Virginibus Puerisque | Page 6

a fellow of parts, quick, humorous, a clever painter,
and with an eye for certain poetical effects of sea and ships. I am not
much of a judge of that kind of thing, but a sketch of his comes before
me sometimes at night. How strong, supple, and living the ship seems
upon the billows! With what a dip and rake she shears the flying sea! I

cannot fancy the man who saw this effect, and took it on the wing with
so much force and spirit, was what you call commonplace in the last
recesses of the heart. And yet he thought, and was not ashamed to have
it known of him, that Ouida was better in every way than William
Shakespeare. If there were more people of his honesty, this would be
about the staple of lay criticism. It is not taste that is plentiful, but
courage that is rare. And what have we in place? How many, who think
no otherwise than the young painter, have we not heard disbursing
second-hand hyperboles? Have you never turned sick at heart, O best of
critics! when some of your own sweet adjectives were returned on you
before a gaping audience? Enthusiasm about art is become a function of
the average female being, which she performs with precision and a sort
of haunting sprightliness, like an ingenious and well- regulated
machine. Sometimes, alas! the calmest man is carried away in the
torrent, bandies adjectives with the best, and out-Herods Herod for
some shameful moments. When you remember that, you will be
tempted to put things strongly, and say you will marry no one who is
not like George the Second, and cannot state openly a distaste for
poetry and painting.
The word "facts" is, in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits
and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic
republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's- eye neckcloths; and each
understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I
might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was
essential to them, seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no
compromise as to what was, or what was not, important in the life of
man. Turn as we pleased, we all stood back to back in a big ring, and
saw another quarter of the heavens, with different mountain-tops along
the sky-line and different constellations overhead. We had each of us
some whimsy in the brain, which we believed more than anything else,
and which discoloured all experience to its own shade. How would you
have people agree, when one is deaf and the other blind? Now this is
where there should be community between man and wife. They should
be agreed on their catchword in "FACTS OF RELIGION," or "FACTS
OF SCIENCE," or "SOCIETY, MY DEAR"; for without such an
agreement all intercourse is a painful strain upon the mind. "About as

much religion as my William likes," in short, that is what is necessary
to make a happy couple of any William and his spouse. For there are
differences which no habit nor affection can reconcile, and the
Bohemian must not intermarry with the Pharisee. Imagine Consuelo as
Mrs. Samuel Budget, the wife of the successful merchant! The best of
men and the best of women may sometimes live together all their lives,
and, for want of some consent on fundamental questions, hold each
other lost spirits to the end.
A certain sort of talent is almost indispensable for people who would
spend years together and not bore themselves to death. But the talent,
like the agreement, must be for and about life. To dwell happily
together, they should be versed in the niceties of the heart, and born
with a faculty for willing compromise. The woman must be talented as
a woman, and it will not much matter although she is talented in
nothing else. She must know her METIER DE FEMME, and have a
fine touch for the affections. And it is more important that a person
should be a good gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly of common
friends and the thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than
that she should speak with the tongues of men and angels; for a while
together by the fire, happens more frequently in marriage than the
presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner. That people should
laugh over the same sort of jests, and have many a story of "grouse in
the gun-room," many an old joke between them which time cannot
wither nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your leave,
than many other things higher and better sounding in the world's ears.
You could read Kant by yourself, if you