IV
February, 1913.
I AM so glad, my dear Caroline, to hear that you were interested in my last letter. It is an important subject – marriage – and one I want more fully to discuss with you. No one accomplishes any rôle successfully without some preparatory training – and the rôle of a married woman requires a good deal of thought bestowed upon it before it should be undertaken.
As I said in my last epistle, the affair is a bargain, in which too often the modern young people refuse to recognize any of the responsibilities. Let us, for the sake of our argument, suppose, Caroline, that you have fallen in love with, and married, what appears to be a suitable young man in fortune and character. We will pretend that he is the eldest son of some one of importance, and in his turn one day will occupy a great position. If you have carefully followed the advice I have been giving you, you will be so distinguished in appearance and manner that you ought to be an ornament to your new station. And you must make your husband feel from the very beginning that you mean to take the deepest interest in all his tastes and pursuits: if they are political, that you will endeavor to forward his interest and understand his aims; if they lie in the country and the management of his estate, that you mean to fulfil all the duties which such an existence requires. If he is a soldier, a sailor, a barrister, a financier – no matter what – this same principle applies, though in the latter professions you cannot take perhaps such active interest; but you must show him that at all events you can give him your sympathy and understanding, and make his home pleasant and agreeable when he returns to it. If you make it smooth and charming for him you may be as certain that he will prefer to spend all his spare time with you as that he will break away immediately if you do not.
All human beings unconsciously in their leisure moments do what they like best. If you find a man in his free hours doing something which he obviously cannot like, it is because to accomplish his duty is the thing he likes best. Thus, if you bore your husband in his leisure, he may stay with you for a while from a sense of duty, but he will begin to make excuses of work to curtail the moments, and he will snatch time from his real work for his pleasure elsewhere.
Whether you keep your husband’s love and devotion lies almost entirely with yourself and your own intelligence, and I might say sagacity! Remember this maxim: “A fool can win the love of a man, but it requires a woman of resources to keep it” – the difficulty being much greater in a country like England, where the women are in the majority, than in another where they have to be fought for, and the men are the more numerous.
We will suppose that you desire to retain the love and devotion of your husband, and have not only married him for a home and a place in society. In this case face the fact that it is always a difficult matter for a woman to keep a man in love with her when once she belongs to him, and he has no obstacles to overcome. For man is a hunter naturally, and when the quarry is obtained his interest in that particular beast wanes, although the interest in securing by his skill another of the same species remains as active as ever.
The wise woman realizes all these primitive and deep-seated instincts in human nature, and adapts herself to them. She recognizes the futility of trying to make her personal protest effective against what is a fundamental characteristic of all male animals.
Who, seeing a wall with several gates in it, would be so foolish as to fling herself against the stones instead of quietly going through one of the openings, simply because she resented the wall’s being there at all! And yet this is what numbers – indeed the majority – of women do, figuratively, in their dealings with men; and so destroy their own happiness. But I want you to be wiser, Caroline. Realize when you embark upon matrimony that you will have to play a difficult game, with the odds all against you, and that it will take every atom of your intelligence to win it, the prize being continued happiness. You may reply, “If Charlie requires all this management and thinking over, let him go! I would not demean myself by pandering to such things.”
And I answer, “Certainly, if to let him go will make you as happy as to keep him!” But if, on the contrary, it will make you perfectly miserable, then it will be more prudent to use a little common sense about it. Ask yourself the question frankly and then settle upon your course of conduct.
If you decide to try to keep him, attend to your means of attraction. While you were engaged to him you would not have allowed him to see you looking ugly or unappetizing for the world – such things are even more important after you are married. Never under any circumstances let him have the chance of feeling physically repulsed – for the very first time he experiences this sensation that will be the beginning of the end of his being in love with you, although he may go on treating you in a very kind and friendly way. But if you want to keep him in the blissful state, attend far more to pleasing his eye and his ear when alone with him than to pleasing the world when you go out. Let him feel that whatever admiration you provoke – and the more you do provoke the better he will love you – still that your most utterly attractive allurements are reserved as special treats for himself alone. If I were able to give girls only one sentence of advice as to how to keep their husbands in love with them, I should choose this one – Never revolt the man’s senses. For, remember, this particular aspect of affection called being in love is caused by the senses of both participants being exalted. He is moved by what he thinks he sees in his beloved, and she likewise; and, if the realities are far below the mark of his or her imaginary conception of them, so much the more careful should each one be to keep up the illusions. Very deep affection can remain when all sense of “being in love” is over, but it has lost its exquisite aroma of sweetness.
A man will go on being in love with even a stupid woman who never fails to please his eye and his ear – whereas he will lose all emotion for the cleverest who revolts either. Grasp this truth, that the personal attraction in a connection like marriage is of colossal importance, for the moment that is over the affair will subside into a duty, a calm friendship, or an armed neutrality. It can no longer be a divine happiness. So if you can keep this great joy by using a little intelligence and forethought, how much better to do so! I hope you agree with me, Caroline?
Remember, all the other women your husband will meet will only be showing their most agreeable sides to him without the handicap of daily intercourse. Remember, also, that, though he may have the most honorable desire to be faithful to you in the letter and the spirit, he cannot by his own will suppress or increase his actual emotion toward you, and if you destroy his ideal of you it cannot be his fault if his ardor cools. That is one point of gigantic importance which I want to hammer into your head, child – whatever a person thinks and feels about you, you yourself are responsible for. You have given his or her sensibilities that impression, exactly as when you look in a mirror your reflection is reproduced.
People complain of being misunderstood, but it is because they themselves, unconsciously perhaps, have given the cause for misunderstanding. A girl may say a man is a brute and a false traitor, because in May he was passionately loving, making every vow to her, but by October he had cooled, and by December he had become in love with someone else! Granted that some men have fickle natures and more easily stray than others, still the actual emotion for a particular person is not under any human being’s control, only the demonstrations of it. I must be very explicit about this statement in case you misunderstand me.
I mean that no man or woman can love or unlove at will – (by “love” I am still meaning all the emotions which are contained in the state called “being in love”). This state in man or woman is produced, as I said before, by some attraction in the loved one, just as a needle is attracted by a magnet. If the magnetic power were to lessen in the magnet the needle could not prevent itself from falling away from it – or if another and stronger magnet were placed near the needle it would be drawn to that. It – the needle – would only be obeying natural laws and therefore would not be responsible.
Which, then, could you blame – the original magnet or the needle?
Obviously the magnet is responsible.
You may reply. But the magnet did not wish to lessen in attraction; that and the arrival of the stronger magnet were pure misfortunes and accidents of fate.
Granted – but this only brings in a third influence – it does not throw the blame upon the needle. So I want you to understand, Caroline, that if a man ceases to love you it is your own fault – or misfortune – never his fault; just as, if you cease to love the man, it is his fault or misfortune, not yours.
These are truths which ninety-nine women out of a hundred do not care to face. But the wise hundredth, realizing that she is the magnet, tries her uttermost to keep her magnetic power strong enough to withstand all misfortune or the attacks of other magnets – that is, if she wishes to keep the man who is the needle.
And if he leaves her she must ask herself how she is in fault. She must never blame him. If she cannot discover that she is in fault at all, she is then in the position of the first magnet – and it is her misfortune; but misfortune can be turned into success by intelligence, and, with skill, a magnet can be recharged.
Now do you clearly understand this argument, Caroline? I hope so, because I have put it plainly enough to make you conscious of your personal responsibility in the matter of being able to retain your husband’s love. So we can get back to the subject of the vital importance of keeping his senses pleased with you. There are numbers of girls who at the end of a month of marriage have done, said, and looked things which they would have died rather than let their fiancés perceive, hear, or see, and yet who are much astonished and feel resentful and aggrieved because they begin to reap the harvest of their own actions in the fact of their husbands showing less love and respect for them.
How illogical! How foolish!
To please a man after marriage every attraction which lured him into the bond should be continually kept up to the mark, because there are, then, the extra foes to fight – the natural hunting instinct in man and the destroying power of satiety. How could a girl hope to keep her husband as a lover when she herself had abandoned all the ways of a sweetheart and had assumed little habits which would be enough to put off any man! If you have done everything a woman can possibly do to be physically and mentally desirable to your husband, and yet have failed to keep his love, you must search more deeply for the reason, and when you have found it, no matter how the discovery may wound your vanity or self-esteem, you must use the whole of your wits to remedy its result if you are unable to eradicate its cause.
He may have idiosyncrasies – watch them and avoid irritating them. He may have some taste which you do not share, and have shown your antagonism to. Try to hide this, and if the taste is not a low one try to take an interest in it. Try always and ever to keep the atmosphere between you in harmony.
If the lessening of your attraction for him has been engendered by the arrival of a stronger magnet on the scene, your efforts must be redoubled to replenish your own magnetic powers. You certainly will not draw him back to you by making the contrast between yourself and his new attraction the greater through being disagreeable. If he outrages your truest feelings, let him see that he has hurt you, but do not reproach him – not because you may not have just cause to do so, but because giving way to this outlet for your injured emotions would only defeat your own end, that of bringing him back to yourself.
You may be perfectly certain that if that aim of your being remains unchanged, and your love continues strong enough to make your methods vitally intelligent, you will eventually draw him away from anything on earth back to the peaceful haven of your tender arms. All this I am saying presupposing that you are “in love” with the man, and the greatest desire of your life is to keep his love in return.
But supposing that his actions kill your affection (this, though, is not so likely to happen as that your actions will damp his – because of that hunting instinct in man making him more fickle by nature) – but supposing it does happen that you find yourself utterly disillusioned and disgusted, then all you can aim at is to obtain peace and dignity in your home, and at least merit your husband’s respect, and the respect of all who know you. But this possibility I must leave the discussion of to another letter; it would be a digression in this one.
The magnet and the needle simile works both ways. If your husband ceases to draw your affection he will only have himself or his misfortune to blame – not you. We have been speaking of emotions hitherto, and of their impossibility of control – and to leave the discussion at that would open a dangerous door to those feather brains who never, if they can help it, look at the real meaning of an argument, but adapt it and turn it to fit their own desires. So I must forcibly state that, although the actual emotion in its coming or going is not under human control, the demonstration of it most emphatically is, being entirely a question of will. A strong will can master any demonstration of emotion, and it is the duty of either the young husband or wife sternly to curb all vagrant fancies in themselves, whose encouragement can only bring degradation and disaster.
I am confining myself now to enlightening you, Caroline, upon your own responsibilities. If your health should not be good use common sense and try to improve it – make as light of it as possible, and do not complain. It is such a temptation to work upon a loved one’s feelings and secure oceans of sympathy, but often the second or third time you do so an element of boredom – or, at best, patient bearing of the fret – will come into his listening to your plaints. If he is ill himself do not fuss over him, but at the same time make him feel that no mother could be more tender and thoughtful than you are being for his comfort. Do not be touchy and easily hurt. Remember he may be thoughtless, but while he loves you he certainly has no deliberate intention of wounding you. Be cheerful and gay, and if he is depressed by outside worries show him you think him capable of overcoming them all. Let your thoughts of him be always that he is the greatest and best, and the current of them, vitalized by love, will assist him to become so in fact.
Think of all the young couples that you know. How few of them are really in love with each other after the first year! They have bartered the best and most exquisite joy for such poor returns – and they could have kept their Heaven’s gift if they had only thought carefully over the things which are likely to destroy it.
I believe you play the piano most charmingly, Caroline – in an easy way which gives pleasure to everyone. Do not, when you marry, give this up and let it be relegated into the background, as so many girls do with their accomplishments. And if your husband should be one of those rich modern young men who seem to have no sense of balance or responsibility, but pass their lives rushing from one sport to another, try to curb his restlessness and teach him that a great position entails great obligations and that he must justify his ownership of it in the eyes of the people who now hold the casting vote in their inexperienced hands. I believe, from the little I know about politics, that I am a Conservative, Caroline – but, when I see an utter recklessness and indifference to their nation’s greatness and a wild tearing after pleasure apparently the only aims of young lives in the upper classes, it sickens me with contempt and sorrow that they should give the enemy so good a chance to blaspheme.
And as women by their gentleness, tact, and goodness influence affairs and governments and countries, through men, a thousand-fold more than the cleverest suffragettes could influence these things by securing votes for women – I do implore you, Caroline, when your turn comes to be the inspiration of some nice young husband, to use your power over him to make him truly feel the splendor of his inheritance in being an Anglo-Saxon, and his tremendous obligation to come up to the mark.
Now you will think I am becoming too serious, so I will say good-night, child.
Your affectionate Godmother,
E. G.