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A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT
OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE
AS a single man, I have spent a good
deal of my time in noting down the infirmities of Married People,
to console myself for those superior pleasures, which they tell
me I have lost by remaining as I am.
I cannot say that the
quarrels of men and their wives ever made any great impression
upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social
resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more substantial considerations.
What oftenest offends me at the houses of married persons where
I visit, is an error of quite a different description; -- it is
that they are too loving.
Not too loving neither:
that does not explain my meaning. Besides, why should that offend
me? The very act of separating themselves from the rest of the
world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's society, implies
that they prefer one another to all the world.
But what I complain
of is, that they carry this preference so undisguisedly, they
perk it up in the faces of us single people so shamelessly, you
cannot be in their company a moment without being made to feel,
by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you are not the object
of this preference. Now there are some things which give no offence,
while implied or taken for granted merely; but expressed, there
is much offence in them. If a man were to accost the first homely-featured
or plain-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her
bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enough for him, and
he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his
ill manners; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access
and opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet
thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly
as if it were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would
think of making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right
have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are
scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man,the
lady's choice. It is enough that I know I am not: I do not want
this perpetual reminding.
The display of superior
knowledge or riches may be made sufficiently mortifying; but these
admit of a palliative. The knowledge which is brought out to insult
me, may accidentally improve me; and in the rich man's houses
and pictures, -- his parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct
at least. But the display of married happiness has none of these
palliatives: it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unqualified
insult.
Marriage by its best
title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort. It is
the cunning of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep
their advantage as much out of sight as possible, that their less
favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, may the less
be disposed to question the right. But these married monopolists
thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces.
Nothing is to me more
distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which
beam in the countenances of a new-married couple, -- in that of
the lady particularly: it tells you, that her lot is disposed
of in this world: that you can have no hopes of her. It is true,
I have none; nor wishes either, perhaps: but this is one of those
truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted,
not expressed.
The excessive airs which
those people give themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried
people, would be more offensive if they were less irrational.
We will allow them to understand the mysteries belonging to their
own craft better than we who have not had the happiness to be
made free of the company: but their arrogance is not content within
these limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion
in their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he
is immediately silenced as an incompetent person. Nay, a young
married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the Jest was,
had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a question
on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the
properest mode of breeding oysters for the London market, had
the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor as
I could pretend to know any thing about such matters.
But what I have spoken
of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these creatures give
themselves when they come, as they generally do, to have children.
When I consider how little of a rarity children are, -- that every
street and blind alley swarms with them, -- that the poorest people
commonly have them in most abundance, -- that there are few marriages
that are not blest with at least one of these bargains, -- how
often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents,
taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the
gallows, &c. -- I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride
there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes,
indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext.
But when they are so common -
I do not advert to
the insolent merit which they assume with their husbands on these
occasions. Let them look to that. But why we, who are not their
natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our spices,
myrrh, and incense, -- our tribute and homage of admiration, --
I do not see.
"Like as the arrows
in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children:"
so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book appointed for
the churching of women. "Happy is the man that hath his quiver
full of them:" So say I; but then don't let him discharge
his quiver upon us that are weaponless ; -- let them be arrows,
but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these
arrows are double-headed: they have two forks, to be sure to hit
with one or the other. As for instance, when you come into a house
which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of
them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn a
deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable,
morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you find them
more than usually engaging,if you are taken with their pretty
manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with them,
some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out
of the room: they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. -- does
not like children. With one or other of these forks the arrow
is sure to hit you.
I could forgive their
jealousy, and dispense with toying with their brats, if it gives
them any pain; but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to
love them, where I see no occasion, -- to love a whole family,
perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately,to love all the
pretty dears, because children are so engaging.
I know there is a proverb,
"Love me, love my dog:" that is not always so very practicable,
particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at
you in sport. But a dog or a lesser thing -- any inanimate substance,
as a keep-sake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where
we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I
can make shift to love, because I love him, and any thing that
reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and
apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have
a real character and an essential being of themselves: they are
amiable or unamiable per se; I must love or hate them as I see
cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious
a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to
another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly: they stand
with me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. O!
but you will say, sure it is an attractive age, there is something
in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us. That
is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that
a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting
the delicate creatures which bear them; but the prettier the kind
of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty
of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory;
but a violet should look and smell the daintiest. -- I was always
rather squeamish in my women and children.
But this is not the
worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity at least, before
they can complain of inattention. It implies visits, and some
kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom you
have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,if you did not
come in on the wife's side, -- if you did not sneak into the house
in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy
before their courtship was so much as thought on, -- look about
you -- your tenure is precarious -- before a twelve-month shall
roll over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually
grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities
of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance,
upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence
after the period of his marriage. With some limitations they can
endure that: but that the good man should have dared to enter
into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not consulted,
though it happened before they knew him, -- before they that are
now are man and wife ever met, -- this is intolerable to them.
Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must he brought
into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a
sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in
some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked
and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let
it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally
befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new mintings.
Innumerable are the
ways which they take to insult and worm you out of their husband's
confidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as
if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things, but
an oddity, is one of the ways -- they have a particular kind of
stare for the purpose -- till at last the husband, who used to
defer to your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences
of understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein of
observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins
to suspect whether you are not altogether a humorist, -- a fellow
well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor days, but not
quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be called
the staring way; and is that which has oftenest been put in practice
against me.
Then there is the exaggerating
way, or the way of irony: that is, where they find you an object
of especial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to
be shaken from the lasting attachment founded on esteem which
he has conceived towards you; by never-qualified exaggerations
to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who understands
well enough that it is all done in compliment to him, grows weary
of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candor, and by
relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two in
his enthusiasm, sinks at length to that kindly level of moderate
esteem, -- that "decent affection and complacent kindness"
towards you, where she herself can join in sympathy with him without
much stretch and violence to her sincerity.
Another way (for the
ways they have to accomplish so desirable a purpose are infinite)
is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake
what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If an
esteem for something excellent in your moral character was that
which riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary
discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she will
cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr.
-- as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for some
supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to like
you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling irregularities
in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of these
she as readily exclaims, "This, my dear, is your good Mr.
----." One good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating
with for not showing me quite so much respect as I thought due
to her husband's old friend, had the candour to confess to me
that she had often heard Mr. -- - speak of me before marriage,
and that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with
me, but that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expectations;
for from her husband's representations of me, she had formed a
notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-like looking
man (I use her very words); the very reverse of which proved to
be the truth. This was candid; and I had the civility not to ask
her in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal
accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much
from his own; for my friend's dimensions as near as possible approximate
to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have
the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more than
myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his
air or countenance.
These are some of the
mortifications which I have encountered in the absurd attempt
to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain
endeavour: I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety
of which married ladies are guilty, of treating us as if we were
their husbands, and vice versa -- . I mean, when they use us with
familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance,
kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time
of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. -- did not come
home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would
he guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence.
This was reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is
an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from
knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with
a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavors to make
up by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious
preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea
kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities
to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict
rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to
observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour
and decorum: therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony
of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas,
which I was applying to with great good will, to her husband at
the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary
goose- berries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can
I excuse the wanton affront of -
But I am weary of stringing
up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them
amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full-length
English of their names, to the terror of all such desperate offenders
in future.
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