He will be foolish if he utters aloud, or even says in the silence of his heart, that motherhood is good, but that wifehood was what he wanted. It would be but a bootless kicking against the pricks. For he has chosen the mother-woman, and it is beyond his power, or that of any other specialist, to effect the fundamental change for which his soul may long. It only remains for him to make the best of a very good bargain, and one to which it is very probable his strict personal merits may hardly have entitled him.
If such a marriage is childless, it may still be a very useful one. Nature's accommodations often verge on the miraculous. The unemployed maternal instincts of the wife easily work themselves out in an unlimited and universal auntdom. It must be confessed that bad blunders are apt to ensue, but where the intentions are good, the pavement should not be too closely scanned. In fiction these are the Dinahs, the Romolas, the Dorotheas, the Mary Garths. Dear to the soul of the female writer is the maternal type. With loving, if tiresome frequency, she is presented to us again and yet again. In truth we sometimes grow a little weary of her saintly monotony. But as it is given to few of us to have the courage of our tastes, we bear with her, as we bear with other not altogether pleasing appliances, presented to us by earnest friends, with the assurance that they are for our good, or for our education, or some other equally superfluous purpose.
With the male artist this female model is not nearly so popular. It may be that he feels himself wholly unequal to cope with her countless perfections. Certain it is that he makes but a sad muddle of it when he tries. Witness Thackeray's faded, bloodless Lady Esmond, as set against his glowing wayward Trix—she, by the way, a beautifully-marked specimen of the wife-woman—though whether it would be pure wisdom to take her to wife must be left an open question. Still, we have in our time lovedher