Yellowly would have every one married, Reed every one occupied, in the world, society being thus at its best.—Author, chap. i.
I propose to illustrate the twenty-second century, on which we now enter, by reference to one subject only, but yet a subject so important and comprehensive as to involve very much else in human relations, and thus to approve itself a good characteristic illustration. In short, I propose to treat of marriage, in some of the chief features which that social condition itself, as well as the various ways and preparations for attaining it, presented in the twenty-second century. The progress of the world may perhaps be quite as characteristically shown in this particular direction, as in any other. Given, youth and the two sexes, there will always be marrying and giving in marriage. Let us, then, see how they managed this important business of human life in the century which we have now reached.
The habit alike of early marriage and of universal marrying, had been our increasing social feature since the great educational and other reforms that characterized the closing nineteenth and opening twentieth century. Every young man and every young woman looked forward, as matter of course, to being a husband or a wife; and each, upon due occasion, took his or her own case in charge in the most methodical and business way, and with altogether undisguised purpose. But, in order to be suitably mated, the great object on either side was not merely the ordinary family or domestic happiness, which was mostly a sure enough prospect in those fairly well-ordered times; still less was it anything about pecuniary settlements, that prime consideration of some previous centuries. What the expectant wife might possibly be even more concerned about than mere domestic bliss, was the prospect of an active and successful joint participation in the current science or business of the time, so that life might be spent to some purpose, and the departing spirit, at the end, feel that, during the occupation of the body, there had not been a mere useless cumbrance of the busy ground. Deathbeds might thus be at times a sad but not unedifying spectacle, when they were disturbed by a sense of irrevocably wasted time. The strength, freshness, and comparative leisure of youth were in general diligently given by either sex, to lay a solid foundation of acquirements for the pursuits of maturer life. Even diet, as well as exercise, began to be universally regulated so as to result in the greatest powers of mind and body. The young couples, when mated with due regard to suitability, would complete together, with an inspiring mutual stimulus, their preparatory career, and then enter with mutual ardour upon the special study or work of their life, which was sometimes the same for both, sometimes different.
Marriage was thus looked forward to as the era for entering upon many-sided activities and much accompanying satisfaction and happiness. The stronger sex, as was fitting and proper, then and always, still assumed the lead in matrimonial preliminaries. But if it was the young man who most usually first approached, then wooed and won the young maid; yet the latter, upon any special circumstances or emergencies, or upon the confines of a critical age, would be just as little disposed as the masculine sex to waste her opportunities, or let slip her particular likings, and thus, from any over-delicacy or untimely hesitation, wrong her life-prospects in so time-pressing and momentous a business.
But these early marriages, and this busy married life, if they produced much happiness, produced also large—indeed very large—families. The progress in this direction was truly quite as marked as in any other, in the general advance of our country and of the world. Society at large was confronted by the one special problem of ever-increasing mouths ever agape for food. But over against this one costly responsibility of the time, society could set many economies resulting from the diligence and good order of married life. The two sexes, meeting each other freely in business walks, formed early attachments, which had a restraining effect upon the passion or extravagance of youthful inclination. The gentler sex had, by this time, successfully fought its way into all of the world's work that was suitable to it; and thus the engaged young couple would pile up together, from the proceeds of their respective industry, the sufficient preliminary fund for their beginning their joint life. Society could thus be assured that the prospective increase of population was subject to such concurrent guarantees for a full set-off in industry, frugality, and other social good demeanour, as to leave society largely the gainer.
The Government of the day did not deem it either beneath their dignity, or a matter outside of their duty, to countenance and even to promote this general attention to suitability in marriage. This was usually done by precautionary and other needful intimations issued from the State medical department. We shall see, further on, what more was done in this beneficial supervision, more especially when a public interest came to be taken in the promotion of international marriages. The State, indeed, affected no secret that it also, as well as the parties themselves, was primarily interested in suitable marriages, and in the highest health, moral as well as physical, of family life.
We come back to the old saying, "As parent, so offspring." The latter can get only what the other, at its time, has to give. Parents in bad health must expect children who will be a trial and trouble to all concerned. Nor is the moral health less heritable than the physical. By due intelligent precaution, the child might be, and indeed ought to be, an advance upon the parents; nor was public opinion, about this time, slow to pronounce, if the result were noticeably otherwise. A good father with a bad son aroused unfavourable comment upon the former rather than the latter; while to serve out the offending junior by finally "cutting him off with a shilling" was now regarded as but scant parental justice and reparation. Pious parents, troubled with unruly family nests, got scant public sympathy in this cause-seeking time; for there had obviously been either bad parental condition, or else most culpable negligence. Intermittent parental health, unsteady character, intervals of devious or doubtful purposes, require all to be intelligently guarded from transmission; nor can subsequent parental physical restoration, or after reformation or penitence, however personally edifying and saving, hail backwards to the offspring's like benefit.
The State, as already hinted, did something more than take only a medical interest in the great and ubiquitous marriage question. While medical science was constantly expounding, in language as plain, and yet as delicately select as the subject would admit of, those qualities of mind and body which would unite in the best and happiest marriage, the State had itself begun to give practical effect to theory, by intervening in the promotion of suitable unions. Our statesmen of that day, relieved, as they happily were, from countless old cares and anxieties, in naval and military superintendence, criminal jurisdiction, and ever possible international differences, jealousies, and general susceptibilities, could not better employ their resulting official leisure to useful public account. By way of publicly exemplifying marriage suitabilities, certain national selections would be periodically made of both sexes; and if these selected suitabilities, thus theoretically mated, afterwards mutually agreed to actual marriage, they became, in a certain sense of social consideration, the State's family, and any children they might have were to be regarded with more or less of public concernment. This procedure was, in fact, no other than a very high-class scientific experiment, and society was then sufficiently advanced to so regard and benefit by it. The children of such State marriages were usually, as was fully expected, the most perfect of their time. Any other result would have been as surprising to all, as indeed it would have been reprehensible to the parties more immediately concerned.
The young people of those days, as we have said, looked well after their own matrimonial interests; and even the gentle young maiden, however diffident and filially obedient in all else, took this matter pretty much into her own hands. The parental experience and discretion, which had prevailed in former times, as far at least as regarded pecuniary considerations, had but scant tolerance now. "The settlements," in their old meaning, had drifted out of the reckoning. Indeed, from the facility, or rather the absolute certainty, with which an adequate living could be earned by due exertion and ability, in those days of high education and of the universal application of high art and science to all business life, the energetic and ambitious young wife was not anxious for a husband already well off, and thus deprived of his strongest stimulant to exertion. On the contrary, she would rather have suspected and dreaded such a candidate for her hand and heart, and have preferred one who was likely to be more free to assist, effectively, her own exertions towards imprinting their common mark upon the advancing world, to the credit of their own name after their departure, as well as that of the family they hoped to leave behind them.
The love-sick youth of the other sex must thus, for his part, be careful of allusions to wealth or family, or other such non-personal matters, seeing they were apt to be viewed, by the critically interested fair one, merely as excuses for, or symptoms of, an idling tendency. His great-grandfather's merits, however overshadowing, could not possibly stand for his own. The personal had, in the very practical common sense of the time, become the sole consideration. The process of courtship was, indeed, one of the prominent high arts of the time, the grand object on either side being to find out each other sufficiently upon all important personal points. It was only when each was thus entirely satisfied with the other, that the final agreement was ratified, and a joint life entered upon, which thus gave all good promise of mutual suitability, as regarded alike personal happiness and public usefulness.
Yes, alas! with all its advance at this time, society had not emerged from this social necessity. Divorce features, however, had been very appreciably changed, and been freed from most of the grosser aspects of former centuries. Wives had not much complaint now of cruel or sensual husbands. Their wrongs were of a much more refined character, and one that was more accordant with the delicate sentiment, and the high aims, hopes, and expectations of that age. The following two instances of divorce suits will form a sufficiently characteristic illustration, more especially as these cases, both famous in their time in this century, assisted respectively in establishing authoritative precedents for subsequent times.
First case.—A youth, heretofore of promise, who, in the severer part of his university ordeal, had unguardedly addicted himself to the injurious, dirty, and then all but exploded habit of tobacco-smoking, had afterwards also fallen in love with a different and far more worthy object of affection. But, perfectly aware, as he could not fail to be, that the public sentiment as to his unfortunate habit, and more especially the firm stand which, as by tacit agreement in matrimonial relations, the other sex had made against it, for more than a century past, would give him but slight chance in his proposed courtship, he not only at once laudably abandoned his smoking, but by a course of thorough medical purgation he successfully eliminated every possible trace of his old infirmity. Rejoicing in the strength of new purposes, and a new life and manhood, he now introduced himself to the fair object of his hopes, and was duly successful in his suit.
The honeymoon, and even some further interval, had passed over with mutual and unexceptionable happiness, when, alas! the old habit began once more to creep over its victim. The alarmed and aggrieved wife, after a sad struggle between love for her husband and abhorrence of his vile habit, together with all the altered prospects of her whole life, through this health-injuring, time-wasting, and in every way anti-aesthetic practice, was persuaded, under due approval of her legal advisers, and as her last available resource, to bring her action of divorce.
The learned judge commented on the unusual clearness of the case. The wife's sacred vows were to the man himself, not to the man plus the tobacco. It was a case of divided affection, where agreement had been for undivided affection; while the victimized wife had been designedly, and by legal fraud, kept in ignorance of conducing circumstances prior to the matrimonial agreement. Had the wife been duly apprised beforehand of the bad tendency in question, her legal remedy was utterly gone, she having knowingly accepted all risks. Or had the vicious habit arisen only after marriage, she was in equal deprivation of remedy—nay, even more in this latter case, for the usual commanding influence of a good wife would seem in such case to have been at fault. Clearly there had been a legally constructive fraudulent concealment of facts that were most material to the intended marriage, and the court must therefore pronounce for a divorce.
Second Case.—The other case, as the judge, in effect, said at the time, was not one whit less clear. A wife had ascertained, but not until after marriage, that her husband had been possessed of considerable property; and, what was to be regarded as still worse for his prospects, it was means inherited and not self-made. In consequence of such ample pre-provision, he had shown but slight disposition to enter with due zest and vigour upon the world's work, and his poor and humiliated wife was in consequence in utter despair at her prospects. The case was aggravated by the indolent fellow keeping an elegant and luxurious carriage, in which, with all the latest and best energy-locomotive adaptations, he wasted many precious hours; and he had even repeatedly tried to seduce his virtuous and high-aiming wife into the same ignoble waste of time.
The noble-minded wife, after a protracted endurance, hoping still against all hope, at length, and most, reluctantly, brought her action. The judge commented upon the very high importance of this case to the advanced civilization of the time. He pictured the young wife, ardent in the honourably ambitious hope of a successful life of activity and usefulness, realizing, after marriage, that all her brightest expectations were thwarted, checkmated, utterly wrecked, by an idling and useless husband. No doubt husbands of unusually superior natures could surmount the obstacles in question, and be, perhaps, just as active, mind and body, with wealth as without it. But as that was by no means the ordinary experience, a fact so material to the matrimonial agreement, and to matrimonial prospects, ought, in all fairness, to be made known beforehand; otherwise the contract was simply null and void. After a brief but emphatic assertion of the true justice of that view, and sympathetic allusion to the fresh chance such justice afforded to the unhappy wife yet to retrieve the blasted prospects of her life, the learned judge, amidst the hardly suppressed applause of the whole court, pronounced for the divorce.
The term "International," three centuries earlier, was wont to call up chiefly a grim vision of class war and bloodshed, and the general upset of society. That term now carried a very different meaning. So soon as the various peoples of the civilized world had fully realized that all fears of mutual war were finally done with, a mutual trafficking, and mutual personal intercourse set in, with a cordiality, and upon a scale, which were altogether beyond precedent. Our young men, after completing their education, and just before settling down to life's regular vocation, would make a short visiting tour amongst neighbouring societies in Europe or across the Atlantic. Indeed they went, by-and-by, gradually much further afoot; for, during this century in particular, our Anglo-German race had almost everywhere overspread the world from equator to either pole, in their successful colonizing enterprise. These various outside visits were cordially reciprocated to us by the youths of the other countries.
Upon this practice there was gradually grafted another. The respective States began to issue, to their respective young excursionists, duly accrediting passports or letters of general introduction, which would give them free ingress abroad to the best society. These letters were more than a mere form; they were the result of proper and careful inquiry and evidence as to character and attainments. There were thus, of course, great facilities for the meeting of the élite of the sexes, and there was a charm of novelty and piquancy in the whole case which helped much to promote the many life agreements that were the consequence. In short, our young adventurer most commonly returned with a foreign wife; while the State, backed by medical science, gave no unhesitating approval of this most genial international habit.
But after a time this practice took a new and still enlarging direction, and a direction which was eventually more specially associated with the term "international." The practice, in fact, now become general with the one sex, at length extended to the other. At first, of course, the excursionists had been, without exception, of the stronger sex. The bare idea of any young lady embarking on such a cruise, unmistakably, as it must have been interpreted, in search of a husband, seemed quite intolerable to the proper delicacy of the sex. But it is marvellous how good common-sense, as to the actual needs and wants and reasonable desires of life, comes at last to prevail. As regarded the young men, there was soon no affectation of disguise that the main object was a nice foreign wife. Was the other sex really less interested on the same subject? Evidently the woman's rights question was to come up once more here. As year succeeded year, opinion seemed to get riper, and female courage stronger, on behalf of the new right and privilege; and the only question at last was, as to which country would be the first to launch its fair-sex invasion into the open and tempting field of the others.
There was evident preparation in this new direction amongst more than one of our neighbours, not to mention the social heavings within ourselves. If our English young maidens lacked the courage to be themselves the first to break the ice, our country was, at all events, honoured as the place to which the interesting first experiment was directed. There was, in fact, in this matter, so characteristic of the times, an interval of high curiosity and expectation. Failing our own fair sex making the first attempt, we were looking rather in the direction of old blood relationship across the Atlantic, where many millions of the ruddy young life and beauty of Canada were already in perceptible ferment on the subject, and where still more millions of the still more self-assertive and independent-thinking maidens of the great States on the southern border seemed not less bent upon the coming fray. The Atlantic had now long been easily and rapidly crossed by great ferries, which resembled, in dimensions and steadiness, rather a considerable floating town or territory, than the old and superseded ships and steamers, which the wild waves played with at their will two or three centuries before. There was, therefore, little difficulty or delay nowadays on the score of transatlantic distance.
But, after all, the first expedition of fair adventuresses came from La belle France, and an ever-memorable occasion it made for either country. The respective Governments had been aroused to take quite a leading part; and a countless multitude of either nationality streamed forth, the one to bid farewell, the other to welcome, this new pledge and novel direction of international union. By this time there was no longer a Calais-Dover strait. Indeed the original viaduct, with its railway, thrown across many years before, had been already widened into a broad belt of intervening territory; while further north and south respectively, other like encroachments had been also successfully made upon the oceanic domain. While the long and well-crammed train is being drawn up at the half-way international boundary, and its most elegant and precious freight is being transferred to the charge of the committee of English matrons officially appointed for the purpose, let us make a few further and explanatory remarks upon this new and extending international custom.
These lively missions to, or invasions of, each other's country, soon took, even with the gentler sex, the form of national rivalry and challenge. Each country not only gave, as we have seen, accrediting passports to its youthful representatives, but grew more and more careful to select the very best of the youth for the purpose; and thus a high national interest was excited, before which the old horse-racing, cricketing, and such like, paled almost to insignificance. Thus the female accession to these excursions fell to be dealt with, and even, if possible, still more strictly, in the like discriminating way; and France, we may be sure, had put forth, on this first occasion, her full strength of beauty and accomplishment.
There was yet another curious result of this highly characteristic international rivalry. When the one country sent forth its choicest youth of the one sex, it could not be long ere the other country would, as matter of course, feel impelled to meet the implied challenge by some equivalent encountering display of the other sex. And thus a practice obtained of the visited country having in readiness a number of the opposite sex about equal to that of the visitors, and selected, as we need hardly add, with due diligence and adequate discrimination. At official receptions, arranged for the purpose, these élite of the two sexes were mutually introduced; and, as might have been expected, the end of it was that, in most cases, the young men did not fail to find wives to their taste, nor the young maids husbands. But the curious result alluded to was more particularly this, that any who might happen to return unmated had presumably failed to encounter excellence equal to their own, and were thus enabled to bring their superiorities safely back for the good of their own kith and kin. When the female sex entered these lists, of course this view of the case was still further enforced by considerations of gallantry. There was, therefore, always the greater triumph to their country, the larger the proportion of its fair ones who came back unsatisfied and unwed.
History has told us that of this famous, and, in all senses of the word, virgin French expedition, not one fair member returned as she came, and thus certain expectations of French triumph were signally disappointed. This, however, was by no means the uniform result; for after the first novelty wore off, and this kind of marital adventure became quite a common occurrence, even amongst the fair sex, considerable bands would return with still uncaptured hearts, to be welcomed with triumphant acclamation by their compatriots, and afterwards, most likely, to be eagerly sought after at home as the proud possessors of unmatchable superiorities. But there was one remarkable instance of the same complete result, which happened not very long after this first case, and which comprised such exceptional and stirring features, as to be not unworthy also of a place in our record.
The case in question concerned Italy, which country had not yet sent forth its first army of fair and foraging maidens, even after most other countries, including our own, had repeatedly set the example. We, for instance, had already thus invaded this same backward Italy, in common with other places. There was something not entirely explicable in the matter; for a long roll of Italian beauty was understood to be both ready and willing, and seemed restrained only by a mysterious official pressure. But no one outside had suspected the real cause and motive, until early one fine Italian morning our ambassador at Rome telephoned our Government in haste and alarm, to the effect that he had just then, reliably, albeit surreptitiously, ascertained, that we were almost on the very eve of being visited by such unprecedented numbers, and such a strictly selected excellence of Italian maidenhood, as made it utterly impossible for us, with mere ordinary preparation, to escape grievous national defeat.
The surface, to all appearance, indicated nothing unusual. The Italian Government had already transmitted to ours the usual courtesy notice, as though for quite an ordinary visitation; and they had done this with an ostensible calmness, even almost indifference, as though nothing in particular were in the wind; while, instead of that, a furious tornado was already well-nigh at our very doors. But our measures were instantly taken; and as Italy had so successfully kept her own counsel, so did we, and even with still more success. We had out, at once, agencies everywhere over the country, to gather in the élite of our youth. We decided upon our tactical course. So soon as we could learn the exact number of the enemy, we draughted off an exactly equal force, the very choicest of the choice, and thus, in readiness and full confidence, our authorities awaited battle.
We completely hoodwinked the watchful expectancy of the Italian ambassador in London, so that no warning whatever had passed to his masters outside. As the day of departure drew on, the Italian authorities were hardly troubled to conceal their approaching triumph; for it seemed to them now impossible for England, in the brief remaining interval, to be duly prepared. Venerable old Rome, with all its millions of population, was in high fête on that memorable day, as the long and crowded trains carried off Italy's choicest flowers to what was deemed certain victory. The bright and joyous, laughing and joking occupants, had, however, many a serious exhortation, parental and general, to reject with becoming pride all inferiority, and to assure their country's triumph by returning, in the largest possible proportions, with uncaptured hearts.
This famous journey was one continuous succession of pleasurable excitement. The universal and somewhat critical circumstances had begun to be known everywhere, and to arouse the greatest possible interest. On the way, authorities and people alike, at the different places the expedition successively passed through, in Italy itself, in Switzerland, in Germany, in France, gave the excursionists the most specially cordial greeting. As they approached the old but exploded Alpine barrier, the trains divided, some to take one or other of the various tunnels, the others to ascend the various mountain lines, whose steeps were then easily overcome by the adequate electric locomotive appliances of the day. Many of the lively young travellers preferred the grand mountain scenery, which they could comfortably enjoy beneath the protective over-all glass surrounding. Indeed, in all the more northern latitudes also, by this time, the custom was general of enclosing even the entire railway line with glass, which was either the ordinary toughened cheap article of the kind, found to be quite strong enough for all usual emergencies, or, at a trifle more cost, the thin light diamond sheet, so sparklingly clear, and of such defiant strength against the hail and tempest that still characterized our earth's meteorology. The great work which we, of the twenty-ninth century, have since accomplished, of filling up the most part of our ocean surfaces, had not yet advanced so far as very perceptibly to mitigate the old world's climatologies.
The Italian embassy at London, it is recorded, had indulged largely in bets, and at heavy odds, upon the results of their fair countrywomen's mission. One-fourth of the whole, one-third, one-half, nay, even more than all that, were to return as they came, to the terrible exposure of England's inferiority, as compared at any rate with triumphant Italy. Betting in those days did not, however, continue in the degrading and mercenary form of previous centuries. The loser of a bet was, at this time, usually bound to write an article upon any subject whatever which the winner might prescribe. Upon honour he was bound also to write without help; so that these constrained articles formed a very characteristic literature of the age, very trying to the writers, and very amusing, at the least, to every one else. And so the "Bet Magazines" came in for very general reading, and formed, in fact, quite a noticeable section of literature.
So soon as business opened, our authorities, confident in all their arrangements, were ready with their programme of surprises for the other side. As surprise the first, we at once intimated that our numbers would be strictly limited to exactly those of the other side. Any less confident feeling would have preferred a larger number on our side, as giving us a better chance. Again, the options in precedure being with us, as the challenged party, we at once declared, as surprise number two, for the Alphabetic course. This meant no less than that the first or preliminary introductions, by pairing in the alphabetic order of the names, would be committed to absolute chance. This seemed mere blank defiance on our part. The other, and much more usual mode, as giving better or freer opportunities to seek out mutual suitability, was to make the introductions quite general, and thus leave the young people more entirely to their own selections. By our extraordinary course, we were, in effect, saying, that either side was so perfect throughout, and thus so equally matched, that any two, taken at hap-hazard, would prove as suitably mated as any other two. Those of our own people, who were not in the secret, quailed visibly at such rashness, and rampant triumph was already running over the Italian side. "Whom the gods would destroy they first turn mad," was in every mind, and upon every glib tongue in that quarter, and the betting there went furiously on at any offered odds.
Now the great event of the receptions is opened, and all eyes are curiously turned, more especially to where the élite of England is to emerge, in order to confront that of Italy. The quality of the latter had been already declared as the long line defiled shortly before from the arrival platform; and the enthusiastic ovation, into which we were impelled on the occasion, showed all the more clearly the sense of the country's approaching danger.
The candidates on our side had, until now, been carefully, and rather mysteriously shrouded from common view. The Italians were not slow to jump at a probable reason, and forthwith, even more expectant than before, their betting grew even still wilder. When the first name in letter A was called on our visitors' side, and a living form of unsurpassable grace and beauty came responsively forth for Italy, every eye at once turned to the opposite entrance where England was simultaneously to put in her rival appearance. A buzz of admiring satisfaction, which immediately passed through the great assembled company, told that England had not proved second-best in the dread encounter, and gave timely relief to many doubting and anxious minds. But this was only an individual instance. A legion lay still behind, and the Italian side was still undismayed; nor had it still abandoned hope even when the entire first letter was played out. But, alas! long, long ere Z was reached, their hopes had fallen to zero. What a harvest in store for the "Bet Magazines" of that nationally eventful week!
"We are left to infer that the young couples did actually settle their mutual affairs by the chance medley of the alphabetic course. Anyhow, as the record has told us, every young Italian maiden was duly robbed of her heart by the young English brigands of the occasion. Although Italy lost some expected vainglorying, we are not to doubt that she contributed largely instead to the brightness, beauty, and happiness of many English homes.