WHY DIDN’T HE MARRY THE GIRL?
WHAT is wrong with marriage, anyhow? I find myself pondering thisquestion so often, when reading high-class literature. I put it tomyself again the other evening, during a performance of Faust. Why couldnot Faust have married the girl? I would not have married her myself forany consideration whatsoever; but that is not the argument. Faust,apparently, could not see anything amiss with her. Both of them were madabout each other. Yet the idea of a quiet, unostentatious marriage witha week’s honeymoon, say, in Vienna, followed by a neat little cottage_orné_, not too far from Nürnberg, so that their friends could have comeout to them, never seems to have occurred to either of them.
There could have been a garden. Marguerite might have kept chickens anda cow. That sort of girl, brought up to hard work and by no means toowell educated, is all the better for having something to do. Later, withthe gradual arrival of the family, a good, all-round woman might havebeen hired in to assist. Faust, of course, would have had his study andgot to work again; that would have kept him out of further mischief. Theidea that a brainy man, his age, was going to be happy with nothing to doall day but fool round a petticoat was ridiculous from the beginning.Valentine—a good fellow, Valentine, with nice ideas—would have spent hisSaturdays to Monday with them. Over a pipe and a glass of wine, he andFaust would have discussed the local politics.
He would have danced the children on his knee, have told them tales aboutthe war—taught the eldest boy to shoot. Faust, with a practical man likeValentine to help him, would probably have invented a new gun. Valentinewould have got it taken up.
Things might have come of it. Sybil, in course of time, would havemarried and settled down—perhaps have taken a little house near to them.He and Marguerite would have joked—when Mrs. Sybil was not around—abouthis early infatuation. The old mother would have toddled over fromNürnberg—not too often, just for the day.
The picture grows upon one the more one thinks of it. Why did it neveroccur to them? There would have been a bit of a bother with the Old Man.I can imagine Mephistopheles being upset about it, thinking himselfswindled. Of course, if that was the reason—if Faust said to himself:
“I should like to marry the girl, but I won’t do it; it would not be fairto the Old Man; he has been to a lot of trouble working this thing up; incommon gratitude I cannot turn round now and behave like a decent,sensible man; it would not be playing the game”—if this was the way Faustlooked at the matter there is nothing more to be said. Indeed, it showshim in rather a fine light—noble, if quixotic.
If, on the other hand, he looked at the question from the point of viewof himself and the girl, I think the thing might have been managed. Allone had to do in those days when one wanted to get rid of the Devil wasto show him a sword hilt. Faust and Marguerite could have slipped into achurch one morning, and have kept him out of the way with a sword hilttill the ceremony was through. They might have hired a small boy:
“You see the gentleman in red? Well, he wants us and we don’t want him.That is the only difference between us. Now, you take this sword, andwhen you see him coming show him the hilt. Don’t hurt him; just show himthe sword and shake your head. He will understand.”
The old gentleman’s expression, when subsequently Faust presented him toMarguerite, would have been interesting:
“Allow me, my wife. My dear, a—a friend of mine. You may remembermeeting him that night at your aunt’s.”
As I have said, there would have been ructions; but I do not myself seewhat could have been done. There was nothing in the bond to the effectthat Faust should not marry, so far as we are told. The Old Man had asense of humour. My own opinion is that, after getting over the firstannoyance, he himself would have seen the joke. I can even picture himlooking in now and again on Mr. and Mrs. Faust. The children would behurried off to bed. There would be, for a while, an atmosphere ofconstraint.
But the Old Man had a way with him. He would have told one or twostories at which Marguerite would have blushed, at which Faust would havegrinned. I can see the old fellow occasionally joining the homely socialboard. The children, awed at first, would have sat silent, with staringeyes. But, as I have said, the Old Man had a way with him. Why shouldhe not have reformed? The good woman’s unconsciously exertedinfluence—the sweet childish prattle! One hears of such things. Mighthe not have come to be known as “Nunkie”?
Myself—I believe I have already mentioned it—I would not have marriedMarguerite. She is not my ideal of a good girl. I never liked the wayshe deceived her mother. And that aunt of hers! Well, a nice girl wouldnot have been friends with such a woman. She did not behave at all toowell to Sybil, either. It is clear to me that she led the boy on. Andwhat was she doing with that box of jewels, anyhow? She was not a fool.She could not have gone every day to that fountain, chatted with thosegirl friends of hers, and learnt nothing. She must have known thatpeople don’t go leaving twenty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels about ondoorsteps as part of a round game. Her own instinct, if she had been agood girl, would have told her to leave the thing alone.
I don’t believe in these innocent people who do not know what they aredoing half their time. Ask any London magistrate what he thinks of thelady who explains that she picked up the diamond brooch:—
“Not meaning, of course, your Worship, to take it. I would not do such athing. It just happened this way, your Worship. I was standing as youmight say here, and not seeing anyone about in the shop I opened the caseand took it out, thinking as perhaps it might belong to someone; and thenthis gentleman here, as I had not noticed before, comes up quite suddenlyand says; ‘You come along with me,’ he says. ‘What for,’ I says, ‘when Idon’t even know you?’ I says. ‘For stealing,’ he says. ‘Well, that’s ahard word to use to a lady,’ I says; ‘I don’t know what you mean, I’msure.’”
And if she had put them all on, not thinking, what would a really nicegirl have done when the gentleman came up and assured her they were hers?She would have been thirty seconds taking them off and flinging them backinto the box.
“Thank you,” she would have said, “I’ll trouble you to leave this gardenas quickly as you entered it and take them with you. I’m not that sortof girl.”
Marguerite clings to the jewels, and accepts the young man’s arm for amoonlight promenade. And when it does enter into her innocent head thathe and she have walked that shady garden long enough, what does she dowhen she has said good-bye and shut the door? She opens the ground-floorwindow and begins to sing!
Maybe I am not poetical, but I do like justice. When other girls dothese sort of things they get called names. I cannot see why thisparticular girl should be held up as an ideal. She kills her mother.According to her own account this was an accident. It is not an originalline of defence, and we are not allowed to hear the evidence for theprosecution. She also kills her baby. You are not to blame her forthat, because at the time she was feeling poorly. I don’t see why thisgirl should have a special line of angels to take her up to heaven.There must have been decent, hard-working women in Nürnburg more entitledto the ticket.
Why is it that all these years we have been content to accept Margueriteas a type of innocence and virtue? The explanation is, I suppose, thatGoethe wrote at a time when it was the convention to regard all women asgood. Anything in petticoats was virtuous. If she did wrong it wasalways somebody else’s fault. _Cherchez la femme_ was a later notion.In the days of Goethe it was always _Cherchez l’homme_. It was the man’sfault. It was the devil’s fault. It was anybody’s fault you liked, butnot her’s.
The convention has not yet died out. I was reading the other day a mostinteresting book by a brilliant American authoress. Seeing I live faraway from the lady’s haunts, I venture to mention names. I am speakingof “Patience Sparhawk,” by Gertrude Atherton. I take this book becauseit is typical of a large body of fiction. Miss Sparhawk lives a troubledlife: it puzzl
es her. She asks herself what is wrong. Her own idea isthat it is civilisation.
If it is not civilisation, then it is the American man or Nature—orDemocracy. Miss Sparhawk marries the wrong man. Later on she getsengaged to another wrong man. In the end we are left to believe she isabout to be married to the right man. I should be better satisfied if Icould hear Miss Sparhawk talking six months after that last marriage.But if a mistake has again been made I am confident that, in MissSparhawk’s opinion, the fault will not be Miss Sparhawk’s. The argumentis always the same: Miss Sparhawk, being a lady, can do no wrong.
If Miss Sparhawk cared to listen to me for five minutes, I feel I couldput her right on this point.
“It is quite true, my dear girl,” I should say to her, “something iswrong—very wrong. But it is not the American man. Never you mind theAmerican man: you leave him to worry out his own salvation. You are notthe girl to put him right, even where he is wrong. And it is notcivilisation. Civilisation has a deal to answer for, I admit: don’t youload it up with this additional trouble. The thing that is wrong in thiscase of yours—if you will forgive my saying so—is you. You make a foolof yourself; you marry a man who is a mere animal because he appeals toyour animal instincts. Then, like the lady who cried out ‘Alack, I’vemarried a black,’ you appeal to heaven against the injustice of beingmated with a clown. You are not a nice girl, either in your ideas or inyour behaviour. I don’t blame you for it; you did not make yourself.But when you set to work to attract all that is lowest in man, why be soastonished at your own success? There are plenty of shocking Americanmen, I agree. One meets the class even outside America. But niceAmerican girls will tell you that there are also nice American men.There is an old proverb about birds of a feather. Next time you findyourself in the company of a shocking American man, you just ask yourselfhow he got there, and how it is he seems to be feeling at home. Youlearn self-control. Get it out of your head that you are the centre ofthe universe, and grasp the idea that a petticoat is not a halo, and youwill find civilisation not half as wrong as you thought it.”
I know what Miss Sparhawk’s reply would be.
“You say all this to me—to me, a lady? Great Heavens! What has becomeof chivalry?”
A Frenchman was once put on trial for murdering his father and mother.He confessed his guilt, but begged for mercy on the plea that he was anorphan. Chivalry was founded on the assumption that woman was worthy tobe worshipped. The modern woman’s notion is that when she does wrong sheought to be excused by chivalrous man because she is a lady.
I like the naughty heroine; we all of us do. The early Victorianheroine—the angel in a white frock, was a bore. We knew exactly what shewas going to do—the right thing. We did not even have to ask ourselves,“What will she think is the right thing to do under the circumstances?”It was always the conventional right thing. You could have put it to aSunday school and have got the answer every time. The heroine withpassions, instincts, emotions, is to be welcomed. But I want her tograsp the fact that after all she is only one of us. I should like herbetter if, instead of demanding:
“What is wrong in civilisation? What is the world coming to?” and soforth, she would occasionally say to herself:
“Guess I’ve made a fool of myself this time. I do feel that ’shamed ofmyself.”
She would not lose by it. We should respect her all the more.
Idle Ideas in 1905 Page 17
