But even if you have chosen the best of women for your companion, whether it be due to your merit or your good fortune, the great problem of happiness is not yet solved, for there are so many incidents and accidents which disturb it when least we expect them.

Your wife is never a meteorite fallen from the sky, but a fruit still attached to the branch, and this branch is taken from a trunk, which is the family to which she belongs. [Pg 193] When you marry her you must inevitably marry her relations also; you must enter a clan which may be a garden of roses, but may be also a wasp’s nest—nay, even a nest of vipers.

Do not allow yourself any illusions, believing that when once you are legitimate master of your companion you will be able to isolate yourself in the nest of your domestic felicity, chasing away wasps and crushing the vipers, if there should be any. I will suppose that the woman loves you much, and adores you above all creatures in the world, but the clan from which she has been taken will complain of you, protest and conspire against you. Her parents have ceded the government [Pg 194] of one of their provinces to you, but still hold the protectorate and place a resident near, and they reserve the right of intervention in many, unfortunately in too many, cases.

The idea of a wife, then, would be that she should be an orphan with only the most distant relations or guardians, who are happy to have her well married. But here again there are new complications. To be an orphan at an early age means, since the parents died young, to belong to an unhealthy stock. The decadence of many English families is due to this very fact. The younger sons of the nobility, who bear a noble name, but have an empty purse, seek to equalize blazonry [Pg 195] and finance by marrying orphans, or only daughters, and thus they bring into the new family the risk of an infirm state of health and sterility.

It is only too true that all the gravest problems of life are so framed that when you have succeeded with patience and labour in untying one knot, others form under your fingers.

The wife, however, might be an orphan from other causes, independent of the health of the parents, and that would be the highest ideal—for example, a girl who had escaped from a fire, or a railway accident, in which both parents (alike robust) were killed. I am supposing things incredible, or at least improbable; I make cruel conjectures, but what can [Pg 196] I do? A scolding, wicked, or jealous mother-in-law is worse than a fire and railway disaster together.

Those good, courteous, intelligent mothers-in-law need not alarm themselves—those who become a second mother to their sons-in-law, who double the delights of the dual life, who bring you the valuable blessing of experience and disinterested affection, and who act in the domestic storm as conciliatory judges. Hosanna and everlasting glory to such beings, sent by Providence to double your happiness.

For I only speak of others who, without being bad, are women, or rather men, with all the congenital defects of the race of Adam.

The best of mothers-in-law always [Pg 197] sees in you an intruder, a rival, a man who has robbed her of her daughter, and since she is good she will not worry you; but she will make scenes of jealousy; she will not plot against you with your wife, but will swallow so much bitterness day by day in the secret silence of her house as to enlarge her liver, so that some day or other her moral jaundice will be scattered through the atmosphere of your home, and you too will feel the bitterness.

I understand and am indulgent. That bitterness is distilled from the deepest and most delicate regions of the heart. To have loved a daughter for twenty or thirty years, to have brought her into the world with pain, to have suckled her with spasms, to [Pg 198] have educated her with a wise love, after having breathed the same air, eaten at the same table, shared bread and tears; and then for the first comer, just because he wears trousers and has an impudent moustache, to rob her of all that treasure with an arrogance as if he claimed and took his own—that is hard. And as if that were not enough, the daughter, the angel of her domestic temple, runs after the trousers and moustaches, and goes away, abandoning her mother’s and her own house, as if she were leaving a room at an hotel in which she had passed the night.

Let us be just! Who will dare to throw the first stone at that poor woman, the pitiable mother? Who would dare ill treat her if she asked [Pg 199] as a charity the favour that her daughter’s new home should be near hers, if she implored you to allow her to visit her often? Man is egotistic and feels paternity less than woman, but even if only in a slight degree he ought to understand the hidden hell of a mother-in-law who has to watch her daughter leave her own nest.

The marriage of a loved daughter is an event expected and desired, but it is like a birth, a blessing accompanied by tremendous pain. Elect natures feel the pain, but do not show it, lest they should give pain to others, and never convert it into hate.

Others, on the contrary, transform every drop of bitterness which they swallow into a feeling of vengeance, which they ruminate on for some time [Pg 200] and hatch with cruel patience, to launch it against you when least you expect it.

I may suppose you to be patient and good, to be an optimist in your philosophy; you will be deaf to the most mellifluous insinuations, you will say Thank you when your foot is trodden on, and Thank you for the rhubarb lozenge which will be offered you—in short, you will take the points from all the darts launched against you; but there will come a day in which patience, goodness, philosophy, will be scattered to the wind, and you, with so much repressed wrath, will burst out all at once, and placing yourself before your wife, will say:

“There must be an end to all this; it must be either I or her!”

The proverbs of all European languages, [Pg 201] the satires of the poets, the wit of dramatists, have always agreed in compassionating the sons-in-law, and hurling darts against the mothers-in-law. This experience of many centuries has taught us that a good mother-in-law is very rare, and that in marriage she is an element most pregnant with danger, most fruitful in disaster.

From all this we ought to learn two things:

1st. Before taking a wife to study the character of the future mother-in-law well, and to try and discover whether we shall find in her an angel or a harpy, an ally or an enemy.

2d. According to the result of our psychological inquiry we ought to declare most decidedly that we will [Pg 202] not live with the family of the wife, nor take her mother into our house. If the chosen one of our heart really loves us she will consider this decision of ours quite just, and will help us to gain the victory if a battle there must be.

In your own case do not pass it over, do not cede a hand’s breadth of land; keep firm in your intention, being quite convinced that by so doing you will make your own happiness, that of your wife, and of the new family. Between mother-in-law and son-in-law there ought to be affection and respect; a current of benevolent, delicate, and gentle sentiment ought to pass between them, but at a distance, a most respectful distance; so that no sparks, shocks, [Pg 203] much less lightning flashes, may appear. Affection, not intimacy; respect, not subjection.

?

But the complications do not finish with the problem of the mother-in-law. There is the other problem which arises when the candidate for marriage has lost his first wife, or the woman her first husband, or both of them their first partners, with or without children on one side or on both sides.

The possible combinations are these:

    Widow and widower
    without children.
    with children.
    of the man.
    of the woman.
    of both.
    Widower
    without children.
    with children.
    Widow
    without children.
    with children.

[Pg 204]

These various combinations are so many algebraical formul? in which one may find snares, dangers to happiness, and rancour without end.

If you are a widower and you marry a widow, and neither of you have children, no danger hangs over you. Liberty on both sides, no right nor pretext for intervention; marriage presents itself almost in the guise of an union between two young people.

You may indeed incur the danger of your wife making comparisons, and these not to your advantage. An old proverb says, Comparisons are odious, but I should like to make a correction and add that for him to whom they are unfavourable they are odious, but flattering to him who gains by them. Perhaps you may [Pg 205] excel your predecessor, and your companion will be happy to find it so.

In any case, if you have your weak side inquire about the public and private virtues of the first husband, and put the results into the balance which must weigh the pros and cons of the marriage.

A widow and a widower may both have children, or one only may have them. The dangers in these cases are very different.

It is better for the wife to have them, for if the husband really loves her he will also love her children; and besides, being a man, he is less at home, and paternity is always an episode in his life and not the whole life, as maternity is with the [Pg 206] woman. Then if the man has the good fortune not to have children he will often end by loving his wife’s as much as though they were his own.

In the case of there being children on both sides the balance may prove of advantage, because it is equal in weight and measure, and the two married people have cause to reproach themselves and to suffer for the same things.

The worst case is that of a widower with children to whose number the new wife adds; he must be an angel, his wife and children angels also, if no civil war breaks out in his house. Think of it well, think a hundred times. Do not complicate the marriage, already fraught [Pg 207] with so many dangers, by imprudence and temerity.

In marriages between a widow and a widower the greatest danger arises from the children, who fear or see their future threatened, and who in their love for their lost parent believe the new marriage to be an outrage to the memory of the dear one.

It is in these cases that we se............