AGE AND HEALTH.
If a man were only a generating
animal, the problem of age in marriage
would be very simple, and
reducible to this formula: That as
long as men or women can relight
the flame of life they are marriageable.
That means that a man may
marry from sixteen to sixty, and in
exceptional cases up to seventy and
eighty; and that he may marry a
woman of from fifteen to forty-five.
Man, however, is not solely a
generating animal, but a thinking,
reasoning, sentient, cavilling, wrangling
being; a political, commercial,
and religious creature; he manufactures
brakes to curb the exhilaration
of the gallop downhill, creates
sophisms to spoil truth, and crutches
to make athletes rickety; he tells
many lies for amusement; in short
he is the most clever and ingenious
artificer in things of which he knows
very little, in the whole planetary
universe. Notwithstanding all these
precious virtues, man finds the problem
of age most complicated, when
he wishes to take one of the
daughters of Eve and say to her:
“Will you give me your hand, so
that we may form a little future
for ourselves?”
All other elements being favourable,
the ideal perfection in age as
regards marriage would be as follows:
The man to be from twenty-five
to thirty-five.
The woman from eighteen to
twenty-five.
The man should always be a few
years older than the woman, that is
from five to ten years older, and
this for many reasons. Man grows
older more slowly than woman, and
keeps his power of reproduction
longer.
Before twenty-five or thirty years
of age a man, unless he be a born
libertine, knows comparatively little
of the world of woman, and that
only the worst, and in his choice
of a wife may make a terrible mistake.
Then, also, the products of a too
early union are weak and inferior;
the statistics of all countries
show that there are more deaths
among children of young parents
than of older, or if they live, they
are more weakly.
In the most simple problems of
marriage, as in the most complex
and metaphysical, it is always better
to remember the fundamental doctrine,
that harmony and happiness
are founded on the agreement of
two very different instruments, which
ought always to accord with each
other. We should pay attention, then,
to false notes! If in an orchestra
two instruments do not strike the
right notes, or if one goes too fast
and the other too slow, it is a very
small matter, and ends in a grimace
upon the brow of the few who understand
music.
But in marriage the slight discord
is a wound in the heart of two
beings, who had joined hands for a
happy life; and there is always a
cicatrix left, which, like the wounds
of veterans, acts as a barometer to
the least change of temperature, of
moisture, or of an atmosphere charged
with electricity. The restless hand
seeks to stop the sharp irritation,
and lacerates the cicatrix, changing
it to a chronic sore, which is always
painful, but never healed.
Oh, men! oh, women, study counterpoint,
the harmony and melody
of the heart, body, and soul, day and
night, if you wish to gather the
blessed and perfumed rose of married
happiness, in the garden of life.
⁂
Beyond the ideal perfection of
number represented by the beautiful
figure of two flowering and fragrant
young lives, you may have all these
possible combinations, which, with a
crescendo of perils and accidents, render
the accordance of hearts and
bodies always more difficult:
Two beings equally mature in age.
Two old people.
A mature or old man and a young
woman.
A young man and a middle-aged
or old woman.
We see all these combinations pass
daily beyond our eyes, paired according
to one or the other of these arithmetical
formulæ—formulæ in which
numbers weigh and govern human
happiness with so tremendous an
influence.
Let us study them one by one.
⁂
Man adult—woman adult:
This is one of the most favorable
combinations, the freest from danger
and painful discovery. If it be true
that for this combination there is
rarer access to the Olympus of ardent
love, it is also true that shipwreck
and cataclysm are rarer also. The
navigation is nearly always on a
tranquil lake, in a safe boat, under
the guidance of that best of helmsmen,
good sense.
The majority of such cases consists
of old attachments interrupted by
unsurmountable obstacles, favoured
again by some fortunate circumstance.
The two who had loved
and hoped for each other in their
youth, find themselves free and
their own masters, and all at once,
at a single glance, have called up
from the depths a bright panorama
of fond visions, which for some
time seemed to have disappeared in
that abyss which buries and consumes
all.
Do you remember, dear?
Yes, indeed I do! I seem to see
you still at your window on that
Sunday, when, after looking at me
so long, you threw me a kiss across
the street, when I believed I was
hidden by the convolvulus on my
balcony.
Ah, yes, yes; that kiss was the
beginning of a long idyl which I
seem to see rising from the mists
of the past as though by enchantment————
And from remembrance to remembrance
a living and speaking world
appears before those two once more,
but more beautiful and more rose-coloured
in semblance than it was in
reality; enlarged by fancy, the first
of artists, gilded by distant reminiscence,
which is ever optimist.
The old couple have some wrinkles
on their faces and some threads of
silver in their hair, but they see
each other as they were twenty
years ago; and if desires are indolent,
and the clasp of the hands does
not set the heart beating; if at night
ardent dreams no longer disturb the
peace of the passions, an odour of
loving friendship surrounds them and
binds them closer to each other day
by day, and grows hourly more like
love and less like friendship. They
have so many remembrances in common.
They have twenty years of
life to recount to each other, and
relating the sad and joyful events
they alternately recount their recollections
as though they had in reality
lived together all the while, so that
mine becomes thine and then ours,
and without declaration or trepidation
the happy day arrives when, without
any necessity of finishing the
phrase or dotting the i, the two
right hands find themselves clasped
together, the lips join between a
sigh that questions and one that
answers:
Really you wish————?
And why not?
And the why not becomes because I
do on the morrow, and the man and
woman become husband and wife;
and almost without agitation, without
accident, they reach in safety
the port of sure and tranquil happiness.
I recall two such marriages with
emotion, those of Stuart Mill and
Hillebrandt.
To these serene and tranquil unions
children are not necessary, but if
they come they brighten and bless
the house, bringing with them a
nosegay of flowers and an odour of
spring which makes those two happy
mortals young once more.
⁂
Two old people.
Add some ten years to the arithmetical
combination just studied and
you will have a lower temperature,
but still less danger to the happiness
of the two beings who, defying
ridicule and prejudice, wish to consecrate
an old friendship upon the
altar of matrimony.
I do not say altar as a matter of
phraseology, nor to do homage to
the religious ceremony of marriage,
but because I am deeply convinced
that if there be nothing beyond the
union of bodies or association of
capital marriage is a sacrilege. The
troth of two should always be
plighted on an altar, whether it
be that of Christ or of some ideal,
of Moses or Mahomet, of poetry or
religion.
Old people only marry once, either
to win legitimacy for an old contraband
love, or to give a legal status
to the children. They are marriages
of reparation, corrections of proof-sheets
set aside for many years and
forgotten. They merit our approbation
and belong to those good actions
of which Christ speaks, which, if
done at the last hour, make death less
hard and allow us to die at peace
and at rest with the faith, which
illuminates our souls and prepares
us to start in the train that bears
us to eternal silence, or to the
golden gates of the Christian paradise.
In the marriage of two old people
who love each other, love is no intoxicating
flower, but a friendship
slightly gilded by sexual sympathy,
which endures longer than the reproductive
function even as it precedes it.
⁂
A middle-aged man and a young
woman: If theory, hygiene, logical
concords, and compacts proclaim the
truth—which has all the force of a
dogma—that an old man ought not to
marry a young woman, daily practice
shows us that all these combinations
are possible:
40 ♀ + 20 ♂
50 ♀ + 18 ♂
60 ♀ + 30 ♂
60 ♀ + 15 ♂
70 ♀ + 30 ♂
70 ♀ + 20 ♂
80 ♀ + 40 ♂
80 ♀ + 30 ♂
80 ♀ + 15 or 18 ♂
All formulæ, cold and precise as the
numbers that make them up, but full
of a terrible crescendo of precipices
and cataclysms! They arouse before us
the phantom of a perfect pandemonium,
and show us the horrors of a
hell more dreadful than that of Dante.
How many tears, how much blood,
bathe the path which divides those
figures! What deep and hidden hatred,
how much revenge premeditated during
the night and put into practice in the
clear light of day; how many deceptions
planned with the cruelty of art;
what repentance, crimes, intrigues, bitterness
of soul; how many tortures
and struggles are written between those
silent and lifeless figures? Yet, still,
you will find the rarest, most complete,
and perfect happiness lying close to
this hell, like an oasis in the midst of a
desert.
For example, there are marriages of
which the formula is 60 + 30, and even
50 + 18, that are real Edens of delight,
where neither the most lovely and
fragrant flowers of spring-time, nor the
sweet tendernesses of voluptuousness,
illimitable prospects, painless sighs,
conversation without words, nor all
indescribable delights, are wanting;
and where you have also the charm
that belongs to difficulty, and all the
fascination which surrounds things
sacred.
But why among these mute and
dead numbers do we find the extremes
of human misery and blessedness?
Why do we see the most noble sacrifices
and meannesses, the most ignoble
baseness and the highest
ideality, bound together, with a cruel
irony, by a malignant fate; why do
we see angels and demons dancing
together as though enchanted by
some fantastic waltz?
For a very simple reason.
Because the happiness of marriage
between an old man and a young
woman is nothing but an unstable
and difficult balance granted to few.
But to those who are capable of
feeling it, it brings the sublime giddiness
of the great heights. Everyone
walks, but few take the leap
to death. All climb the hills; exceedingly
few have stood on the top of
Mont Blanc. But those who do not
break their necks, nor fall into the
crevasses, experience, as they mount
the highest and most difficult summit
of the Alps, strong and fascinating
emotions which make them proud and
glad. All problems of life, whether
great or small or indifferent, always
have this dilemma hidden within them:
To dare or not to dare.
The Rubicon is either an historical
fact, a myth, or a romance.
I leave it to historians to decide;
but every practical problem of happiness
has its rubicon, at which the
whole world pauses.
Some turn back.
Some leap over it.
The most of them remain still on
the bank all their lives, looking at
the other side and scratching their
heads. After forty years of age
bachelors or widows stand before
the rubicon of marriage and
say:
Shall I go over or not?
The larger number wait so long to
decide that the forty years become
fifty and then sixty. The limbs
become weaker and the river grows
wider by the inundations and floods
of so many autumns, and thus the
problem is resolved by want of resolution.
Others instead, after a short and
earnest meditation, exclaim:
No, I will not leap it.
And both do well, because although
the calculation of probabilities is
rarely applicable to moral problems,
yet it proves that the combination
of an old man and a young woman
is a very frail one; at the least shock
it is separated, as with fulminant mercury,
chloride of azote, and all the
infinite array of explosives; then
comes a detonation, a disaster, more
often a putrid and fetid dissolution.
Some do not scratch their heads,
but decide resolutely on the great
step and leap.
A difficult and perilous leap in
which but few reach the other side
unscathed. The majority of these
intrepid individuals fall into the middle
of the stream, which carries them
away in its turbid and rough waters;
others plunge directly into the mud up
to the body and are fixed there, without
being able to get out, a ridicule
to others, a desperation to themselves.
⁂
In that garden of Gethsemane,
where all men drink of the cup of
doubt, in that garden of perplexity
which we ought to leave with a yes
or no and turn to the right or left,
knowing that one path leads to happiness,
the other to desperation, without
knowing, however, which of the
two ways leads whither; in that
garden, I say, my little book ought
to serve as a guide to resolve one
of the most difficult problems of
marriage.
And I, who have arrogated to
myself this right of counsel, will tell
with a loud voice those who do
care for my advice, my fundamental
and organic precept on which all the
other minor points must rest.
Marriage between an old man and
a young woman may lead to happiness,
if inspired on both sides by
love.
Less surely will it lead to the
same end if the love that leads them
to the altar is all on one side.
It nearly always leads to unhappiness
and ruin if the man is induced
by sensuality, or the woman by the
desire of riches or by ambition.
And as this third case is the most
common, I will explain at once why
those terrible arithmetical combinations
are so fruitful in domestic
misery, adultery, and let us say
crime, including those which the
code does not regard.
⁂
At this point I see a malicious
reader smiling, and hear him say that
I ought to be classed among those
madmen and deceivers who think
they have solved the problem of
squaring the circle or of perpetual
motion.
You tell me a marriage between
an old man and a young woman may
be happy, provided there be love on
both sides. But this is an impudent
joke. You may assure me with equal
seriousness that I can catch a sparrow
if I put salt upon its tail. How,
when, and where can a young woman,
fragrant of spring, who seeks with
eyes, mouth, nostrils, with all senses,
the pollen which will fructify her and
make her a mother; how can she
desire or love a man who is already
on the decline of life and can offer
his companion nothing but lasciviousness
framed by rheumatism, catarrh,
dyspepsia, and cough?
No, malicious reader, I do not
joke; neither have I endeavoured to
solve insoluble problems. I sincerely
believe a young woman can love an
old man, but he must still be a man
and handsome; for robust, flourishing,
and cheerful old age has a
beauty of its own, and if much is
wanting it has the greatest resources
and a certain delicate virtue, too,
which a young man does not possess.
Love, too, has so many and such
different forms, and is composed of
so many different elements, that it
can vibrate and burn even in the
gray-headed.
The last love of Goethe speaks of
all these; and the many warm and
enduring passions awakened in
young women by men eminent in
politics, arts, letters, and science join
in the chorus.
If in these loves the ardour of the
senses fails—and it must fail—we
find much veneration, tenderness, and
often a sweet compassion, a sentiment
that always predominates in the
female breast.
Young men are often bad husbands
because they assume too much; they
pretend that love should be laid at
their feet, as a tribute due to their
beauty and transcendent vigour.
They claim that they have the right
to be loved for themselves, even
when they on their side fulfil none
of their duties.
The old man, on the contrary, feels
his own weakness and implores love
as a favour, and responds to it with
a warm and inexhaustible gratitude
every hour and every minute. He
knows that little is due to him, and
contents himself with a smile, a kiss,
or a caress, which he doubles and
centriples with his unfailing gratitude.
He guards his love as a treasure,
which may be taken from him
from one moment to another; he
defends it with all his strength, encloses
it in a tabernacle, and adores
it as a god. His companion, therefore,
has always the peaceful surety
that she will not be betrayed by
other women.
⁂
That these unions may be blessed
by happiness, the husband and wife,
above all things, must be gentle-people;
that is persons of honour,
who frankly accept the compact
sworn to, without reticence or subterfuge.
Before the old man utters the tremendous
yes he ought to present
his account, even increasing the
credit and diminishing the debit;
explain himself clearly and dot
every i. Therefore I entreat you
when you make your fiancée acquainted
with your financial position,
be careful that each i has its dot,
aye, even two.
⁂
Such marriages as we are studying
are far more frequent than we
should at first suppose, and the
fortunate cases are also less rare
than the theory would lead us to
believe; because women are far
greater idealists in love than we
are, and whilst we chiefly seek
beauty and carnal gratification, they
seek other things of a superior
order, which they appease with the
heart of the artist, and the phantasy
of the poet. The love of a man
for an illustrious but ugly woman
is a phenomenon rarer than a white
fly. The love of a young woman
for a great, but gray-headed man
is tolerably common, and is sufficient
to do honour to the female sex.
But a man of mature age has
other things besides to offer a young
woman: riches, a high social position,
many ambitions he can satisfy; and
he has a whole world of high, good,
and pleasant things to lay at the
foot of the woman, and can say to
her: All this for a little love!
I, of course, understand that these
are international exchanges, which are
far removed from love, and approach
more nearly to commerce; but the
sacred books have often used the
words carnal commerce without blushing,
and why can there not be a
little commerce in matrimony? Provided
the balance does not incline
too much to one side, and there is
no deceit—in a word provided the
one who weighs be a gentleman—such
marriages may be happy, too.
⁂
When a man marries a woman
very much younger than himself,
people smile maliciously and point
their fingers as if to ward off the
evil eye, and to show the daring
individual that the Minotaur awaits
him. In this case the populace cuts
not one, but a hundred gordian
knots with a brutal and bestial
sword.
Adultery is a plant that grows in
every clime, but more especially
where a woman fails in esteem for
her companion, and the clever sower
and cultivator of these plants is
always the husband.
I am so convinced of this truth,
that if statistics of adultery were
possible, I am certain I should find
the greatest number amongst the
unions of young people: for they
also make contracts of buying and
selling, of exchange of titles and
dollars, in their marriages.
If you, with your white hairs,
have the courage to marry a young
woman, study her character most of
all. If she be a thorough lady in
education she will be less likely to
betray you than if you were young;
for she is proud of herself and
would not willingly commit a sin
toward which the world would be
so indulgent; for women also like
difficult things, heroic undertakings;
because they like to say in their
own hearts or throw in the face of
their seducer the sublime motto:
noblesse oblige.
⁂
Then in conclusion:
If, with your white hairs, you have
the courage to bind your life to
blond or brown tresses fragrant with
youthfulness, place yourself naked
before the mirror in your chamber
and look at yourself for some time.
Then for a longer time put yourself
before that other mirror of conscience
which reflects us so inexorably;
and, having balanced the accounts of
your physical I and your moral and
intellectual me, see if you are still
a possible man, a handsome and
strong man; and if you find yourself
a young woman who is more an angel
than a woman, more woman than
female, offer her your hand without
too many scruples or false reticences,
and who knows but that when you
die, you may then be able to say:
“The last years of my life have
been my happiest. In my youth I
knew a hundred women, in my old
age I have only known one; and
she alone was worth the other hundred.
Woman is the benediction of
life.”
⁂
A young man and old woman:
Amongst the discordances of age
between husband and wife, none
astonish us so much, or I ought to
say disgust us more, than when an
old woman marries a young man.
There is the kernel of a great
truth at the root of this scorn, which
springs from the very heart of
nature.
A man may be a man even at
eighty years of age; and I cannot
resist smiling when I remember a
lady who complained of the exactions
of her companion, a man over
seventy. We all remember Fontenelle
and the Duke of Richelieu, in
whom virility was only extinguished
with life: in the first case the life
lasting for a century, in the second
for more than eighty years.
A woman, on the contrary, after
forty-five, or at the most after fifty
years of age, is no longer a woman,
and the reproductive faculty is
entirely destroyed. Hence the marriage
of a young man and old woman
is more contrary to the laws of
nature than that of an old man and
a young woman. The one may be
fruitful, the other never. Add to
the æsthetic exigencies of the man
the rapid decadence of the woman
after the change of life, and you will
understand that the union we are
discussing is one of the most repugnant
and repulsive. The motives
which bring such a man and such a
woman together are nearly always
the most abject, and amongst those
that offend the moral sense the
most. On one side carnal gratification;
on the other the thirst for
gold; hence, prostitution on the part
of the man, the most filthy and disgusting
in the commerce of love.
The man sells his youth, his virility,
in exchange for money; and the
woman who no longer has a right
to love, buys it as a merchandise,
and is satisfied with the voluptuousness
given her by one whom she
ought to be the first to despise! A
market of lasciviousness and vileness,
gold gathered from the mud—a mud,
however, which cannot be washed off,
and which soils hand, conscience,
everything it touches.
However, for the honour of humanity,
such unions are exceedingly
rare: those who buy and sell and are
satisfied with a clandestine concubinage,
hide the sin in the deep folds
of our modern hypocrisy.
Maintained, yes; a husband, no!
A woman, on the contrary, always
desires marriage, because she has the
pride of proclaiming to all the world,
that, notwithstanding her many years
and innumerable wrinkles, the wreck
of her form which assails her on all
sides, she has known how to find a
companion at bed and board, who
makes her happy.
Man, on the contrary, hides himself
on account of the modesty which is
never wanting, even in the vilest delinquents;
and hiding his shame in the
darkness of a clandestine concubinage,
hopes to preserve the esteem of men,
and the gold he has gained with
that reddened face of his. I will persist
no longer on this theme because I
hope that no young husbands of old
women will ever read my book—they
would soil it too much with their
filthy hands—and because I have a
great hope that they are all illiterate.
⁂
However, before leaving this lurid
argument, I ought to say, for the love
of truth, that ancient and modern history
register some exceedingly rare
cases of union between old women and
young men, in which neither the desires
of the flesh nor the thirst for
gold entered at all; they treat of intellectual
unions in which the concord
of souls, the sympathy of hearts and
thoughts, the harmony of taste, the
affinity of humane propositions, most
charmingly unite two persons whom
the difference in age would generally
divide.
Love is the greatest and most powerful
worker of miracles, it is the thaumaturgus
of thaumaturgists, and I in
the small circle of my experiences
know a young man, who has never
been able to desire or love a young
woman, but adores old women; and if
he does not marry any of his venerable
friends, it is from fear of ridicule. It
is true that in this case we treat of an
aberration of sexual instinct to be
classed with sodomy and incest; but
this pathological nomad is seated in
an otherwise normal and perfect
brain.
Intellectual unions on the other
hand are physiological facts which
offend no rights of nature, and ought
to be respected and studied, as rare,
but most noble phenomena of the
human heart.
With regard to the health of those
desiring to take a wife, and the health
of our companion, I will recommend
to them my Elementi d’igiene, and
more especially Igiene d’amore, where
I have fully treated this vital side of
the great problem.