Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/219

206 the popularity of doctrines connected with the Rights of Women. I remember well the time when the sweet sufferers would sit for hours at the feet of any grim Gamaliel, who would explain to them the nature of their wrongs, and descant upon her own spasmodic struggles to escape from the intolerable agonies of the married state. He must have been a bold man, indeed, who would have tried any nonsense with any of them. It was only necessary to be in their company for five minutes, and you would at once come to the conclusion, that had they been men, in place of gaunt angels, they would have spent their lives in one perennial stream of hot water. They would have been actively engaged in Chancery suits and actions for libel: they would have had their heads punched: they would have been perpetual principals in the preliminaries of duels which never came off: and you would have constantly seen their names paraded in the newspapers in connection with “correspondence which we have been requested to publish.”

In the midst of disputes of this nature I feel perfectly convinced most of these avenging angels would have spent their lives had they been denuded of their angelic character, and converted into gross men. Nay! I cannot think, even as it is, that their husbands make what sailors call “fair weather” of it. I can only judge of other men by myself, and I am sure I would as soon think of flinging my shoe at the head of Tom Sayers, the Champion, as of commencing hostilities against any member of that heroic band. I should feel that my penultimate resource was my boot-room and a short clay—my last, the razor. Even at the last moment I should, however, be pained with the uncomfortable thought, that the “rash act” would be pointed out to my Lucretia’s friends as conclusive evidence of my disturbed intellect, and of the cruel sufferings she so long endured without a complaint—without a murmur! “Ah! if the world had known!” Doves and Lambs! But this is hard upon a poor fellow down amongst his boots, and waiting patiently for an interview with the coroner!

The denunciations of this class of angel against the Marriage Bond have, as I have observed, been lately at a severe discount. The real sufferers, moreover, have never swerved in their allegiance—the flesh and blood Marys, and Ellens, and Elizas, who have taken their lot patiently, and done their best to hide from the knowledge of their friends the frenzy and brutality of the Georges, and Philips, and Thomases. The very women—true angels, these ones—who ought to make the complaint, and to rejoice at the rupture of the Gordian knot—hate you if you make it for them, and hug the chain which has worn into their tender arms. I have known a woman married for years to a fellow whom all we men knew to be a drunken beast: her life was, practically, spent in a tap-room, yet was she a person of refined and cultivated tastes: his fortune and well-nigh her own were spent in follies of the grossest kind; but, at last, drunkenness fairly got the best of it amongst the sister-band of vices. Cursing and filth became her daily portion—yet she never wavered in her care and tendance of the drunkard until, at last, his soul staggered away one morning into the next world—between an oath and a dram. The widow cried her eyes out over his vinous remains, and caused them to be interred in great state with an eulogy engraved in marble of the public and private virtues of this most intolerable brute. After his death poor Lizzy Heath—I speak of her by her maiden name—went into mourning, and wore widow’s weeds until her own poor heart was at rest. She might have married a second time if she had pleased—but she would never listen to wooer’s voice again;—not upon the very legitimate grounds that she had made trial of man’s love, and found it a brandy bottle, but because she would never be unfaithful to her drunken spouse of seraphic memory. I verily believe she treasured up the brandy bottle with which he had killed himself as a sacred relic of the dear deceased. won’t see many petitioners of this class in his Court.

Thoughts such as these passed through my head as I was walking down Regent Street and preparing my mind for an interview with Flora, in the course of which it was my intention to introduce mention of the Divorce Court in a jaunty way—just as a man might speak of a pleasant evening with Robert-Houdin, or the last Pantomime. It was all stuff, of course—this institution could never affect my own relations with the angel-world, but I confess that what I had seen, and especially the tenor of my communications with my friend Lamb, had somewhat shaken my confidence in the eternity of existing relations between N and M. Hitherto we had only known of Death, but now it was and. What, if I should become a disreputable man upon town once more? Why should I be better than my neighbour—or dear Flora more constant than my neighbour’s wife? We might shake hands and part to-morrow. would get up a case which would restore liberty to either party to the contract. What an odd sensation to be in Regent Street at 4 with a cigar in my mouth, and my hands in my pockets—to go out and come in when I liked—nobody to trouble me with comments—or to interfere, by so much as a look, with my proceedings. “I will be free as air. I will be lord of my own presence—just like that foreign gentleman in the light grey paletôt with the velvet facings. I am sure no loving eye ventures to pry too curiously into his proceedings.” Nay, I might in my turn become a wooer again—we middle-aged men know all about women and their ways—we have such advantages over the boys, that it is almost dastardly to enter the lists against them. After all, why should the forty-year men dash from their lips the enchanted cup which Houris will force upon them? The boys in their turn will succeed to our present attractions—and have their day. Vive la joie! Shall it be, or , or little who may be positively said to be expanding into ripe and delicious womanhood at Arles—by the banks of the rapid Rhone—on my behalf? Surely, when she said last summer, “''Oui! Monsieur J., je vous aime, et même beaucoup!''” that little Gallic fairy could not be laughing at me! No, that was out of the