II Leasehold Marriage in Practice — A Dialogue in 1999
‘There is one thing that women dread more than celibacy—it is repudiation.’
—Marcel Prévost.
Katharine and Margaret, both attractive women on the borderland of forty, are lunching together. They are old friends and have not met for years.
Margaret. ‘How nice it is to be together again, but I’m sorry to find you so changed; you don’t look happy, what is the trouble?’
Katharine. ‘I ought to look happy, I’ve had wonderful luck, but the truth is, I’m utterly tired. The conditions of marriage nowadays are horribly wearing, don’t you think?’
M. ‘Well, of course, we miss that feeling of peace and security that our mothers talked of, but then we also miss that ghastly monotony. Think of living year after year, thirty, forty, fifty years, with the same man! How tired one would get of his tempers.’
K. ‘I’m not so sure of that. Monotony of tempers is better than variety. All people have them, anyway. Besides, I’ve a notion that our fathers were nothing like so difficult to live with as our husbands are. You see, in the old days they knew they were fixed up for life, and that acted as a curb. We seem to miss that curb nowadays.’
M. ‘Yes, there’s something in that. I remember my grandmother, who was married at the end of the last century, used to say that her husband was her Sheet Anchor, and he called her his Haven of Rest.’
K. ‘Oh, I envy them! That’s what I want so badly—a haven, an anchor! How peaceful life must have been then before this horrible new system came in.’
M. ‘People evidently didn’t seem to think so, or why should they have altered it? But what’s your quarrel with the system? You’ve had four husbands and changed the first two almost as quickly as the law allowed.’
K. ‘Yes, and I’m only forty-one. I began too young—at eighteen—but one naturally takes marriage lightly when one knows it’s only for five years. One enters upon it as thoughtlessly as our happy mothers used to start their flirtations.’
M. ‘The consequences are rather more serious though; we are disillusioned women at the age when they were still light-hearted girls.’
K. ‘It’s the families that make it so difficult. Fatherhood is quite a cult nowadays. All my husbands have been of a philoprogenitive turn, and I have eight children.’
M. ‘Eight children! No wonder you look worried.’
K. ‘Exactly! my mother would have been horrified. Two or three was the correct number in her days, four at the utmost, and five a fatality and very rare.’
M. ‘Well, my dear, you needn’t have had so many; you should have curbed that cult of Fatherhood. No woman is compelled to bear children nowadays, as our unfortunate grandmothers were. Have you got all eight with you?’
K. ‘No, that’s just the trouble. I didn’t want to have so many, but of course now I’ve got them I want them with me, and of course their fathers want them too.’
M. ‘Oh dear! how tiresome; that’s the worst of having children in these times. I’m sometimes glad I have none.’
K. ‘Then perhaps you don’t know the law about the children of our present marriage system? A sum of money has to be invested annually for each child, in the great State Infant Trust; when the marriage is dissolved the mother has the sole custody of them, unless the father wishes to share it; in the latter case they spend half the year with each parent.’
M. ‘It’s fair.’
K. ‘I suppose so, but oh! so terribly hard on a mother! My two elder girls are almost grown up, they’ve been at a boarding school for some time, and it was easy and natural enough for George and I to share them in the holidays, but now, I can’t keep them at the school any longer, and they will have to spend half the year with him. Thank heaven, he hasn’t been married for some time, and isn’t likely to again, so I haven’t the horror of a strange woman influencing them, but how can I guide them? how have any real control or influence over them in such circumstances?’
M. ‘Yes, that must be very sad for you.’
K. ‘It’s awful, but there’s much worse than that. My second husband, Gordon, the father of Arthur and Maggie, is married again, and his wife is jealous of his eldest children, and hates the time when they come to stay. And my little Arthur is so delicate, he requires ceaseless care and studying—I never have a happy moment when he is with them; he doesn’t get on well with the other children either, and always returns from the visits looking ill and wretched. I couldn’t tell you all I have suffered on account of Arthur! Oh! when I think of him, I could curse this infamous marriage system—it is a sin against nature!’
M. ‘But, my dear, it’s no use abusing the laws. Why didn’t you stay with Gordon, or in the first instance with George? It’s often done, even now.’
K. ‘I know, I know, but George and I were utterly unsuited—we married as boy and girl. Under the old system prudent parents generally intervened, and the young couple were obliged to wait until they were sure of their own minds. But you know how things are now; in one’s first young infatuation, one is sure of five years ahead at least, and one doesn’t need to look beyond that.’
M. ‘Well, you were twenty-four when you married Gordon; why didn’t you choose him more carefully?’
K. ‘That was largely “a matter of economics” as I read in an old play called Votes for Women, not long ago—so quaint their ideas were in those days!—and there was something in it too about “twenty-four used not to be so young, but it’s become so!” Still, I was old enough to know better, but I was light-hearted and luxury-loving, and I couldn’t live on that pittance, which was all the law compelled George to allow me. I don’t blame him, it was all he could do to save the necessary tax for the children. So I married Gordon for a home, and of course it was hateful!’
M. ‘And your third husband died?’
K. ‘Yes; the one who should have lived generally dies. I lost him after two years only, but I can’t talk of him, dear; he was just my Man of Men.’
M. ‘Ah! I’m glad you have had that.’
K. ‘Oh! I have been lucky with all my troubles, as I told you. I was alone for four years after I lost my Best, and I should like to have been faithful to him for ever. But I wasn’t strong enough; in spite of the dear children I was very lonely, as the elder ones were always at school.’
M. ‘Yes, and one wants a man, somehow, to fuss round one.’
K. ‘True, it’s a fatal weakness. So at last I married my good little Duncan, just for companionship. I chose him carefully enough. Experience has taught me a lot, and I didn’t mean to be left in the lurch at forty as so many are.’
M. ‘I’m glad he’s good to you. Yes; it’s fearful how many women get left alone just when they need care and love most, when their looks and freshness are gone, and their energy weakened. But, as you haven’t got that to fear, why should you be so worried now?’
K. ‘It isn’t exactly that I’m worried—I’m used up! Twenty years of uncertain domestic arrangements is enough to wear out anyone. I’ve never been able to feel settled in any house, or let myself get attached to a place, or plant out a garden even. One’s set of friends is always breaking up; people never seem to buy houses and estates now, or to get rooted anywhere. In the novels of fifty years ago, how they used to complain about being in a groove! They little knew how miserable life could be for want of a permanent groove.’
M. ‘I dislike monotony, but it certainly has its advantages. You remember my first husband, Dick?—such a good-looking boy—he was crazy about golf and outdoor games. I got quite into his way of living, and it was a great trial when I married Cecil Innes, who hated the open air, and cared only for books and grubbing about in museums.’
K. ‘Why did you leave Dick?’
M. ‘I didn’t really want to, we were very comfy together, but he fell in love with another woman. He was mad about her, and asked me to release him. As I had no children, I thought it only fair to agree. Cecil interested me very much at first, and he adored me, but I had a very dreary time with him. You know I’m not a bit literary, and he was so “precious” and bookish, he bored me to death. I was glad to leave him for Jack, my present husband, but Cecil’s grief at parting was so frightful I shall never forget it, and when he died soon after I felt like a murderess.’
K. ‘It must have been a painful experience, but one gets accustomed to these tragedies, one hears of so many. There is always one who wants to be free, and one to remain bound.’
M. ‘Yes; and the unwritten tradition that it is a matter of honour never to seek to hold an unwilling partner quite negatives the law that a marriage can only terminate when both parties desire it.’
K. ‘I’m sure the tragedies of parting one hears of nowadays are far worse than the occasional tragedies in the old days, caused by being bound, and ever so much more frequent.’
M. ‘It wouldn’t be such an irony if anyone were benefited, but as far as I can see the men suffer nearly as much as the women, especially when they are old. According to our early century newspapers, an old bachelor or widower could always get a young and charming wife, but now nobody will marry an elderly man, except the old ladies, and the men don’t want them.’
K. ‘It’s a pity they don’t, that would solve a lot of the unhappiness one sees around. It must be awful to be deserted in one’s old age.’
M. ‘Talking about the old newspapers, it’s very amusing to read them in the British Museum, and see what wonderful things were expected of the leasehold marriage system when it was first legalised. All the abuses of the old system were to disappear: divorce, adultery, prostitution, and seduction—all the social evils were to go in one clean sweep.’
K. ‘How absurdly shortsighted people were then. Divorce is abolished, it’s true, but the scandals and misery, broken hearts and broken homes that it caused are now multiplied a thousand times. Infidelity may be less frequent, but if people have the wish and the opportunity for it they’re not likely to wait for a certain number of years, until it ceases to be technically a sin. The same with the other evils. There will always be a large number of men who postpone marriage for financial or other reasons, and a large number of women who can only earn a living in one way—the oldest profession in the world will always be kept going! Seduction, too, is not likely to cease as long as the law is so lenient to it. There will always be ignorant, silly, unprotected girls and always men to take advantage of them.’
M. ‘There seem to be just as many elderly spinsters, too, as before; the women who don’t attract men remain the same under any system, and often they are the best women.’
K. ‘How strange it must be never to have had a husband!’
M. ‘It must be peaceful, at anyrate; but spinsters don’t look any happier than married women.’
K. ‘I can only see one good result of the leasehold system—that women are as anxious for motherhood now as in the early century they were anxious to avoid it. We grow old with the fear of almost certain desertion and loneliness before us, and the one hope for our old age is our children——Oh! I am sorry, I forgot you had none.’
M. ‘Never mind, I often think of it, and whenever Jack admires or pays attention to another woman, I am in terror for fear he has found a fresh attraction and may want to leave me. What stuff they used to write formerly about the necessity for love being free. As if freedom were such a glorious thing! Why, we are all slaves to some convention or passion or theory; none of us are free, really free, and we wouldn’t like it if we were. It may be all very well for the fantastic love of novels to be free, but that strange need of each other, which we call “love” in real life, for want of a better term—that must be forged into a bond, or what help is it to us poor vacillating mortals? Love must be an Anchor in real life—nothing else is any use!’