VI A Word for Duogamy
‘God made you, but you marry yourself.’
—R. L. Stevenson.
The day after the polite dinner-party, Isolda, Miranda, and Amoret came in to tea, and I retailed to them the discussion of the previous evening on polygamy.
‘I see the Bluestocking’s point,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully: ‘polygamy might be acceptable to the superfluous woman who can’t marry under present conditions—the discontented spinster to whom the single state is so detestable that even polygamy would be preferable—but it would never be acceptable to the woman who can and does marry.’
‘Yet how many married women put up with it nowadays?’ said Miranda; ‘aren’t there ever so many wives who condone their husband’s infidelity, and endure it as best they can, for the sake of the children, or for social reasons, or because they’re sufficiently attached to the man to prefer a share of him to life alone without him? And what is that but countenancing polygyny?’
‘Ah! but then the other women are only mistresses,’ exclaimed Isolda. ‘One might tolerate that unwillingly, but another legal wife, with rights equal to one’s own or, worse, with children to compete with one’s own—never!’
‘Well, perhaps not,’ agreed Miranda; ‘I suppose a legal and permanent rival would be somewhat different, but, after all, it’s only the middle class in England who can be termed strictly monogamous—the upper and lowest are as polygynous as can be. It’s only our British hypocrisy that makes us pretend monogamy is our rule!’
‘Don’t quarrel with British hypocrisy,’ said Amoret, lazily, ‘it’s our most valuable national asset. Hypocrisy simply holds the fabric of society together.’
‘Agreed,’ said Isolda, ‘we must pretend to believe monogamy is the rule, for peace sake, and for the ideal’s sake. Of course everybody knows there are plenty of polygynous husbands about, and, for the matter of that, polyandrous wives, but hypocrisy is a great aid to decency, and a nation must have decency of theory at least, if not of practice, or we should—er—h’m—decline like the Romans.’
‘I was waiting for one of you to mention the Romans,’ interposed Amoret, who for all her frivolity has a certain humorous shrewdness of her own. ‘It’s an invariable feature of all discussions on marriage. Directly one so much as breathes a suggestion that the marriage tie should be made more flexible to suit modern conditions, everyone present, except the unhappily married, pulls a long face and quotes the awful example of the Romans. Now I’ve got a gorgeous idea for solving the marriage problem.’
‘Tell us,’ cried three voices in unison.
‘Not yet, let’s get rid of the Romans first. I confided my idea to a man the other day, and when he had floored me with the Romans as usual, I went and looked up Gibbon.’
Laughter interrupted her: the idea of our butterfly Amoret poring over Gibbon.
‘Yes, I did,’ she continued, ‘and, as far as I could make out, it wasn’t their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, but their—what shall I say?—their general moral slackness....’
‘I know,’ said Isolda, coming to the rescue. ‘I was reading a frightfully interesting book about it the other day, Imperial Purple. It was the relaxing of all ideals, the giving way entirely to carnal appetites, the utter lack of moral backbone consequent on excess of luxury and prosperity that smashed up the Romans. But if a strenuous, cold-blooded nation like ourselves chose to relax the stringent conditions of marriage, and kept strictly to the innovation, well, it’s absurd to say all our ideals would deteriorate and the Empire collapse in consequence!’
‘Hear, hear! Worthy of the Bluestocking herself!’
‘Very well,’ said Miranda. ‘I’ll give in about the Romans if you like, just so as to get on with the conversation. Now let’s have your gorgeous idea, Amoret.’
‘It’s just this,’ said Amoret. ‘Duogamy.’
‘Duo—two?’
‘Exactly—two partners apiece. We’re all so complex nowadays that one can’t possibly satisfy us. Two would just do it. Two would serve to relax the tension of married life, and yet would not lead to what the newspapers call licence. Everyone would have another chance, and what the first partner lacked would be supplied by the second.’
‘It’s not such a bad idea,’ said Isolda, musingly. ‘Launcelot could choose a good walker and bridge player for his alternative wife, and I’d try to find a man who hated cards and never walked a step when he could possibly ride.’
‘I think it’s a grand idea,’ cried Miranda, enthusiastically. ‘Lysander could find a woman who’d play his accompaniments and love musical comedies, and I’d look out for a man who made a cult of the higher drama and had two permanent stalls at the Vedrenne-Barker Theatre.’
‘It would simply solve everything,’ cried Amoret, ecstatically. ‘Whenever Theodore was disagreeable, off I’d go to my other one—and yet without feeling I was neglecting him, as he could go to his other one. She would probably be a worthy, stolid, stayless lady with none of my faults, and when he was fed up with her stolid staylessness he could come back to me, and my very faults, you see, would be pleasing to him by reason of their contrast to hers, and vice versa.’
‘It’s really a wonderful idea,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully, ‘I wonder no one thought of it before. There would be fewer old maids, as men wouldn’t be so terribly shy of matrimony when they knew there would always be that second chance. They wouldn’t expect so much from one wife as they do now. And think what a good effect it would have on our manners, too—how kind and polite and self-controlled we would be, under fear of being compared unfavourably with the other one.’
‘Yes, it would certainly keep us all up to the mark,’ reflected Miranda, ‘slovenly wives would make an effort to be smart, and shrewish ones would put a curb on their tongues. Husbands would be quite loverlike and attentive, in their anxiety to outdo the other fellow.’
‘It would smooth out the tangles all round,’ declared Amoret; ‘now just take the cases known to us personally. The Fred Smiths, for instance, haven’t spoken to each other for three years, just because Fred fell in love with Miss Brown and spends nearly all his time with her. Mrs Smith is broken-hearted, Fred looks miserable enough—a home where no one speaks to you must be simply Hades—and the Brown girl is always threatening to commit suicide. The affair has quite spoilt her life, and it must be very hard luck on the Smith children, growing up in such an atmosphere. My plan would have done away with all this misery: Fred could have married Miss Brown, and gone on living happily at intervals with Mrs Smith.’
‘But what would Mrs Smith do in the intervals? She happens to have found no counter attraction.’
‘Well, perhaps if duogamy had been the custom, she would have looked out for one,’ said Amoret, ‘most married women could find one alternative, I’m sure. But, any way, no plan is perfect, and there are lots of wives who wouldn’t want a second husband at all, and who would be only too glad of a restful period, when no dinners need be ordered. Then take the case of the Robinsons: Dick Jones adores Mrs Robinson and is utterly wretched because he can only be a friend to her. She is very fond of him, and fond of her husband too; she could make them both very happy if they would share her.’
‘I have often felt I could make two men happy,’ said Isolda. ‘Some of my best points are wasted on Launcelot. Then, too, he never tires of the country and his beloved golf, but I do, and when one of my fits of London-longing were to come over me I’d just run up to town and have a ripping time with my London husband.’
‘Without feeling you were doing anything wrong,’ supplemented Amoret, whose apparent experience of the qualms of conscience struck me as being rather suspicious.
‘It’s no good, girls,’ said Miranda, suddenly. ‘It’s no good—duogamy’s off! Think of the servants!’
‘Horrors, the servants!’ said Isolda, blankly.
‘Yes, I was afraid you would soon find out the one weak spot,’ said Amoret, regretfully. ‘Of course it would be awful having to cope with two lots of servants. One husband could afford to keep four or five, say, and the other only one or two, and each lot would get out of hand during the wife’s absence.’
‘So instead of having a perfectly deevy time with two husbands vying with each other in pleasing one, one would have a fearsome existence constantly breaking-in minions. Directly one had got A.’s servants into order, it would be time to go back to B. and do the same there.’
‘No; thank you,’ said Isolda, firmly, ‘one lot is enough for me. I’ve said dozens of times, for the servant reason alone, that I wish I had never married. It would be madness to actually double one’s burden. You can strike me off the list of duogamists, Amoret, until the Servant Question is solved by some new invention of machinery, or the importation of Chinese.’
‘Perhaps,’ Amoret suggested hopefully, ‘your alternative might consent to live in a hotel.’
‘No such luck,’ said Isolda, mournfully, ‘when a man marries it’s mostly for a home—why else should he marry unless it’s for the children? Good gracious! I’d forgotten all about the children. Of course that settles it.’
‘The cul-de-sac of all reforms!’ said Amoret, tragically. ‘It’s impossible to suggest any revision in the marriage system that isn’t instantly quashed by the children complication.’
We all sat silent, busy with our thoughts, and then Isolda shuddered.
‘Duogamy’s no good,’ she said emphatically, ‘and I am so disappointed!’