O’Shaughnessy during the life of me, Brown! I wish she had! Well, Annabella passed away. Jane rushed in to take her p1ace—my idolised Jane carried the science of ‘nagging’ (hear! hear! hear!) to a point which has been seldom equalled, and never surpassed. Would you not have supposed that I should have rejoiced and revelled in my liberty?—that I should not have put myself a third time in the power of the tormentor? I did though. Within the eighteen months I conducted Sophia Ann to the hymeneal altar. Sophia Ann exists—she adores me, my friends, she adores me; and I never knew the meaning of human misery till now! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
There was a respectful silence—the enormity of this affliction was such, that all words of consolation were felt to be a mockery. We let B. the A.’s anguish have its way. He resumed.
“And do you suppose this is the worst of it! No! like Hippolytus, I curse the sex,—but the iron has entered into my soul. I am their slave. Were my Sophia to be torn from me to-morrow—I know it—within a few months I should be the victim of some fresh fascination—I can’t resist it—I can’t struggle against it. You all of you know my particular wrongs, and that I am not a husband who yields his neck to the axe without a struggle—but I, I Brown, falsely named the Avenger, had I been on the jury in poor Barber’s case the other day, I would have kicked him out of court, and found a verdict for the wife without the smallest hesitation. How is this brought about? Why because there is not one amongst us—not even amongst us, the Prætorians of the human race—connubial veterans grim with scars and suffering—whom the first woman we met could not at any moment tease, cajole, coax, flout, pet, allure, madden, or bedevil into doing anything she pleased. Is it the truth?”
There was again silence, and a deep voice struck in—
Except our wives!
This exception met with general acquiescence. The question, however, remained how some remedy could be applied to the existing evil. It was greatly to be feared, as one gentleman suggested, whose lady had imbibed a taste for “private theatricals,” that Mrs. Barber’s example might be contagious. What boards for a first appearance before the London public! How exciting a part to play! What certainty of bringing down the house! Could the offensive exactions of the law, with regard to the proof of sævitia or cruelty be expunged, all the G.C.s admitted that their case would be much improved; but this was scarcely to be hoped for. Would it be possible to turn the table upon the too fascinating syrens who could, at any moment, sing away the characters of their husbands by an hour or two of dalliance in Sir Cresswell’s gorgeous cage?
Ay! there was the rub; but how was this to be contrived? Who was to bell these soft, alluring, velvet-pawed, sharp-clawed, stealthily-paced, beautiful, but fatal cats?
At length a definite proposition was offered to the notice of the afflicted husbands. It was proposed that a central committee should be formed, with Mr. Brown (otherwise known as the Avenger) as the chairman, and that to this committee should be forwarded the results of the private experience of every member who could be induced to lend his aid to the furtherance of so excellent a work; that the most remarkable of these contributions should be selected for publication, more especially those which illustrated the less known and more subtle forms of marital suffering; that it should be broadly and clearly understood that the G.C.s fully acknowledged that there were thousands and thousands of households throughout the land which were not under subjection to the forms of feminine despotism described, and that they prayed the intelligent reader to accept their revelations for what they were worth—viz., contributions to that needful fund of information upon which alone true theories of the Pathology of Married Life can be based.
The G.C.s, as at present advised, did not pretend to go further than the assertion of what appeared to them to be twelve probable truths, viz.:—
lst. Of 1000 men and 1000 women taken at random in the British Islands, there is, on both sides, an equal percentage of good, indifferent, and bad. The indifferent largely predominate.
2nd. That any lady who may be reading these lines belongs emphatically to the category of the good.
3rd. That the vices and virtues, the qualities and defects of the two sexes are different; but that, on the whole, there is equilibrium.
Corollary. That all men are not brutes, nor all women angels.
4th. That in so close a union as that of married life the stronger will prevails, and that the force of will is as strong with women as with men; but that it works otherwise to its results.
5th. That the power of the woman is based upon her thorough perception and appreciation of the weaknesses of the man.
6th. That men, in the vast majority of cases, are very weak.
7th. That positive law never touches, and never can touch, the miseries and discomforts—where they exist—of married life, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.
8th. That there is a passion, sentiment, or impulse, which can instantaneously convert the gravest and oldest man equally with the most thoughtless and youngest boy into a mere idiot. The poets call it L—e: the G.C.s don’t know what to say about it.
9th. That if a man values his own peace of mind he had better keep out of the way of pink bonnets and Balmoral boots.
10th. That the marriage day and that day year, are two different days.
llth. That the husband and wife know nothing more of each other’s qualities and defects when they join hands at the altar, than if they had been natives of different planets.
Corollary. The longer the courtship, the greater the chance of error, for the deception has been more enduring and continuous.
Axiom. Leap before you look!
