Letters to My Son: A mother's words of warmth, wit and wisdom from 100 years ago

by Ursula Bloom

  It is a mistake to stoop to marry. This sounds snobbish, and Heaven knows that I do not mean it snobbishly. We are divided into niches, and from the very start of your life, you are educated in your niche. The ordinary everyday manners are instilled into you, but in accordance with your niche. You are taught to think along certain lines, and these lines are influenced by ‘class’ (hateful word). It is very difficult to marry a woman beneath you, and to get over the twenty odd years which have preceded your meeting and during which she has formed her own conclusions and opinions, which will be hard to change.

  I once became engaged under such circumstances. I produced a young man whom the family disliked very much. I loved him, and the more they hated him, the more I loved him. Opposition drove me hard. Then one day we went out to a restaurant together, and had a meal. I don’t know what was the matter with him that day, always before he had been careful, but suddenly I saw that he wasn’t behaving as I did. A curtain dropped between us, something invisible yet so marked that I could see it as solid asbestos, a safety-curtain on my life. I could not possibly have tolerated it for the rest of my years, because we were fundamentally different. Our paths did not lie together, but were as the poles apart.

  Now, if I had not happened to see it that day, I might quite easily have waxed obstinate and married that man. I felt that my people were being nasty about him and bigoted on points that did not matter. I was foolish enough not to appreciate the fact that in marriage it is the little things that matter so desperately. The way a man coughs, the way he drinks his soup, the way he snores.

  When you are in love this sounds crude. When you are married it sounds very much like common sense.

  Think twice before you stoop to conquer.

  Think twice also before you rush into the platonic affair. I am not decrying Platonism, but I do recognize it as being dangerous, because one or other of you is so liable to be hurt by it. It has a disarming habit of breaking down. It may offer a rather dreadful disillusion. Most women think of friendship with a man as appertaining to marriage in the long run. I may sound to be talking along old-fashioned lines; but, then, primitive instincts are always old-fashioned. Time does not affect them, and marriage is a primitive instinct. It occupies most of the stage of feminine life. Unless they marry, even though they have become emancipated and have so many spheres to which they may turn, they know that there is a lonely life ahead, perhaps financial difficulties, and the added horror of dying alone. It is only natural for them to concentrate on a partnership which will end all this.

  Too many platonic friendships have led men and women into quandaries, because they are liable to misunderstandings and to complications. I would be careful about them.

  A man is far more inconstant than a woman, and he goes through a series of affairs which constitute experience. I think that it is essential for a young man to have this experience, and if he does not accept it now in the late teens and early twenties, which is the time that Nature has allotted for it, there may be the tendency later on to turn back on his tracks and, after he has married, seek the very flirtations which will ruin his marriage, but which he now realizes were necessary to complete living.

  The attraction that you feel for the one woman, the real love which comes to you, will not come with a rush. You read a lot about people falling in love at sight, and although I would not decry that for a moment, I still do think that it happens but once in a thousand cases. It is unlikely that yours will be the case. Love is quieter than that.

  The sudden rushing emotion is far more likely to be infatuation, which is very disturbing, but not enduring. The quiet liking for a person, which turns to something more, and gradually develops, is love itself. You will not be aware of the bigness of your emotion until suddenly one day you come up against it, and review it with surprise.

  Love is a quiet emotion, infatuation a flamboyant one. Perhaps that is the subtle difference between them.

  I admit it is difficult to know how you can tell if your feelings will last, and provided they are not too violent, and you know that there is a basis of understanding, of affection and respect, which are unlikely to let you down.

  When people marry they grow together ‒ that is, unless they are both very positive people, and pull their own ways. You ‘get used’ to one another. Associations weld you closer. You concentrate on so many mutual likes and dislikes, you are both interested in the home, in yourselves, in your children, so that mutual interests are holding you all the time.

  It is for this reason that I do hate the present-day tendency to give up the home for hotel life. This is dangerous, and I hope the craze will have died by the time that you become a man. Marriage demands a background, and if that background is shifting and insecure, then so will the marriage be. Given the wrong background, it cannot endure. Hotel life has a tendency to shallowness. You become a bird of passage, constantly meeting fresh people, seldom sustaining these friendships. You are made restless, and are for ever ‘on the go’. Dull as it may sound ‒ and provided it is the right partner it is never dull ‒ marriage is a settling down. If you go on with the gay, glamorous, restless life, it may be a matter of settling up.

  Give marriage its proper background, because it is demanding this all the time. You must concentrate on matters which interest both of you, and even if you can afford many servants to do all the work for you, I would like to emphasize the fact that life becomes far happier, and love far stronger, if you do a lot of these things for yourself.

  Love finds such exquisite joy in simplicities: the making of a new rock-garden together, the raising of a family, the different decorations in the home. And although you may choose to despise all these matters, I can assure you that, small as they may seem, they are tremendously important in the effort of staying in love.

  We all take some element of risk when we marry. You gamble with emotion all the time. It is nothing cut and dried that you can be quite sure about, and therefore I do suggest that you do not disturb yourself too much. It is no good trying to be too introspective.

  If you are doubtful of your own feelings, ask yourself some of the following questions, and try to be truthful with your answers. It is strange that it is not easy to be honest with oneself, therefore I do beg you to try your best.

  How would you feel if you were never to see her again?

  Would you prefer discomfort with her, to comfort with somebody else?

  Does she make you feel contented and peaceful, and not nervy and on edge? Too often the nervy and on-edge type of affair is merely infatuation.

  Looking ahead, would you be happy growing old with her, or is it only her youth which holds you? N.B. ‒ Youth does not last.

  Picture yourself marooned on a desert island with her. Can you decide if you are happy there?

  Which would you rather do, go out to dinner at a restaurant you have always wanted to visit, with people you have always wanted to know, or stay at home and talk (talk, I said, not spoon) over the fire, with her?

  With your answers you will find the answer to your question, and can fit your life accordingly.

  Always your loving

  Mother.

  YOUR WIFE

  Frinton-on-Sea.

  January 1920.

  DEAR BOY,

  This really is not on how to choose a wife. Nobody can do that for you. It was only five years ago that I was sick to death of my people trying to teach me how to choose a husband, so that I know quite well it is something you would rather do for yourself. My choice wouldn’t be your choice. All the same, I am giving you some hard-and-fast rules which are just as well to glance through, if only to ignore. I am telling you how I would choose a wife if I were in your place.

  I daresay that you will probably rush head over heels into matrimony, with never a thought about what is the wise thing to do, but all the same luck will be on your side, for luck seems kind to most lovers, and you will come out of it all right. But, at the same time, choosing the woman with whom
you intend to spend the rest of your life is a big decision, and although I do not suggest that you should take the advice of anybody else, I do suggest very seriously that you should sit down and weigh it up with yourself, and try to be as sane as you can under the circumstances.

  Forethought may help you. You have not got your own life alone to consider. Marriage involves other people. There will probably be your children. I myself take my responsibilities very seriously, and I do think that it is most unfair to bring babies into the world to unhappiness. We owe a debt to the next generation, and we have to fulfil our obligations to them or suffer for it. You may be gay, and light-hearted, and think that this sort of thing does not matter, but I am quite sure that nobody can shirk his responsibilities and stay happy. Do believe me when I write this.

  There will be all sorts of people who will want to have a finger in the pie, and guide you towards choosing a wife, but I would let my own heart lead me as much as I could, bearing in mind one or two outstanding facts.

  People who marry ‘outside their class’ are usually not happy. This sounds snobbish, but I do not mean it snobbishly, because after all ‘class’ does not matter. You have got to take into consideration the fact that years of training along totally different lines will have instituted habits which will be very contrary to your nature, and that such habits can complicate married life very considerably.

  Mispronunciations, indifferent manners, illiteracy, are all habits which jar very much. Love blinds you in the beginning, because love cheats so outrageously, but in the end you will see the stark truth, and it will be an unpleasant one.

  Different nationalities means much the same thing. This seems most unfair, but you have got to realize that training stands for much in this life. Training and habit can make or mar us. Two people who have been trained in entirely opposite directions are unlikely to make a brilliant success of marriage. The idea that opposites get on well together is, I always think, a theory of cheap fiction only. How can they get on well together? I would always vote for birds of a feather. Mutual interests, likes and dislikes, surely weld the bond closer? I’d steer clear of opposites.

  It is asking for trouble to marry into a family where there is something latent, like tuberculosis or lunacy. I know that you will say immediately that this is unfair on the girl who can’t help these things being there. It is unfair; but, then, who ever suggested that life was fair? At the same time you cannot cheat by handing on such traits to children who do not ask to be born.

  Those children have only you to think for them. The responsibility for their birth rests with you.

  Apart from these most important factors, I would suggest that you chose for yourself. After all, it is you who have got to live with her for the rest of your natural life; you who will be blessed or bored by her.

  Blood be on your own head.

  Remember that the day you go to the altar you saddle yourself with a liability for life. For that liability you will have to pay with your worldly goods. Do think twice. Second thoughts, even in love, are so much wiser.

  It is a most lamentable thing that when we fall in love, we grow so blind to the qualities which are of sterling worth. We are attracted only by fripperies, the colour of her hair and eyes, the way that she laughs or frowns, her frocks, her hats, her charm; we are beguiled by a hundred and one quite matterless little things which have not even got the merit of staying as they are. For her appearance will alter. Her frocks will go out of fashion, her hats will change; her charm may fade.

  So do try to look for something a little deeper.

  Nature pursues the one end. Nature’s sole idea is to carry on the race, and to this end it cheats abominably. It fuses you with a new fire, so that you see life out of perspective; it drives you hard; it makes you a new person and distorts your view. If you recognize this, then you are wise indeed, and have gone some part of the way towards saving yourself from trouble. But most young men and young women refuse to recognize it. They rush hot-headedly into love, about which they have heard so much, and on which score Nature cheats them so hard.

  So, look to it.

  Before you actually propose, put yourself through a severe mental examination, and don’t answer the test questions in that examination paper with your rose-coloured glasses on. Rose-coloured glasses change anybody’s vision. Try to be honest with yourself on one of the most important points of your life, because this is a very serious move to make, and your future happiness and the happiness of your wife and of your children depend very considerably on your common sense.

  First of all ask yourself, How does she treat her own people? Although it may seem to be quite absurd to you at the moment, you have got to remember that as she treats them now, so will she treat you when the glamour works off.

  I hate to predict that the glamour will work off, but I am afraid that married for a week and married for five years are not quite the same things. Love burns with too feverish a flame at first, and if it went on like that it would only burn itself out and have done. Instead, if it is real love, it collapses a little, and changes into something which is far more durable, far more lasting, far finer, though it may not have the same brilliance. This is affection. Affection will carry you through to eternity and will stay sound and secure. It is the bedrock of all happiness.

  The girl who is rude to her mother, who says openly that her father is a fool, her schoolboy brother a bore, and her baby sister a nuisance, is not going to be much use to anybody as a wife. She will be saying just the same things about you when she has got over the first ecstasy. And what you may be saying about her will be unthinkable.

  Ask yourself if she has got her head stuffed with romance. Is she a rabid reader of cheap fiction? Is she for ever at the pictures? Will she look upon you always as a Romeo and never as a man?

  Because romance, when it is served up for breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea, is not a very satisfactory diet. It sates. It is a case of having too much sugar cake, and it will not endure.

  Is she lazy? My mother always said that she never minded whom my brother married as long as the girl could sew. She said that a woman who could use a needle was a good wife, and could be relied upon to find resources within herself. I don’t suppose that is true, but it is at least a point.

  Is she one of those girls who pride themselves that they cannot do a hand’s turn in the house, and don’t know which end of a needle goes into a man’s sock first? Can she sew, and cook, and does she know how to handle a baby?

  I realize that all this sounds dreadfully domestic, and at the moment you have possibly got ideas about your future being something too romantic for words, with nothing drab or drear like butchers’ and bakers’ books in it.

  But in this world I am afraid that we live on butchers’ and bakers’ books; they are everyday matters which we have got to meet and to accept.

  The best way is to keep them in their proper perspective, and this you cannot do if you refuse to contemplate them when you are planning your future. By ignoring them, and blinding yourself to the girl’s inability to cope with them, you are laying up a pack of trouble for yourself.

  It won’t do.

  When her mother is ill, what is the girl doing? i.e. what will she be doing when you are sick of a fever?

  These things are worth thinking about, when it is all your future happiness at stake, and I do beg you to think of them in all seriousness.

  Can she make her own amusements, or will she cost you a young fortune in trying to keep her happy? Such a lot of young women always want to buy an entertainment ticket, and believe that this is the only way to amuse oneself. You want a wife who can find amusement in her home, who does not want to be for ever out of it, believing that fun can only be found in gay hotels and restaurants and clubs.

  Do avoid a jealous woman.

  When you are engaged it gives you a thrill. You feel that she loves you so much and so over-estimates your value that she believes that every other woman in the world wants
you. It makes you put a high price on yourself too. There is nothing like jealousy for giving you a fillip then, and there is nothing like jealousy for letting you down with a bad bump after marriage. Then it is nothing like as much fun, and you cannot imagine how it was that you did not see the idiocy of it before. She won’t let you ask another girl to the house without suggesting that there is ‘something funny afoot’. She will be suspicious if you go to the golf club, or to a dance, or to any assembly which involves meeting the other sex.

  Your most innocent actions will assume guilty proportions. You will find yourself becoming secretive and difficult, and for ever wondering into what peccadillo she can twist your latest action.

  She won’t let it end there either.

  Time has never yet made a jealous woman better, it has never yet cured her. The fact that you never give her just cause does not prove her mistake to her. Jealousy swells. She allows it to possess her to such an extent that, after a while, she outstrips the limits of decency, and will actually attack the other women on the subject. She will even attack you with an audience, and any man who has to endure this is to be pitied.

  However lovely she is, however precious, if she is the jealous sort, think twice, thrice, and then get out of it!

  Because it is never worth while.

  Is she bossy? Will you have a mind of your own? Is she a martyr? Because martyrs can drive you to madness.

  But if, after you have catechized yourself on all these points, you feel that she is still the girl of your dreams, and that you love her very much indeed and cannot be happy without her, then take your courage in both hands and propose to her.

  Proposing is something which takes a lot of doing, but as you cannot marry her without having asked her first, then it is a case of ‘here goes’. Whatever you may think about it privately, she will be expecting it, even though you have credited yourself with super-intelligence in the matter of concealing your feelings. Most women have a hunch when a man has fallen for them. They know. They will never admit it, because it is one of the things that you do not admit, but at the same time they realize that in their own hearts they had seen it coming for some time.