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Certain Personal Matters - On the Choice of a Wife · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter three of Certain Personal Matters. This is a LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: according all LibriVox accordings are in the public domain. For
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  Speaker 1: more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Phone Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells
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  Speaker 1: on the choice of a wife. Wife choosing is an
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  Speaker 1: unending business. This sounds immoral, but what I mean will
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  Speaker 1: be clearer in the context. People have lived, innumerable people
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  Speaker 1: exhausted experience, and yet other people keep on coming to hand,
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  Speaker 1: none the wiser, none the better. It is like a waterfall,
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  Speaker 1: more than anything else in the world. Every year one
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  Speaker 1: has to turn to and warn another batch about these
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  Speaker 1: still old things. Yet it is one's duty, the last
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  Speaker 1: thing that remains to a man, and as a piece
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  Speaker 1: of worldly wisdom that has nothing to do with wives,
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  Speaker 1: always leave a few duties neglected for the comfort of
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  Speaker 1: your age. There are such a lot of other things
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  Speaker 1: one can do when one is young. Now, the kind
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  Speaker 1: of wife a young fellow of eight or nine and
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  Speaker 1: twenty insists on selecting is something of one and twenty
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  Speaker 1: or less, inexperienced, extremely pretty, graceful and well dressed, not
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  Speaker 1: too clever, accomplished. But I need not go on, for
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  Speaker 1: the youthful reader can fill in the picture himself from
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  Speaker 1: his own ideal. Every young man has his own ideal,
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  Speaker 1: as a matter of course, and they are all exactly alike. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I do not intend to repeat all the still old
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  Speaker 1: saws of out of date wiseakers. Most of them are
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  Speaker 1: even more foolish than the follies they reprove. Take for instance,
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  Speaker 1: the statement that beauty fades absurd. Everyone knows perfectly well
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  Speaker 1: that as the year's crebon, beauty simply gets more highly colored,
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  Speaker 1: and then beauty is only skin deep, fantastically wrong. Some
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  Speaker 1: of it is not that, and for the rest is
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  Speaker 1: a woman like a toy loon just the surface. To
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  Speaker 1: hear that proverb from a man is to know him
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  Speaker 1: at once for a phonographic kind of fool. The fundamental
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  Speaker 1: and enduring grace of womanhood goes down to the skeleton.
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  Speaker 1: You cannot have a pretty face without a pretty skull,
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  Speaker 1: just as you cannot have one without a good temper.
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  Speaker 1: Yet all the same, there is an excellent reason why
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  Speaker 1: one should shun beauty in a prospective wife at any rate.
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  Speaker 1: Obvious beauty, the kind of beauty people talk about and
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  Speaker 1: which gets into the photographer's windows. The common beautiful woman
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  Speaker 1: has a style of her own, a favorite aspect. After all,
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  Speaker 1: she cannot be perfect. She comes upon you, dazzles you,
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  Speaker 1: marries you. There is a time of ecstasy. People envy you,
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  Speaker 1: continue to envy you. After a time, you envy yourself,
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  Speaker 1: yourself of the day before, yesterday, for the imperfection, the
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  Speaker 1: inevitable imperfection. In one case, I remember, it was a
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  Speaker 1: smile becomes visible to you, becomes your special privilege. That
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  Speaker 1: is the real reason. No beauty is a beauty to
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  Speaker 1: her husband. But with the plain woman, the thoroughly plain woman,
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  Speaker 1: it is different. At first, I will not mince matters.
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  Speaker 1: Her ugliness is an impenetrable repulse. Face it. After a time,
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  Speaker 1: little things begin to appear through the violent discords, little
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  Speaker 1: scraps of melody, a shy tenderness in her smile that
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  Speaker 1: peeps out at you and vanishes as something that is winning.
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  Speaker 1: Looking out of her eyes, you find the waveness of
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  Speaker 1: her hair that you never saw at the beginning, a certain, surprising, pleasing,
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  Speaker 1: enduring want of clumsiness in part of her ear. And
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  Speaker 1: it is yours you can see. She strikes to behold
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  Speaker 1: her with something of a shock. And while the beauty
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  Speaker 1: of the beauty is common for all the world to
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  Speaker 1: rejoice in, you will find in your dear plain wife
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  Speaker 1: beauty enough and despair exquisite, for it is all your own,
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  Speaker 1: your treasure, trove, your safely hidden treasure. Then, in a
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  Speaker 1: matter of age, though young fellows do not imagine it,
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  Speaker 1: it is very easy to marry a wife too young.
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  Speaker 1: Marriage has been defined as a foolish bargain in which
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  Speaker 1: one man provides for another man's daughter. But there is
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  Speaker 1: no reason why this should go so far as completing
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  Speaker 1: her education. If your conception of happiness is having something
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  Speaker 1: pretty and innocent and troublesome about you, something that you
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  Speaker 1: can cherish and make happy, a pet rabbit is in
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  Speaker 1: every way preferable, at the worst, that will nibble your boots.
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  Speaker 1: I have known several cases of the girl wife, and
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  Speaker 1: it always began like an idol, charmingly, the tenderest care
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  Speaker 1: on one hand, winsome worship on the other, until some
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  Speaker 1: little thing, a cut chin or a missing paper startled
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  Speaker 1: the pure and natural man out of his veneer dancing
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  Speaker 1: and blaspheming with the most amazing consequences. Only a proven
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  Speaker 1: saint should marry a girl wife, and his motives might
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  Speaker 1: be misunderstood. The idyllic wife is a beautiful thing to
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  Speaker 1: read about, but in practice idyll should be kept episodes.
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  Speaker 1: In practice, the idyllic life is a little too like
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  Speaker 1: a dinner that is all dessert. A common man, after
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  Speaker 1: a time, tires of winsome worship. He craves after companionship
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  Speaker 1: and a sympathy based on experience. The ordinary young man
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  Speaker 1: with the still younger wife I have noticed, continues to
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  Speaker 1: love her with all his heart, and spends his leisure
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  Speaker 1: telling somebody else's wife all about it. If in these
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  Speaker 1: days of blatant youth, an experienced man's counsel is worth anything,
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  Speaker 1: it would be to marry a woman considerably older than oneself,
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  Speaker 1: if one must marry at all. And while upon this topic,
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  Speaker 1: and I have lived long, the ideal wife, and persuaded
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  Speaker 1: from the close observation of many years, is invariably by
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  Speaker 1: some mishap. A widow avoid social charm. It was the
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  Speaker 1: capacity for entertaining visitors that ruin paradise. It grows upon
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  Speaker 1: a woman an indiscriminating personal magnetism is perhaps the most
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  Speaker 1: dreadful vice a wife can have. You think you have
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  Speaker 1: married the one woman in the world, and you find
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  Speaker 1: you have married a host that is to say, a hostess.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of making a home for you, she makes you
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  Speaker 1: something between an ethnographical museum and the casual ward. You
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  Speaker 1: find your rooms littered with people and teacups and things,
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  Speaker 1: strange creatures that no one could possibly care for that
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  Speaker 1: seems scarcely to care for themselves. You go about the
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  Speaker 1: house treading upon chance geniuses, and get chipped by inexperienced guests.
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  Speaker 1: And even when she does not entertain, she is continually
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  Speaker 1: going out. I do not deny that charming people are charming,
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  Speaker 1: that their company should be sought, but seeking in a
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  Speaker 1: marriage is an altogether different matter. Then I really must
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  Speaker 1: insist that young men do not understand the real truth
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  Speaker 1: about accomplishments. There comes a day when the most variegated
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  Speaker 1: wife comes to the end of her tunes, and another
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  Speaker 1: when she ends them for the second time. Vitelonga arsbrevis.
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  Speaker 1: At least as regards the art of the schoolgirl, it
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  Speaker 1: is only like marrying a slightly more complicated Beryl organ.
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  Speaker 1: And for another point, watch the young person you would
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  Speaker 1: honor with your hand for the slightest inkling of economy
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  Speaker 1: or tininess. Young men are so full of poetry and
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  Speaker 1: emotion that it does not occur to them how widely
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  Speaker 1: the sword advices are distributed in the other sex. If
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  Speaker 1: you are a hotel proprietor, or a school proprietor, or
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  Speaker 1: a day laborer, such weaknesses become a strength, of course,
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  Speaker 1: but not otherwise for a literary person. If, perchance you
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  Speaker 1: are a literary person, it is altogether too dreadful. You
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  Speaker 1: are always getting swept and garnished, straightened up and sent
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  Speaker 1: out to be shaved and home. Even your study becomes
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  Speaker 1: a glittering, spick and span mechanism. But you know the
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  Speaker 1: parable of the seven devil. To conclude a summary, the
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  Speaker 1: woman you choose should be plain, as plain as you
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  Speaker 1: can find, as old or older than yourself, the void
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  Speaker 1: of social gifts or accomplishments, poor for your self respect,
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  Speaker 1: and with a certain amiable untidiness. Of course, no man
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  Speaker 1: will heed this, But at least I have given my
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  Speaker 1: counsel and very excellent reasons for that council, And possibly
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  Speaker 1: I shall be able to remind him that I told
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  Speaker 1: him as much. In the course of a few years time,
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  Speaker 1: and by the bye I had almost forgotten, never, by
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  Speaker 1: any chance marry a girl whose dresses do up at
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  Speaker 1: the back, unless you can afford her a maid or
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  Speaker 1: so of her own, and of on the choice of
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  Speaker 1: a wife,