Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2216 page)

A little further on (page thirty-eight) the family have their fling at me. I “must not presume to take my stand, thus prematurely, as a member of the family, nor affect that exceeding intimacy which leads,” et cetera. Thus, the father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins, all keep me at arm’s length as well as the bride. Second insult.

First persecution. During my engagement, I am to be “very particular, and even punctilious in my dress. My visits, which, for the most part, we may presume will occur in the evening, should be made invariably in evening dress.” Indeed? I have been at my office all day; I have dined at my lonely chop-house. I fly, at the risk of indigestion, with my “follow-chop” and my love contending for the uppermost place in my bosom, to the door of my charmer. I suddenly stop with my hand on the knocker, remember that I have a pair of grey trousers on, and turn away again to case my legs in black kerseymere, to change my coloured shirt, to make pomatum pills and rub them into my hair, to put fresh scent on my handkerchief and a flower in my dress-coat, to send for a cab, and to drive up, at last, to my young woman’s door, as if she had asked me to a party. When I get in, does she slip into the back dining-room and privately reward me for my black kerseymere, my pomatum pills, and my scented handkerchief? Not she! She receives me, in the drawing-room, at arm’s length; and her family receive me at arm’s length, also. And what does Etiquette expect of me, under those circumstances, for the rest of the evening? Here it is at page forty-three. I “must never be out of spirits but when my fair one is sad-never animated but when she is cheerful; her slightest wish must be my law, her most trifling fancy the guiding-star of my conduct. In coming to her, I must show no appreciation of time, distance, or fatigue” By Jupiter! if this does not disclose the existence of an organised plan for the harassing of bridegrooms, I should like to know what does? I put it to the women themselves: Are you any of you really worth all that? You know you’re not! What would you privately think of a man who was afraid to come and see you of an evening in grey trousers, and who tried to conceal from you that his poor corns ached a little after a long walk? You would privately think him a fool. And so do I, publicly.

Second persecution in case the wretched bridegroom has survived the first. As the wedding-day approaches, I “must come out of the bright halo of my happiness” (happiness!) “into the cold, grey, actual daylight of the world of business.” I must “burn all my bachelor letters” (why I should like to know?) “and part with, it may be, some few of my bachelor connections “ (does this mean “ some few “ of my relations, my blood relations who adore the very ground I tread on?) and I must, finally, “ bid a long farewell to all bachelor friends!” “Did you say all? O, hell-kite!-all? “ Yes, there it is in print, at page sixty-two. My affectionate tendencies, my grey trousers, my comfortable shooting jacket, my appreciation of time, distance, or fatigue, my bachelor letters, my few connections, my bachelor friends all must disappear before this devouring Moloch in petticoats. Nothing is left me nothing but my evening costume and the prospect of being married!

After the insults and persecutions, minor troubles envelope me previous to the commencement of the wedding-day degradations. All the responsibility of getting Moloch’s wedding-ring is thrown on me. It must not be too thin, or Moloch, in course of years, will wear it out; it must not be too large, or Moloch’s finger will let it drop off. If I am self-distrustful (and how can I be otherwise, after the severe discipline to which I have submitted during the courtship?), I must get at Moloch’s size through the intervention of Moloch’s sister; and when I have purchased the ring, I must be very careful to keep it in the left-hand corner of my right-hand waistcoat-pocket, to be ready at a moment’s notice for the clerk when he asks me for it. Having grappled with all these difficulties, my next piece of work is to get my bridegroomsmen. I must be very particular in selecting them. They must be limited in number to the number of the bridesmaids, one for each. They must be young and unmarried, they should be handsome, they cannot fail to be good-humoured, they ought to be well dressed, their apparel should be light and elegant, they should wear dress coats. The bride sends white gloves, wrapped in white paper and tied with white ribbon, to each of the bridesmaids; and I must do the same to each of the bridegroomsmen. My own costume is to be “a blue coat, light grey trousers, white satin or silk waistcoat, ornamental tie, and white (not primrose-coloured) gloves.” Pleasant! Having insulted and persecuted me all through the courtship, Etiquette, on my wedding morning, strips me even of my evening costume, clothes me in an ornamental tie and a white satin waistcoat, and produces me maliciously before the public eye in the Character of an outrageous snob.

We now come to the Bridegroom’s First Degradation. It is the morning of the marriage; and the wedding-party is setting out for the church. Here is Etiquette’s order of the carriages:

In the first carriage, the principal bridesmaid and bridegroomsman.

“In the second carriage, the second bridesmaid and the bridegroom’s mother.

Other carriages, with bridesmaids and friends, the carriages of the bridesmaids taking precedence.

“ In the last carriage the bride and her father.”

Where is the Bridegroom in the programme? Nowhere. Not even a hackney cab provided for him! How does he get to church? Does he run, in his ornamental tie and white satin waistcoat, behind one of the carriages? Or has he a seat on the box? Or does he walk, accompanied by two policemen, to prevent him from taking the only sensible course left, in other words, from running away? We hear nothing of him till it is time for him to undergo his Second Degradation; and then we find him waiting in the vestry, “where he must take care to have arrived some time previously to the hour appointed.” Observe the artfulness with which this second degradation is managed! If the bridegroom only arrived at the church door five minutes before the appointed hour, he would appear in the estimable character of a rigidly punctual man, who knew the value of time (especially when you have an ornamental tie, and a white satin waistcoat to put on), and who was determined not to waste the precious moments on his wedding-morning. But Etiquette insists on making a contemptible fool of him all through. The beadle, the clerk, the pew-opener, and the general public must all see him “kicking his heels “ to no earthly purpose, some time before the hour when he, and the beadle, and the clerk, and the pew-opener all know that he is wanted. Consider the bride dashing up to the church-door with her train of carriages; then, look at the forlorn snob in light grey trousers, humbled by insult and wasted by persecution, who has been dancing attendance “some time previously to the hour appointed,” in a lonely vestry; and then say if Etiquette does not punish the lords of creation severely for the offence of getting married!

But the offence is committed the marriage has been perpetrated the wedding-party returns to breakfast; the bridegroom, this time, having a place in the first carriage, because the Law has made a man of him at last, in spite of the bride and her family. But the persecutions are not over yet. They assume a small, spiteful, social character, in terror of the aforesaid Law. The breakfast is eaten. Drink, the last refuge of the wretched, partially revives the unhappy man who has been kicking his heels in the vestry. He begins to lose the galling sense of his white satin waistcoat; he forgets that he is personally disfigured for the occasion by an ornamental tie. At that first moment of comfort, vindictive Etiquette goads him onto his legs, and insists, no matter whether he can do it or not, on his making a speech. He has hardly had time to breakdown, and resume his chair before Etiquette sends the bride out of the room to put on her travelling dress. The door has hardly closed on her, when a fiend (assuming the form of a bachelor friend) attacks him with “a short address” (see page seventy-nine), to which he is “ expected to respond.” Give him time to show his light grey trousers once more to the company, above the horizon of the tablecloth give him time to break down again
 
and the bride re-appears, ready for the journey. This is the last chance the family have, for some time to come, of making the bridegroom uncomfortable; and Etiquette shows them how to take the meanest possible advantage of it:

“The young bride, divested of her bridal attire, and quietly costumed for the journey, now bids farewell to her bridesmaids and lady friends. Some natural tears spring to her gentle eyes as she takes a last look at the home she is now leaving. The servants venture to crowd to her with their humble though heartfelt congratulations; and, finally, melting, she falls weeping on her mother’s bosom. A short cough is heard, as of some one summoning up resolution. It is her father. He dare not trust his voice; but holds out his hand, gives her one kiss, and then leads her, half turning back, down the stairs and through the hall, to the door, where he delivers her to her husband; who hands her
 
quickly to the carriage, leaps in lightly after her, waves his hand to the party, who appear crowding to the windows, half smiles to the throng about the door, then gives the word, and they are off, and started on the voyage of life!”

There are some parts of this final programme of persecution to which I have no objection. I rather like the idea of the father being obliged to express parental grief by the same means which he would employ to express bronchitis a short cough. I am also gratified to find that Etiquette involves him in the serious gymnastic difficulty of taking his daughter down-stairs, and of “half turning back “ at the same time. But here all sentiments of approval, on my part, end. From the foregoing passage I draw the inference as every one else must that the bridegroom is kept waiting at the street-door for the bride, just as a begging-letter impostor is kept waiting at the street-door for an answer. And, when she does come down, what does the triply degraded man find to reward him for waiting? Part of a woman only; the rest having melted on the mother’s bosom. Part of a woman, I say again, with a red nose, and cheeks bedabbled with tears. And what am I, the bridegroom, expected to do under these circumstances? To hand what the mother’s bosom and the father’s short cough have left me, “quickly into the carriage,” and to “leap in lightly” after it. Lightly? After what I have gone through, there must be a considerable spring in my light grey trousers to enable me to do that.

I pursue the subject no further. The new Divorce Court occupies the ground beyond me; and I make it a rule never to interfere with the vested interests of others. I have followed a Man, by the lurid light of Etiquette, from his Courtship to his Marriage; and there I leave him with emotions of sympathy for which the English language affords me no adequate means of expression. I defy British families (being a bachelor, I am not the least afraid of them) to point out in any other mortal affair which a man can go through, such an existing system of social persecution against the individual as that which is attached to the business of courting and marrying when a man undertakes it in this country. There is the book with the code of inhuman laws against the unoffending bridegroom, for every one to refer to. Let the Shy Young Man get it, and properly test my accuracy of quotation; and then let him say whether he is still prepared to keep his eye on his young woman, after he knows the penalties which attach to letting it rove in that dangerous direction. No such Awful Warning to Bachelors has been published in my time as the small volume on the Etiquette of Courtship and Matrimony, which I now close with a shudder henceforth and for ever.

First published
Household Words
27 March 1858

SEA-BREEZES WITH THE LONDON

THROW up the window; come into the balcony; here we are, my dear, at the seaside.

Yes! we have actually got away from town. I survey the ocean instead of the opposite houses, I smell sea-weed and salt water instead of smoke. Looking in the glass, I see myself reflected in a costume which would be the ruin of my character for respectability if I wore it in my own street. Turning affectionately towards my wife, I behold a saucy-looking hat on her head instead of her usual quiet bonnet. Thirty years ago, when she was. a young girl, the at would have set off her youth and beauty becomingly. Now, it makes her look, singularly enough, many years older than she really is. I dare not acknowledge it to her, I hardly venture to confess it to myself, but a middle-aged woman in a girl’s hat is scarcely a less anomalous sight, to my eyes, than a middle-aged woman would be in a girl’s short frock and frilled trousers. However, as no Englishwoman appears to consider herself too old for a hat at the sea-side-not, as I observe in some instances, even when she wears a wig-I have no right to remonstrate with my wife, who is still on the right side of fifty. Let us keep to our national peculiarities, and let no antics in costume be too ridiculous for us when we are away from home.

Well, as I said before, we have actually got away from town. What induces me to repeat that extremely common-place phrase? What sinister influence is making me begin to doubt, in defiance of the view from the window, in defiance of our conjugal change of costume, in defiance of the salt-water smell in my very nostrils, whether we have absolutely left London behind us, after all? Surely it must be the organ playing before the next house? Yes! A London organ has followed us to our refuge on the coast, playing the well-known London tunes; bringing us back by the force of the most disagreeable of all its associations, to our street at home. Can I order the dirty, leering Italian vagabond to take himself out of hearing? No; for here, at the sea-side, I am not a housekeeper. The merciful consideration of the English law for all men who live by the perpetration of nuisances; necessarily protects the organ and abandons me. There was a case in point, the other day, in the paper. A gentleman occupied in making some elabourate calculations connected with important public works, charges an organ grinder with interrupting his employment, and with refusing to move out of hearing. The magistrate looks at the Act, finds that -nobody but a housekeeper has any legal right to protection from organs, ascertains that the gentleman whose occupation has been fatally interrupted is a lodger only, and, as a matter of technical necessity, dismisses the application. Evidently I can hope for no chance of peace and quiet in my new abode unless I can get my landlady to complain for me. She has a family of eight small children, and no one to look after them but herself. Can I expect her to find time to appeal to the local magistrate perpetually, on my behalf, even supposing (which is not at all probable) that the Police Act extends to this place? Certainly not. This is a pleasant prospect, if I look to the future. I shall do better, however, if I occupy myself with the present only, and make my escape from those hateful London tunes which are taking me back to town faster than the express train itself brought me away from it. Let me forget that I am a tax-paying citizen who helps to support his country, and let me leave the musical foreign invader who helps to burden it, master of the field.