The Marriage Book (45 page)

74. If Love be not thy
chiefest
Motive, thou wilt soon grow weary of a Married State, and
stray
from thy Promise, to search out thy Pleasures in
forbidden
Places.

75. Let not Enjoyment lessen, but augment Affection; it being the basest of Passions
to like when we have not, what we slight when we possess.

76. It is the Difference betwixt
Lust
and
Love
, that this is fixt, that volatile. Love grows, Lust wastes by Enjoyment: And the Reason is, That one springs from an
Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense
.

77. They have divers Originals, and so are of different Families: That
inward
and
deep
, this superficial; This transient, and that Permanent.

78. They that Marry for Mony cannot have the true Satisfaction of Marriage; the requisite means being wanting. . . .

86. But in Marriage do thou be wise; prefer the
Person
before Mony;
Vertue
before Beauty, the
Mind
before the Body: Then thou hast a Wife, a Friend, a Companion, a
Second Self
; one that bears an equal Share with thee in all thy Toyls and Troubles.

87. Chuse one that Measures her Satisfaction, Safety and Danger, by thine; and of whom thou art sure, as of thy secretest Thoughts: A
Friend
as well as a Wife, which indeed a Wife implies: For she is but
half
a Wife that is not, or is not capable of being
such
a Friend.

88.
Sexes
make no Difference; since in Souls there is
none
: And they are the Subjects of Friendship.

89. He that minds a Body and not a Soul, has not the better Part of that Relation; and will consequently want the noblest Comfort of a Married Life.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

SONNET 43,
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
, CIRCA 1845

Married to fellow poet Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) became famous for the forty-four love poems she wrote him during their courtship. The title of the collection—with its suggestion that the poems had been translated—was an attempt to keep their authorship private. Originally they were called
Sonnets From the Bosnian
.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as men turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears of all my life!—and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

EDWARD LEAR

“THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT,” 1871

Limericks were just an obscure form of light verse before Edward Lear (1812–1888) popularized them. Among his many published short poems, “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” was one of his most famous—and certainly among his most joyful.

Lear coined many words and phrases, including
runcible spoon
, which is sometimes defined as a kind of spoon with sharp edges.

I

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

And sang to a small guitar,

“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are,

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

II

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?”

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

To the land where the Bong-tree grows,

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose,

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”

So they took it away, and were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

CLARA ELSENE PECK

PHRASES, MAZES, AND CRAZES OF LOVE
, 1904

The epigrams were collected by the poet Minna Thomas Antrim, but the illustrations, by Clara Elsene Peck (1883–1968), brought particular charm to the team’s lively volume.

EMMA GOLDMAN

“MARRIAGE AND LOVE,” 1911

Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was a Lithuanian immigrant who came to the United States in her teens and soon became a leading player among numerous anarchists, socialists, and radical laborers. By the first decade of the century, she had founded a magazine called
Mother Earth
and had become a popular lecturer on political, literary, and social subjects. “Free love” was one of her signature topics, and in this essay, she offered her argument against the institution of marriage.

Goldman herself never married but was involved for many years with fellow anarchist Alexander Berkman, whom she encouraged in his plot to assassinate the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years for the shooting (which Frick survived), but no sufficient evidence was found to try Goldman.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death. . . .

In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love’s summit.

Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the
potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.

WILLIAM ROSE

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER
, 1967

Interracial marriage in 1967 was still a shocking proposition, and state laws forbidding it were only struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court that year. The answer to the famously ironic title of the film written by William Rose (1914–1987) was Dr. John Wade Prentice Jr. (played by Sidney Poitier), a black physician engaged to marry a young white woman named Joanna Drayton. The story brings both sets of would-be in-laws together with the couple for an evening of intense dialogue and debate. This speech, delivered by Spencer Tracy as Matt Drayton, occurs at the film’s conclusion and seems to settle the question of marriage with the answer of love. It memorably moved Katharine Hepburn, perhaps both as Tracy’s life partner and as her character, Christina, to tears.

“His Reverence” is family friend Monsignor Mike Ryan. Tillie is the family’s long-employed black cook. Tracy, who was dying, was denied insurance by the production company; the filming only took place when Hepburn and director Stanley Kramer agreed to put their salaries in escrow so that, if necessary, another actor could be hired for Tracy’s part. As it turned out, he made it through the filming—and died seventeen days later.

Now it became clear that we had one single day in which to make up our minds as to how we felt about this whole situation. So what happened? My wife typically enough decided to simply ignore every practical aspect of the situation, and was carried away in some kind of a romantic haze which made her in my view totally inaccessible to anything in the way of reason. . . .

Now Mr. Prentice, clearly a most reasonable man, says he has no wish to offend me but wants to know if I’m some kind of a “nut.” And Mrs. Prentice says that like her husband I’m a burnt-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it’s like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And strange as it seems, that’s the first statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue. Because I think you’re wrong. You’re as wrong as you can be.

I admit that I hadn’t considered it, hadn’t even thought about it. But I know exactly how he feels about her, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that your son feels for my daughter that I didn’t feel for Christina. Old? Yes. Burnt-out? Certainly. But I can tell you, the memories are still there—clear, intact, indestructible. And they’ll be there if I live to be a hundred and ten. Where John made his mistake I think was attaching so much importance to what her mother
and I might think. Because in the final analysis it doesn’t matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other. And if it’s half of what we felt—that’s everything.

As for you two and the problems you’re going to have, they seem almost unimaginable, but you’ll have no problem with me, and I think that when Christina and I and your mother have some time to work on him, you’ll have no problem with your father, John. But you do know, I’m sure you know, what you’re up against. There’ll be a hundred million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled at the two of you, and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You can try to ignore those people, or you can feel sorry for them and for their prejudices and their bigotry and their blind hatreds and stupid fears, but where necessary you’ll just have to cling tight to each other and say, “Screw all those people!”