CHAPTER I

MARRIAGE

There are two ways of dealing with the heart of a woman. You may have confidence in it, believe in it, regard it as a real element of strength and happiness, uplift and develop it, touching it then to fine issues in love, religion, philosophy. These are the lines on which the modern world proceeds. Or you may treat it as a frail organ of the body, unruly, incapable of good; you may bind it down, early and with due care, with all sorts of reasonable chains, the chief of which, marriage, will keep it fast prisoned, and reduce it to nothingness and oblivion. This, of course, was the system of former days.

Singularly enough, these two systems, contrary as they are, spring from precisely the same practical starting-point, which indeed remains the sole point of contact between them: the principle, namely, that marriage and love are distinct, and must neither be confused nor blended.

To Battista Spagnuoli of Mantua,[12] poet and monk, in the solitude of his cloister, marriage shone with a rosy light. Cornelius Agrippa,[13] with his utilitarian and paradoxical mind, regarded it as a compulsory conscription of the German type, with no possible exemptions, or almost none, and fancied that if men would but go in quest of a pretty woman instead of being so much absorbed with the proprieties and the main chance, the result would prove far more satisfactory. With the exception of these two, and a few more or less ingenuous or eccentric people like them, no one believed in the utility or the possibility of love in marriage. Caviceo’s romance _Il Peregrino_ was considered sheer perversity, for after innumerable intrigues and adventures it ends—how? With wedding bells! So that, according to Caviceo, marriage was to turn out a romance of cloak and sword![14]

It was universally agreed that no idea could be more absurd, less practical, more detestable, more immoral even. Marriage was a transaction, an ‘establishment,’ a business partnership, a grave material union of interests, rank, and social responsibilities, sanctified by the close personal association of the partners. To insinuate an idea of pleasure was to rob it of its noble and honourable character, and to drag it down into the mire of sensuality. To mingle with it a physical suggestion was to degrade it; to mingle with it love, the absolute, great enthusiasms of heart or intellect, was to lay up for oneself disasters, or at least certain disappointment. “Love-matches turn out badly quite as often as arranged marriages.” A romance lasts a week, the reality for a lifetime. No passion can survive the humdrum, the monotony, the deadweight of matrimonial experience: and what marriage can hold out against passion? Heart freedom, the storms, raptures, revulsions to be anticipated on all sides—what amalgamation is possible between these and the peaceful domestic life which is looked-to to furnish forth a very solid, united, and well-ordered existence? A certain equality is the rule of passion: what it demands is a perfect union between two persons who are mutually attracted and whom there is nothing to keep apart. What would become of married life under these conditions, without some directing authority, without one to give law to the other? In regard to marriage, the time-honoured principle, rigorous though protective, was this: the husband ought always to take the helm, imbecile, madman or rake though he be: woman is born to obey, man to command.

Wedlock then is good solid household bread, not by any means cakes and ale. It is the modest squat suburban villa in which you eat and sleep: passion is a church-spire piercing the sky—the spire we see high above our smoky roofs, whence on Sundays and festivals our ears are greeted with the sound of bells.

To try to import passion into marriage is like trying to pack a cathedral into one’s bedroom.

And so marriage is to retain its actual character as a simple, natural function of the physical life, like eating and drinking: the husband a domestic animal, presented to the woman by the usages of society, the accident of birth, and the terms of the bargain. There is no reason for choosing him except in so far as he fulfils these conditions. Do women choose their family affections? Do they select their father, brother, relatives? The husband also is a relative, a partner, to whom every possible duty is owing except that of love. The woman’s duty to him is to keep house for him, present him with children, nurse him in sickness, and regard his liberty as sacred.

In short, at whatever point of view one placed oneself, marriage excluded every idea of personal fancy; indeed, of all the contracts of life, marriage was the least tolerant of any such idea. Its traditional character as a business transaction no one would have dreamed of contesting.

So far as the woman was concerned, the practical consequences of this principle were very simple. It was not for her to seek a husband, but merely to accept the man whom fate, that is to say, Providence, had destined for her. Nothing was more ridiculous than here and there to find some portionless girl, or one who, like Mademoiselle de Clermont, was no longer in her first bloom, waxing sentimental and speaking with a sigh of the “unaccustomed pleasure” of loving the man one married. “This pleasure,” she says, raising her eyes to heaven like a virgin martyr, “if it sets at nought human wisdom, is inspired by wisdom from on high; so fine, so exquisite must it be, that of a truth it is keener than sorrow at the loss of the loved one—a commonplace and everyday sorrow.” Whereupon, whatever sympathy may have been inspired by Mademoiselle de Clermont’s misfortune, her friends cannot help smiling: “So you mean to say,” they exclaim, “that a woman has more pleasure in the embraces of her husband than pain at seeing him slain before her eyes!”[15]

The idea that a young girl should submit passively to be married was almost the only one on which there was complete agreement. Everyone was thoroughly convinced that in adopting any other course she would almost invariably be committing a folly sure to bring repentance. If young and unsophisticated, she would allow herself to be lured and snared by mere illusions from which there would be a speedy awakening; if she had lost something of her youth and innocence things were still worse, for then she inevitably said and thought and did ridiculous things, like poor foolish Mademoiselle de Clermont. A spinster of twenty-five or thirty, seized with a yearning for marriage,[16] would be subject to attacks of mental vertigo springing rather from vanity than from love; one could believe her capable of the veriest follies and the most surprising judgments.[17] That was the opinion of all serious women, from Louise of Savoy to Anne of France,[18] whether they were of matter-of-fact intellect, spiritual in their affections, or somewhat wayward in their imagination. The whole mechanism of life exemplified this fundamental principle: a young girl should have “no choice, ambition, or wish” of her own; “experience, failing God and the Law, proves to girls the necessity of discretion, and of not marrying to please themselves; their marriage should be left to their relatives, or in default of relatives, to their friends.”[19]

Very frequently, the “best” marriages were negotiated by intermediaries more or less obliging, relatives or friends. Princes and princesses were married through the good offices of diplomatists. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen of the Court did quite a respectable trade in match-making, for a consideration.

But, after all, the task of marrying his daughter was essentially and especially one for the father.

For the most part, the father would be only too glad to wash his hands of the business. In every case he was in a hurry to bring matters to a head, and believed that in losing no time he was acting in the interests of his child. She was to belong wholly to another household, since it was a woman’s lot to belong to her husband, and so it was well for her to enter upon her new life as early as possible, before she had formed ideas of her own, and at an age when the paternal household would not yet have set its stamp indelibly upon her.

In this respect the betrothals, the “marriages for the future”—marriages, that is, solemnised in infancy for future consummation—were of great service, and the higher the position occupied in the social scale, the earlier such marriages were. Kings have even been known to marry their daughters two days after birth, but such a compact, it is true, was in the end declared by the lawyers to be immoral and hardly serious. Indeed, later on, when the time for carrying out the bargain came, some princes and princesses felt constrained to protest against this arbitrary disposal of their persons. Happily, such engagements were not of the most stable kind, and, often enough, political considerations were sufficient to upset them before any harm was done.[20]

In distinguished families, betrothal was by no means unusual at the age of two or three. At this tender age Vittoria Colonna[21] was betrothed to the Marquis of Pescara.

Consummation usually took place at the age of twelve. That was a favourite age with the husbands; though, according to the best judges, fifteen was the age when the physical charms were at their best, and the soul was most malleable—a view dating as far back as Hesiod and Aristotle. Tiraqueau,[22] the friend of Rabelais, vaunts his exploit in having wedded a girl of ten. In vain did the French physicians implore the men in mercy to have a little patience, beseech them to wait at least until the fourteenth year: they demurred, for it was humiliating for a father to have a fifteen-year-old daughter on his hands: at sixteen they would have called it a catastrophe. Champier,[23] one of the gravest of writers, proposed that after the age of sixteen young women should be provided with husbands by the State, on the lines of Plato’s system. Some parents betrayed such haste to get their girls off their hands that they anticipated the ceremony, handing them over to their husbands-elect on the strength of a mere promise of fidelity. It happened at Milan, among the Sforza family, that a mother, becoming apprehensive, refused at the last moment to part with her daughter on such terms, and the matter ended where it should properly have begun, in a mutual arrangement, the young lady being formally placed in charge of her husband to save appearances. But difficulties like these were always very dangerous. In this case a dispute arose in regard to the dowry, and blood waxed hot; the bridegroom broke off the match, and took to wife another girl of the same family, a child of ten, whom he led off like a horse-dealer returning with a filly purchased at the fair.

Sometimes, in great families, the girls were married in advance by proxy. Certain wives grew to womanhood without even making their husbands’ acquaintance.

Urbino is not a great way from Mantua, but the diplomatic agent of Urbino found it necessary to urge his master, Francesco Maria della Rovere, a youth of eighteen, to come on a visit to Leonora Gonzaga, whom he described in the most alluring terms: “If your Excellency saw Madame Leonora, and the Marquis’s little mare, you would see the two loveliest things I ever set eyes on. I do not think there is in all Italy anyone more beautiful or virtuous than Madame, and I am sure no king or prince in Christendom has a mare to match his Excellency’s.” Ultimately La Rovere yielded like a lord, and set off incognito to see his wife, a girl of fourteen years and a half, a merry little creature, pretty, well-bred, and a pupil of the historian Sigismondo Golfo. She was presented to him at the palace of Mantua, in the Hall of the Sun. He stepped forward to greet her, and embraced her in the most correct style; then, on Cardinal Gonzago remarking loudly that this was a somewhat frigid demonstration, he went forward again, caught Leonora by the arms and head, and planted a becoming kiss upon her lips. And then they sat down and began chatting on the topics of the day, notably a portrait which had just been finished.

To find marriages of mutual affection it would have been necessary to go down among the lower ranks of the people, in country places; “good matches were made”[24] as they danced together at the fair or at the village merry-makings. But in the great world the future spouses were subjected to a system of “interviews.” Louis de la Trémoille,[25] who conceived the eccentric idea of escaping the infliction, found no other means than to introduce himself into the house of his prospective wife, Gabrielle de Bourbon, disguised and under a false name, as they do in the comedies. With a widow, perhaps, a little less ceremony may have been permissible, and then—! In one of his diplomatic despatches Bibbiena[26] relates with much humour an interview of this sort:

“To-day there took place an interview between the Duke of Calabria and the divine lady of Forli.[27] Needless to say, his excellency was admirably groomed and attired in the height of Neapolitan fashion. His arrival at Bagnara was welcomed with a salute of musketry, and he stayed to dinner. He spent two hours here with the countess, but it is patent to everyone that Feo[28] has the lady well under his thumb. His excellency took his leave very well satisfied; but he was only moderately taken with the countess: he told me that they joined hands very gingerly, that he caught some winking and shrugs. And so we are off again, like a cricket into its hole.”

The final scene was enacted between the bride’s father and the bridegroom or his parents. It was remarkably like any other sort of bargaining: and on this subject an old author throws a charming side-light: he urges paterfamilias to bestow as much care on the choice of a son-in-law as on the purchase of a dog!

Ah! if the wife is ever to become an instrument of love, there is no sign of it here! Her father occupies himself with calculations of the frankest and most practical kind; he has lived long enough to understand the importance of questions of money or worldly interests, and on this score is usually more than a match for his son-in-law. It is all very well for the preachers to extol virtue naked and unadorned! The ideal of a self-respecting father is an eligible elder son, heir to the paternal dovecot, a man of leisure, or at any rate a “gentleman,” in other words, well-connected, moving in good society, with fine friends. Trade he rather looks down on: he has seen so many failures!—so many substantial traders have taken to setting up as “merchant gentlemen,” like the Genoese, and have come to grief! The law, on the other hand, is extremely popular; in these days there is nothing better than an alliance with a lawyer. The young man who is waiting for the death of his father to buy an appointment in the judicature may hold up his head in any company.

Having once come to a decision, the father is at no loss for excellent reasons both for himself and others. “He plays the guitar well, is a beautiful dancer, a delightful singer, an excellent writer, a good-looking decent fellow! He has the promise of a post as Lord High Whipper-snapper to the King: ’tis a fine thing, a place at Court! given opportunity and a friend, and your fortune is made.”... “He is a sensible fellow, keeps a still tongue in his head, answers you only with nods or Italianate shrugs.”... “Oh! it’s all the same to me. I am a gentleman myself; here’s to all gentlemen! Zounds! but ’tis expensive, worse luck! Come now, I’m as good a gentleman as the king. I don’t keep up his style, to be sure, but, mark you, I hunt when I like, come and go as I please, bustle about, flog and bawl at and curse my people, let ’em know I am master; and the hundred or two serfs I have under me daren’t stir, egad, without my leave.”... “Tut tut! a little less gilt and a little more gingerbread! My girl marry a lord and then forsooth go footing it in the mud to canvass Jacks-in-office for a flower-girl’s corner or some twopenny-ha’penny matter! A fig for your gentlemen!”... and so on, with endless variations on the same theme of utilitarianism pure and simple. Perhaps the girl is already smitten with a handsome officer: no matter, she will have to marry some surveyor from Paris, especially if he holds a good appointment on the crown lands, because that provides opportunities of feathering one’s nest. In such matters the fathers relentlessly enforce their authority, apparently with every right. The pleadings in a criminal case reveal to us the Biblical Machiavelism of a well-to-do peasant who had conceived the idea of getting gratuitous service for ten years from the candidate for his daughter’s hand and fortune: the period expires, and then the father with singular bad faith proposes to exact another ten years’ service; but this time the future son-in-law rebels, and has the misfortune accidentally to kill his prospective father-in-law, and this brings him before the courts.

The father’s egotism was only equalled by that of the bridegroom elect. The man who thought of marrying, that is to say, of taking a wife, was a man of some thirty years (Plato proposed thirty, Aristotle thirty-five); he had enjoyed his youth, and was now shutting the door upon it. Why? Often he was not very clear himself: because the time had come, he supposed, for doing what everybody did. Celibacy was not the vogue: “We are no longer in the age of the vestals,” as Egnatius[29] excellently said. And we discover from various sources that the religious vocation was not very well understood, even among girls. Luckless preachers had to toil and sweat to prove that virginity was no crime, and that a woman might quite fittingly prefer the ideal of a mystic marriage to the prospect of bearing a man’s yoke and measuring out the domestic oil. Erasmus writing to nuns is too courteous not to speak of angels or lilies of the valley, but in his heart of hearts he thinks it all terribly old-fashioned, and has not the slightest belief in the virginal theories of St. Jerome. With still greater reason, celibacy was not countenanced beyond a certain age. Luther very honestly regarded it as an intolerable burden, contrary to nature and the custom of the early church. “It is as impossible to do without women as without meat and drink.” And so a man took a wife because he thus fulfilled part of his duty as a healthy animal; he married because at thirty years the time had come for making a home and begetting a family. In reality a man married, in a manner, impersonally, rather for his family than for himself; and all that he desired was to complicate his life as little as possible in marrying, to be able to preserve his tastes, habits, hobbies, without the incubus of a partner.

The worst feature of this business of matrimony was that it was so entirely at the mercy of chance, which made almost a lottery of it, and it would have been much more ridiculous for a man than for a woman to yield to a childish infatuation. The man knew nothing of the girl he was espousing, either physically or morally. He merely assumed some likelihood of her resembling her parents, with the result that he devoted special attention to his prospective mother-in-law; she was the woman he was wedding. A young woman without relatives to serve as samples and guarantees was at a discount in the matrimonial market. At the best, it is always a leap in the dark, something like a step into death; it is the burial of the past, the first sacrifice of one’s life for the preservation of the race; the Stoic, says Cardan, knows whereabouts he is at his marriage and his death. A man’s best course is to take comfort beforehand, to fix his eyes on the object he aims at, to reflect that the reason, the mind has no great part in it, and that children are not the offspring of a woman’s brain.

Moralists had put themselves to much trouble to cheer men along this difficult road, and to provide them with a series of test questions as an aid to matrimony. They assured a man that he might be quite easy in mind if he simply verified eight particulars in regard to the girl he proposed to marry: physically, her age, health, maternal aptitudes, beauty; generally, her intelligence, education, family, and dower. Unhappily, this verification was not easy.

Physically, he could verify nothing but the young lady’s age; for the rest, the physicians advised him to look to her figure and in general to choose the best-grown girl; but no one can fail to see how vague and fallacious was any presumption based on that! True, there were the attractions of her features to judge by; but those were precisely what the same moralists urged him to distrust: a serious man, they said, would never build on that sand. In married life striking beauty is apt to pall, you come to loathe it, and a pretty woman is rarely clever enough to bring grist to her husband’s mill—except maybe in trade, when she serves as a signboard or a trade-mark. Sensible men preferred plainness; it was only widowers or wealthy dotards who gave themselves as a last resource the luxury of marrying a pretty woman. Poor souls! they would do better to think of their rheumatism, their indigestion, the dreadful draughts! Such a match was that of Madame Dixhomme, a very sprightly young woman well known in society, who bore the name of an old husband, a shining light of the Parisian bar, who might have been her father! There is no help for it. These good patriarchs will listen to no advice, and always count on coming off well. The world is content to smile, and to look on their attitude as courageous, not to say heroic.[30]

So much for the physical aspect. In regard to moral principles, there was one that was firmly established. The man who was bringing himself to the marrying point was haunted by the spectre of feminine independence; the terror he felt in anticipation of some enforced sacrifice of his tastes or whims took possession of him and dominated every other sentiment. So when he set out in quest of a young wife, he looked for one in his own rank of society, on his own level, so that she might have nothing to hope for from him, nothing to cast in his face, that he might owe her nothing, that she might have no pretext for riding roughshod over him, but might resign herself quite contentedly to play second fiddle, regarding this subordination as natural, just as the ivy gladly embraces the asperities of the wall it is fixed to. The husbands wished their wives to take pleasure in resignation and to fancy that their woes were the source of true felicity. The first condition towards attaining this end was that the ladies should not have a higher, nor even a lower station in society to look back on.

In a fit of epicurism dashed with respectability you marry your cook, thinking you are securing careful attentions, a good table, and a warm bed! Woful mistake! You are wedding a fishwife, who will treat you after the manner of fishwives, and overwhelm you with coarse abuse: she will never tire of telling you you are not man enough for her. You would not find it much more pleasant to marry a woman a little too much above you, who, at the critical moment, would hold you with an admirable curtain lecture, and, instead of doing her wifely duty, would discourse to you for the hundredth time on the splendid matches she had declined, the rage of her family, your poverty,[31] and so forth.

It is easy to understand with what uneasiness and fatalism all these considerations, not to mention others, fill the mind of a man who has reached the age of official paternity. He hesitates long, and makes up his mind at last with his eyes wide open, knowing that “in the best of marriages one must expect at least as much pain as pleasure.” Not that he would maintain that marriage is a mistake for men, but he does think that “neither joy nor felicity has part or lot in such brutishness.” He asks advice from one and another, and always runs counter to it. Someone tells him of a girl with money—she will want to rule the roost; of a poor girl—she will be a drag; a pretty girl—so much the better for his neighbours; a plain girl—ugh! that offends his susceptibilities. What does he want, then? A good manager, a strapping well-built wench: if he talks of consulting an expert, he is referred to Triboulet![32] He would much rather have to choose a cow.

It is in this frame of mind that he at last makes his decision. If in later years he attains to some eminence and is tempted to-write his memoirs, this business of his marriage will be one of the episodes he will be able to detail, for his own justification, with perfect composure.

A dispensation of Providence was often necessary to bring him to the point. This dispensation manifested itself under the most diverse forms. The learned Tiraqueau, of whom we have already spoken, was struck one day with the fact that the Greeks and Romans had a very poor opinion of celibacy, and he culled from Valerius Maximus especially a number of convincing proofs on this head. Whereupon he crossed the street and demanded in marriage the young girl who lived opposite; he found that her name was Marie Cailler, that she was very well-bred, and that her parents were anxious to get her off their hands. But Tiraqueau was determined not to suggest a suspicion that a man of his stamp felt a real need of marriage, and so he dedicated to his father-in-law and to posterity the unparalleled account of his actual motives.

The hand of Providence was sufficiently revealed in the will of the parents, or in the cash of an uncle from whom one had expectations, and who, not having himself taken the trouble to perpetuate his stock, was determined that the duty should be undertaken by another.

It is curious enough to see Michelangelo in this rôle of the preachifying uncle. So far as he was concerned, he had long held such peculiar ideas about marriage that he would have nothing to do with it. At a time when he had come to years of discretion he worked himself up into a fine fury of indignation against his brother, who, to put an end to an old and vexatious law-suit, thought of marrying the daughter of the opposite party. Later, however, he took it into his head that the name of Buonarotti must not be allowed to disappear: “the world would not come to an end, but every living being does his best to preserve his species.” For this reason his nephew was to marry. But marry whom? Not money, said the uncle, but a girl of good stock: “to wed a good, well-bred, healthy woman, is to do a good day’s work,” and to assure peace and quietness at home.

The idea of a good day’s work did not much take the young man’s fancy: the prospect of a dowry was more attractive. But the dowry Michelangelo made himself responsible for, provided they found for him a niece who was really adaptable and likely to prove a good wife. A match was proposed, but after dragging on for a time the negotiations fell through, to be resumed and to fall through again. The uncle was content to give the nephew a start, and kept himself in the background, though he was all the time setting the bishop of Arezzo at work in the matter. He knew that the distinguished people at Florence were at that time in sore pecuniary straits, a circumstance at which he rejoiced, for it might be expected to help forward his plans. Ere long, however, the bishop of Arezzo offered a girl who was no beggar-maid to be wed for charity.

The nephew’s hesitation being at last overcome, he obtained an introduction to the Guicciardini, one of the principal families of Florence, rich in the possession of two daughters. All went so well that the good uncle was soon exchanging excellent letters with the girl’s father. But on the very first occasion when serious business was discussed, the bridegroom elect discovered with dismay that the style of the house, which indicated a respectable fortune, was all a vain show. Old Guicciardini, excellent man, was very careful to avoid a scandal, and there and then offered his would-be son-in-law the daughter of one of his friends the Ridolfi. Kept well posted in these various incidents, Michelangelo at last became rather bewildered; but to him it mattered little whether his nephew espoused the Ridolfi or the Guicciardini provided it was one of the two.

Finally, the nephew wedded the fair Ridolfi in April, 1553, and on May 20th he poured out all his satisfaction in a letter to his uncle. Ravished, enchanted, and overflowing with thankfulness, Michelangelo despatched the promised dowry with a present of jewellery. In April of the following year a son made his entrance into the world under the name of Michelangelo Buonarotti; next year another was expected, and a third the year after. Michelangelo signified his approval by a present of 600 golden crowns (about £2000). That was something like a marriage!

But Raphael, a man of the world, wedded to his independence, took a far less simple view of the institution. His uncle, a worthy canon, never spoke to him of a dowry; a stroke of Raphael’s brush was worth a dowry in itself. Unhappily, the divine poet of maternal love, the exquisite interpreter of women, weighed and digested the matter like a man of sense. He does not cease to thank Providence, he says, that he has refrained from wedding any of the ladies contemplated up to the present. To-day (1514) he may marry brilliantly if he likes; the choice is open to him: a cousin of Cardinal St. Maria in Porticu, offered him by the Cardinal himself—a lovely creature, of good family, with a dower of 3000 crowns, or even more. But “he is in no hurry”; and indeed, that is the sober truth: men are not in a hurry; and Raphael never married.

So it was quite with the feeling that he was fulfilling an impersonal and family duty that a man ended by espousing a woman whose attitude was as impersonal as his own. For the same reason, to consecrate the nuptial transaction and give it due importance in the eyes of the world, the marriage was surrounded with an ever-increasing ostentation. The opening scene was as imposing and brilliant as the subsequent years of married life were to prove sombre and colourless.

At a later date we find the Calvinists up in arms against these idle gawds, which they style scandalous worldliness, a “villany.” Nevertheless there was evidently no idea of glozing over the real character of the contract; but aesthetic taste, however rudimentary, insisted apparently, if not on idealising the contract, at least on beautifying it.

Up to the solemn moment everything has been transacted between men. The young woman appears on this great day for the first time in her life. If she has been brought up according to the old method, many people have scarcely suspected her existence. Unlike her husband, who is taking a step backwards, subsiding from youth into maturity, she is being born into life. There she is, at the door or under the porch of the church, standing beside her husband, involuntarily, with no desires of her own, passive—an offering, as it were, to the race. In this strong light of publicity she alone seems a little ill at ease, blushing at the exhibition, agitated at this unknown something which the rest are so joyfully celebrating. The priest comes down the nave, just as at funerals, receives the young couple’s whispered “I will,” sprinkles them lightly as they stand with a little lustral water, censes them; and then the procession is formed, to wind its way up to the altar where the nuptial benediction mass will be sung—a long, noisy procession, ponderous, gothic, all stiff with velvets, monumental stuffs and gilded draperies; thirty, forty, sometimes three hundred persons, none but members of the family; but in these circumstances of parade and pleasure the family becomes extraordinarily multiplied. At the head of the procession, buried under trappings of superb finery representing a fortune, the little bride is scarcely visible; she is for all the world like the clapper of a bell. And verily under that golden robe there is after all nothing—but a woman.

They leave the church, and there is no crush; the sight attracts only a few curious folk, a few halt and blind: in those days there was nothing to draw the overwhelming throng without which no modern marriage is complete. And the procession crawls on, displaying through the town its festal finery drawn from ancestral coffers, with a majesty which may perhaps give the impression of an official pageant, but nowhere indicates the crowning incident in a love-story. All is significant of a serious, authentic, arithmetical fact, a practical and substantial fact, a performance got up for the honour of a family.

It is precisely this which sends a thrill through all who take part in the ceremony. Under these huge plumes and massive carcanets there vibrates a delirious but very real joy—the old family joy in pomp and circumstance, this, too, drawn, as it were, out of the ancestral coffers. What man is there who, however poverty-stricken he may be, dispenses with magnificence at his marriage? Perhaps this is the only day—or rather, the only period, for one is not married in a day—when he will know what luxury is. There is a truce to care; life shows a countenance all joy and geniality.

In the rural parts of France the company only rose from table to sit down again, or to dance under the elms. Deep drinking, love, quarrels, broad jests, strange customs, such, for instance, as the _jus primae noctis_, or the drinking-match traditional with the country lads—all this developed a boisterous gaiety. The bridegroom alone groaned under it, for among the middle and lower classes it was the correct thing to invite to one’s wedding as big a crowd as possible. The poor man spent his time running from fiddler to purveyor, ruining himself in presents for his friends and the bridesmaids; he was expected to show everyone a smiling face, to receive his guests, have a word for all, crack jokes, be at everybody’s beck and call, think of everyone but himself, lucky if at an odd moment he could snatch a morsel to eat. When night came he had not even the right of taking his rest; ordeals of every kind lay in wait for him; and in the morning he was bound to go on laughing, to receive more visits, and profess himself the happiest fellow in the world. And then comes the turn of the upholsterers and house-furnishers.

“Happily,” he says, “one doesn’t get married every day.” Divorce will never number him among its supporters.

Helysenne de Crenne,[33] the great romance-writer, sketches a somewhat analogous picture of the doings in the great world.

On some fine sunny morning, when the birds are enlivening all things with song, the groomsmen set out in procession to fetch the bridegroom, and the bridesmaids to escort the bride. She arrives in a blue robe adorned with pearls, a diamond coronet on her head. The festivities, extraordinarily magnificent, last the whole day, concerts and dances forming part of them; the men hover solicitously about the ladies; some of them get up a tilting match, ironically inviting the bridegroom to enter the lists, and his refusal lets loose a flood of pleasantries.

At nightfall the couple are solemnly bedded. At this moment, in France, the fun is only just beginning. The house seems verily bewitched: not a bolt catches, not a window but is under a spell; at the most unexpected moment an avalanche of troublesome visitors bursts into the nuptial chamber; the couple spring out of bed; the intruders wax hilarious on the slightest pretext. In her precipitation the bride has perhaps torn a little rent in her shift; a court is at once constituted to try the case, and we may imagine the full-flavoured jests that are bandied about, becoming indeed a little wearisome.

In Italy the marriage was a more solemn and complicated affair. The law indeed was compelled to intervene with a view to limiting the expenditure, in spite of which certain Florentine marriages cost some £20,000, without reckoning the presents—and the presents made a heavy item. At Venice the witnesses, sometimes numbering forty, could not escape for less than two hundred ducats apiece. The marriage set the artistic world in motion. Men of letters came flocking up with inflictions in the shape of epithalamiums, more or less new, descanting in Grecian style on the theme “is marriage a necessity?” or farragoes of pedantry, crammed with allusions to the ancients, full of names like Lycurgus and Plato, lauding the families of the young couple to the skies, and comparing the bride and bridegroom to Philip of Macedon, Mithridates, Dido; eclogues were rained on them, and apologues, and declamations in Latin verse. All these were printed, and constituted an authentic memorial of the event. A painter of repute would be commissioned to decorate the trunk for the brides trousseau; he would depict on it a story from Scripture or mythology, or a genre scene,[34] and this formed another memorial, often charming and always worth keeping.[35]

In the pages of history we find descriptions of so many weddings that it would be no easy matter to make a selection. King Alfonso of Aragon, hardly serious as a husband but a very splendid prince, was married with a magnificence that was long remembered. On the shores of the sea, the glorious sea of Naples, tables were set up for a company of thirty thousand, amid fountains running wine and pavilions flashing with light. In the neighbouring forest a hunt was organised for the Court. The Neapolitans in their enthusiasm invoked the sun to witness that nothing more beautiful could ever be seen.

The wedding of Eleanor of Toledo to the Duke of Florence in 1539 is described with abundant details in a little book compiled for the occasion. There you may read a description of the triumphal arches, the statues, the dramatic performances, and find the complete text of the stanzas, the madrigals and the comedy. The music was printed separately.

One may read also the details given by M. Molmenti of the dazzling pageants at Venice: the official proclamation in the court of the Doge’s palace, the prolonged and sumptuous preparations for the festive entertainments, the canals _en fête_, the façades of the palaces hung with bunting, the gondoliers in red silk hose skimming the waves, the armies of servants in gold-embroidered liveries, the bonfires, the fireworks, the fifers and trumpeters, the serenades, dramatic performances, balls, banquets with lavish displays of gold plate and decorations flashing with all the colours of the rainbow—it is all like a dream; even Veronese would have despaired of painting the thousand extravagances of this feverish life.

But nowhere do we catch sight of the woman: it is the man who predominates and plays the leading part. Suddenly the curtain falls. The girl has become a wife, and then what crudities! what realism! even in those circles where delicacy is as a rule pushed to the utmost limits of refinement.

Details on so intimate a matter appear to elude the historian. But though confidences are lacking, we may surmise the real feelings, the profound degradation of certain young brides, from the very circumstantial reports of the ambassadors charged with superintending the arrangements of royal marriages. These reports, it is true, relate to a very special society, but it was the highest society, and precisely that which set the fashion. No one would imagine what singular details are to be found in these letters.

Take for instance an incident that happened at the charming Court of Urbino, perhaps the most exquisite of all courts. On the morrow of her son’s marriage, the Duchess-dowager had the door of the bridal chamber flung open at dawn, and approaching her daughter-in-law, who bashfully tried to hide under the bedclothes, said to her: “Well now, my daughter, isn’t it a fine thing to sleep with the men!” What a compliment from the Queen of Platonism! No one after this will deny that marriage is everywhere stamped with the character of unredeemed prose.

That phrase “fine thing” in particular, which on the lips of the duchess so often denoted the ideal, startles us here with a singular irony.

Or again, what a curious chapter of adventures was that of Bianca Sforza, who as heiress to an immense fortune had become by proxy the wife of the Emperor Maximilian! Ambassador Brascha was deputed to the delicate mission of proceeding to Innsprück to hand the princess over to her husband, but lo! on arriving they found no one to meet them but an archduchess. How was he to extricate the lady from this embarrassing situation?

Brascha wrote to Vienna, striving in the meantime to put a good face on the matter, giving balls, and so forth.

Maximilian was in no hurry to reply, but wrote at length, asking to see the ambassador. Brascha set out instantly, taking with him this charming but singular note:

“Most serene King,

My lord, I find myself under such obligations towards your Majesty that I am quite dazed at the love you manifest for me. I could not if I tried express the joy which floods my soul. Being unable to testify to it sufficiently in writing, I send Messer Erasmus Brascha to speak on my behalf: and I beseech your Majesty to believe him, and I commend myself to you.

Innsprück, December 26, 1493.

From Your Majesty’s handmaid,

BLANCA MARIA, with her own hand.”

It was two months before Brascha returned: he was determined not to return alone. The Emperor was very much occupied: he entertained the ambassador handsomely, invited him to festivities, waxed eloquent in praise of the Sforza family, and even mentioned Innsprück with much urbanity; but all this did not answer the purpose of the unlucky Brascha, whose exertions, uneasiness, and distress of mind may be imagined. At last the imperial procession began to move: for Brascha it was a moment of poignant emotion. Poor Bianca had no prudish reluctance in quitting Innsprück, where she had been so long eating her heart out, and the union took place on March 9 at Ala. And on the 10th Brascha wrote, with a sounding sigh of satisfaction: “At last, thank God, we have got to the consummation of the marriage, to the confusion of our enemies. I spent yesterday evening with the king and queen, and we were deep in conversation up to the time when, the Court having broken up, their Majesties decided to go to bed.” Brascha was resolved to make quite sure, continuing for several nights in succession to assure himself. At last he breathed freely! Ah! such missions as this were no sinecures!

But when the time came for reappearing in public, life glowed with a new heat and resumed all its exquisite charm. If by some chance a young bride of princely rank had to cross Italy to rejoin her husband, she saw along her whole course nothing but demonstrations of joy, smiling faces, charming freaks of fancy; to give her pleasure these affectionate people used their one resource—invention. At Milan the poet Bellincione and Leonardo da Vinci welcomed the young wife of Giovanni Galeazzo in a sort of firmament, in which animated planets circled round her, loading her with compliments the while. Plato in his raptest moods never imagined anything sweeter or lovelier than certain tokens of homage paid by the Italians to a new sovereign lady. On returning to their domains the Duke and Duchess of Urbino found, ranged upon a hill-slope, the ladies of the city exquisitely dressed, and the children bearing olive-branches in their hands. As soon as the bridal party came in sight a screen of mounted choristers rose up before them, accompanied by nymphs in antique garb; dogs started off in pursuit of hares let loose for them; the hills resounded with the strains of a cantata specially composed; the Goddess of Mirth in person descended the slope and offered the duchess her congratulations and good wishes.

These affectionate welcomes, this show of cordiality at least warmed the sick and sad heart of a young wife, and indicated at the outset her path of safety. Yes, it was a pious and salutary work to envelop in an ideal world this timid child of nature who was being consigned to a lord and master. It would have been barbarous to check this joy in external things; to show the poor girl from the very first the cutting of bread-and-butter as the be-all and end-all of a woman’s life; to shut out from her view all that lends brightness and colour to the world. On the contrary, thanks to the smiles with which heaven and earth greeted her, a woman of intelligence and sensibility entered upon her mission with a stout heart, in the vague anticipation that fortune was bound to smile upon her still. Where was the harm? There was nothing in her hopes to prevent her from treading the stoical path of destiny and lending herself to the material functions that devolved upon her. But her eyes were opened, she perceived the dawn for her of a life which her husband had long known. It was now her turn to blossom out; she became conscious of her soul, and understood that she too was to be entitled to her youth.