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Nellie McClung: What qualities are essential for happiness in marriage?

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Oct. 4, 1941. Everyone has a story, and so it follows that almost everyone could, if they wished, write one story.
Nellie McClung.jpg
Nellie McClung

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Oct. 4, 1941.

Everyone has a story, and so it follows that almost everyone could, if they wished, write one story. It might not carry the typical reader past the opening paragraph, for readers are flighty people at best.

I have just finished reading a story that is a model for all those who desire to throw a net of words around the drama of life. I do not believe there is a wasted word in these 86 pages, which constitute the story of two women and one man in the well-worn triangle; well worn but never worn out.

It is a story of a man and woman who lived a happy, normal life in a little village, working hard. Then prosperity hit them and they moved to the city, where they were assailed by more prosperity.

As a result of all these coupons and shares, James Wayne retired in his early 40s and became a collector of jade and developed an eye for pretty women; and Ruth, his wife, quiet but observant, sat in her garden and waited from him to come home.

Of course the story does not begin like this, for it is not art to start at the beginning of a story. The skilled technician begins as near as possible to the climax, and so this story begins the night that Wayne met Lee at dinner at a friend’s house. Ruth was at the dinner, too. Ruth was asked to the dinner only because Wayne would not go anywhere without her. Ruth was socially under the ban because she didn’t care what she wore.

In all other respects she seems to have been an estimable person, but she certainly did not know how to dress. But the other woman, Lee, 10 years younger than Ruth, knew exactly how to prepare and had been told by her hostess about this ill-assorted couple. The man so handsome, the wife aging and dowdy. So she hung dripping diamond earrings in her ears and put on her cloak of furry white.

At the table as she sat beside Wayne (meeting him for the first time), she looked at him with magic in her eyes and laid her hand on his arm, with a pretty child-like grace, while across the table poor little mousy Ruth knew at a glance she was in for trouble again. This is the opening scene, and from there the reader is carried breathlessly from page to page.

I expected to read that Ruth fought the battle with the enemy’s tools, got her face lifted, eyebrows plucked, and a complete new outfit of clothes. But the story has no such obvious plot. The book has a surprise ending that no reviewer must give away.

The book is called Forsaking All Others, and the writer is Alice Duer Miller, whose White Cliffs wrung our hearts with its beauty. Miller has written these two stories in verse, both clever and winsome, and becomes therefore the modern successor to Owen Merewith (Lord Lytton), whose novel Lucile was in the same form and is still read with keen delight.

We have been discussing the lot of Miller’s book and wondering if any man really ceases to love his wife because of her lack of taste in dress. I am disposed to think that much of this emphasis on women’s appearance has a commercial basis only.

Women, who are the greatest readers of advertisements, are told that certain soaps will keep their hands romantic and make their husbands more devoted. Magazine and radio programs recommend perfumes, powders, hair dressings, out of all proportion to their real value.

I have seen marriages go wrong, but I do not remember ever seeing a home wrecked on the rock of the wife’s careless dressing. I have seen women’s extravagances and foolish buying do a neat job of home-destroying, just as the husband’s drinking can do it.

When an American judge was in this city a few months ago, he was asked by a reporter what was the chief cause of domestic unhappiness, and his reply was that drinking stood at the top of the list. He gave three causes that lead to the disruption of homes but not one mention of careless dressing.

I believe that marriage is built on something more enduring than the tilt of a hat, or the curve of a cheek. Age comes as naturally as the sunlight of morning fades into the shadows of the evening, but beauty does not die because the sunlight pales. Marriage is built on companionship, understanding, and the sharing of joys and sorrows.

“Drive with a loose rein” is good advice to husbands or wives. For criticism, recriminations and coercion kill love, which is a tender plant to be carefully nurtured. Idleness is the severest test of marriage, for idleness is an abnormal condition. No one was ever intended to be a confirmed idler.

The Waynes, in Miller’s story, would probably have remained a devoted pair if they had gone on living in the little village where Ruth did her own work and Wayne mowed the lawn and washed his own car, and a trip to the state fair was the high spot of the summer. But money set them free from earthly cares and exposed them to a new danger. Work is a track, on which the wheels of life are safely set.

What qualities are essential for happiness in marriage? For the wife I would say cheerfulness and loyalty. No man wants to come home to a house of trouble, no matter how clean the veranda floor and the front steps are. Even a good meal can be spoiled by a sour face behind the teapot.

For the qualifications of a good husband, I would set dependability at the top of the list. Anyone who reads this sentence will know that the writer has left the daisied fields of youth behind. What young person would ever think of anything as drab a paying the taxes, or seeing that the winter supply of fuel is in the basement, as the primary requirement of a happy marriage? The foundation of a house does not show, but on it depends the beauty and comfort of the whole structure.

I have seen notable exceptions to this rule. I had a friend who married a handsome fellow, who sang, wrote plays and poetry, had black eyebrows, neat as minnows, and eyes of blue fire. He is still handsome and why shouldn’t he be? She has a good position and pays the bills.

He takes no thought for tomorrow, but is irritable and temperamental. Once, he blackened her eyes when he was in a temper, but he wrote a beautiful poem to her the next day, full of contrition and when he got paid for a story, he brought her a dozen red roses. The light and water were in arrears, but he bought roses, and strangely enough that family goes merrily on its way.

I got my first glimmer of the way the books are balanced in marriage when I was about 15 years old, and I happened to be present at a family quarrel in the neighbourhood. My sympathies were all with the wife, and I wondered how she ever married a man who would use such violent language. With the boldness of youth, I said something to this effect when the storm was over and the offender had gone out, slamming the door behind him.

“Frank has a bad temper,” she said, “but that’s the worst anyone can say about him. I knew about his temper before I married him, but there isn’t a finer man in the country.

“Frank was certainly good to my mother when she was bed-ridden here three years before she died, and he paid all the bills without a murmur. He knew that my mother did not want me to marry him, too, but he was too big a man to ever hold that against her. He never went out of the house without calling up goodbye to her, and that’s something I’ll never forget.

“I often wish he didn’t shout so much, but he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Anyway, he’s my choice and I’m satisfied. I would rather quarrel with him than agree with any other man.”

There is no balance to weigh these goods or ills and so no sure guide to matrimony has ever been written, but Miller’s book leaves the reader with a heightened sense of its abiding power. I recommend it for a wedding present.

Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.