What is a Wife? Well, that seems a question easily answered. But still the answer depends upon circumstances; in fact, there seem to be no end of replies to that little query, and answering the question, as one who has taken a little notice of wives in general, I’ll tell you what a wife is sometimes. It is a something to be kicked and sworn at, and beaten, knocked down and trampled upon, used in brutal ways that the vilest barrow-man would hesitate about applying to his donkey for fear of killing it, while when the poor woman is forced to appear before a magistrate and prosecute, why – well, he is her husband after all, and for lack of evidence the brute gets off. A wife is something to have her hair dragged down and her head beaten against the wall; to be neglected, half-starved, or made to work for the noble specimen of creation who hulks about in front of public-houses, and scowls at every decent-looking working man who passes him. She is the something who sits up for him and puts his drunken highness to bed; nurses his children; slaves for him worse than any drudge – ten times – no a hundred times, for money would not buy a soul to slave as some women do for their husbands. What is a wife? Why, often and often a poor, trusting, simple-hearted woman, toiling in hard bondage till there’s a place dug for her in one of the cemeteries and she goes to rest.

But what is a wife? Is she not the God-given blessing to cheer a working man’s home? and while working with her husband to make that home happy, is she not the sharer of his joys and sorrows, – the heart that he can trust and confide in, though all the world turn their backs upon him? Yes, this, and much more, if her husband will.

And now a word for those who have dissension and discomfort at the cottage or lodgings, for it’s hardly fair to disgrace that most holy of names by calling some places I know home. And first just a word about some of these miserable spots, and let’s try and find a few causes for there being one-roomed places, badly furnished or not furnished at all, for the rickety chairs and beggarly bed and odds and ends are not worthy the name; children with no shoes, dirty clothes, dirty faces, dirtier hands, and dirtiest noses. The wife – oh, desecration of the sacred name! – a sour-faced, thinly-clad, mean-looking, untidy-haired, sorrowful woman, dividing her time between scolding the children and “rubbing out,” not washing, some odds and ends of clothes in a brown pan – the wash-tub leaked, so it was split up and burned – and then hanging the rags upon strings stretched from one side of the room to the other, just as if put there on purpose to catch “the master’s” hat and knock it off when he comes home from work.

Well, there are two sides to every question, and one reason for there being such wretched places is this: – Young folks get wed after the good old fashion invented some six thousand years ago, when Eve must have blushed and turned away her head and let her hand stay in Adam’s; and while the days are young all goes well, but sometimes Betsy – that’s the wife, you know – thinks there’s no call to be so particular about her hair now as she used to be before Tom married her, and so puts in the thin end of a wedge that blasts the happiness of her future life.

What strong language, isn’t it? Betsy does not make her hair so smooth as she used to, and so puts in the thin end of a wedge that blasts the happiness of her future life. Strong words, sweeping words, but true as any that were ever written, for that simple act of neglect, that wanting of pride in her appearance and innocent coquetry to please her husband, is deadly, ruinous, to love and esteem, and altogether a something that should be shuddered at by every woman in England.

The unbrushed hair leads to other little acts of neglect which creep in slowly, but so surely; shoes get down at heel, dresses torn and unhooked, and then the disorder slowly spreads to the children, then to the furniture, and so on, step by step, till Tom stands leaning against the wall looking upon the wreck before him, and wondering how it is possible that the slovenly, half-dirty woman before him can have grown out of that smart, bright-eyed servant lass he once wed.

But there it is – there’s the fact before him; that’s Betsy sure enough – at least that’s the present Betsy, not the Betsy of old – and, somehow or another, Tom puts his hands in his pockets, sighs very deeply, and then goes out and loiters about the streets.

“Just arf a pint, Tom,” says a mate he meets, whose wife is suffering from the same disease; and Tom says he will, and they go in where there’s a clean sanded floor, no noisy children, a bright fire, and some dressed up and doctored decoction sold to the poor fellows as beer.

Next time it’s Tom says to the other – “Just arf a pint, Sam;” and Sam says he will. But the mischief is they don’t have “arf a pint,” but a good many half-pints; and at last every Saturday night there’s an ugly score up that gets paid out of the wages before any money goes home; while Betsy says Tom has got to be so fond of the public-house that he never sits at home now, while the money he spends is shameful.

“Bet, Bet, Bet – and whose fault is it?”

“Not mine, I’m sure,” says Betsy in a very shrill voice, as she bridles up.

“Wrong, Betsy; for it is your fault, and yours alone.”

“There,” cries Betsy; “the cruel injustice of the thing!” And then she would go on for nearly half-an-hour, and tell all the neighbours what we have said. But we must stop her. So, go to, Betsy, thou wife of the British working man, for in hundreds, nay, thousands of cases, it is your fault, and yours alone; and, where it is not, I say, may the great God help and pity you! for yours is indeed a pitiful case.

Come, now, listen to a few words, and don’t frown. There’s the trace as yet of that bonny face that won poor Tom. He’ll come back cross and surly to-night. Never mind: try and bring back that same old smile that used to greet him. Smooth that tangled hair and drive some of the wrinkles out of your forehead – all will not go; make the best of the common cotton dress – in short, as of old, “clean yourself” of an afternoon; and, if you’ve a trace, a spark of love for your husband and yourself, hide away and stuff into a corner – under the bed – anywhere – that household demon, the wash-tub or pan; while, as to the rubbed-out clothes, bundle them up anywhere till he is out of sight again. Think of the old times, and start with new rules. It will be hard work, but you will reap such a smiling, God-blessed harvest that tears of thanksgiving will some day come to your eyes, and you will weep and bless the change. You have children; well, thank God for them. You were a child once yourself; you are a child now in the hands of a great and patient Father who bears with your complaining. Well; those children; they are dirty and noisy, but there are cures – simple remedies for both evils. If their precious little fasts are only broken on bread and treacle, let them be broken at regular hours decently and in order, and don’t have them crumbling the sticky bread all over the floor, running about the room, or up and down the stairs, or in the street. Get them to bed at regular times, and manage them kindly, firmly; and don’t snarl and strike one day, and spoil and indulge the next. Make the best of your home, however beggarly; but, in spite of all, in your efforts to have it clean, don’t let Tom see you cleaning.

Now, don’t think after years of neglect, that because you have now made no end of improvement all is going to be as it used. Don’t think it. You let in the thin end of the wedge over that stray hair, and things have gone gradually wrong. Just so: and you must by slow, painful degrees, get that wedge gradually worked back a little bit and a little bit, while all your patience and perseverance will be so sorely tried, that in sheer despair you’ll often say, “There: it’s of no use!” But it is of use, and of the greatest of use, and even though he may not show it, Tom can see the difference and feel those household spirits tugging at his heart-strings, and saying, when at public-house, “Come away!” in tones that he finds it hard to resist. Brutal men there are in plenty, we know, but, God be thanked for it! how many of our men have the heart in the right place, and you women of England can touch it if you will.

Say your home, through long neglect, has become bare and beggarly. Never mind; make the best of it. It’s wonderful what a ha’porth of hearthstone, a ha’porth of blacklead, and a good heart will do. And that isn’t all, you foolish woman; for there’s a bright and glorious light that can shine out of a loving woman’s face and make the humblest home a palace with its happy radiance. Say your room is bare. What then? Does Tom go to a well-furnished place to spend his money? No; but to a room of hard, bare forms and settles, and common tables sticky and gum-ringed, while the floor, well sanded, grits beneath his feet. Go to, Betsy, never mind the bareness, for you have a glorifying sun within you, whose radiance can brighten the roughest, thorniest way.

Look out here at this bare court, dull, dingy, filthy, frowsy, misery stricken. The sun comes from behind yon cloud, and lo! the place is altered so that even your very heart leaps at the change, and your next breath is a sigh of pleasure. And have you not for years been shrouding your face in clouds and keeping them lingering about your home? Thousands of you have: take heart, and let the sun appear everywhere that Tom will cast his eye. Why, the reflection shall so gladden your own spirit that it shall leap for joy, while you know within yourself that you have done your duty.

Young wives, beware – take heed of the first stray hair and jealously prison it again, for by that single frail filament perhaps hangs yours, your husband’s, your children’s future welfare; so never let Tom be less proud of you than in the days of old.

What is a wife? The prop or stay of a man, the balance that shall steady him through life, and make him – the weaker vessel – give forth when struck a sonorous, honest, clear tone. He is the weaker vessel, and yours are the hands to hold him fast.

But it cannot always be so, for in spite of all a loving heart can do there are brutes – we won’t call them men – we won’t own them as belonging to our ranks, but drum them out – brutes, before whom the jewel of a true wife’s love is as the pearl cast before swine. But, there; leave we them to their wallow, for it is defiling paper to quote their evil ways.

What is a wife? A burden? a care? Oh no, she is what we choose to make her: a constant spring of bright refreshing water, ready for us at all times during our journey through life – a confidant – one we can turn to for help when stricken down by some disease, or the wounds met with in the battle of life, ready to smooth our pillow, and cool the weary, aching head. There; when looking upon some of the poor, dejected, neglected, half-forsaken women we see around, it is enough to make a man’s heart swell with indignation and scorn for those who have cast aside so great a treasure, and made of it a slave.

There are faults enough on both sides, but many a happy home, many a simple domestic hearth, has been opened out or swept and garnished ready for the reception of a demon of discord, whose web once spun over the place, can perhaps never be torn away. But turn we again to the hopeful side of the question. Let the sun of your love shine forth, oh woman, brightly upon your home, however bare, and fight out the good fight with undying faith. And young wife, you of a few days, weeks, months, remember the first stray hair.

Chapter Twenty Six.
A Piece of Assurance

Being only a quiet, country-bumpkin sort of personage, it seems but reasonable that I should ask what can there be in me that people should take such intense interest in my life being insured. If such eagerness were shown by, say one’s wife, or any very near relative, one might turn suspicious, and fancy they had leanings towards the tea-spoons, sugar-tongs, and silver watch, and any other personal property that, like Captain Cuttle, one might feel disposed to make over “jintly” in some other direction. Consequently, one would be afterwards on the look-out for modern Borgiaism, and take homoeopathic doses of Veratria, Brucine, etc, etc, by way of antidote for any unpleasant symptoms likely to manifest themselves in the system. But then it is not from near relatives that such earnestness proceeds, but from utter strangers. It is hard to say how many attempts I have had made upon my life insurance – I will not use the word assurance, though it exists to a dreadful extent in the myrmidons of the pushing offices – at home, abroad, in the retirement of one’s study, in the lecture-hall of a town, always the same.

Fancy being inveigled into attending a lecture, and sitting for an hour and a half while a huge, big-whiskered man verbally attacks you, seizes you with his eye, metaphorically hooks you with his finger, and then holds you up to the scorn of the assembled hundreds, while he reproaches you for your neglect of the dear ones at home; calls up horrors to make you nervous; relates anecdotes full of widows in shabby mourning; ragged children and hard-hearted landlords; cold relations, bitter sufferings, and misery unspeakable; all of which troubles, calamities, and cares, will be sure to fall upon those you leave behind, if you do not immediately insure in the Certain Dissolution and Inevitable Collapse Assurance Company, world-famed for its prompt and liberal settlement, and the grand bonuses it gives to its supporters.

I have nerves, and consequently did not want to know exactly how many people leave this world per cent, per annum. I dislike statistics of every kind, and never felt disposed to serve tables since I was kept in at school to learn them. I did not want to be sent home to dream of a dreadful dance of death funereally performed by undertakers’ men in scarfs, with brass-tipped staves and bunches of black ostrich-plumes in their hands. We do certainly read of people who prepare their own mausoleums, and who, doubtless, take great comfort and delight in the contemplation of their future earthly abode; but to a man without any such proclivities this style of lecture – this metaphorical holding of one’s head by force over the big black pit, was jarring and dreadfully discordant in its effect upon the resonant strings of the human instrument.

I have very strange ways and ideas of my own, and have no hesitation in saying that I like to do as I please, and as seems me best. If what seems to me best is wrong, of course I do not own to it. Who does? and if I prefer insuring my furniture and house to my life, and this system is wrong, I’m not going to be convinced of its wrongness by a tall, gentlemanly-looking man who wishes to see me on particular business, and whom I have shown into the room I call my study, but which should be termed workshop.

Now, just at the time of the said tall, gentlemanly man’s arrival, I am in the agony of composition; I have written nearly half of a paper for a magazine, one which the editor will be as sure to reject as I in my then state of inflation think he will hug it to his breast as a gem. I am laboriously climbing the climax, and find the ascent so slippery, and the glides back so frequent, that the question arises in one’s breast whether, like the Irish schoolboy, it would not be better to try backwards. I have just come to where the awe-stricken Count exclaims —

“Please sir, you’re wanted,” says Mary, opening the door upon her repeated knocks gaining no attention; and then, after an angry parley, I am caught – regularly limed, trapped, netted by the words “particular business.”

A tall gentlemanly man wanting to see me on particular business. What can it be? Perhaps it is to edit The Times; perhaps to send Dr Russell home, after taking his pencil and note-book out of his war-correspondent hands; or maybe to put out the GAS of the Daily Telegraph. Is it to elevate the Standard, distribute the Daily News, act as astronomer-royal to the Morning and Evening Stars, to roll the Globe, or be its Atlas, take the spots from the face of the Sun, blow the great trumpet of the Morning Herald, literary field-marshal in some review, rebuild some damaged or exploded magazine? What can the business be? Not stage business, certainly, for that is not my branch. Law? perhaps so. A legacy – large, of course, or one of the principals would not have come down instead of writing. It must be so: I am next of kin to somebody, and I shall buy that estate after all.

Enter tall gentlemanly man upon his particular business of a private nature; and then, being a quiet, retiring person, to whom it is painful to speak rudely or without that glaze which is commonly called politeness, I suffer a severe cross-examination as to age, wife’s ditto, number of children, and so on. I am told of the uncertainty of life – the liability of the thread to snap, without the aid of the scissors of Atropos – how strengthening the knowledge of having made provision for my ewe and lambs would be if I were ill; how small the amount would be; how large a bonus would be added if I assured at once; how mine would be sure to be a first-class life – he had not seen the phials and pill-boxes in the bedroom cupboard – how nothing should be put off until to-morrow which could be done to-day, which I already knew; how a friend of his had written twelve reasons why people should assure, which reasons he kindly showed to me; and told me an abundance of things which he said I ought to know. He had answer pat for every possible or impossible objection that I could make, having thoroughly crammed himself for his task; and he knocked me down, bowled me over, got me up in corners, over the ropes, in Chancery, fell upon me heavily; in fact, as the professors of the “noble art” would say – the noble art of self-defence and offence to the world – had it all his own way.

I had no idea what a poor debater I was, or that I could be so severely handled. My ignorance was surprising; and I should have been melancholy afterwards instead of angry, if I had not consoled myself with the idea that I was not in training for a life assurance fight.

I recalled the answer made by a friend to a strong appeal from a class office, and that was, that he was neither a medical nor a general, and therefore not eligible; at the same time holding the door open for his visitor’s exit. But then I did not feel myself equal to such a task, and however importunate and troublesome a visitor might be, I somehow felt constrained to treat him in a gentlemanly manner. I tried all the gentle hints I could, and then used more forcible ones; but the gentlemanly man seemed cased in armour of proof, from which my feeble shafts glanced and went anywhere; while, whenever he saw that I was about to make a fresh attack, he was at me like Mr Branestrong, QC, and beat down my guard in a moment. It took a long time to eradicate the bland, but it went at last, and a faint flush seemed to make its way into my face, while to proceed to extremities, there was a peculiar nervous twitching in one toe, originating in its debility caused by a table once falling upon it, but now the twitches seemed of a growing or expanding nature, and as if they were struggling hard to become kicks. It was pain unutterable, especially when the moral law asserted its rights, and an aspect of suavity was ruled by reason to be the order of the day – if allied with firmness.

“If allied with firmness.” Ah! but there was the rub, for firmness had turned craven and vanished at the first appearance of my visitor.

“No; I would rather not assure then; I would think it over; I would make up my mind shortly; I felt undecided as to the office I should choose,” were my replies, et hoc genus omne; but all was of no avail, and at last I acknowledged to myself that I could not hold my own, and must speak very strongly to get rid of my unwelcome friend, who solved my problem himself by asking whether I admired poetry.

Presuming that this was to change the conversation, preparatory to taking his leave, I replied, “Yes.”

“Then he would read me a short poem on the subject in question,” and drawing from his pocket a piece of paper, he began in a most forced declamatory style to read some doggerel concerning a gentleman who was taken to heaven, but who left a wife and seven – rhyme to heaven – and whose affairs would have been most unsatisfactory if he had not assured his life.

But my friend did not finish, being apparently startled by some look or movement upon my part, which caused him to hurriedly say “Good morning,” and to promise to call again, as I seemed busy.

Perhaps he may call again; but he will have to call again, and again, and again, and very loudly too, before he gets in to talk upon particular business.

Now, it may seem strange that after this I should express great admiration for the system of assurance; but I do admire it, and consider it the duty of every poor man to try and make some provision for the future of those he may leave behind. But one cannot help feeling suspicious of offices that are in the habit of forcing themselves so unpleasantly upon your notice, and sinking their professional respectability in the dodges and advertising and canvassing tricks of the cheap “to be continued in monthly parts” book-hawker, or the broken down tradesman, who leaves goods for your inspection. One has learned to look upon the quiet, flowing stream as the deepest and safest to bear the bark; for the rough, bubbling water speaks of shoals, rocks, and quicksands, with perchance “snags and sawyers,” ready to pierce the frail bottom.

Once more alone, I referred to the circular left upon my table, where beneath my age and the sum per cent, that I should have to pay, was a broad pencil-mark, emanating from the eminently gentlemanly gold pencil-case of my visitor. But in spite of unheard-of advantages, liberal treatment, large bonus distribution every five years, with a great deal more duly set forth in the paper, I shall not assure in that office, for I made my mind up then in the half-hour of anger, when I could not get the Count to exclaim anything, although I tried so hard. He was awe-stricken, certainly; but as I had painted him, he would keep changing into a gentlemanly man, charged with life assurance principles. So I read what I had written, saw the error of my ways, and knowing too well that a certain conductor would reject it after the first page, I sighed, tore off a portion, and used it to illumine a cigar; and then took for my hero the morning’s visitor – writing this paper, which I trust may have a better fate.