The Ten Pleasures of Marriage Part 1

The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682).

by A. Marsh.

INTRODUCTION

The Restoration brought back to England something more than a king and the theatre. It renewed in English life the robust vitality of humour which had been repressed under the Commonwealth--though, in spite of repression, there were, even among the Puritan divines, men like the author of _Joanereidos_, whose self-expression ran the whole gamut from freedom to licentiousness.

It is a curious thing, that fundamental English humour. It can be vividly concentrated into a single word, as when, for instance, the chronicler of _The Ten Pleasures of Marriage_ revives the opprobrious term for a tailor--"p.r.i.c.klouse": the whole history of the English woollen industry and of the stuffy Tudor and Stuart domestic architecture is in the nickname. Or a single phrase can light up an idea, as when, a few days before marriage, "the Bridegroom is running up and down like a dog." But, on the other hand, the spirit manifests itself sometimes in exuberance, as when Urquhart and Motteux metagrobolized Rabelais into something almost more tumescent and overwhelming than the original. In that vein of humour the present work frequently runs. The author is as ready to pile up his epithets as Urquhart himself. Let the Nurse go, he says, "for then you'll have an Eater, a Stroy-good, a Stufgut, a Spoil-all, and Prittle-pratler, less than you had before."

It is, in fact, as an example of English humour--exaggerated, no doubt, by the reaction from Puritanism--that _The Ten Pleasures of Marriage_ should be viewed, in the main. It is true, however, that it is of uncertain parentage and must own to foreign kin. A well-known but (by a strange coincidence) almost equally rare book is Antoine de la Salle's _Quinze Joies de Mariage_. It seems possible that this was translated into English. At any rate, in the year in which _The Ten Pleasures_ was published--1682-1683--the following work was registered at Stationers' Hall: _The Woman's Advocate, or fifteen real comforts of matrimony, being in requital of the late fifteen_ sham _comforts_.

Moreover, _The Ten Pleasures_ was in all probability printed abroad--Hazlitt thinks at The Hague or Amsterdam. The very first page in the original edition contains one of several hints of Batavian production--"younger" is printed "jounger." The curious allusion to the great French poet, Clement Marot, may also suggest a temporary foreign sojourn for the author for though Marot was doubtless known to English readers in the seventeenth century, the exact reference of the allusion is not at all obvious. It very possibly reflects on the fact that in 1526 the Sorbonne condemned both Marot and his poem _Colloque de l'abbe et de la femme scavante_; and Marot certainly wrote about women and marriage. He is not, however, a "stock" figure in English literary allusion, either learned or popular, and the fact suggests at least familiarity with the literature of other countries.

But there can be no doubt of the English character of the text both in general and in detail. It is redolent of English middle-cla.s.s life as it was in the days before our grandfathers decided that the human body was an obscene thing and its functions deplorable. It has the middle-cla.s.s love of good food--Colchester oysters (famous then as now), asparagus, peaches, apricots, candied ginger, China oranges, comfits, pancakes--enough to make the mouth water. It has the solid English furniture, with all its ritual of solemnity; "vallians"

(valences), "daslles" (ta.s.sels), big bedsteads, Chiny-ware, plush chairs, linen cupboards. It has all the fuss of preparation for childbirth--the acc.u.mulations of wrappings, the obstetric furniture, the nods and winks of the midwife and the gossips, authentic ancestors of Mrs Sarah Gamp and Mrs Elizabeth Prig--why, the haste to fetch the midwife at the crisis might almost be the foundation upon which d.i.c.kens built the visit of Seth Pecksniff, Esq., to Kingsgate Street, High Holborn.

It has likewise many touches which show knowledge of the average fairly prosperous English life--the merchant's, the shopkeeper's, the sea-captain's. The author clearly knew the routine of trade. He knew that at New Year's Day the "day-book" had to be fully written up for scrutiny and stock-taking and sending out of accounts. (But the pleasures or torments of love are such that "the squire is so full of business that he can't spare half-an-hour to write it out." The brief description of his feelings which follows, conventional, perhaps, to some extent, has a certain life in it, as if the writer, embittered, was recalling his own youthful experience.) He knew, too, what to-day we only know in the ma.s.s through the newspapers, that a merchant's business depends not only upon watching the markets, but upon the actual supply of material--"what commodities are arrived or expected,"

and whether tea is up d. or tin d. down, or if hogs closed firm. The commercial world changes only its methods of communication and expression.

The first chapter, indeed, is of genuine historical and literary interest. From the literary point of view, it is a near descendant--collateral, if not direct, and anyhow based on the same English empirical humour of life--of Thomas Overbury's _A Wife_ (1614--only one unique copy of this is known to exist), John Earle's _Microcosmographie_ (1628), in prose, and Thomas b.a.s.t.a.r.d's _Chrestoleros_* (1598), in verse. It is an early instance of the stringing together, in a connected narrative, of the material previously used only in short sketches or "characters"; and so it is directly in the succession which in the end produced what is perhaps the most enduring and individual phenomenon in our literature--the English novel.

* A copy of the very rare first edition fetched 155 at the Britwell sale in February 1922.

Of course the book says things we do not say now openly--though the traditional _corpus scriptorum nondum scriptorum_ which almost all men and even some women know is handed on, a rather noisome torch, from generation to generation, solely by word of mouth, and flickers now and again in _The Ten Pleasures_. But they were said openly then, and by great writers. There is nothing here so nauseatingly indecent as the viler poems of the Rev. Robert Herrick and the Very Rev. the Dean of Dublin, Jonathan Swift, D.D. There are salacious hints, there are bawdy words, but no more than Falstaff or the wife of Bath or the Summoner or Tom Jones might have used--less, on the whole. There is no need, to borrow a phrase from the book's sequel, to "make use of the gesture of casting up the whites of the eyes." "True-hearted souls will solace their spirits with a little laughter, and never busy their brains with the subversion of Church and State government."

Certainly the writer favoured the jovial life. Food and wine flow in his pages like milk and honey in Canaan. There is no room in his house for the Puritans, not even, apparently, in the bringing up of his child. "Those that frequent Mr Baxter's Puritanical Holding-forth"

must be merry when they come to his feast. He will have no _Catechizing of Families_--a discourse published by Richard Baxter in this very year 1683; and the only _Compa.s.sionate Counsel_--a Baxter pamphlet of 1681--he is likely to offer to young men is to take life lightly, as his hero does, and above all, not to marry.

For that is the true point of this lively piece of irony (the irony is less well sustained in the sequel, _The Confession of the New Married Couple_, and dropped altogether in the bitter _Letter_ at the end of _The Ten Pleasures_). It is a savage attack upon women--upon (to quote a Rabelaisian sentence) "the quarrelsome, crabbed, lavish, proud, opinionated, domineering and unbridled nature of the female s.e.x."

Women, he says, "are in effect of less value than old Iron, Boots and Shoes, etc., for we find both Merchants and money ready always to buy those commodities." The a.n.a.logy is an unfortunate one, for one of his implications is that women can easily be bought. But he--if it is a "he"--is in deadly earnest. Love, marriage, he asks scornfully--what are they? A romance, are they? The true happiness of life? Very well: here are the pleasures of them. You will be in love and make a match--and look at all the worry of the settlement, in which, by the way, you may often be defrauded. You will get married--a fine ceremony, with a fine feast; and all the nasty old women of the neighbourhood will come and tell bawdy stories to enliven the occasion. You get married, and thereafter you are at the mercy of your wife, who will indulge your wishes or not as suits her mood. Your house will be all awry if she has but a slight headache. When the baby comes, the place will be filled with old women and baby-linen and medical apparatus, and you will have all the anxieties of a father added to the discomforts of a neglected husband. For the rest, your wife will know how "to cuckold, jilt, and sham" as well as any gay lady of Covent Garden. And so on.

Much of the satire is acute and well-turned, often novel in expression if not in thought. But it is, as has been suggested, in the picture of English middle-cla.s.s life under James II. that the importance of the book lies. Here is the domestic side of what the great diarists and the great poets hint at, and the excess of which munic.i.p.al records, those treasuries of private appearances in public, chronicle with the severity of judgment. You have the young couple going (alas that the river for this purpose has, so to speak, been moved farther up its own course!) for a row on the Thames, with Lambeth, Bankside and Southwark echoing to their laughter. They might visit the New Spring Gardens at Vauxhall; but they would probably avoid the old (second) Globe Theatre on Bankside, for it was a meeting-house at which the formidable Baxter preached. Or they might go into Kent and pick fruit, even as "beanfeasters" do to this day; or to Hereford for its cider and perry, the drinking of which is a custom not yet extinct. Or maybe only for an outing to the pleasant village of Hackney. They would see the streets gay with signs which (outside Lombard Street) few houses but taverns wear to-day--the sign of the _Silkworm_ or the _Sheep_, or that fantastic schoolmaster's emblem, the _Troubled Pate_ with a crown upon it. And when they stopped for rest at the sign of a bush upon a pole, how they would fall to upon the Martinmas beef, the neats-tongues, the cheesecakes! It is true they might find prices high and crops poor; but such things must be.... "This is the use, custom, and fruits of war. If the impositions and taxes run high, the country farmer can't help that; you know that the war costs money, and it must be given, or else we should lose all." Had they learnt that as long ago as 1682?

As a _genre_ work the book is not unique; rather is it typical. The gradual social settlement after the Civil War, destined to develop into stagnation under the first Georges, caused didactic works, guides to manners, housewifery and sport, society handbooks, to proliferate.

_The Ten Pleasures_ mentions some standard works, which every good housewife would probably possess--Nicholas Culpepper's medical handbooks, for instance, and _The Complete Cook_, which indeed, as part of _The Queen's Closet Opened_, had reappeared in its natal year 1682-1683. The same year saw the birth of such works as _The Complete Courtier_, _The Complete Compting House_, _The Gentleman Jockey_, _The Accomplished Ladies' Delight._ Life was being scheduled, tabulated, in readiness for the complacent century about to open. It was also being explored, not only in such works as _The Ten Pleasures_ and _The Woman's Advocate_, but in others (entered as published, but in many cases not known to be now extant) like _The Wonders of the Female World_, _The Swaggering Damsel_, or _Several New Curtain Lectures_, and _Venus in ye smoake, or, the nunn in her smock, in curious dialogues addressed to the lady abbesse of love's parradice_--all produced in that same _annus mirabilis_ of outspoken domesticity.

_The Ten Pleasures_, apart from its intrinsic interest, is exceptionally important from a book-collector's point of view. It is of the utmost rarity. There is no copy in the British Museum and none in the Cambridge University Library. In fact, there are only two copies known of the whole work--one in the Bodleian (wanting one plate), and that from which the present text is taken. The Huth Collection had a copy of the first part only. Both the fuller copies contain the second part--_The Confession_--and evidently the two parts, though they have separate t.i.tle pages, and were published at different times, were intended to form a complete work.

Who wrote the book? "A. Marsh, Typogr. [apher]," says the t.i.tle page.

A. Marsh cannot be traced, nor is the work included in the Stationers'

Registers for the period. It may be that Marsh thought it too licentious for registration (an improbable supposition), and so, as Hazlitt suggests, printed it abroad.

But the initials A.B. at the end of the _Letter_ in the first part may be a clue, though a perplexing one. It is a plausible guess that they are those of Aphra or Aphara Behn, the dramatist and poet, the first woman to earn her living by her pen. It is true that she was, so to speak, a feminist: the preface and epilogue to her _Sir Patient Fancy_ speak bitterly of those who would not go to her plays because they were by a woman. On the other hand, she had a free pen, to say the least of it, and often a witty one. And she had Dutch a.s.sociations. Her husband was a Dutch merchant living in London. She had herself been on secret service in the Netherlands. She translated a Dutch book on oracles. If the book was printed in Holland, she of all people could get the work done. And she knew the city of London intimately.

There are, too, some odd details in her plays, especially in _Sir Patient Fancy_, which recall touches in _The Ten Pleasures_. She introduces a Padua doctor on the stage. She shows, in several of her plays, a curious interest in medicine, especially quack medicine. Sir Patient, a hypochondriac, thinks he is swelling up like the "pipsy"

husband. Isabella, in the same play, says "keeping begins to be as ridiculous as matrimony.... The insolence and expense of their mistresses has almost tired out all but the old and doting part of mankind." It is not inconceivable that in a freakish or embittered moment this singular woman threw herself with malicious joy into an attack on her own s.e.x.

"Love in fantastic triumph sat...." Aphra Behn's great lyric deservedly lives. If she wrote _The Ten Pleasures_, the sort of love she describes in it still lives, but hardly in fantastic triumph. Yet if we want to know our fellow-men, we must know something of it. Apart from the curious interest of its rarity, _The Ten Pleasures_ is a st.u.r.dy piece of human nature.

JOHN HARVEY.

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE

"Of the making of many books there is no end," nor is there an end to the Romance of books, as the little volume here, privately reprinted by the Navarre Society, is surely proof most positive. The original is a small thick volume; it bears the imprint "London, Printed in the year 1683," and but one perfect copy is known; that copy lay unappreciated in the heart of London in an antiquarian bookseller's shop.

Fortunately, however, for our literature and for students of the manners of the commonality of the period it was seen by a colleague, who wondered why he did not know it. After purchasing it he found the reason why--the Bodleian Library alone possessed a copy of the work (imperfect); later a copy of the first part (only) appeared in the last portion of the sale of the great Huth Collection. The present text is taken from the perfect copy mentioned above.

The curious t.i.tle rather d.a.m.ns the literary interest of the book, which presents pictures of the cit and his wife at work and play which Fielding, had he lived in the seventeenth century, might have written. It is thought that the book was printed in Holland, and if so, it may well be that the s.h.i.+p carrying the printed sheets to England foundered in the North Sea, or was sunk by enemy craft. There can be no doubt that such a work would not have escaped the wits of the time; if it had survived for ordinary circulation, mention would have been made of it, however small an edition had been sold. No other so likely reason for its extreme rarity presents itself.

It is reprinted, as faithfully as the altered manners of our time permit, with a Preface by John Harvey, who attributes the work to the industrious and sometimes brilliant Mrs Aphra Behn, a discovery which the Navarre Society believe to be well grounded. They hope that the issue of the book to their subscribers may help to confirm or refute that lady's responsibility for so graceless an attack upon her s.e.x.

Whether she did or did not write it, the fact remains that a work so vividly representative of Restoration life and literature is rescued from the obscurity to which its scarceness has. .h.i.therto condemned it and worthily preserved for scholars and amateurs of the future.

THE TEN PLEASURES OF MARRIAGE.

The Nuptial estate trailing along with it so many cares, troubles & calamities, it is one of the greatest admirations, that people should be so earnest and desirous to enter themselves into it. In the younger sort who by their sulphurous instinct, are subject to the tickling desires of nature, and look upon that thing called Love through a multiplying gla.s.s, it is somewhat pardonable: But that those who are once come to the years of knowledge and true understanding should be drawn into it, methinks is most vilely foolish, and morrice fooles caps were much fitter for them, then wreaths of Lawrel. Yet stranger it is, that those who have been for the first time in that horrible estate, do, by a decease, cast themselves in again to a second and third time. Truly, if for once any one be through contrary imaginations misled, he may expect some hopes of compa.s.sion, and alledge some reasons to excuse himself: but what comfort, or compa.s.sion can they look for, that have thrown themselves in a second and third time? they were happy, if they could keep their lips from speaking, and ty their tongues from complaining, that their miseries might not be more and more burdened with scoffings which they truly merit.

And tho not only the real truth of this, but ten times more, is as well known to every one, as the Sun s.h.i.+ne at noon day; nevertheless we see them run into it with such an earnestness, that they are not to be counselled, or kept back from it, with the strength of _Hercules_; despising their golden liberty, for chains of horrid slavery.

But we see the bravest sparks, in the very blossoming of their youth, how they decay? First, Gentleman-like, they take pleasure in all manner of n.o.ble exercises, as in keeping time all dancing, singing of musick, playing upon instruments, speaking of several languages, studying at the best Universities, and conversing with the learnedst Doctors, &c. or else we see them, before they are half perfect in any exercise, like carl-cats in March run mewing and yawling at the doors of young Gentlewomen; and if any of those have but a small matter of more then ordinary beauty, (which perhaps is gotten by the help of a d.a.m.n'd bewitched pot of paint) she is immediately ador'd like a Saint upon an Altar: And in an instant there is as much beauty and perfection to be seen in her, as ever Juno, Venus and Pallas possessed all together.

And herewith those Gentile Pleasures, that have cost their Parents so much money, and them so much labour and time are kickt away, and totally abandoned that they may keep company with a painted Jezebel.

They are then hardly arrived at this int.i.tled happiness, but they must begin to chaw upon the bitter sh.e.l.l of that nut, the kernel whereof, without sighing, they cannot tast; having no sooner obtained access to the Lady, but are as suddenly possest with thousands of thoughts what they shall do to please the Sweet object. Being therewith so tosticated, that all their other business is dispersed, and totally laid aside. This is observable not only in youth of the first degree, but also in persons that have received promotion.

For if he be a Theologue, his books drop out of his hands, and ly stragling about his study, even as his sences do, one among another.

And if you hear him preach, his whole Sermon is nothing but of Love, which he then turns & winds to Divinity as far as possible it can be fitted.

If it be a Doctor of Physick, oh! he has so much work with his own sicknes, that he absolutely forgets all his Patients, though some of them were lying at deaths dore; and lets the Chyrurgian, whom he had appointed certainly to meet there, tarry to no purpose, taking no more notice of his Patients misery, and the peril of his wounds, then if it did not concern him. But if at last he doth come, it is when the wound's festered, the Ague in the blood, or that the body is incurable. So far was he concern'd in looking after that Love-apple, or Night-shadow, for the cure of his own burning distemper.

If he be a Counsellor, his whole brain is so much puzzel'd how to begin and pursue the Process for the obtaining his Mistress in Marriage; that all other suits tho they be to the great detriment of poor Widows and Orphans are laid aside, and wholly rejected. Then being desired by his Clients to meet them at anyplace, and to give his advice concerning the cause, he hath had such earnest business with his Mistress, that he comes an hour or two later then was appointed.

But coming at last, one half of the time that can be spent, is little enough to make Mr. Counsellor understand in what state the cause stood at the last meeting. And then having heard what the Plaintif and Defendant do say, he only tells them, I must have clearer evidences, the accounts better adjusted, and your demand in writing, before I can make any decision of this cause to both your satisfactions.

There they stand then, and look one upon another, not daring to say otherwise, but _'tis very well Sir, we will make them all ready against the next meeting_; and are, with grief at heart, forced to see as much and sometimes more expences made at the meeting, as the whole concern of their debate amounted to. Then it is, come let's now discourse of matters of state, and drink a gla.s.s about to the health of the King & the prosperity of our Country and all the inhabitants; which is done only to the purpose, that coming to his Mistress, he may boastingly say, my dear, just now at a meeting we remembered you in a gla.s.s, & I'l swear the least drop of it was so delicious to me, as ever _Nectar_ and _Ambrose_ could be, that the Poets so highly commend.

If Counsellors, and other learned men, that are in love, do thus; what can the unlearned Notary's do less? Even nothing else, but when they are writing, scribble up a multiplicity of several words, unnecessary clauses, and make long periods; not so much as touching or mentioning the princ.i.p.al business; and if he does, writes it clear contrary to the intent of the party concern'd: By that means making both Wills and other Deeds in such a manner, that the end agrees not with the beginning, nor the middle with either. Which occasions between friends, near relations, and neighbors, great differences, and an implacable hatred; forcing thereby the monies of innocent and self-necessitated people, into the Pockets of Counsellors and Attorneys.

And alas the diligent Merchant, when he has gotten the least smatch of this frensie, his head runs so much upon wheels, that he daily neglects his Change-time; forgets his Bils of exchange; and is alwaies a Post or two behind hand with his Letters: So that he knows not what Merchandises rise or fall, or what commodities are arrived or expected. And by this means buies in Wares, at such rates, that in few daies he loses 20, yea sometimes 30 per cent. by them. Nay, this distemper is so hot in his head, that thereby he s.h.i.+ps his goods in a Vessel, where the Master and his Mate are for the most part drunk, and who hardly thrice in ten times make a good voyage.

And who knows not how miserable that City and Country is, when a military person happens to ly sick in this Hospital. If he be in Garison, he doth nothing but trick up himself, walk along the streets, flatter his Mistress, and vaunt of his knowledge and Warlike deeds; though he scarce understands the exercising of his Arms, I will not mention encamping in a Field, Fortification, the forming of Batalions, and a great deal more that belongs to him.

And coming into Campagne; alas this wicked Love-ague continues with him; and runs so through his blood, that both the open air, and wide fields are too narrow for him. Yea and tho he formerly had (especially by his Mistris) the name of behaving himself like a second Mars; yet now he'l play the sick-hearted, (I dare not say the faint-hearted) to the end he may, having put on his fine knotted Scarf, and powdered Periwig, only go to shew himself to that adorable Babe, his Lady Venus, Leaving oftentimes a desperate siege, and important State affairs, to accompany a lame, squint-ey'd, and crook-back'd _Jeronimo_.