Chapter IX: Honeymooning

"The importance of the honeymoon, which had been so much vaunted
to him by his father, had not held good."--_The Married Life of
Albert Durer._

The "honeymoon" is defined by Johnson to be "the first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure." And certainly it ought to be the happiest month in our lives; but it may, like every other good thing, be spoiled by mismanagement. When this is the case, we take our honeymoon like other pleasures--sadly. Instead of happy reminiscences, nothing is left of it except its jars.

You take, says the philosophical observer, a man and a woman, who in nine cases out of ten know very little about each other (though they generally fancy they do), you cut off the woman from all her female friends, you deprive the man of his ordinary business and ordinary pleasures, and you condemn this unhappy pair to spend a month of enforced seclusion in each other's society. If they marry in the summer and start on a tour, the man is oppressed with a plethora of sight-seeing, while the lady, as often as not, becomes seriously ill from fatigue and excitement.

A newly-married man took his bride on a tour to Switzerland for the honeymoon, and when there induced her to attempt with him the ascent of one of the high peaks. The lady, who at home had never ascended a hill higher than a church, was much alarmed, and had to be carried by the guides with her eyes blindfolded, so as not to witness the horrors of the passage. The bridegroom walked close to her, expostulating respecting her fear. He spoke in honeymoon whispers; but the rarefaction of the air was such that every word was audible. "You told me, Leonora, that you always felt happy--no matter where you were--so long as you were in my company. Then why are you not happy now?" "Yes, Charles, I did," replied she; sobbing hysterically; "but I never meant above the snow line." It is at such times as these that awkward angles of temper make themselves manifest, which, under a more sensible system, might have been concealed for years, perhaps for ever.

Boswell called upon Dr. Johnson on the morning of the day on which he was to leave for Scotland--for matrimonial purposes. The prospect of connubial felicity had made the expectant husband voluble; he therefore took courage to recite to the sage a little love-song which he had himself composed and which Dibdin was to set to music:

A MATRIMONIAL THOUGHT.

"In the blythe days of honeymoon,
With Kate's allurements smitten,
I loved her late, I loved her soon,
And called her dearest kitten.

But now my kitten's grown a cat,
And cross like other wives,
Oh! by my soul, my honest Mat,
I fear she has nine lives."

_Johnson_: "It is very well, sir, but you should not swear." Whereupon the obnoxious "Oh! by my soul," was changed on the instant to "Alas! alas!"

If the kitten should develop into a cat even before the "blythe days of honeymoon" are ended, it is no wonder, considering the way some young couples spend the first month of married life, rushing from one continental city to another, and visiting all the churches and picture-galleries, however scorching may be the weather or however great may be their secret aversion to art and antiquity. The lady gives way to fatigue, and is seized with a violent headache. For a while the young husband thinks that it is rather nice to support his Kate's head, but when she answers his sympathetic inquiries sharply and petulantly, he in turn becomes less amiable, dazzling, enchanting, and, in a word, all that as a _fiance_ he had been.

Winter honeymooning is even more trying to the temper, for then short days and unfavourable weather compel the young couple to stay in one place. Imagine the delights of a month spent in lodgings at the seaside, with nothing to do except to get photographed, which is a favourite pastime of the newly-married. The bride may be indifferent to the rain and sleet beating against the windows, for she can spend the time writing to her friends long and enthusiastic descriptions of her happiness; but what can the unlucky bridegroom do? He subscribes to the circulating library, reads a series of novels aloud to his wife, and illustrates every amatory passage with a kiss. But the "dear old boy" (as the bride calls him) tires of this sort of thing after a week, and how can he then amuse himself? He stares out of windows, he watches the arrival of the milkman and the butcher with the liveliest interest; he envies the coastguardsman, who is perpetually on the look-out for invisible smugglers through a portentously long telescope. Cases have been known where the bridegroom--a City man--being driven to desperation, has privately ordered the office journal and ledger to be sent down by luggage train, and has devoted his evenings to checking the additions in those interesting volumes.

When Hodge and his sweetheart crown their pastoral loves in the quiet old country church, they take a pleasant drive or a walk in their finery, and settle down at once to connubial comfort in the cot beside the wood. Why do their richer neighbours deny themselves this happiness and invent special troubles? Why, during the early weeks of married life, do they lay up sad memories of provoking mistakes, of trunks which will not pack, of trains which will not wait, of tiresome sight-seeing, of broiling sun, of headache, of "the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever" of honeymooning abroad? Many a bridegroom but just returned from a "delightful tour on the Continent" will be able to sympathize in the remark of the country farmer to a companion in the train, as he went to town to buy hay. "Yes, it's been a bad winter for some folk. Old Smith's dead, and so is Jones, and my wife died yesterday. And how be the hay, master?"

We do not want excitement during the honeymoon, for are we not in love (if we are not we ought to be ashamed of ourselves), and is not love all-sufficient? Last week we only saw the object of our affections by fits and starts as it were; now we have her or him all to ourselves.

"Who hath not felt that breath in the air,
A perfume and freshness strange and rare,
A warmth in the light, and a bliss everywhere,
When young hearts yearn together?
All sweets below, and all sunny above,
Oh! there's nothing in life like making love,
Save making hay in fine weather."

Let cynics say what they will, the honeymoon, when not greatly mismanaged, _is_ a halcyon period. It is a delightful lull between two distinct states of existence, and the married man is not to be envied who can recall no pleasant reminiscences of it. What profane outsiders consider very dull has a charm of its own to honeymoon lovers who "illumine life with dreaming," and who see--

"Golden visions wave and hover,
Golden vapours, waters streaming,
Landscapes moving, changing, gleaming!"

Still, we cannot but think that if a wedding tour must be taken it should be short, quiet, free-and-easy, and inexpensive. At some future time, when the young people are less agitated and have learned to understand each other better, the time and money saved will be available for a more extended holiday. During the honeymoon there should be "marches hymeneal in the land of the ideal" rather than globe-trotting; "thoughts moved o'er fields Elysian" rather than over the perplexing pages of "Bradshaw's General Railway and Steam Navigation Guide."

In reference to the honeymoon, as to other matters, people's opinions differ according to their temperaments and circumstances. So we shall conclude this chapter by quoting two nearly opposite opinions, and ask our readers to decide for themselves.

In the "Memoir of Daniel Macmillan" his opinion is thus stated: "That going out for the honeymoon is a most wise and useful invention; it enables you to be so constantly together, and to obtain a deeper knowledge of each other; and it also helps one to see and feel the preciousness of such intimacy as nothing else could. Intercourse in the presence of others never leads below the surface, and it is in the very depths of our being that true calm, deep and true peace and love lie. Nothing so well prepares for the serious duties of after-life."

"As to long honeymoons," says the Bishop of Rochester, "most sensible people have come utterly to disbelieve in them. They are a forced homage to utterly false ideas; they are a waste of money at a moment when every shilling is wanted for much more pressing objects; they are a loss of time, which soon comes to be dreary and weary. Most of all, they are a risk for love, which ought not so soon to be so unpleasantly tested by the inevitable petulances of a secret _ennui_. Six days by all means, and then, oh! happy friends, go straight home.... Whenever you come back, six weeks hence or one, you will have just as much to stand the fire of a little hard staring which won't hurt you, and of bright pleasantness which need not vex you; and the sooner you are at home, the sooner you will find out what married happiness means."