THE IDEAL HUSBAND.

Evening Star, Issue 12396, 9 January 1905, Page 8

THE IDEAL HUSBAND.

English authors have ceased to -write books on how to choose a husband, finding, perhaps, that the wilful maiden of to-day has very deaf ears. In Italy, however, woman is still to some extent under the yoke, and js no doubt giving to Signer Mantegazza's book the thoughtful consideration it deserves. At the same time, the writer is certainly a little difficult to please. It must be depressing lor any-fair reader, intent on matrimony, to come at the very outset on this list of husbands who ought to be avoided:— \ ';■••■.■•'-'.■■ BAD HUSBANDS.

Tyrants. Misers. Milksops. Profligate?. Othellos. Fools. Grumblers. . Do-Nofchings (Idlers). Who of us all can lay his hand onhis heart and say his withers are unwrung? How many Benedicks can avoid Censures 1 and 2 by being riot too assertive but just aßsertive enough? And what, after all, are the'justifiable limitations of marital grumbling in relation, say, to (a) cold mutton, (bj dress bills, (c) mother-in-laws' visits? Here is food for much argument, and it is easier for Signor Mantegazza to say that a husband should be neither too stubborn nor too weak than for his anxious reader to find that paragon of a man. The lady is not, however, left without help in her quest. Signor Mantegazza's test for the miser is to "watch him particularly when he pronounces the words 'million' or 'millionaire.'" If he "swells with pride," even if he " raises the pitch of his voice," give him his conge; he is no meet husband. The wise virgin is also recommended to avoid young gentlemen who use the first personal pronoun over-mnch—here you see the tyrant—and also such as Msb the maidservant (Fault No. 6). "Fools" may dissemble their vacuity during courtship by getting up their information; wherefore the prudent damsel will read Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, and be in a position to detect stolen syllogisms. In other matters, also, the English habit is to be studied, for (under the' heading of the eighth Deadly Sin) we learn that _ In many countries of Europe and America doing nothing is not a title of nobility, but a disgrace at which the richert blush. In London, for example, there are gentlemen, owners of millions, who work in industrial and commercial enterprises, who occupy themselves with science, art. or literature, travel abroad for distraction or instruction, or, at the worst, administer their estates, occupying themselves with agricultural improvements. Yet I know gentlemen in Lombardy who have never even seen their estates! In respect of No. 3, also, the Italian husband is of lower earth than the AngloSaxon, for Signor Mantegazza devotes a page to the discouragement of wife-murder. "I sympathise and condole," he Fays, "with the husband who kills the favored lover," but " to kill a woman is the most bestial of outrages, and I applaud those who take their own lives after committing this crime." It is a singular oversight that an author who considers so many contingencies should have omitted to discuss the difficult question of wife-beating, a course which may be held to lie somewhere midway between the indifference which he would no doubt deprecate and the " Othelloiara " which wields a lethal pillow. The admonitory signor must have a fellow-feeling for Mr 11. Q. Wells, for in the end his heroine becomes the wife of an engineer, and, we are given to understand, lives happily ever afterwards. It is to be hoped that in that capacity she followed the excellent advice of the book: Should your husband talk to you of his plans and enterprises, show you his designs and drawings, do not look bored or outside the pale of his studies. It is well to adopt a sympathetic attitude even towaxds a triple-expansion engine. Apparently it was u mere toss-up whether the fair Silvia did not wed a manufacturer (supposing him to be at the same time a Socialist) whom the author classes, as a husband, "far above merchants, shopkeepers, or even bankers." (The allusion, it should be explained, is to Italian bankers, who appear to be especially liable to defalcation and sudden beggary.) He has no great objection to the lawyer, in spite of that learned man's " comfortable tendency to interchange truth with falsehood"—again, let us hope, a criticism only applicable to the K.C. of King Victor Emmanuel. Tho worst of marrying a doctor is that he may smell of iodoform or phenol, and involuntarily the thought may cross your mind at the* dinner table that the same hand now pealing an orange was perhaps an hour ago dissecting a dead body or operating a tumor. Besides, a doctor is either too busy or too poor, and—in Italy, of coune—his wife has a tendency to become the feminine counterpart of No. 3 in the catalogue of undesirables. Ambitious ladies are urged to marry politicians; and the scientist, once aloof and absorbed, " may now be an excellent husband." Two classes, however, must keep the tyrant and the rest company on the Index -Expurga-torius:—N-Yer marry an artist unless he happens to be a genius or an angel; never marry a mediocre author. In anv event the artist is unsatisfactory, for "his first love is Art, and you will always come after her"; and you cannot even have it out with her except in Bessie's way in 'The Light That Failed.' On the other hand, if the poet fulfils the necessary conditions, he may be a successful spouse:— A literary man brings into home life more flowers than fruit; but flowers, too, are very beautiful Miings, and you will spend many happy hours while your poet husband reads you with emotion the last

pages of one of his books. But in this case the wife must possess very superior qualifications; no doubt a list of them will be found in Signor Manteeazza's previous volume on 'The Art of Taking a Wife.'

In a closing chapter the author counsels his charges not to be afraid of becoming old maids. If they endeavor to adhere strictly to his excellent advice, it is highly probable that that will be their latter end. But it is a self-willed sex, and likely enough his very next reader, having determined on his representations to marry a manufacturer (who is also a Socialist) will go forth and take to "herself a minor poet who is both a tyrant and a grumbler, as well as a miser on account of circumstances over which he has no control.