Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 13, 6 April 1927, Page 4

Mundane Musings

MARRIED TO A MISSION BE WARNED IN TIME AND DON’T To be married to a missionary is a matter of taste, but at least it is a straightforward proceeding. You know beforehand that you will have to ruin your liver and complexion accompanying him or her to darkest Africa or India’s coral strand, and that unless you are very much in love, extremely strong, good at the harmonium, and cutting out the simpler kinds of red flannel underwear, you had better give it up. It is not the mission to foreign parts, but the mission in the home, that is the trouble. It were better for a man to be hanged or married to the world’s worst virago than to marry a woman who has looked on the flannel when it was red. It is a vice which is more persistent than drink or drugs, and whichnothing but death will kill! Mrs. Jellyby, in “Bleak House,” is the classic example of being married to a mission. She is described as a “lady of very remarkable character, who devotes herself entirely to the public,” which meant in her case a scheme for improving the. lot of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger, says an English writer. All day long she sat “in quite a nest of waste paper,” inky, wild-haired, writing busily, or uttering beautiful sentiments about the brotherhood of humanity, but letting no thoughts of her duties to her husband and children come between her and the great African continent.

One child gets his head fixed in the area railings; another falls down a flight of stairs with a series of resounding bumps; the codfish and roast beef appear on the table nearly raw; Mr. Jellyby sits in the corner with his head against the wall, “as if he were subject to low spirits,” a proceeding

not surprising in the circumstances; Caddy, the eldest girl, gets engaged, but Mrs. Jellyby remains remote, aloof, refusing to allow anything, even the “film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy,” to come between her and her schemes for the amelioration of the lot of the Bdrrioboola-Oha-ians. Mrs. Jellyby is a type which, unfortunately, persists through the ages, the woman who believes that no good can be done without a committee; no mission accomplished except to the geographically remote; no charity needed except for foreign parts. Her mind is so full of schemes for supplying lonely lighthouse-keepers with parrots, or poor people with pink petticoats, that she quite forgets to supply her own wretched family with clean towels, poached eggs for breakfast, buttons on their shirts, and the other necessities of life. She is perpetually “just off to a committee,” a bazaar, or a meeting; eternally in correspondence with Lapland or the Fijian Isles, when she might be more profitably employed in her own shopping street. inquiring what made the butcher think that an obvious piece of horse was a leg of lamb. She returns in the evening, worn out with her efforts on behalf of deserving drunkards, wistful widows, and blameless blacks, but guiltless of any expenditure of energy with regard to a mere husband, or children who have got a mother of their own. The outside world probably regards her as a devoted and self-sacrificing woman, untiring in her efforts for humanity, but in reality it is not herself, but her husband and children, whom she has sacrificed for the Cause. To Mr. Jellyby’s heartfelt warning to Caddy on the eve of her wedding, “Never have a mission, my dear child!” I would add: “And never, never marry one!” A WIDOW'S WEDDING

Every woman loves a wedding and likes to see herself a ‘bride, so a smart widow often elects to be married to her second bridegroom with a repetition of the pomp and circumstance of her first wedding ceremony. Fully choral service, decorated church, many wedding guests, and fashionable reception distinguish the change in her estate.

She cannot, however, without offending good taste, usurp the privileges of the girl bride by appearing in virginal white, veiled, and wearing orange blossom. Instead of white flowers she should carry a bouquet of coloured ones, and church and reception room decorations ought to.be in the same spirit. Coloured buttonhole favours are worn.

Widows are not attended by bridesmaids as such, but a page or wto, and maid of honour, are sometimes included in the bridal group, especially when the bride has small sons or daughters by her first marriage, whom she likes to have near her during the ceremony to hold her gloves and bouquet.

At a second marriage it is optional for the bride to ge “given away,” and many dispense with this little ceremony. Others, however, feel that the supporting arm of some relative or old family friend, on which to lean going up the aisle, the cynosure of all eyes, is welcome.