11 AUGUST 1923, Page 8

HISTORY AND HAPPINESS.

IT would be an interesting task for a learned man to write a history of happiness in this country. The historian, however, would need to be also a philo sopher. To weigh a blissful ignorance against the careful joys of knowledge, a primitive, simple life against one embellished with all the complications of scientific conveni- ence, good health against good faith, the exhilaration of war against the monotony of peace, over-population against under-population, the tyranny of organized and penalty-enforced service against a hard-won freedom resulting in a gospel of each for himself would be difficult indeed. No genius could, we imagine, be found great enough to hold the balance. Yet every desultory reader of history attempts to pass a judgment. No child for whom history is anything better than a means of getting up in the school but wonders as a dim picture of other days rises before his mind whether he would rather have lived then than now. In practice the subject would need to be strictly delimited—not only as to time but as to class. It is a very open question how far the sun of happiness shines upon the rich and poor simultaneously, or whether it is necessary to come to the rather cynical conclusion that one man's loss is another man's gain, and when the rich are up the poor are down. There is little doubt that when England first became an industrial country the lot of the poor was a desperately hard one, and the rich enjoyed their new ease very much indeed. Perhaps it is the only period in her history when English poor children suffered misery. The little rich of the period were just beginning to come to the front and thoughtful men began to give endless consideration to their upbring- ing and to devise a mistaken system for making them happy, which finally found a spokesman in the author of Sandford and Merton.

" A History of the Happiness of the Middle Class in England—Beginning Backwards," would, we think, make a very good title for the historical fragment we have imagined. At present the educated section of that class is in great danger, and the moment is a good one to put its constant pursuit of happiness upon record before it abandons the chase in despair or recovers itself and sets off again like a giant refreshed with wine.

Most of us can look back at least a century. We have heard what our fathers have told us, and what their grandfathers told them of an older generation still. We know more or less without books what life was like in the country and the town before the railways, and that probably means that we can make a pretty good estimate of how domestic life went on for some long time before the great and drastic change produced by easy means of locomotion. There is, of course, a tendency to see the past in bright colours; which is simply accounted for by the fact that all our witnesses are looking back to the time of life when energy and natural high spirits inclined them to think well of life. This fact, however, is easily allowed for ; it is easy even to make too great allowance. Most of us, we think, who consider seriously what " our fathers have told us " of " the wondrous works " done " in their day " will be apt to conclude that so far as happiness goes the change may be exaggerated, at least in the case of men. The necessity of earning a living, and the anxieties which belong to its accomplishment, very much reduce the effect upon men's happiness of the outward changes of custom. Where women are con- cerned—and, after all, they are half of the world— fashions in the art of life count for much more. Take the question of marriage, always the supreme event of a woman's life. It would seem at first sight as though their chances of happiness depended very largely upon the alterations in custom. For instance, when women of the middle-class were not trained to earn money, marriage was absolutely necessary to their happiness. Parents knew this very well, and impressed the fact upon their daughters from their cradles. Any marriage was con- sidered better than no marriage, and parents urged their daughters to make romance and affection secondary con- siderations. Also, in the kindness of their hearts, they exercised pressure, more or less tactfully, According to their temperaments. One man shut his daughter up till she gave in, another persuaded with all the tenderness he could command, and a third showed by a natural display of anxiety and disappointment that he was suffer- ing heartbreak at the thought of his child's refusal to be guided by his experience. Accordingly, the daughters of lawyers and doctors, and clergy and merchants, and big farmers and small landowners, found their choice of partners very much restricted. A woman was regarded as an old maid before she was thirty, and if distaste led her to refuse one offer, she thought many times before she refused a second. If she remained single she must lead the restricted life of a girl. It was not easy, even in Miss Austen's day, for a young woman even to take a walk alone. If she had no money she must be a governess, and all her friends pitied her for the sad necessity as openly and as truly as they would have pitied her if some unsightly physical defect had destroyed her matrimonial chances. All things considered, a sensible young woman ran no risks. She married when she could—always supposing the man proposed to her was neither repellent nor wicked. Logically speaking, her chances of happiness in married life were about half those of the present generation. She might easily find herself tied for life to a worthy person with whom she had not a taste or an idea in common. Logic, however, is a bad guide. From what our fathers have told us, happy marriages bore as large a proportion to the unhappy as they do now, and that even when we have made allow- ance for the new fashion of frankness. How this came about it is not easy to say. The education of girls was not such as to develop in them any special bent. Training was directed to marriage. They were taught to " make themselves happy "—if such a thing can be taught. Perhaps it cannot : but indifference upon a vast number of subjects can be cultivated. An ill-read and carefully guarded woman does not " strike out for her- self " intellectually. If she has a " strong character," she longs for the greater freedom which she sees as she looks at those around marriage alone gives. She desires an influence, and knows that, however much she must " knock under " to her husband, she will have during their most impressionable years command of her children. But when all these obvious things have been allowed for, there is still much mystery surrounding the subject. Between the period we have been thinking of and the present day there came a time of transition. Everyone, parents and children alike, began to see the evils of the system. Thackeray opened their eyes to it. Ethel Newcombe dealt it a heavy blow. " Love " in the most romantic sense was exalted as it has never been since the age of chivalry. The children were brought up upon Tennyson, and there arose slowly in the middle-class a vast army of old maids. Parents did not press. A man would have been condemned as an absolute brute who constrained a daughter to marry the most eligible man on earth if she told him that she was not in love. A new convention arose. Marriages were for the most part undertaken in an atmosphere of romance, and the girl at least did really expect to live happy ever after. The vogue of the happy-ending Victorian novel reflected the real state of things. Such marriages should have been happy, and many of them were. Was the proportion very much changed ? That would be a question for the historian to decide. Meanwhile, the old maids were wretched ; and a very great stir they made. The present generation owes a great deal to them. They forced the doors of the professions and the still stiffer doors of men's minds. They broke down the old barriers. Nowadays marriage in the middle-class is not more a necessity for women than Nature will always make it. They are free to accept or refuse whom they like. They go to school, and mix with the world, and play games with their brothers and their brothers' friends. They insist on knowing something of the personalities of their husbands before they marry them. They have copied from the working class the custom of " walking out." They " dance out " instead, but it comes to the same thing. It seems as though no better system could be devised. What would the historian of happiness have to say of the results ? It is too soon to judge, but the evidence of the Divorce Court would need to be given its due place. Is it a very large place or not ?