MESALLIANCES.
THE Rev. C. H. Craufurd, Rector of Old Swinford, Worcester- shire, a gentleman of good birth, fair means, considerable age, and gouty habit, has recently married his cook, whose English is not perfect, who is not polyglotted, but who is a woman of simple piety, and entirely disinterested in her attachment for Mr. Craufurd. We really must apologize to a lady who, for aught we know to the contrary, entirely deserves her promotion, and on whom, in any case, we should certainly never dream of passing a comment, for publishing such a sentence, but it is not our fault at all. We have but quoted her husband's own words. It has pleased Mr. Craufurd, a descendant, it would seem, of some relative of Wallace,—brigand who objected to the Union of Scotland and England proposed by Edward I.,—and son of the gallant officer who fell at Ciudad Rodrigo, not only to marry his cook, which he had an incontestible right to do, but to preach a sermon in his own pulpit explaining his reasons for the proceeding, which he had no right whatever to do ; and to send the Spectator a copy of that most eccentric production, which was certainly a supererogatory act of virtue. In it he states at much greater length the facts we have given, and a great many more, which will, we think, strike readers not acquainted with Swinford as possibly a little superfluous ; such as that his rank, the Rector's, is equal to that of a Duke, that his cousin refused Louis Napoleon, that he snubbed a suitor of his daughter's pretty savagely, and that he intends for the future to prepare himself for heaven and have very little to do with Old Swinford, two decidedly expedient resolutions. We must, however, refrain from analyzing the sermon. We never remember to have received so tempting a document ; for Mr. Craufurd is evidently not only not mad, but has been a man of education and ability ; but there would be cruelty to the innocent in criticizing, as it de- serves, a statement so eccentric and so naked. It is Mr. Craufurd's wife and daughters who have to bear the brunt of such a folly, not Mr. Craufurd himself ; and we leave his sermon therefore, with a hope that his Bishop will not take the notice of it which his parishioners expect, and that it and its author will be forgotten as speedily as if they had not furnished a week's amuse- ment to the Midland Counties. Mr. Craufurd is not mad, but there are forms of silliness which ought to enjoy the privileges and sanctity of insanity.
It is a very curious and not quite intelligible fact that the horror of a mesalliance, upon which Mr. Craufurd has evidently been brooding until it has almost overturned a mind originally of some capacity, should remain so very strong in England, and indeed throughout the world. The respect for birth is dying out rapidly, so rapidly that it is difficult to ascertain the birth of many leading statesmen, and people profess—with a certain honesty, too, in the profession—to make little account of occupation. What does it signify, say the philosophers, what a man does, so long as it be honest work ?—and on this point the Western world believes itself, and sincerely believes itself, to be in accord with the philosophers. Moreover, upon very many points quite as important as marriage it is in accord with them, has really Gleaned its mind of prejudices once of undeniable or admitted force. No statesman probably in England, America, France, or Germany will ever again find his father's position or his own early occupations a serious impediment to his career. Day by day the dislike for trade in any of its hundred forms is dying away, and in the four most powerful legislatures in the world the fact that an orator had been, or still was, a shop- keeper would not cost him a cheer or an interruption. The transfer of political power to the masses, the rise of the Jews, the growth of an exceeding appreciation of mental power have all tended to ameliorate social prejudices, till it is not only true but commonplace to say that the Western world tends towards the equality which Mohammed secured so thoroughly for the Eastern. We may remark en passant that the fanatics for Equality will do well to explain why it has accomplished so little in countries where a tobacco-dealer may, if he rises, marry a Sultan's daughter, and a slave may become in a year a great officer of .State. Nevertheless, the ancient prejudice, in the ancient world the strongest of which men's minds were capable, against the intermarriage of different castes, against any per- manent confusion in the different strata of society, is still as strong as ever. Men ridicule birth and respect occupation, yet there never was a time when a lady who made a low marriage was believed to have lost herself so utterly, or when a proceeding like mr. Craufurd's excited a feeling so nearly akin to scorn among his own compeers. King Cophetua, to use the Rector's slightly hackneyed and excessively harsh illus- tration,—harsh, we mean, to his wife,—could not now marry the beggar girl without imminent risk of dethronement, or if his folly were for any reason condoned, it certainly would not endear him to the popular imagination. It would be much more difficult now than it was a hundred years ago for a great Peer to marry far below him, even if the object of his choice were another Lady of Burleigh ; and the woman who does it is considered almost lost. The social pride which is offended is, indeed, different in kind, but it is very nearly as powerful in its degree. Something must be allowed, no doubt, to the gradual decay of individualism, to the wretched habit of interference, which is growing daily both in France and England till a man has to appeal to an electorate of friends before he can wear the boots which fit him, and must take a sort of plebiscitum before he orders his dinner. Mr. Bicknell likes horse chops, and asks people to eat them ; but they hardly dare do it without asking the newspapers to condone the innova- tion, on the ground of the immense good the poor may derive from stringy horse beef at about the price of mutton. A very little more of the process, and we shall have to legalize the interference, not indeed of Family Councils, as the French do—for Englishmen, as highly domestic persons, usually detest their cousins—but of Councils of Friends, to authorize Smith's acquaintance by statute to interfere against Smith's wastefulness in shirt collars and scent. If we may believe American novelists, that kind of thing does actually occur in Connecticut, and it is to Connecticut we are tending. Of course, if friends have any right of comment at all, it is upon marriage, which as it were imposes a friend upon them ; but their new habit of interference does not explain all the facts. We are inclined to believe that the pride of refinement, of culture in its social aspect, is becoming as strong as the pride of birth ; that the demand for equality is in marriage taking the form of a demand for equality in refinement. If the refinement exists, inequality of birth or condition does not signify much ; but if it does not, or rather, if there is reason to suspect it does not, then Society goes wroth. The greatest lady in the country might marry a curate without comment, except that she might have looked higher, from people who would cut her dead if she married the curate's brother, who is still keeping a shop. The preconceived notion is that the curate must have been refined by education, and the shopman need not, and their equality of birth and pecuniary position are never taken into the account. Opinion rather sympathizes than otherwise with the Archduke who marries a singer of the front rank because she is presumably refined and educated, if only by her art ; but the Archduchess who stooped to an actor would be ridiculed, because there is no such presumption. The social law of the matter still weighs more heavily on women than men ; but the explanation is the same,—men are allowed to consider persona) beauty an element in refinement, or to be more true, an equivalelt for it ; and women are expected to be above any such consiclos- tion, to deny that unrefined beauty can be beauty at all. They are accused else of coarseness of taste, and coarseness ofaste 15 only allowed or tolerated in men.
This pride of refinement has its bad side, threateni4 tu divide men into castes almost as stringently as the pride of Jivth used to do ; but its general effect is probably good, and we ,:e by no means
inclined to argue gravely that misalliances are expedient. As a rule, the men or women who form them make mistakes, though not, it must be observed, in precisely the same way. The man who marries a woman much beneath himself in culture is almost sure .either to be unhappy, being annoyed by a perpetual incompati- bility of habits and ideas, or to lower himself slowly to his wife's level, to the distinct injury of his character. The latter is the more frequent result, while it is in the case of the woman the less frequent. She is usually made more or less unhappy by her blunder, but she usually also tends to become more refined, to fall back in her recoil more decidedly upon her ladyhood. The children of a man who has married beneath him are almost invariably coarse, -the children of a woman who has done the same thing almost invariably more refined than either father or mother. Tenny- son's well known line, "All within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay" may be said to be invariably true of the man, but is by no means invariably true of the woman. The porcelain is apt to preserve its glaze with additional -care as a preservative against the mud. So, also, in mesalliances -of a different kind. A woman is rarely made unhappy by marrying above her, though novelists are so fond of depicting that particular form of unhappiness. Such women are apt to like the refinement they do not share, are content to be proud of the intellect they do not quite understand, and, unless irredeemably vulgar, accept even an oppressing grandeur with a passive, not an .active dislike. No Lady of Burleigh, such as Tennyson draws, would die of external pressure, unless, indeed, it took the form, as it is said to have done with Lady Jane Grey, of excessive sense of responsibility, aninward dread, springing not from the caste, but from the conscience. A man, on the other hand, almost invariably loses by marrying much above him, loses with his self-reliance much of his manliness and independence, gets a habit of deference and self- distrust which, in such a relation, is fatal to the energy of his .-character. To a man a mesalliances either way is usually very dangerous, and our only plea is for his right to risk the danger without too much social interference. Let him judge for himself, and if he judges wrongly, take the consequences of his own acts as resignedly as he can ; and above all, let him never, like this poor Rector, attempt a public defence. His real apology is his right to freedom of will in the matter, and the more he trusts to that right, and the leas to argument, the better for him and for his wife, whose position is certainly not improved, even if her temper can endure a -defence which Mr. Craufurd in his sermon puts in this marvellously plain way:—" With such a woman it has been my will and pleasure -to form an alliance—an alliance little more in accordance with my rank (and I am sure my wife will pardon me for saying so) than was that in accordance with his royalty, which King Cophetua formed when he espoused the beggar-girl, and, as the ballad tells -us, lived with her, ever after, a quiet,' and doubtless, a happy, :life."
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