CHAPTER XXXV

OF THREE GOOD WOMEN

They are not by the dozen, as every one knows, and especially in the duties of marriage, for that is a bargain full of so many nice circumstances that ’tis hard a woman’s will should long endure such a restraint; men, though their condition be something better under that tie, have yet enough to do.  The true touch and test of a happy marriage have respect to the time of the companionship, if it has been constantly gentle, loyal, and agreeable.  In our age, women commonly reserve the publication of their good offices, and their vehement affection towards their husbands, until they have lost them, or at least, till then defer the testimonies of their good will; a too slow testimony and unseasonable.  By it they rather manifest that they never loved them till dead:  their life is nothing but trouble; their death full of love and courtesy.  As fathers conceal their affection from their children, women, likewise, conceal theirs from their husbands, to maintain a modest respect.  This mystery is not for my palate; ’tis to much purpose that they scratch themselves and tear their hair.  I whisper in a waiting-woman’s or secretary’s ear:  “How were they, how did they live together?” I always have that good saying m my head: 

“Jactantius moerent, quae minus dolent.”

     ["They make the most ado who are least concerned.” (Or:)
     “They mourn the more ostentatiously, the less they grieve.” 
     —­Tacitus, Annal., ii. 77, writing of Germanicus.]

Their whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to the dead.  We should willingly give them leave to laugh after we are dead, provided they will smile upon us whilst we are alive.  Is it not enough to make a man revive in pure spite, that she, who spat in my face whilst I was in being, shall come to kiss my feet when I am no more?  If there be any honour in lamenting a husband, it only appertains to those who smiled upon them whilst they had them; let those who wept during their lives laugh at their deaths, as well outwardly as within.  Therefore, never regard those blubbered eyes and that pitiful voice; consider her deportment, her complexion, the plumpness of her cheeks under all those formal veils; ’tis there she talks plain French.  There are few who do not mend upon’t, and health is a quality that cannot lie.  That starched and ceremonious countenance looks not so much back as forward, and is rather intended to get a new husband than to lament the old.  When I was a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady, who is yet living, the widow of a prince, wore somewhat more ornament in her dress than our laws of widowhood allow, and being reproached with it, she made answer that it was because she was resolved to have no more love affairs, and would never marry again.

I have here, not at all dissenting from our customs, made choice of three women, who have also expressed the utmost of their goodness and affection about their husbands’ deaths; yet are they examples of another kind than are now m use, and so austere that they will hardly be drawn into imitation.