A man's dealings
with women can be purely physical (they cannot really, of course: but I mean he
can refuse to take other things into account, to the great damage of his soul
(and body) and theirs); or 'friendly'; or he can be a 'lover' (engaging and
blending all his affections and powers of mind and body in a complex emotion
powerfully coloured and energized by 'sex'). This is a fallen world. The
dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world
has been 'going to the bad' all down the ages. The various social forms shift,
and each new mode has its special dangers: but the 'hard spirit of
concupiscence' has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house,
since Adam fell. We will leave aside the 'immoral' results. These you desire
not to be dragged into. To renunciation you have no call. 'Friendship' then? In
this fallen world the 'friendship' that should be possible between all human
beings, is virtually impossible between man and woman. The devil is endlessly
ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at
catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or
more animal ones. This 'friendship' has often been tried: one side or the other
nearly always fails. Later in life when sex cools down, it may be possible. It
may happen between saints. To ordinary folk it can only rarely occur: two minds
that have really a primarily mental and spiritual affinity may by accident
reside in a male and a female body, and yet may desire and achieve a
'friendship' quite independent of sex. But no one can count on it. The other
partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by 'falling in love'. But
a young man does not really (as a rule) want 'friendship', even if he says he
does. There are plenty of young men (as a rule). He wants love: innocent, and
yet irresponsible perhaps. Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne! as Chaucer
says. Then if he is a Christian and is aware that there is such a thing as sin,
he wants to know what to do about it.
There is in our
Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a
product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times
are inimical to it. It idealizes 'love' — and as far as it goes can be very
good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not
purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, 'service', courtesy, honour, and
courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly
game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed
contrary to) matrimony. Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and
the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity –
of the old-fashioned 'his divinity' = the woman he loves – the object or reason
of noble conduct. This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman
is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril. But combined and harmonized
with religion (as long ago it was, producing much of that beautiful devotion to
Our Lady that has been God's way of refining so much our gross manly natures
and emotions, and also of warming and colouring our hard, bitter, religion) it
can be very noble. Then it produces what I suppose is still felt, among those
who retain even vestigiary Christianity, to be the highest ideal of love
between man and woman. Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true,
and it is not perfectly 'theocentric'. It takes, or at any rate has in the past
taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck
not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the
young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It
inculcates exaggerated notions of 'true love', as a fire from without, a
permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and
unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look
for a 'love' that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without
any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the
squalor of the divorce courts).
Women really have
not much part in all this, though they may use the language of romantic love,
since it is so entwined in all our idioms. The sexual impulse makes women
(naturally when unspoiled more unselfish) very sympathetic and understanding,
or specially desirous of being so (or seeming so), and very ready to enter into
all the interests, as far as they can, from ties to religion, of the young man
they are attracted to. No intent necessarily to deceive: sheer instinct: the
servient, helpmeet instinct, generously warmed by desire and young blood. Under
this impulse they can in fact often achieve very remarkable insight and
understanding, even of things otherwise outside their natural range: for it is
their gift to be receptive, stimulated, fertilized (in many other matters than
the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent
woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point – and how (with rare
exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they
cease to take a personal interest in him. But this is their natural avenue to
love. Before the young woman knows where she is (and while the romantic young
man, when he exists, is still sighing) she may actually 'fall in love'. Which
for her, an unspoiled natural young woman, means that she wants to become the
mother of the young man's children, even if that desire is by no means clear to
her or explicit. And then things are going to happen: and they may be very
painful and harmful, if things go wrong. Particularly if the young man only wanted
a temporary guiding star and divinity (until he hitches his waggon to a
brighter one), and was merely enjoying the flattery of sympathy nicely seasoned
with a titillation of sex – all quite innocent, of course, and worlds away from
'seduction'.
You may meet in
life (as in literature1) women who are flighty, or even plain wanton — I don't
refer to mere flirtatiousness, the sparring practice for the real combat, but
to women who are too silly to take even love seriously, or are actually so
depraved as to enjoy 'conquests', or even enjoy the giving of pain – but these
are abnormalities, even though false teaching, bad upbringing, and corrupt
fashions may encourage them. Much though modern conditions have changed
feminine circumstances, and the detail of what is considered propriety, they
have not changed natural instinct. A man has a life-work, a career, (and male
friends), all of which could (and do where he has any guts) survive the
shipwreck of 'love'. A young woman, even one 'economically independent', as
they say now (it usually really means economic subservience to male commercial
employers instead of to a father or a family), begins to think of the 'bottom
drawer' and dream of a home, almost at once. If she really falls in love, the
shipwreck may really end on the rocks. Anyway women are in general much less
romantic and more practical. Don't be misled by the fact that they are more
'sentimental' in words – freer with 'darling', and all that. They do not want a
guiding star. They may idealize a plain young man into a hero; but they don't
really need any such glamour either to fall in love or to remain in it. If they
have any delusion it is that they can 'reform' men. They will take a rotter
open-eyed, and even when the delusion of reforming him fails, go on loving him.
They are, of course, much more realistic about the sexual relation. Unless
perverted by bad contemporary fashions they do not as a rule talk 'bawdy'; not
because they are purer than men (they are not) but because they don't find it
funny. I have known those who pretended to, but it is a pretence. It may be
intriguing, interesting, absorbing (even a great deal too absorbing) to them:
but it is just plumb natural, a serious, obvious interest; where is the joke?
They have, of
course, still to be more careful in sexual relations, for all the
contraceptives. Mistakes are damaging physically and socially (and
matrimonially). But they are instinctively, when uncorrupt, monogamous. Men are
not. .... No good pretending. Men just ain't, not by their animal nature.
Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for
us men a piece of 'revealed' ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh.
Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few
hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a
healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between
our bodies, minds, and souls.
However, the
essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free
enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for
self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by
denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great
mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to
sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may
help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him –
as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties
to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however
truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to
her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the
will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up 'in
the Church'. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it. When the glamour wears
off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that
the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be
the next sexually attractive person that comes along. Someone whom they might
indeed very profitably have married, if only —. Hence divorce, to provide the
'if only'. And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a
mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound
judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most
profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes:
in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a
little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found
more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually
married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most
of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His
appearances). It is notorious that in fact happy marriages are more common
where the 'choosing' by the young persons is even more limited, by parental or
family authority, as long as there is a social ethic of plain unromantic
responsibility and conjugal fidelity. But even in countries where the romantic
tradition has so far affected social arrangements as to make people believe that
the choosing of a mate is solely the concern of the young, only the rarest good
fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined'
for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still
dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been
written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life
(yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such
great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the
truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by
'failure' and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first
sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an
unfallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence,
wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean, heart, and fidelity of
will.....
My own history is
so exceptional, so wrong and imprudent in nearly every point that it makes it
difficult to counsel prudence. Yet hard cases make bad law; and exceptional
cases are not always good guides for others. For what it is worth here is some
autobiography – mainly on this occasion directed towards the points of age, and
finance.
I fell in
love with your mother at the approximate age of 18. Quite genuinely, as has
been shown – though of course defects of character and temperament have caused
me often to fall below the ideal with which I started. Your mother was older
than I, and not a Catholic. Altogether unfortunate, as viewed by a guardian.
And it was in a sense very unfortunate; and in a way very bad for me. These
things are absorbing and nervously exhausting. I was a clever boy in the throes
of work for (a very necessary) Oxford scholarship. The combined tensions nearly
produced a bad breakdown. I muffed my exams and though (as years afterwards my
H[ead] M[aster] told me) I ought to have got a good scholarship, I only landed
by the skin of my teeth an exhibition of £60 at Exeter: just enough with a
school leaving scholarship] of the same amount to come up on (assisted by my
dear old guardian). Of course there was a credit side, not so easily seen by
the guardian. I was clever, but not industrious or single-minded; a large pan
of my failure was due simply to not working (at least not at classics) not
because I was in love, but because I was studying something else: Gothic and
what not. Having the romantic upbringing I made a boy-and-girl affair serious,
and made it the source of effort. Naturally rather a physical coward, I passed
from a despised rabbit on a house second-team to school colours in two seasons.
All that sort of thing. However, trouble arose: and I had to choose between
disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me,
more than most real fathers, but without any obligation, and 'dropping' the
love-affair until I was 21. I don't regret my decision, though it was very hard
on my lover. But that was not my fault. She was perfectly free and under no vow
to me, and I should have had no just complaint (except according to the unreal
romantic code) if she had got married to someone else. For very nearly three
years I did not see or write to my lover. It was extremely hard, painful and
bitter, especially at first. The effects were not wholly good: I fell back into
folly and slackness and misspent a good deal of my first year at College. But I
don't think anything else would have justified marriage on the basis of a boy's
affair; and probably nothing else would have hardened the will enough to give
such an affair (however genuine a case of true love) permanence. On the night
of my 21st birthday I wrote again to your mother – Jan. 3, 1913. On Jan. 8th I
went back to her, and became engaged, and informed an astonished family. I
picked up my socks and did a spot of work (too late to save Hon. Mods. from
disaster) – and then war broke out the next year, while I still had a year to
go at college. In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a
nasty cleft to be in, especially for a young man with too much imagination and
little physical courage. No degree: no money: fiancée. I endured the obloquy,
and hints becoming outspoken from relatives, stayed up, and produced a First in
Finals in 1915. Bolted into the army: July 1915. I found the situation
intolerable and married on March 22, 1916. May found me crossing the Channel (I
still have the verse I wrote on the occasion!) for the carnage of the Somme.
Think of your
mother! Yet I do not now for a moment feel that she was doing more than she
should have been asked to do – not that that detracts from the credit of it. I
was a young fellow, with a moderate degree, and apt to write verse, a few
dwindling pounds p. a. (£20 – 40), and no prospects, a Second Lieut. on 7/6 a
day in the infantry where the chances of survival were against you heavily (as
a subaltern). She married me in 1916 and John was born in 1917 (conceived and
carried during the starvation-year of 1917 and the great U-Boat campaign) round
about the battle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed as far-off as it
does now. I sold out, and spent to pay the nursing-home, the last of my few
South African shares, 'my patrimony'.
Out of the
darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing
to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. .... There you will find romance,
glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and
more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands
the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can
what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be
maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which
every man's heart desires.
(6-8 March 1941)
