The Marriage Book (59 page)

DAPHNE DU MAURIER

REBECCA
, 1938

British author Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) is probably best known today for
Rebecca
, a Gothic novel told by a nameless heroine, essentially the tale of a second marriage haunted by the first. In this scene, the narrator waits while her fiancé, Maxim de Winter, breaks the news of their engagement to the woman with whom she has been traveling as a lady’s companion. The narrator’s reaction to seeing Rebecca’s name is just a hint of things to come.

The ellipses are the author’s.

The walls of the suite were thick, I could hear no hum of voices. I wondered what he was saying to her, how he phrased his words. Perhaps he said, “I fell in love with her, you know, the very first time we met. We’ve been seeing one another every day.” And she in answer, “Why, Mr. de Winter, it’s quite the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” Romantic, that was the word I had tried to remember coming up in the lift. Yes, of course. Romantic. That was what people would say. It was all very sudden and romantic. They suddenly decided to get married and there it was. Such an adventure. I smiled to myself as I hugged my knees on the window seat, thinking how wonderful it was, how happy I was going to be. I was to marry the man I loved. I was to be Mrs. de Winter. It was foolish to go on having that pain in the pit of my stomach when I was so happy. Nerves of course. Waiting like this; the doctor’s ante-room. It would have been better, after all, more natural surely to have gone into the sitting-room hand in hand, laughing, smiling at one another and for him to say: “We’re going to be married, we’re very much in love.”

In love. He had not said anything yet about being in love. No time perhaps. It was all so hurried at the breakfast table. Marmalade, and coffee, and that tangerine. No time. The tangerine was very bitter. No, he had not said anything about being in love. Just that we would be married. Short and definite, very original. Original proposals were much better. More genuine. Not like other people. Not like younger men who talked nonsense probably, not meaning half they said. Not like younger men being very incoherent, very passionate, swearing impossibilities. Not like him the first time, asking Rebecca. . . . I must not think of that. Put it away. A thought forbidden, prompted by demons. Get thee behind me, Satan. I must never think about that, never, never, never. He loves me, he wants to show me Manderley. Would they ever have done with their talking, would they ever call me into the room?

There was the book of poems lying beside my bed. He had forgotten he had ever lent them to me. They could not mean much to him then. “Go on,” whispered the demon, “open the title-page, that’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Open the title-page.” Nonsense, I said, I’m only going to put the book with the rest of the things. I yawned, I wandered to the table beside the bed. I picked up the book. I caught my foot in the flex of the bedside lamp, and stumbled, the book falling from my hands on to the floor. It fell open, at the title-page. “Max from Rebecca.” She was dead, and one must not have thoughts about the dead. They slept in peace, the grass blew over their graves. How alive was her writing though, how full of force. Those curious, sloping letters. The blob of ink. Done yesterday. It was just as if it had been written yesterday. I took my nail scissors from the dressing-case and cut the page, looking over my shoulder like a criminal.

I cut the page right out of the book. I left no jagged edges, and the book looked white and clean when the page was gone. A new book, that had not been touched. I tore the page up
in many little fragments and threw them into the wastepaper basket. Then I went and sat on the window seat again. But I kept thinking of the torn scraps in the basket, and after a moment I had to get up and look in the basket once more. Even now the ink stood up on the fragments thick and black, the writing was not destroyed. I took a box of matches and set fire to the fragments. The flame had a lovely light, staining the paper, curling the edges, making the slanting writing impossible to distinguish. The fragments fluttered to grey ashes. The letter R was the last to go, it twisted in the flame, it curled outwards for a moment, becoming larger than ever. Then it crumpled too; the flame destroyed it. It was not ashes even, it was feathery dust. . . . I went and washed my hands in the basin. I felt better, much better. I had the clean, new feeling that one has when the calendar is hung on the wall at the beginning of the year. January the 1st. I was aware of the same freshness, the same gay confidence. The door opened and he came into the room.

PHILIP BARRY

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
, 1939

Philip Barry (1896–1949) wrote the play
The Philadelphia Story
expressly for Katharine Hepburn, and it was a great success, both on Broadway and, the following year, as a film also starring Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. The action takes place on the day before the intended wedding of the blue-blooded Tracy Lord to the up-and-comer George Kittredge. C. K. Dexter Haven, husband number one, has arrived just in time to throw a wrench into the works. Margaret, Tracy’s mother, is more sanguine about the bad behavior of her own husband, Seth.

JULIE CONNELLY

“THE CEO’S SECOND WIFE,”
FORTUNE
, 1989

Julie Connelly was a senior editor at
Fortune
magazine when she reported on a marital pattern among powerful men that she linked to the growing acceptance of divorce in American society. Along the way, she coined a term that has since made its way into everyday use.

Powerful men are beginning to demand trophy wives. . . . The more money men make, the argument goes, the more self-assured they become, and the easier it is for them to think: I
deserve
a queen.

Enter the second wife: a decade or two younger than her husband, sometimes several inches taller, beautiful, and very often accomplished. The second wife certifies her husband’s status and, if possible given the material she has to work with, dispels the notion that men peak sexually at age 18. This trophy does not hang on the wall like a moose head—she works. Hard.

SECRETS

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

JULIUS CAESAR
, CIRCA 1599

The wife of Brutus, Portia sounds remarkably modern in her desire to know what is troubling her husband—and distinctly annoyed by the prospect of being excluded from his world. She inflicts her “voluntary wound” as she addresses him.

HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE

“THE EVENING BEFORE THE MARRIAGE,” CIRCA 1830

Born in Germany but more closely associated with his adopted country of Switzerland, Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (1771–1848) served in various political and educational posts, wrote novels and history, and edited the
Schweizerbote
(
Swiss Messenger
), a popular liberal weekly. He married a pastor’s daughter named Anna Elisabeth Nüsperli in 1805. Together they had twelve sons and a daughter.

The short story from which the following excerpt is taken was translated into English and reprinted in the American magazine
The Ladies’ Wreath
.

In the first solitary hour after the ceremony . . . promise each other, sincerely and solemnly,
never to have a secret from each other
under whatever pretext, with whatever excuse it may be. You must continually and every moment, see clearly into each other’s bosom. Even when one of you has committed a fault, wait not an instant, but confess it freely—let it cost tears, but confess it. And as you keep
nothing secret from each other,
so, on the contrary, preserve the privacies of your house, marriage state and heart, from
father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, and all the world.
You two, with God’s help, build your own quiet world.

COTESWORTH PINCKNEY

THE WEDDING GIFT, TO ALL WHO ARE ENTERING THE MARRIAGE STATE
, 1848

The Rev. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (see
In-laws
) was firm in his advice about the airing of marital grievances.

Should the fact of your having sought the advice of your friends become known to your husband, that mutual trust which must exist between you to render the married state a happy one, will be forever destroyed. Consider well, therefore, before you impart to a third party any disagreements that may take place in your home. Be rather solicitous to screen them from observation. The human heart is not generally hard, unless it is made so; beware, then, of tampering with it.

G. K. CHESTERTON

CHARLES DICKENS
, 1906

Author of some eighty books, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) wrote social, political, and literary criticism, theology, poetry, novels, plays, biographies, and short stories. His book about Dickens was one of the first to rekindle an appreciation of the Victorian writer and his insights into the rich variety of average people. Dickens’s great lesson, Chesterton wrote, was: “It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies.”

Chesterton met his future wife, Frances Blogg, in 1896 and in his proposal letter two years later, described how he’d felt upon meeting her: “If I had anything to do with this girl I should go on my knees to her; if I spoke with her she would never deceive me; if I depended on her she would never deny me; if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she would never go back on me.” They remained married until his death.

A man and a woman cannot live together without having against each other a kind of everlasting joke. Each has discovered that the other is a fool, but a great fool. This largeness, this grossness and gorgeousness of folly is the thing which we all find about those with whom we are in intimate contact; and it is the one enduring basis of affection, and even of respect. . . .

Many of us live publicly with featureless public puppets, images of the small public abstractions. It is when we pass our own private gate, and open our own secret door, that we step into the land of the giants.

MOHANDAS GANDHI