The Marriage Book (62 page)

But because these spells are diabolical, and are especially found among women, they can sometimes be cured by divine methods, sometimes by human ones. . . .

. . . If a nut or acorn is the cause of this spell, someone should take a nut or acorn, and separate it. With one half, the man should proceed on one side of some road, or of that road along which [the bride and groom] went, and put his half there; but the woman should put the other part of the nut on the other side of the road. Then the bride and groom should take both parts of the nut, without taking the shell off, and thus put the whole nut back together and keep it for seven days. Having done this, they should have intercourse. . . .

If magic has been done against a virgin bride and groom, so that the groom cannot have
sexual intercourse with the bride, take a dish or a cup. In the middle of it write a cross and these four names on the four sides of the cross:
avis, gravis, seps, sipa,
and on the inside rim of the cup write the entire gospel of St John. Afterwards take holy water, if you can, or wine or other water if you cannot get holy water, and put it in the cup, and with your finger wash all the letters in it, and both [the bride and groom] should drink it devotedly, and in God’s name they should have intercourse. It has been proved.

DANIEL DEFOE

CONJUGAL LEWDNESS; OR, MATRIMONIAL WHOREDOM: A TREATISE CONCERNING THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE MARRIAGE BED
, 1727

The author of popular novels such as
Robinson Crusoe
and
Moll Flanders
, Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) also wrote hundreds of nonfiction books and essays on a wide range of subjects, including marriage.

Suppose here are two young People, a Man and Woman . . . and the Man solemnly promises to marry her: But, in the mean time, the Fellow (Hell prompting, and his own Wickedness tempting) presses this Woman to let him lie with her. His Arguments are smooth and subtle;
Why should you refuse?
Says he:
We are fairly Man and Wife already
by Agreement (and, in the Sight of God, the Intention is the same thing as the Action)
there is nothing more to be done
but
just a few Words of the Parson, and the formality of repeating it in the Church, and that we will do too as soon as I can get the Licence down
, (suppose it to be in the Country) or as soon as the Asking in the Church is over; and you may take my Word, for I assure you again,
I will be very honest to you
, (and then perhaps he swears to it) and
How can you refuse me? And then he kisses her
, and continues urging and teazing her, and wheadling her to it, and perhaps she as much inclined to it as he, only more for waiting till Marriage than he; so that the Devil takes hold of Inclination on both Sides, to bring about the Wickedness. . . .

On the Man’s Part; here is a publick Confession, that you had a wicked filthy ungovernable Inclination, that could not contain your self from a Woman for a few Days. . . .

. . . How absurd a Thing is it to make a Whore of his own Wife; to expose her for a Whore, who he proposes to embrace as an honest Woman ever after; to draw her in to be exposed, to be flouted at, to be jested with, and insulted all her Days, to be the scorn of her Neighbours, slighted and shunned by modest Women, and laughed at by every Body.

MARIA THERESA

LETTER TO MARIE ANTOINETTE, 1775

The powerful Austrian empress Maria Theresa (1717–1780) bore sixteen children, including two future queens, a couple of emperors, and a slew of archdukes and archduchesses. Yet her own marriage had been strained by her husband’s infidelities, and she wanted to ensure that her daughter Marie Antoinette make a success of her marriage to the French king Louis XVI. The empress had reason to be concerned: despite many warning letters like this one, it took seven years before the couple consummated their marriage.

During their lifetimes, Louis was rumored to be impotent, Marie Antoinette licentious; in the early twentieth century, author Stefan Zweig put forth the view that Louis had a small deformity but was loath to have it corrected surgically. More recent research suggests that the problem was actually that Louis was so well endowed that it made intercourse excruciating for both parties.

All the letters from Paris say that you sleep separately from the King, and that he does not trust you very much. I must admit that that strikes me even more as in the daytime you are amusing yourself without the King, and therefore this friendship, and custom of being together will end soon, and I can only foresee unhappiness and pain for you in your brilliant position, although Rosenberg assured me that the King loved and esteemed you, and therefore you could easily maintain your position.

Your sole task must be to spend the whole day with him as much as possible, to keep him company, be his best friend and confidante, and to try to know what is happening in order to be able to talk to him and support him; then he will never find more pleasure and comfort elsewhere than in your company. We are not here to amuse ourselves, but to become worthy of heaven. Forgive these sermons, but I tell you, this sleeping apart, and these trips with the comte d’Artois have pained me greatly, as I realize the consequences, and cannot present them to you too dramatically, as I wish to save you from the abyss towards which you are racing. My love requires me to warn you of these matters, do not dismiss my words too hastily.

WILLIAM BLAKE

NOTEBOOK FRAGMENT, CIRCA 1793

Little regarded in his lifetime and often mocked for his eccentric views, the brilliant poet, engraver, and painter William Blake (1757–1827) was acclaimed in later centuries as a pioneer of Romantic poetry and an astonishing visionary. Wife Catherine, to whom he was devoted and who helped him create and print his vividly illustrated works, once said of Blake: “I have very little of Mr. Blake’s company; he is always in Paradise.”

In a wife I would desire

What in whores is always found

The lineaments of Gratified desire.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE
, 1829

The passage below is from a chapter called “The Fore-Ordained,” in which the then-single Balzac (see
Fidelity
;
Honeymoon
;
Power
) offers a series of aphorisms that he describes as the “Matrimonial Catechism.”

SEXUAL AID ADVERTISEMENT

MORNING OREGONIAN
, 1896

The forty-eight-page pamphlet described in this ad promised potency and sexual stamina, in not quite so few words. The pamphlet, though free, actually promoted the “Erie Vacuum Appliance” to be purchased by mail order and designed to cause “a vigorous circulation of the blood throughout that part.”

The Triumph of Love Is Happy and Fruitful Marriage.

Every Man Who Would Know the Grand Truths, the Plain Facts, the New Discoveries of Medical Science as Applied to Married Life, Who Would Atone for Past Errors and Avoid Future Pitfalls, Should Secure the Wonderful Little Book Called “Complete Manhood, and How to Attain It.”

Here at last is information from a high medical source that must work wonders with this generation of men.

The book fully describes a method by which to attain full vigor and manly power.

A method by which to end all unnatural strains on the system.

To cure nervousness, lack of self-control, despondency, &c.

To exchange a jaded and worn nature for one of brightness, buoyancy and power.

To cure forever effects of excesses, overwork, worry, &c.

To give full strength, development and tone to every portion and organ of the body.

Age no barrier. Failure impossible. Two thousand references.

The book is purely medical and scientific, useless to curiosity seekers, invaluable to men only who need it.

A despairing man, who had applied to us, soon after wrote:

“Well, I tell you that first day is one I’ll never forget. I just bubbled with joy. I wanted to hug everybody and tell them my old self had died yesterday, and my new self was born to-day. Why didn’t you tell me when I first wrote that I would find it this way?”

And another thus:

“If you dumped a cart load of gold at my feet it would not bring such gladness into my life as your method has done.”

Write to the ERIE MEDICAL COMPANY, Buffalo, N.Y., and ask for the little book called “COMPLETE MANHOOD.” Refer to this paper, and the company promises to send the book, in sealed envelope, without any marks, and entirely free, until it is well introduced.

WILLIAM ROBINSON

SEXUAL PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY
, 1912

As a team of reviewers wrote of Dr. Robinson (see
Grievances
) in a 1924 issue of the
Journal of Social Forces
: “More than any other comparable writer . . . [Robinson] has freed his medical writing from those considerations and implications of conventional mysticism, prudery and supernaturalistic ethics which surround even most of the medical and semi-medical writings on sexual problems.”

Quite often, when a married woman is ailing, has a pasty, dingy complexion, lusterless eyes, suffers from lack of appetite and insomnia, is irritable and cranky, wants she-does-not-know-what, is in a mood varying from black to the deepest azure, has been given dozens of kinds of drugs, and treated by massage, baths, electricity, etc., and has not been improved in the least, quite often we say, such a woman needs no treatment at all—it is her husband who needs it. And very often he needs no treatment either—merely a little advice. And just a little advice frankly and plainly given does the work. The wife’s complexion clears up, her eyes acquire a luster, her walk has a spring to it which it did not possess before, her appetite is fine, she is jolly and happy, life has a new interest which it did not possess before—in short, she is thoroly permeated with the
joie de vivre.
And what did it all?

The
cognoscenti
know; as to the others, we must let them do some guessing, for we regret to say, our censors will not let us discuss such things frankly in print.

MARIE STOPES

MARRIED LOVE: A NEW CONTRIBUTION TO THE SOLUTION OF SEX DIFFICULTIES
, 1918

A British botanist and outspoken advocate of sexual freedom, birth control, and early eugenics, Marie Stopes (1880–1958) earned praise and condemnation for her extraordinarily frank bestseller on sex and fulfillment. Among the subjects she explored were the differences between men and women when it came to the subject of sleep after sex, which for men “falls like a soft curtain of oblivion and saves the man’s consciousness from the jar and disappointment of an anti-climax.”

Stopes’s first marriage was annulled in 1916 on the uncontested grounds that it had never been consummated.

How fare women in this event? When they too have had complete satisfaction they similarly relax and slumber.

But as things are to-day it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the majority of wives are left wakeful and nerve-racked to watch with tender motherly brooding, or with bitter and jealous envy, the slumbers of the men who, through ignorance and carelessness, have neglected to see that they too had the necessary resolution of nervous tension.

Many married women have told me that after they have had relations with their husbands they are restless, either for some hours or for the whole night; and I feel sure that the prevalent failure on the part of many men to effect orgasms for their wives at each congress, must be a very common source of the sleeplessness and nervous diseases of so many married women.

The relation between the completion of the sex-act and sleep in woman is well indicated in the case of Mrs. A., who is typical of a large class of wives. She married a man with whom she was passionately in love. Neither she nor her husband had ever had connection with any one else, and, while they were both keen and intelligent people with some knowledge of biology, neither knew anything of the details of human sex-union. For several years her husband had unions with her which gave him some satisfaction and left him ready at once to sleep. Neither he nor she knew that women should have an orgasm, and after every union she was left so “on edge” and sleepless that never less than several hours would elapse before she could sleep at all, and often she remained wakeful the whole night.