The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New married Couple (1682) written by A. Marsh
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A. Marsh >> The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New married Couple (1682)
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16 [Illustration: THE TEN PLEASURES OF MARRIAGE
Printed at London 1682
Published by the Navarre Society London]
THE TEN PLEASURES OF
MARRIAGE
AND THE SECOND PART
THE CONFESSION OF THE
NEW MARRIED COUPLE
ATTRIBUTED TO
APHRA BEHN
_REPRINTED WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
BY
JOHN HARVEY
AND THE ORIGINAL TWENTY PLATES
AND TWO ENGRAVED TITLES
RE-ENGRAVED
LONDON: MCMXXII
_PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE NAVARRE SOCIETY LIMITED_
_Printed in Great Britain_
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
The Restoration brought back to England something more than a king and
the theatre. It renewed in English life the robust vitality of humour
which had been repressed under the Commonwealth--though, in spite of
repression, there were, even among the Puritan divines, men like the
author of _Joanereidos_, whose self-expression ran the whole gamut
from freedom to licentiousness.
It is a curious thing, that fundamental English humour. It can be
vividly concentrated into a single word, as when, for instance, the
chronicler of _The Ten Pleasures of Marriage_ revives the opprobrious
term for a tailor--"pricklouse": the whole history of the English
woollen industry and of the stuffy Tudor and Stuart domestic
architecture is in the nickname. Or a single phrase can light up an
idea, as when, a few days before marriage, "the Bridegroom is running
up and down like a dog." But, on the other hand, the spirit manifests
itself sometimes in exuberance, as when Urquhart and Motteux
metagrobolized Rabelais into something almost more tumescent and
overwhelming than the original. In that vein of humour the present
work frequently runs. The author is as ready to pile up his epithets
as Urquhart himself. Let the Nurse go, he says, "for then you'll have
an Eater, a Stroy-good, a Stufgut, a Spoil-all, and Prittle-pratler,
less than you had before."
It is, in fact, as an example of English humour--exaggerated, no
doubt, by the reaction from Puritanism--that _The Ten Pleasures of
Marriage_ should be viewed, in the main. It is true, however, that it
is of uncertain parentage and must own to foreign kin. A well-known
but (by a strange coincidence) almost equally rare book is Antoine de
la Salle's _Quinze Joies de Mariage_. It seems possible that this was
translated into English. At any rate, in the year in which _The Ten
Pleasures_ was published--1682-1683--the following work was registered
at Stationers' Hall: _The Woman's Advocate, or fifteen real comforts
of matrimony, being in requital of the late fifteen_ sham _comforts_.
Moreover, _The Ten Pleasures_ was in all probability printed
abroad--Hazlitt thinks at The Hague or Amsterdam. The very first page
in the original edition contains one of several hints of Batavian
production--"younger" is printed "jounger." The curious allusion to
the great French poet, Clement Marot, may also suggest a temporary
foreign sojourn for the author for though Marot was doubtless known
to English readers in the seventeenth century, the exact reference of
the allusion is not at all obvious. It very possibly reflects on the
fact that in 1526 the Sorbonne condemned both Marot and his poem
_Colloque de l'abbe et de la femme scavante_; and Marot certainly
wrote about women and marriage. He is not, however, a "stock" figure
in English literary allusion, either learned or popular, and the fact
suggests at least familiarity with the literature of other countries.
But there can be no doubt of the English character of the text both in
general and in detail. It is redolent of English middle-class life as
it was in the days before our grandfathers decided that the human body
was an obscene thing and its functions deplorable. It has the
middle-class love of good food--Colchester oysters (famous then as
now), asparagus, peaches, apricots, candied ginger, China oranges,
comfits, pancakes--enough to make the mouth water. It has the solid
English furniture, with all its ritual of solemnity; "vallians"
(valences), "daslles" (tassels), big bedsteads, Chiny-ware, plush
chairs, linen cupboards. It has all the fuss of preparation for
childbirth--the accumulations of wrappings, the obstetric furniture,
the nods and winks of the midwife and the gossips, authentic ancestors
of Mrs Sarah Gamp and Mrs Elizabeth Prig--why, the haste to fetch the
midwife at the crisis might almost be the foundation upon which
Dickens built the visit of Seth Pecksniff, Esq., to Kingsgate Street,
High Holborn.
It has likewise many touches which show knowledge of the average
fairly prosperous English life--the merchant's, the shopkeeper's, the
sea-captain's. The author clearly knew the routine of trade. He knew
that at New Year's Day the "day-book" had to be fully written up for
scrutiny and stock-taking and sending out of accounts. (But the
pleasures or torments of love are such that "the squire is so full of
business that he can't spare half-an-hour to write it out." The brief
description of his feelings which follows, conventional, perhaps, to
some extent, has a certain life in it, as if the writer, embittered,
was recalling his own youthful experience.) He knew, too, what to-day
we only know in the mass through the newspapers, that a merchant's
business depends not only upon watching the markets, but upon the
actual supply of material--"what commodities are arrived or expected,"
and whether tea is up 1/2d. or tin 3/4d. down, or if hogs closed firm. The
commercial world changes only its methods of communication and
expression.
The first chapter, indeed, is of genuine historical and literary
interest. From the literary point of view, it is a near
descendant--collateral, if not direct, and anyhow based on the same
English empirical humour of life--of Thomas Overbury's _A Wife_
(1614--only one unique copy of this is known to exist), John Earle's
_Microcosmographie_ (1628), in prose, and Thomas Bastard's
_Chrestoleros_* (1598), in verse. It is an early instance of the
stringing together, in a connected narrative, of the material
previously used only in short sketches or "characters"; and so it is
directly in the succession which in the end produced what is perhaps
the most enduring and individual phenomenon in our literature--the
English novel.
* A copy of the very rare first edition fetched L155 at the
Britwell sale in February 1922.
Of course the book says things we do not say now openly--though the
traditional _corpus scriptorum nondum scriptorum_ which almost all men
and even some women know is handed on, a rather noisome torch, from
generation to generation, solely by word of mouth, and flickers now
and again in _The Ten Pleasures_. But they were said openly then, and
by great writers. There is nothing here so nauseatingly indecent as
the viler poems of the Rev. Robert Herrick and the Very Rev. the Dean
of Dublin, Jonathan Swift, D.D. There are salacious hints, there are
bawdy words, but no more than Falstaff or the wife of Bath or the
Summoner or Tom Jones might have used--less, on the whole. There is no
need, to borrow a phrase from the book's sequel, to "make use of the
gesture of casting up the whites of the eyes." "True-hearted souls
will solace their spirits with a little laughter, and never busy their
brains with the subversion of Church and State government."
Certainly the writer favoured the jovial life. Food and wine flow in
his pages like milk and honey in Canaan. There is no room in his house
for the Puritans, not even, apparently, in the bringing up of his
child. "Those that frequent Mr Baxter's Puritanical Holding-forth"
must be merry when they come to his feast. He will have no
_Catechizing of Families_--a discourse published by Richard Baxter in
this very year 1683; and the only _Compassionate Counsel_--a Baxter
pamphlet of 1681--he is likely to offer to young men is to take life
lightly, as his hero does, and above all, not to marry.
For that is the true point of this lively piece of irony (the irony is
less well sustained in the sequel, _The Confession of the New Married
Couple_, and dropped altogether in the bitter _Letter_ at the end of
_The Ten Pleasures_). It is a savage attack upon women--upon (to quote
a Rabelaisian sentence) "the quarrelsome, crabbed, lavish, proud,
opinionated, domineering and unbridled nature of the female sex."
Women, he says, "are in effect of less value than old Iron, Boots and
Shoes, etc., for we find both Merchants and money ready always to buy
those commodities." The analogy is an unfortunate one, for one of his
implications is that women can easily be bought. But he--if it is a
"he"--is in deadly earnest. Love, marriage, he asks scornfully--what
are they? A romance, are they? The true happiness of life? Very well:
here are the pleasures of them. You will be in love and make a
match--and look at all the worry of the settlement, in which, by the
way, you may often be defrauded. You will get married--a fine
ceremony, with a fine feast; and all the nasty old women of the
neighbourhood will come and tell bawdy stories to enliven the
occasion. You get married, and thereafter you are at the mercy of your
wife, who will indulge your wishes or not as suits her mood. Your
house will be all awry if she has but a slight headache. When the baby
comes, the place will be filled with old women and baby-linen and
medical apparatus, and you will have all the anxieties of a father
added to the discomforts of a neglected husband. For the rest, your
wife will know how "to cuckold, jilt, and sham" as well as any gay
lady of Covent Garden. And so on.
Much of the satire is acute and well-turned, often novel in expression
if not in thought. But it is, as has been suggested, in the picture of
English middle-class life under James II. that the importance of the
book lies. Here is the domestic side of what the great diarists and
the great poets hint at, and the excess of which municipal records,
those treasuries of private appearances in public, chronicle with the
severity of judgment. You have the young couple going (alas that the
river for this purpose has, so to speak, been moved farther up its own
course!) for a row on the Thames, with Lambeth, Bankside and Southwark
echoing to their laughter. They might visit the New Spring Gardens at
Vauxhall; but they would probably avoid the old (second) Globe Theatre
on Bankside, for it was a meeting-house at which the formidable Baxter
preached. Or they might go into Kent and pick fruit, even as
"beanfeasters" do to this day; or to Hereford for its cider and perry,
the drinking of which is a custom not yet extinct. Or maybe only for
an outing to the pleasant village of Hackney. They would see the
streets gay with signs which (outside Lombard Street) few houses but
taverns wear to-day--the sign of the _Silkworm_ or the _Sheep_, or
that fantastic schoolmaster's emblem, the _Troubled Pate_ with a crown
upon it. And when they stopped for rest at the sign of a bush upon a
pole, how they would fall to upon the Martinmas beef, the
neats-tongues, the cheesecakes! It is true they might find prices high
and crops poor; but such things must be.... "This is the use, custom,
and fruits of war. If the impositions and taxes run high, the country
farmer can't help that; you know that the war costs money, and it must
be given, or else we should lose all." Had they learnt that as long
ago as 1682?
As a _genre_ work the book is not unique; rather is it typical. The
gradual social settlement after the Civil War, destined to develop
into stagnation under the first Georges, caused didactic works, guides
to manners, housewifery and sport, society handbooks, to proliferate.
_The Ten Pleasures_ mentions some standard works, which every good
housewife would probably possess--Nicholas Culpepper's medical
handbooks, for instance, and _The Complete Cook_, which indeed, as
part of _The Queen's Closet Opened_, had reappeared in its natal year
1682-1683. The same year saw the birth of such works as _The Complete
Courtier_, _The Complete Compting House_, _The Gentleman Jockey_, _The
Accomplished Ladies' Delight._ Life was being scheduled, tabulated, in
readiness for the complacent century about to open. It was also being
explored, not only in such works as _The Ten Pleasures_ and _The
Woman's Advocate_, but in others (entered as published, but in many
cases not known to be now extant) like _The Wonders of the Female
World_, _The Swaggering Damsel_, or _Several New Curtain Lectures_,
and _Venus in ye smoake, or, the nunn in her smock, in curious
dialogues addressed to the lady abbesse of love's parradice_--all
produced in that same _annus mirabilis_ of outspoken domesticity.
_The Ten Pleasures_, apart from its intrinsic interest, is
exceptionally important from a book-collector's point of view. It is
of the utmost rarity. There is no copy in the British Museum and none
in the Cambridge University Library. In fact, there are only two
copies known of the whole work--one in the Bodleian (wanting one
plate), and that from which the present text is taken. The Huth
Collection had a copy of the first part only. Both the fuller copies
contain the second part--_The Confession_--and evidently the two
parts, though they have separate title pages, and were published at
different times, were intended to form a complete work.
Who wrote the book? "A. Marsh, Typogr. [apher]," says the title page.
A. Marsh cannot be traced, nor is the work included in the Stationers'
Registers for the period. It may be that Marsh thought it too
licentious for registration (an improbable supposition), and so, as
Hazlitt suggests, printed it abroad.
But the initials A.B. at the end of the _Letter_ in the first part may
be a clue, though a perplexing one. It is a plausible guess that they
are those of Aphra or Aphara Behn, the dramatist and poet, the first
woman to earn her living by her pen. It is true that she was, so to
speak, a feminist: the preface and epilogue to her _Sir Patient
Fancy_ speak bitterly of those who would not go to her plays because
they were by a woman. On the other hand, she had a free pen, to say
the least of it, and often a witty one. And she had Dutch
associations. Her husband was a Dutch merchant living in London. She
had herself been on secret service in the Netherlands. She translated
a Dutch book on oracles. If the book was printed in Holland, she of
all people could get the work done. And she knew the city of London
intimately.
There are, too, some odd details in her plays, especially in _Sir
Patient Fancy_, which recall touches in _The Ten Pleasures_. She
introduces a Padua doctor on the stage. She shows, in several of her
plays, a curious interest in medicine, especially quack medicine. Sir
Patient, a hypochondriac, thinks he is swelling up like the "pipsy"
husband. Isabella, in the same play, says "keeping begins to be as
ridiculous as matrimony.... The insolence and expense of their
mistresses has almost tired out all but the old and doting part of
mankind." It is not inconceivable that in a freakish or embittered
moment this singular woman threw herself with malicious joy into an
attack on her own sex.
"Love in fantastic triumph sat...." Aphra Behn's great lyric
deservedly lives. If she wrote _The Ten Pleasures_, the sort of love
she describes in it still lives, but hardly in fantastic triumph. Yet
if we want to know our fellow-men, we must know something of it. Apart
from the curious interest of its rarity, _The Ten Pleasures_ is a
sturdy piece of human nature.
JOHN HARVEY.
* * * * *
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE
"Of the making of many books there is no end," nor is there an end to
the Romance of books, as the little volume here, privately reprinted
by the Navarre Society, is surely proof most positive. The original is
a small thick volume; it bears the imprint "London, Printed in the
year 1683," and but one perfect copy is known; that copy lay
unappreciated in the heart of London in an antiquarian bookseller's
shop.
Fortunately, however, for our literature and for students of the
manners of the commonality of the period it was seen by a colleague,
who wondered why he did not know it. After purchasing it he found the
reason why--the Bodleian Library alone possessed a copy of the work
(imperfect); later a copy of the first part (only) appeared in the
last portion of the sale of the great Huth Collection. The present
text is taken from the perfect copy mentioned above.
The curious title rather damns the literary interest of the book,
which presents pictures of the cit and his wife at work and play
which Fielding, had he lived in the seventeenth century, might have
written. It is thought that the book was printed in Holland, and if
so, it may well be that the ship carrying the printed sheets to
England foundered in the North Sea, or was sunk by enemy craft. There
can be no doubt that such a work would not have escaped the wits of
the time; if it had survived for ordinary circulation, mention would
have been made of it, however small an edition had been sold. No other
so likely reason for its extreme rarity presents itself.
It is reprinted, as faithfully as the altered manners of our time
permit, with a Preface by John Harvey, who attributes the work to the
industrious and sometimes brilliant Mrs Aphra Behn, a discovery which
the Navarre Society believe to be well grounded. They hope that the
issue of the book to their subscribers may help to confirm or refute
that lady's responsibility for so graceless an attack upon her sex.
Whether she did or did not write it, the fact remains that a work so
vividly representative of Restoration life and literature is rescued
from the obscurity to which its scarceness has hitherto condemned it
and worthily preserved for scholars and amateurs of the future.
* * * * *
THE TEN
PLEASURES
OF
MARRIAGE.
* * * * *
THE TEN
PLEASURES
OF
MARRIAGE,
_Relating_
All the delights and contentments that are mask'd under the bands of
Matrimony.
Written by A. MARSH, Typogr.
LONDON,
Printed in the Year, 1682.
* * * * *
TO THE READER.
Courteous Reader,
_This small Treatise which I here present unto thee is the fruit of
some spare hours, that my cogitations, after they had been for a small
time, between whiles, hovering to and fro in the Air, came fluttring
down again, still pitching upon the subject of the Ten Pleasures of
Marriage, in each of which I hope thou wilt find somthing worthy of
thy acceptance, because I am sure 'tis matter of such nature as hath
never before been extant, and especially in such a method; neither
canst thou well expect it to be drest up in any thing of nice and neat
words, as other subjects may be, but only to be clad in plain habit
most fit for the humour of the Fancy. If I perceive that it please
thee, and is not roughly or unkindly dealt withall; nor brain'd in the
Nativity, to spoil its generation of a further product, it will
incourage me to proceed upon a second part, some say of the same_
Tune, _but I mean to the same_ Purpose, _and apparelled very near the
same dress: In the mean time, with hopes that thou wilt be kind to
this, and give it a gentle reception, from him who is thine.
Farewell._
* * * * *
THE TEN PLEASURES OF MARRIAGE.
The Nuptial estate trailing along with it so many cares, troubles &
calamities, it is one of the greatest admirations, that people should
be so earnest and desirous to enter themselves into it. In the younger
sort who by their sulphurous instinct, are subject to the tickling
desires of nature, and look upon that thing called Love through a
multiplying glass, it is somewhat pardonable: But that those who are
once come to the years of knowledge and true understanding should be
drawn into it, methinks is most vilely foolish, and morrice fooles
caps were much fitter for them, then wreaths of Lawrel. Yet stranger
it is, that those who have been for the first time in that horrible
estate, do, by a decease, cast themselves in again to a second and
third time. Truly, if for once any one be through contrary
imaginations misled, he may expect some hopes of compassion, and
alledge some reasons to excuse himself: but what comfort, or
compassion can they look for, that have thrown themselves in a second
and third time? they were happy, if they could keep their lips from
speaking, and ty their tongues from complaining, that their miseries
might not be more and more burdened with scoffings which they truly
merit.
And tho not only the real truth of this, but ten times more, is as
well known to every one, as the Sun shine at noon day; nevertheless we
see them run into it with such an earnestness, that they are not to be
counselled, or kept back from it, with the strength of _Hercules_;
despising their golden liberty, for chains of horrid slavery.
But we see the bravest sparks, in the very blossoming of their youth,
how they decay? First, Gentleman-like, they take pleasure in all
manner of noble exercises, as in keeping time all dancing, singing of
musick, playing upon instruments, speaking of several languages,
studying at the best Universities, and conversing with the learnedst
Doctors, &c. or else we see them, before they are half perfect in any
exercise, like carl-cats in March run mewing and yawling at the doors
of young Gentlewomen; and if any of those have but a small matter of
more then ordinary beauty, (which perhaps is gotten by the help of a
damn'd bewitched pot of paint) she is immediately ador'd like a Saint
upon an Altar: And in an instant there is as much beauty and
perfection to be seen in her, as ever Juno, Venus and Pallas possessed
all together.
And herewith those Gentile Pleasures, that have cost their Parents so
much money, and them so much labour and time are kickt away, and
totally abandoned that they may keep company with a painted Jezebel.
They are then hardly arrived at this intitled happiness, but they must
begin to chaw upon the bitter shell of that nut, the kernel whereof,
without sighing, they cannot tast; having no sooner obtained access to
the Lady, but are as suddenly possest with thousands of thoughts what
they shall do to please the Sweet object. Being therewith so
tosticated, that all their other business is dispersed, and totally
laid aside. This is observable not only in youth of the first degree,
but also in persons that have received promotion.
For if he be a Theologue, his books drop out of his hands, and ly
stragling about his study, even as his sences do, one among another.
And if you hear him preach, his whole Sermon is nothing but of Love,
which he then turns & winds to Divinity as far as possible it can be
fitted.
If it be a Doctor of Physick, oh! he has so much work with his own
sicknes, that he absolutely forgets all his Patients, though some of
them were lying at deaths dore; and lets the Chyrurgian, whom he had
appointed certainly to meet there, tarry to no purpose, taking no
more notice of his Patients misery, and the peril of his wounds, then
if it did not concern him. But if at last he doth come, it is when the
wound's festered, the Ague in the blood, or that the body is
incurable. So far was he concern'd in looking after that Love-apple,
or Night-shadow, for the cure of his own burning distemper.
If he be a Counsellor, his whole brain is so much puzzel'd how to
begin and pursue the Process for the obtaining his Mistress in
Marriage; that all other suits tho they be to the great detriment of
poor Widows and Orphans are laid aside, and wholly rejected. Then
being desired by his Clients to meet them at anyplace, and to give his
advice concerning the cause, he hath had such earnest business with
his Mistress, that he comes an hour or two later then was appointed.
But coming at last, one half of the time that can be spent, is little
enough to make Mr. Counsellor understand in what state the cause stood
at the last meeting. And then having heard what the Plaintif and
Defendant do say, he only tells them, I must have clearer evidences,
the accounts better adjusted, and your demand in writing, before I can
make any decision of this cause to both your satisfactions.
There they stand then, and look one upon another, not daring to say
otherwise, but _'tis very well Sir, we will make them all ready
against the next meeting_; and are, with grief at heart, forced to
see as much and sometimes more expences made at the meeting, as the
whole concern of their debate amounted to. Then it is, come let's now
discourse of matters of state, and drink a glass about to the health
of the King & the prosperity of our Country and all the inhabitants;
which is done only to the purpose, that coming to his Mistress, he may
boastingly say, my dear, just now at a meeting we remembered you in a
glass, & I'l swear the least drop of it was so delicious to me, as
ever _Nectar_ and _Ambrose_ could be, that the Poets so highly
commend.
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