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Typos — p. 139: particuar [= particular]
- p. 138 - XXII Primogeniture and Selection in Matrimony Other influences apart, the matrimonial policies of our aristocracy alone would have sufficed to undermine the nation's faith in their ability to govern. However rare the occurrence may have been we know that for centuries, especially in France and England, the nobility of Europe produced personalities who, had they maintained their family qualities, might have bred a race of rulers capable of kindling an unquenchable faith in the reality, advantage and indispensability of a class of thoroughbreds in the scat of government. For, as J. B. Rice has truly observed, "an aristocracy of blood is eternally right, because it is natural." (Social Hygiene, p. 328). But from the earliest times, alas!, owing to the absence of any controlling body within their Order, they not only violated every precept of sound rulership, but also every measure which might have ensured a continuance of ability, dignity and even ordinary health in their family lines. In vain, as early as the sixteenth century, sages arose who inveighed against the notion that infatuation alone was not to be trusted as the motive for a sound marriage; because the privileges of a Ruler Caste involved corresponding sacrifices incompatible with the irresponsible self-indulgence which was one of the few luxuries of the masses. But no aristocrat lent an ear to such admonitions. "Un bon mariage, s'il en est un," said Montaigne, "refuse la compagnie et conditions de l'amour." ("A good marriage, if such there can be, will have nothing to do with love and its associations.") In an earlier essay he wrote, "Je ne vois point de mariages qui failles plutôt et se troublent que ceux qui s'acheminent par la beauté et le désir amoureux." ("I know of no marriages that come more rapidly to grief than
Almost two centuries after Rousseau, Paul Adam warned his contemporaries that "Il ne faut pas épouser uniquement par plaisir." (La Morale de L'Amour, 1907, Chap. XI: "We should not marry merely for pleasure."). And it is almost certain that in pronouncing this warning he had not only the élite of his world in mind. It would doubtless be wrong to interpret these Frenchmen's warnings as a total proscription of affection and attachment from among the motives for a sound marriage. But what Montaigne in particuar felt — and quite properly — was that, at all events in ruler families, it was suicidal to allow this one factor to be paramount. From the earliest times, in England certainly, the nobility were always inclined to allow other considerations than the preservation of their family quality to determine their choice of a mate. And many examples of this recklessness could be adduced, even in an Age as remote as that of the Fastens in the Mediaeval times. (See my Quest of Human Quality, Chap. VIII.) But from early in the eighteenth century and onwards, the record has been shocking. From 1735 (if not 1732) to 1945, the nobility of England chose 42 actresses as wives, and among the men concerned there were 7 Dukes, including one Royal one; 3 Marquesses, 17 Earls, 1 Viscount and 14 Barons. The Duke of Leinster who married twice, chose an actress on both occasions. Even the vulgar Romans at least aspired to something better than this; for, according to the Lex Julia (13 B.C.), senators and their children were forbidden to marry a libertine, or a woman whose father
This is not to suggest that actresses are necessarily depraved, or that, as Schopenhauer maintained, they and actors follow a profession which stands low in the hierarchy of the Arts. For in the creation of new rôles, alone, they are often called upon to exercise considerable psychological insight and a profound knowledge of human character. But it is surely not unreasonable to question whether actresses may be expected to possess those qualities and family traditions required by a class depending for its survival as a ruling élite upon the maintenance of its hereditary gifts for government. Nor do I mean to suggest that occasional alliances between the scions of the Aristocracy and the daughters of Commoners are always to be deprecated. — On the contrary, when such maidens are chosen from roturier families with unblemished records both of health and ability, known to have been a credit to their locality, the refreshment a ruler stock may thus receive is wholly to be commended. It must seriously be questioned, however, whether such attributes as I have briefly enumerated, often constituted the essential conditions under which unions of this kind were contracted, especially when the primary object was to replenish the coffers of an impoverished noble line. At all events, in the long list of rich roturier heiresses who became the wives of English nobles, there is often little evidence of any exacting discrimination other than that concerning the bride's financial prospects. In 1798, for instance, Alexander Baring (later Lord Ashburton) married Anne Louisa Bingham, daughter of a rich Philadelphia merchant; but there is no evidence that she possessed any title to élite status except her great wealth. And much the same may be said of the marriages that followed — that of the future Lord Erskine to Frances Cadwalader, also of Philadelphia; those of the three Caton girls, belonging to the wealthy family of the Carrols of Carrolstown, one of whom became the Marchioness of Caermarthen (later Duchess of Leeds); another married Baron Stafford, and the third became the second wife of the Marquess of Wellesley (1825). Later on, probably in similar circumstances, Jennie Jerome, daughter of the rich Wall-Street Broker, Leonard Jerome, and
And so it went on. The 4th Marquess of Anglesey had married Mary Livingstone King of Sanhills (1880); the Duke of Marlborough married Consuelo Vanderbilt (1895: fortune 15,000,000 dollars); the Earl of Yarmouth married Alice Thaw (1903: fortune 10,000,000 dollars). But it would be tedious to prolong the list. Does anyone suppose that these American heiresses brought any valuable ruler qualities to the families they entered? — It may be that some of the Southern families of America were of good English stock with genuine aristocratic instincts and traditions. But whether this was so or not, and whether the nobles who married the daughters from such homes were still regenerate enough for their stock to benefit from any ruler virtues their wives may have contributed to it, only the ultimate result of these marriages could show; and as no actual revival of aristocratic ability followed these mariages de convenance, the refreshment they brought to the various families concerned appears to have been of little avail. (For most of the above details I am indebted to Lady Elizabeth Eliot's able and entertaining book, They all Married Well, 1960). It is, however, not without significance, as reflecting on Francis Galton's understanding of what was at stake in these marriages that all he found to say about them was that they helped to promote the extinction of our noble families. For "an heiress, being usually someone with no brothers and sisters," and therefore probably deriving from infertile stock, she became a means of limiting the progeny of our noble families. But this was a less important consequence of these misalliances than the fact that, apart from the fortunes they brought their husbands, they did little, if anything, to check the downward trend of the
Many a sober historian who feels more inclined to judge the success or failure of a War-Leader by the conditions prevailing after the conflict is over, rather than from the bald fact that the enemy was finally routed, may even perhaps entertain doubts whether the case of Jennie Jerome overwhelmingly vindicates the principle of our aristocracy, throughout the nineteenth century, of marrying heiresses. For, after all, the actual winning of a war by the defeat of the enemy in the field, is the outcome of the skill, the prowess and the sacrifice of the soldiers themselves; whilst the onus of proving that all this skill and sacrifice was worth while politically — i.e. by the improved political conditions that this victory has secured — rests with the statesmen and politicians of the winning side. And, judged in this way, many a patriot may well entertain legitimate doubts even about the fruits of the Jennie Jerome match. Speaking of the English nobility of the seventeenth century Buckle says, "The influence of the richer ranks was, in England, constantly diminishing" (History of Civilisation in England, Vol. II, Chap. III); whilst Matthew Arnold, referring to a generation two centuries later, observes, "I cannot doubt that in the aristocratic virtue, in the intrinsic commanding force of the English upper classes there is a diminution. . . . At the very moment when democracy becomes less and less disposed to follow and admire, aristocracy becomes less and less qualified to command and captivate." (Essay on Democracy). As early as the sixteenth century the nobility must already have been scandalously incompetent; for, as W. Percival points out, Elizabeth, who had an eye for efficiency if for little else, "gave them [the peers] little or nothing to do." (The Future of the House of Lords, Chap. II). Even if marriages in the higher ranks of society had always been the wisest possible for the preservation of the stock's best qualities, how could the aristocracy have hoped to maintain a high standard of honour and ability if by a process of blind selection they always acted as if taking for granted that their first-born males must represent the best permutation and combination of their family genes? Yet this is precisely what the rule of primogeniture implied. Marc Bloch (Feudal Society) tells us that even in mediaeval
The reader will recall what has already been said about the rule of primogeniture in Chapter IX ante and about its relatively late adoption in England. But in confirmation of Marc Bloch's testimony, it is interesting to read in Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, that, just as among the early Israelites other sons than the first-born were sometimes known to succeed, so, many of the Italian dictatorships of the fifteenth century thought that "The fitness of the individual, his worth and his capacity, were of more weight than both the laws and usages which prevailed in the West in establishing his claim to succession." And this was the principle applied even in the case of bastards. Leaving aside the aristocracy, even if we restrict our enquiry to plebeian families, we shall easily convince ourselves that relatively few of them lend the slightest support to the belief that the best combinations of the qualities of a family line necessarily appear in first born offspring. I am well aware of the fact that this does sometimes happen. We have but to think of Velasquez, Hobbes, Milton, Heine, Corneille, Molière, Racine, Keats, Swinburne, Browning, Carlyle, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Columbus, Dryden, Gibbon, Thackeray, Macaulay, Ruskin, Gissing, Meredith, Herbert Spencer, Hegel, Leonardo da Vinci, Chopin, Locke, Newton, Watts (painter) and Rossini; all of whom were either eldest or only sons, in order to appreciate that the vagaries of the hereditary processes sometimes appear to justify mankind's faith in the rule of primogeniture — the legendary sanctity of "whatsoever openeth the womb". (Exodus, XIII, 2). The error lies in assuming that we may stake on their always doing so. And
Against the list of first-born given above, therefore, it is well to remember that among plebeians of note who came at least 14th in their families were, Edward Lear (21st child), Charles Wesley (18th child), Sir Thomas Lawrence (16th child), John Wesley (15th child), and Albert Moore (14th child). Among famous roturiers who came thirteenth in their families were, Sir Richard Arkwright and Josiah Wedgwood; whilst Sir John Franklin was a 12th son, and Henry Steinway, who built the first Steinway piano was his parents' 12th child. Thomas Campbell, Charles Reade, Ignatius Loyola and Lamarck were all eleventh children, and J. E. Thorold Rogers was an eleventh son. Benjamin Franklin, John Hunter (physiologist), Coleridge, Benjamin West, were tenth children. Lord Cromer was a ninth son; whilst Butler (of the Analogy), Lord Lawrence (Gov. Gen. of India), and Sebastian Bach were all three 8th children. Among famous plebeians who came seventh in their families, are Herrick, William Hunter (physiologist), Kierkegard, Van Dyck, T. H. Huxley, James Martineau, Jane Austen, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Francis Galton: whilst Rubens and Botticelli were both sixth sons. Rob. Schumann, Emily Brontë (greatest European woman of genius), Charles Darwin, De Quincey, Voltaire, Samuel Butler (Hudibras), Oliver Goldsmith, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Walter Besant and Rembrandt, all came fifth in their families; and Alfred the Great, Bossuet, Cecil Rhodes, and Horace Walpole were all fifth sons. Schubert, Emerson, Rossetti (Christina), Tennyson, Tolstoy, Cobden, James Watt, Feuerbach, Wellington, Gladstone, Bentham, and Darwin (Erasmus), were all 4th children; whilst Andrea del Sarto, Fanny Burney, David Hume, Dürer, David Garrick, Smollett, Condillac, Descartes, Charles Lamb, Rubinstein, Shakespeare, Hazlitt and William Morris, all came third in their families. Finally, all the following were third sons: Lord Clarendon, Bulwer Lytton, Landseer, Cardinal de Retz, Turgot, Jos. Chamberlain, Jenner, Richelieu, Montaigne, Ricardo, Trollope, Samuel Wilberforce, Nelson, Romanes, Mivart and Napoleon.
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