THE RIGHT AGE TO MARRY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2634, 16 October 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE RIGHT AGE TO MARRY.

01,-l tennis champion and HER BETROTHAL (J. 1156 SUTTON’S views, in the “Daily Mail.”) The absorbing question of what i. c ; the right age to marry has been once more brought, to the lore by Muss May Sutto:i, "llio famous American lawn tennis player, who, when quite a gnu, won the j«h glish championship at Wimbledon, in Miss Sutton Jias created an oxt >:•<!inary sensation in California, by h -:' original way of announcing that her h to A?;-. George Ham, the son of Mexican banker, is broken off beer. I'-:-.- she is not old enough. “Call it •••,” Aliys Sutton is quoted as s:iyj, . “ “At ad events, I foot and fancy f-‘e, and intend going to England to "'play the game of my life.” The noted lady tennis player, in the course of an interview, developed views on matrimony in the following positive terms. “No woman.” she said, “should marry before twenty-live, i stand by that statement. In the first place, no woman before that age is sufficient. ,\ matured. She does not know her own mind, and she has not bad experience enough. It does not scorn to me right that a woman should have to learn her duties after she is married. She should be ready to step into her place in society as a full-fledged matron when she becomes a wife. “In America a woman has more to do with the selection of a husband than in the older countries. Parents have little to do with her choice beyond advising, and when a girl is young such advice is not appreciated. Hence it is of the utmost importance that the American woman at all events shou cl have a la rye oxoerienco of men and the world before she" takes the important step of choosing a partner fer life. “I do not mean to say that all youthful marriages are unhappy, but many, many of thorn are. Look at the divorce courts of America. They have a terrible deserved notoriety, because the divorce evil is appallingly on the increase. Divorces in this country are due, in my opinion, to the large number of youthful. ill-considered marriages. “Until l am perfectly sure, therefore, that mv true love hath my heart and I his I shall remain in ‘maiden meditation, fancy free.’ ” THE COUNTESS OF CARDIGAN’S ADVICE.

The Countess of Cardigan, who was born only ju&t after the <!ays of the Regency and married the most popular litSro of her day, thus expressed her views on the subject “I was married in 1558,” said the Countess, “and my opinion is that no girl knows her own mind in her teens; or at least she did not when I was young. It is all very romantic and charming at eighteen, but no girl really knows the heart of a man until sho is in the twenties. A man at twenty-eight is forty-eight in experience,” and how can a eielicol-room beau tv permanently depose the adorable She who has filled the happy youthful years of a man’s life? “Cynics scoff at these turned down nges. Be'ieve me, they are the most sacred of any. For tho beauty of realisation give me the fulness of a man s love, the perfect marriage, wholly after years of disappointment he meets, the one woman who gently knits up his,lost ideals and bids him forget. Not that forgetting brings happiness, but it brings repose. “ I married, as my first husband, tho most chivalrous and popular hero of the Crimean War. I had known him when a mere girl, and my girlhood’s admiration had gradually ripened into love. Lord Cardigan never disappointed me. I was no longer in niy teens, but with the loss of the first glamor of youth there come the appreciation of maturity. I could recognise the salient points of man, far more than I could judge them from the critical standpoint of a gixd who has nothing to forgive.

THE. HAPPIEST MARRIAGES. “My advice is—Never marry too young. The-; chain of love becomes intolerable when it is hampered with the links of doubt and disillusion which clings round later love. Far better is , it to meet on common ground, as mutual sympathisers, each eager to forgive each other’s faults and to say: ‘Let us begin again,’ than to begin hopins and livo unsatisfied. “No, the happiest marriages are those that understand all, and forgive all, as the French say. Know your own mind thoroughly, its capacity for forgiveness, its power of sympathy, before you ask any woman to face life’s battles with you. And, dear young people, never lose your friend when you gain your lover! “I agree with Miss May Sutton in her ideas as to the marriageable age. She is quite right, but as to the ideals in marriage, what could I quote better than the most human ami charming words spoken by Jessica Falconer in ‘The Choir Invisable: ’ > “ ‘Oh, if you ever marry, don't make the mistake of treating the woman as an ideal! Treat her in every way as a human being, exactly like yourself, with the same temptations. And, as you have some morcy on yourself despite your faults, have some mercy ori her despite hers.’ ’’ On the other hand,- Mrs. Stannard, the nove’ist, who is well known as “John Strange Winter,” gives her opinion in favor of early marriage, disagreeing upon the point with both Lady Cardigan and Miss May Sutton. Mrs. Stannard says: “Can Lady Cardigan, or even a champion tennis player, go one better than Nature? I doubt it. It is the fashion to-day to cry out upon marriage, to regard it as an antiquated, obsolete custom, only really necessary for the benefit of the Colonies and family estates. But that is wrong. Wo were made, all of us, to marry; and those of us, who, for some reason best known to ourselves, do not,.or cannot marry, are, to put it mildly, making a mistake, or are unfortunately placed. Most women, and all men, are more truly happy when they are married, and the sooner they marry the better chance of happiness they will have. “I not only believe in boy-and-girl marriages, but I believe they are practically the only marriages. And I am the more firmly convinced as I progress on my journey through life that, in event'of second marriages or late marriages which had been delayed for good reasons, those who do marry should he within at most five years of each other’s age. Only yesterday a lady told * me quite seriously that men ought to marry women much younger than them-

! selves, because women age more quickly 1 than men. She could bring no special j evidence to bear on the argument, but i was possessed of a genera: idea to that : effect.

“I believe that Lady Cardigan herself married when sho was well over thirty, and it must not be forgotten that she married a hero, and also that lie only lived for ten vers. Marriage, in the usual experience, is for a longer time than this; it is for life; I venture to say, therefore, that Lady Cardigan is not in a position to speak personally. I should not touch upon this point ii oho did not cite her own marriage as an instance. “At the same time I cannot forget tint my grandmother and my mother-in-law were ’noth married at eighteen — one man being twenty-two and the other twenty-one; both had largo families, and both retained an unswerving Affection of their husbands to the day

of their death. . I “I some years ago asked a friena oi | mine who had manned, when lie was twenty-one. a girl of seventeen how lie felt about early marriages after his cx- ; porienou of fourteen years. He thought ; a minute, and then su’d: ‘Well, it j might have made a difference; but i nothing on earth could give me back ; those fourteen years.” i “No, no; in marriage let there he no binding up of wounds, no forgiving and forgetting, no patching up of bygone . mistakes. But let marriage be what it | was meant to be in the beginning—the ’ perfect union of perfect love. If this : were the rule, and there were not so j many mercenary considerations ! brought into the marriage question, we j should have' very little work for the ! divorce courts. Fathers and mothers | would he nearer of an age to their 1 children, and therefore, more sympathetic to them.”