The Ten Pleasures of Marriage<br />and the Second Part, The Confession of the New Married Couple by A. Marsh (best ebook reader TXT) 📗

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, 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.

he 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