Perhaps you’ll think all this is maudlin nonsense, and in bad taste, or that I’ve been drinking. As a matter of fact, I have—Gretchen brought in a bottle of wine for our supper, and before that I had visited the estaminet at the corner; but I assure you this makes no difference, or only to this extent, that I can speak freely what it has long been on my mind to say. I’ve wanted to get all this off my chest, to square accounts with you. The chances are a hundred to one we’ll never see each other again; I don’t expect ever to come back to America; and I don’t think you will want to see me if you should ever come to Europe. I think, in fact, that it will be better all around if we don’t meet. There would be no use in it. For this reason, I want to take my leave of you with a kind of admission of my shortcomings; at least, I want you to know that I completely realize them. My life as a husband and father was a horrible failure, and the best thing for all concerned is that I should simply drop out of your lives. I am starting over again, on a humbler scale. I am starting off, I mean, with a frank admission that I’m a misfit, a second-rater, and one whose only excuse for living—well, I thought when I began that sentence that there was some excuse, but upon my soul I can’t think of any! Is the fact that Gretchen loves me an excuse? God knows; perhaps. It is at any rate a reason why you will not want to come and see me if you ever do come to Paris. That is what I mean when I say that I am starting life over again on a different plane. Not that I mean to end my days in the gutter. But you will gather that my way of life is not that of Germantown.
My other motive for writing, darling Pops, is harder for me to speak of. It’s partly because of it that I begin as I do, with this kind of degrading and dismal confession. I want you to know that I am not preaching to you as if I were myself any sort of angel. For once, I don’t want you to think of me as a scolding father, or one who denies you the things you want, but as a good friend, who can advise you dispassionately. I am talking, you see, about this Warren affair. At the time of our quarrel, when I left, I didn’t know in the least the real significance of it; I don’t want you to think that. It is only in the last few months that I have heard what it was all about. I needn’t tell you from whom I heard it, except that it wasn’t Jim. Jim hasn’t said a word to me, hasn’t written me a line. It was someone else who wrote me, and who simply said that she thought that I, as your nearest relative, ought to know about it.
She was in the next room to yours at the Imperial, in Atlantic City, when you went there with Warren. She saw you first walking along the boardwalk—you and Warren—but luckily, as it turned out, neither of you saw her. At this time she naturally wasn’t suspecting anything, and assumed of course that Jim was with you, too. Then the same evening she opened her bedroom door to go down to dinner, and saw you and Warren just coming out of the next room. The poor lady didn’t know what to do then—she was afraid of embarrassing you—(and herself)—if she went down to the dining room; so finally she ordered her dinner sent up. And early the next morning she moved to another hotel. You see, these things can’t be concealed. It’s absolutely no use. I’ve found that out many times. Somebody will always see you; it may be a good friend who won’t gossip (like this lady, who hasn’t told a soul except myself) or it may be, and more likely, one of those good upright souls who believe in virtue, but who practice it in the singular way of inflicting the ultimate social cruelty on those who are too strong or too weak to be enslaved by the conventions. These people make me sick—they are hypocrites—at the bottom of their souls they would love to be wicked themselves—they are frequently the ones who adore telling smutty stories in mixed company, while at the same time they disapprove of any work of art which is frank in the least—and they get a kind of upside-down sexual pleasure in trampling, socially, on anyone who actually lives his unorthodoxy.… They are worms, despicable, but unfortunately you can’t leave them out of account. If X, this lady, saw you, it’s possible that some snooping Y did also, and will lose no time in spreading the exciting and delightful news in Germantown and Philadelphia.…
My dear child—I was terribly sorry to hear all this. You know there is nothing Victorian about me, and that if I urge you to take one course of action rather than another, it will not be because of conventional morals or scruples. The course of my own life is sufficient comment on that! My advice to you is, of course, to give this thing up, at once and completely; not, however, because there is anything wrong in it, but simply because it’s inexpedient. It’s the long run that counts, and in the long run it cannot possibly turn out happily. We may as well face the fact that the human animal is fickle, faithless, has a roving appetite (as regards love) and when he is tied down by marriage is always wanting to break out of the cage and go exploring. As far as the male is concerned, that is obvious enough. But I don’t think it is sufficiently realized that the female is just as subject to these wandering appetites, these desires that are, so to speak, merely of the moment, or of the season. She has them, just as much as he has. She sees a man and is attracted to him—he has certain qualities which her husband lacks, and she is prone to leap to the hasty conclusion that this is, after all, the man she was all the while looking for. Well, maybe he is, but more likely he’s not. Suppose she gives up her husband, her home, her place in society, her children (I won’t sentimentally stress this point, but I can speak from experience when I say that to lose the regard of one’s children is the worst thing that can befall one) and goes flying after this exquisite Lothario. What will happen then? The chances are at least even that before the year is out she will discover that it was just one of these momentary cravings, a whim, or even—at most—a passion; and that she will wish she had never given way to it. She will also find that other such desires will occur from time to time. Will she give way to these, too? No, my dearest little Winky, this won’t do. Stability, as she will find too late, is the only basis on which a woman can be happy. She is not fitted by nature for a wandering life. You may just now believe passionately that life without Warren is inconceivable. But don’t allow that belief to run off with you. Your real future, your only happy future, is the certain one, the one you have already launched yourself on. Make up your mind about this. Try to accept this as a kind of law, and make up your mind that these wandering appetites are going to occur to you from time to time, that they will make you momentarily unhappy, but that they can be overcome or forgotten, or temporized with, and that above all the thing for you to hang on to is your delightful home with Jim and dear little Muffet. These are the substantial things of your life—your capital, so to speak. Jim is a good fellow. I know you have had your troubles with him—there’s no marriage worth the name that hasn’t troubles. Of course, after one has been married seven years, one is no longer in love as one was at the outset. That isn’t human nature. The first ecstasy dwindles off in a year, or even in a few months. And then the arrival of the first child changes and flattens the tone of the whole business. After that, you’re married. It’s no longer a mere love affair, and it’s folly to try, as some people do, to pretend that it is. You just settle down to a mutual give-and-take, a deliberate tolerance and understanding. It’s my idea that if it were possible, each of the partners ought then to be free to have a little passade or two, if that should seem advisable. I can easily imagine two people so deeply fond of each other, so used to each other, so desirous of each other’s happiness, that they would say, ‘Now, look here—I know you’re a little bit in love with X or Y—go ahead, but be careful, don’t allow gossip to start about you. Get this thing off your mind, or heart, and don’t worry. I’ll be just as fond of you when it’s over, and I hope you’ll tell me as much about it as you feel like telling.’ Why not? There doesn’t seem to me to be anything ridiculous or impossible in that. Human nature seems to me to be capable of it; it’s only that we’ve been brought up with fantastic ideas about the nature of loyalty and its purpose. Loyalty isn’t just a matter of keeping one’s physical appetites for one person alone; it isn’t even a matter of keeping one’s emotional appetites for one person alone; it’s a deeper and simpler thing than that. It’s a desire to keep the marriage going simply as the only makeshift arrangement that will most probably promote the eventual and permanent happiness of all concerned.