DOMESTIC OGRES.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2639, 23 June 1877, Page 4

DOMESTIC OGRES.

(WHITEHALL KEVIEW.)

There are plenty of well-dressed brutes and quiet monsters, plenty of tyrants who are well bred and well educated, who are so careful of their good name that they retain for their exclusive fields of exercise their own firesides. The being of the quiet type is, of course, a married man. The objects of bis tyranny are his wife, his children and his servants. His weapons of offence are sneers and abuse. They are always at hand ; and convenient it is'that they are, for they are in continual request. He commences to indulge his fancy usually as soon as he is awake. To judge by himself, one would think that no member of his household has a right to live but by his suffrance. He is the misery of his wife, the terror of his children, the bete noir of his servants, the ogre of the domestic hearth. At his detested presence brightness takes to its wings. He is a wet blanket on all conversation, a skeleton in the midst of every game. Everything that transpires "in the house is arranged with reference to his temper or his whereabouts. All is done to the end that it may please, or rather appease him—for pleasure is generally the last thing which would be willingly accorded to him by anyone around him. Indeed, abhorrence of him is so intense that it must often be a source of vexation to those who have the ordering of things that they cannot usually avoid his wrath without consulting his comfort too. This man renders bis ' children's home oppressive to the boys, odious to the #irls and both naturally seek the earliest opportunity of escaping from it. No wonder that- his sons go wrong, and his daughters "contract runaway marriages. Yet he is to all outward appearance a suave and polite gentleman, and a genial host. No one would imagine, who saw the perfect cordiality of his hospitality, that when he turns aside for a moment to speak to his wife, it is to hurl some brutal speech or cutting sarcasm at her, which shall make her wretched for the rest of the evening. To all beyond his ownhousehold he is affable and kind. Even to the dumb animals about him he extends his good manners. It is a common habit of his after a more than unusually hot attack upon his wife to light a cigar and stroll round to the stables, where he will stroke and caress the horses or the dogs with as much tenderness as ever his wife could covet. Returning, he will whistle gaily up to the door of the house; but, once inside, the man is changed into the ogre again. It is not always blameworthy, or at least unpardonable, for the master of a house to be habitually ill-tempered at home. There are many causes which can easily, and do frequently and permanently, spoil the temper of a man. An ill-assorted marriage ; a wife who is continually absent from home, or a blue stocking, or ruinously extravagant; an overwhelmingly large family; a rabid mother-in-law, or a troop of omnipresent relatives; a badly managed house, an illconducted table, a succession of villainous cooks. Any of these, untoward things will sometimes make a man hate the very sight of his house, and all that to it per» tains; will reduce hi 9 domestic temper to the level of the veriest cur about the place. But the reason exists and can be seen. His demeanour is intelligible, if not altogether to be forgiven. His nature is more wronged than guilty. His own conscience is to a certain extent clear, which alone often softens his asperities, and always prevents those exhibitions of violence which are indulged in by the guilty coward. At the same time the inward consciousness of fault in some at least of those around him goes far to gain for him their tolerance and their excuse ; perhaps even at times their pity. Sympathy, at all events, he may always be sure of from outsiders. To those beyond the domestic circle he appears in his true light, even when his ruined temper is unreined before them.

The other kind of being is altogether different. He may be in good circumstances ; his marriage may have turned out in all respects a favorable one; his wife may be good, true, considerate ; his family may be not too large for his income; his cook may be a treasure; his wife's relations may be dead. But the creature himself appreciates none of these facilities, any of which would be the seventh heaven to any man. The very property which keeps him in affluence may have been acquired by his marriage with her whese existence he now renders so miserable. His wife may have perhaps only one fault—her never failing submission to him. With a husband less a tyrant, more- a man, she would perhaps have been an ornament to society, a credit to her household. With him, both'are "impossible. No woman ■ can carry'^ her head erect in the presence of so great a tyrant, No lady can sustain her proper position before either her children or servants who is bound to

such a person. .Every sentence addressed to his wife by him, in the presence of a menial, provides a text for gossip in the servants' hall, every member of which dreads and despises his master with the fullest cordiality. Every fresh bullying administered by their papa before the children gives rise to lainutiie conference in the nursery, or, what is worse, a discussion among such of them as are growing up and becoming men and women themselves. Older and younger, greater aud smaller, all that make up his household live in dread of the domestic ogre. But it is upon the wife that the chief brunt of his cruelty falls. The servants can leave if they like. The children are probably not much in his actual presence, and have always the time for leaving home to look forward to, and hasten it as much as possible — how often to their own permanent disadvantage has been already hinted. It is only the wife whose lot it is to face the blank future, as does a galley slave condemned for life. Yet there must have been a time when ho was suave and gallant to her too. And there must have been a time when the change came, whether gradually or suddenly upon the happening of some event, which, great or small, estranged her from his lordly fancy.