it is becoming more and more common for husband and wife
to take separate holidays; there are even some who leave behind them
merely a slip: "Gone away, address unknown." They are cutting the wire
entanglements behind which lie dangers and freedoms. All this again
comes from mutual respect with mutual realization, from education, and
especially from late marriages. Late marriages are one of the most
potent causes of the break-up of the family, for now women are no longer
caught and crushed young; they are no longer burdened matrons at thirty.
The whole point of view has changed. I remember reading in an
early-Victorian novel this phrase: "She was past the first bloom of her
youth; she was twenty-three." The phrase is not without its meaning; it
meant that the male was seeking not a wife, but a courtesan who, her
courtesanship done, could become a perfect housekeeper. Now men prefer
women of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, forsake the _backfisch_ for her
mother, because the mother has personality, experience, can stimulate,
amuse, and accompany. Only the older and more formed woman is no longer
willing to enter the family as a jail; she will enter it only as a
hotel.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, from child to parent erosion also operates. I do not think
that the modern child honors its father and its mother unless it thinks
them worthy of honor. There is a slump in respect, as outside the family
there is a slump in reverence. As in the outer world a man began by
being a worthy, then a member of Parliament, then a minister, finally
was granted a pension and later a statue; and as now a man is first a
journalist, then a member of Parliament, a minister, and in due course a
scoundrel, so inside the family does a father become an equal instead of
a tyrant, and a good sort instead of an old fogy. For respect, I
believe, was mainly fear and greed. The respect of the child for its
father was very like the respect that Riquet, the little dog, felt for
Monsieur Bergeret. Anatole France has expressed it ideally:

"Oh, my master, Bergeret, God of Slaughter, I worship thee! Hail, oh God
of wrath! Hail, oh bountiful God! I lie at thy feet, I lick thy hand.
Thou art great and beautiful when at the laden board thou devourest
abundant meats. Thou art great and beautiful when, from a thin strip of
wood causing flame to spring, thou dost of night make day...."

That was a little the child's cosmogony. Then the c