non-appearance in good society, of the word wife-hunting, that the
practice is anything but common--that, since a hunt necessarily implies
pursuit on one side and flight on the other, a man cannot well be said
to hunt a woman who is either engaged in hunting him, or else only too
ready to meet him halfway? Are we gradually tending towards an advanced
stage of civilization in which woman will be formally recognized as the
pursuer, and man as the pursued? We are not bold enough to take under
our protection a view so glaringly heterodox, but still we think it
only common justice to point out that there are difficult problems in
the present state of society which the view helps materially to solve.
We fear, for instance, there can be no doubt that there is a good deal
of truth in the Belgravian mother's lament that marriage is gradually
ceasing to be considered "the thing" among the young men of the present
day; that girls of good families and even good looks are taking to
sisterhoods, and nursing-institutes, and new-fangled abominations,
simply because there is no one to marry them.
It is not merely that the young men are getting every day rarer; though,
unless there is some system, like Pharaoh's, for putting male infants to
death, what can become of them all is a mystery. India and the colonies
may absorb a good many, though these places also do duty in the
absorption of spinsterhood. But this will not account for the alarming
fact, that in almost every ball-room, no matter whether in the country
or in town, there are usually at least three crinolines to one
tail-coat, and that dancing bachelors are becoming so scarce that it is
a question whether hostesses ought not, for their own peace of mind, to
connive at the introduction of the Oriental nautch. Yet even the
alarming scarcity of marriageable men is not so serious an evil as their
growing disinclination to marry.
With the causes of this disinclination we are not now concerned. Some
attribute it to the increase of luxurious and expensive habits among
bachelors--habits specially fostered by "those hateful clubs;" some to
the "snobbishness" which makes a woman consider it beneath her dignity
to marry into an establishment less stylish than that which it has
perhaps taken her father all his life to secure; some to the
_demi-monde_--an explanation very like the theory that small-pox is
caused by pustules. But, whatever may be the causes of the
disinclination, there can be but little doubt that it exists, and the
worst part of the matter is, that it is found among rich men no less
than among poor. That really poor men should not wish to marry is, even
the Belgravian mother must admit, an admirable arrangement of nature.
But it is too bad that so many men-about-town should seem rich enough
for yachting, or racing, or opera-boxes, or even diamond necklaces--for
anything, in short, but a wife. The fact is, that in the eyes of poor
men a wife is associated chiefly with handsome carriages, showy dresses,
fine furniture, and other forbidden luxuries; and, inasmuch as there is
not one law of association for the rich and another for the poor, this
view spreads, until even rich men consider whether it is not possible to
secure the luxuries without the wife.
Now, since marriage is, on the whole, an institution with which society
cannot very well dispense--at any rate not until some good substitute
has been found for it--it is clear that rich men ought not to be allowed
to treat it in this way. If modern civilization tends to beget a
disinclination to marry, it ought also, on the principle of
compensation, to provide some means for counteracting this tendency, or
keeping it under control. Is the increase of husband-hunting--we ask the
question in a respectful and, we trust, purely philosophical spirit of
inquiry--calculated to supply this great and obvious want? What are its
merits, in this respect, as compared with the old-fashioned theory that
woman should be wooed, not woo? Even the most inveterate hater of
husband-hunting must admit that, so far as the great end of matrimony is
concerned, the two sexes nowadays stand to each other in a most
unnatural relation. It is alike the mission of both to marry, but
whereas women are honorably anxious to fulfill this mission, men, as we
have already seen, are too ready to shirk it. Yet, by a strange
inversion of the usual order of things, to the very sex which evades the
mission is its furtherance and chief control entrusted.
Besides, not only does woman take more kindly to the duty of matrimony
than man--or at least nineteenth-century man--but she has comparatively
nothing else to think about. A dozen occupations are open to him, but
her one object in life, her whole being's end and aim, is to marry.
Surely, if the art of marriage requires cultivation, it ought, like
everything else, to be entrusted to those who can give their whole time
to it, not to those who have so much else to do. Even when a bachelor is
in a position to marry, and not unwilling to make the experiment, he is
still far less fitted for the furtherance of matrimony than a woman. He,
perhaps, meets a nice girl at a ball, is taken with her, and after a
mild flirtation thinks, as he walks home in the moonlight, that she
would make a charming wife. He dreams about her, and next morning at
breakfast, as he pensively eats a pound of steak, resolves that on the
same afternoon, or the next at the very latest, he will contrive an
accidental meeting, or even find some excuse for a call. But then comes
office-work, or the _Times_, or some other distraction, and later on
perhaps a visit from some matter-of-fact friend with an unromantic taste
for "bitter," or a weakness for the Burlington Arcade. One day slips
away, and by the next the image of the evening's idol has waxed
comparatively faint. At least it is not sufficiently vivid to inspire
him with courage enough for a call, or a too suspicious-looking
rencontre. In a week he bows to the image, as it is driven by, as coolly
as if he had never had a thought of making his heart its shrine; and
thus a golden opportunity for bringing together two young people, in
whose auspicious union the whole community has an interest, has been
cruelly thrown away.
How different might the case have been if fashion had allowed the lady
to take the initiative, instead of compelling her to sit idly at home!
She has no office-work, nor _Times_, nor any business but that of
bringing last night's flirtation to a practical issue. Assuming her to
be satisfied as to the eligibility of her partner, there is nothing to
prevent her giving her whole time and attention to his capture. She is
as little likely to throw away any chance of an interview calculated to
help in bringing about this result as he is to neglect an opportunity
for winning the lawn sleeves or silk gown. Marriage is of as much
importance to her as either of these to him. It is, perhaps, not
impossible that the mere notion of a woman's thus taking the initiative
in courtship may to some appear outrageously immodest. But with this
point we have nothing to do, as we have been discussing the theory of
husband-hunting, not with any reference to its modesty, but solely and
exclusively in its connexion with the great question, how marriage is to
be carried on. We put together the three facts that nineteenth-century
civilization makes men indisposed to marry, that it gives women no
object in life but marriage, and yet that it assigns the furtherance of
marriage, which we assume to be an institution deserving of careful
cultivation, not to those whose interest it is to promote it, but to
those who are comparatively averse to it. Modest or immodest,
husband-hunting obviously tends to remedy this misdirection and waste of
force.
We take this to be the right explanation--and we have endeavored to make
it an impartial one--of the charge not uncommonly brought against the
young ladies of the present day, that, as compared with their mothers
and grandmothers, they are rather forward and fast, and that
husband-hunting in their hands, is gradually being developed to an
extent scarcely compatible with the old-fashioned theories about
maidenly modesty and reserve. The change may be considered the effort of
modern civilization to remedy an evil of its own creation. The tide
advances in one direction because it recedes in another. If the men
will not come forward, the women must. It is all very well for satirists
to call this immodest, but even modesty could be more easily dispensed
with than marriage. Besides, without quitting our position as impartial
observers, we may point out that it is only fair to the professor of
husband-hunting to remember that there are two kinds of immodesty, and
that some actions are immodest merely because it is the custom to
consider them so. It would, no doubt, be immodest for a young lady to
ride through Hyde Park in man's fashion. Yet what is there in the nature
of things to make a side-saddle more modest than any other? The Amazons
were positive prudes, and would never have even spoken to man if they
could have contrived to carry on society without him; yet they rode
astraddle. And if fashion could make this practice feminine, why should
it not some day do as much for husband-hunting?
THE PERILS OF "PAYING ATTENTION."
We have elsewhere asserted that the art of match-making requires
cultivation. We are told, however, that, on the contrary, match-making
is so zealously studied and skillfully pursued that it bids fair to be
the great social evil of nineteenth-century civilization. The growing
difficulty of procuring sons-in-law has called forth a corresponding
increase in the skill required for capturing them, just as the wits of
the detective are sharpened to keep pace with the expertness which the
general spread of useful knowledge has conferred upon the thief.
Eligible bachelors complain that scarcity of marrying men has much the
same effect upon the match-making mother as scarcity of food upon the
wolf. It makes her at once more ferocious and more cunning. Her
invitations to croquet-parties and little dinners are so constant and so
pressing that it is scarcely possible for her destined prey to refuse
them all without manifest rudeness, and yet it is equally hard for him
to go without being judiciously manoeuvred into "paying attention" to
the one young lady who has been selected to make him happy for life.
This chivalrous and graceful synonym for courtship in itself speaks
volumes for the serious nature of the risk which he runs. The truly
gallant assumption which underlies it, that an Englishman only "pays
attention" to a woman when he has a solid businesslike offer of marriage
to make her, not only puts a formidable weapon into the hands of the
match-maker, but also leaves her victim without a most effectual means
of protection. The national gallantry towards women upon which a
Frenchman so plumes himself may be, as your true Briton declares, a poor
sort of quality enough; a mere grimace and trick of the lips--not
genuine stuff from the heart; having much the same relation to true
chivalry that his _biere_ has to beer, or his _potage_ to soup. But at
any rate it has this advantage, that it enables him to pay any amount of
flowery compliments to a woman without risk of committing himself, or of
being misunderstood.
If an Englishman asks a young lady after her sore throat, or her invalid
grandmother, and throws into his voice that tone of eager interest or
tender sympathy which a polite Frenchman would assume as a matter of
course, he is at once suspected of matrimonial designs upon her. He is
obliged to be as formal and businesslike in his mode of address as the
lawyer's clerk who added at the end of a too ardent love-letter the
saving clause "without prejudice." We have heard of a young lady who
confided to her bosom friend that she that morning expected a proposal,
and, when closely pressed for her reasons, blushingly confessed that the
night before a gentleman had twice asked her whether she was fond of
poetry, and four times whether she would like to go into the
refreshment-room.
We do not mean to say that this tendency to look upon every "attention"
as a preliminary step to an offer is entirely, or even principally, due
to British want of gallantry. Our national theory of courtship and
marriage has probably much more to do with it. We say "theory"
advisedly, for our practice approaches every day nearer to that of the
Continental nations whose mercenary view of the holy estate of matrimony
we righteously abjure. Our system is, in fact, gradually becoming a
clumsy compromise between the _mariage de convenance_ and the _mariage
d'amour_, with most of the disadvantages, and very few of the
advantages, of either. Theoretically, English girls are allowed to marry
for love, and to choose whichever they like best of all the admiring
swains whom they fascinate at croquet-parties or balls. Practically, the
majority marry for an establishment, and only flirt for love. They leave
the school-room, no doubt, with an unimpeachably romantic conception of
a youthful bridegroom who combines good looks, great intellect, and
fervent piety with a modest four thousand a year, paid quarterly.
But they are not very long in finding out that the men whom they like
best, as being about their own age or still young enough to sympathise
with their tastes and enter heartily into all their notions of fun, are
rarely such as are pronounced by parents and guardians to be eligible;
and so, after one or two attacks, more or less serious, of love-fever,
they tranquilly look out for an admirer who can place the proper number
of servants and horses at their disposal, while they in return
magnanimously decline to make discourteously minute inquiries as to the
condition of his hair or teeth. A marriage made in this spirit, even
where no pressure is put upon the young lady by parents or friends, and
she is allowed full liberty of action, is open to all the charges
ordinarily brought against the Continental _mariage de convenance_. Yet,
on the other hand, it has not the advantage of being formally arranged
beforehand by a couple of elderly people, who are in no hurry, and who
have seen enough of the world to know thoroughly what they are about;
nor, we may add, does it usually take place in time to avert some one or
more of those troublesome flirtations with handsome, but penniless,
ball-room heroes which are not always calculated to improve either
temper or character.
Still, whatever our practice may be, we nevertheless do homage to the
theory that, in this favored country, young ladies choose whatever
husbands they like best, and marry for love; and although this theory is
in some respects a serious obstacle to marriage, and often stands
cruelly in the way of people with weak nerves, it places a powerful
weapon in the hands of the dauntless and determined match-maker. If
young people are to marry for love, they must obviously have every
facility afforded them for meeting and fascinating each other. It is
this consideration which reconciles the philosopher to some of our least
entertaining entertainments, although, at the same time, it makes so
much of our hospitality an organized hypocrisy.
It is, indeed, a hard fate to be obliged to leave your after-dinner
cigar and George Eliot's last novel in order to drive four miles through
wind and snow to a party which your hostess has given, not because she
has good fare, or good music, or agreeable guests, or anything, in
short, really calculated to amuse you, but simply and solely because she
has a tribe of daughters who somehow must be disposed of. Yet even a man
of the Sir Cornewall Lewis stamp, who thinks that this world would be a
very tolerable place but for its amusements, may forgive her when he
reflects that business, not pleasure, is at the bottom of the
invitation. If marriage is to be kept up, we must either abandon our
theory that young ladies are allowed to choose husbands for themselves,
or we must give them every possible facility for exercising the choice.
Bachelors must be dragged, on every available pretext, and without the
slightest reference to the nominal ends of amusement or hospitality,
from the novel or cigar, and made to run the gauntlet of female charms.
From the Sir Cornewall Lewis point of view, with which nearly all
Englishmen over thirty more or less sympathise, it is the only sound
defence of many of our so-called entertainments that they are virtually
daughter-shows--genteel auctions, without which a sufficiently brisk
trade in matrimony could not possibly be carried on. The consciousness
of this is doubtless in one way somewhat of an obstacle to flirtation,
and gives the frisky matron a cruel advantage over her unmarried rival.
A man must have oak and triple brass round his heart who can flirt
perfectly at his ease when he knows that his "attentions" are not
merely watched by vigilant chaperons, but are actually reduced to a
matter of numerical calculation--that a certain number of dances, or
calls, or polite speeches will justify a stern father or big brother in
asking his "intentions."
This application of arithmetic is, in some respects, as dangerous to
courtship as to the Pentateuch. But, nevertheless, it gives the clever
and courageous match-maker an advantage of which the eligible bachelor
complains that she makes the most pitiless use. He finds himself
manoeuvred into "paying the attentions" which society considers the
usual prelude to a marriage, with a dexterity which it is all but
impossible to evade. The lady is played into his hands with much the
same sort of skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There are
perhaps a number of other ladies present, in promiscuous flirtation with
whom he sees, at first glance, an obvious means of escape. But this hope
speedily turns out a delusion. One lady is vigilantly guarded by a
jealous betrothed; a second is a poor relation, or humble friend, who
knows that she would never get another invitation to the house if she
once interfered with her patron's plans; a third is too plain to be
approached on any ordinary calculation of probabilities; a fourth is
hopelessly dull; the rest are married, and if not actually themselves in
the conspiracy--which, however, is as likely as not--are still carefully
chosen for their freedom from the flirting propensities of the frisky
matron. The destined victim finds, in short, that he must either
deliberately resign himself to be bored to death, or boldly face the
peril in store for him, and take his chance of evading or breaking the
net. Nine men out of ten naturally choose the latter alternative, too
often in that presumptuous spirit of self-confidence which is the
match-maker's best ally.
A bachelor is perhaps never in so great danger of being caught as when
he has come to the conclusion that he sees perfectly through the
mother's little game and merely means to amuse himself by carrying on a
strictly guarded flirtation with the daughter. We mean, of course, on
the assumption that the daughter is either a pretty or clever girl, with
whom any sort of flirtation is in itself perilous. His danger is all the
greater if it happens--and it is only fair to young-ladydom to admit
that it often does happen--that the daughter has sufficient spirit and
self-respect to repudiate all share in the maternal plot. Many a man has
been half surprised, half piqued, into serious courtship by finding
himself vigorously snubbed and rebuffed where he had been led to imagine
that his slightest advances would be only too eagerly received. But, in
any case, the match-maker knows that, if she can only bring the two
people whom she wishes to marry sufficiently often into each other's
society, the battle is half won. According to Lord Lytton, whom every
one will admit to be an authority on the philosophy of flirtation,
"proximity is the soul of love." And eligible bachelors complain that it
becomes every day harder to avoid this perilous proximity, and the duty
of "paying attention" which it implies, without being positively rude.
We have not much consolation to offer the sufferers who prefer this
complaint. As regards our own statement that the art of match-making
requires cultivation, we did not mean by it to imply that match-making
is not vigorously carried on. So long as there are mothers left with
daughters to be married, so long will match-making continue to be
pursued; and it must obviously be pursued all the more energetically to
keep pace with the growing disinclination of bachelors among the upper
and middle classes to face the responsibilities of married life. We
meant that match-making does not receive the sort of cultivation which
it seems to us fairly to deserve, when we consider the paramount
importance of the object which it at least professes to have in view,
and the delicate nature of the instruments and experiments with which it
is concerned.
We have not yet mustered up courage for the attempt to show what should
be its proper cultivation; but we may safely say that so long as it is
left in the hands of those who are influenced by merely mercenary or
interested motives, and who watch the "attentions" of a bachelor, not in
the spirit of a philosopher or a philanthropist, but in that of a
Belgravian mother, it cannot be cultivated as a fine art. It can only be
rescued from the unmerited odium into which it has fallen by being taken
under the patronage of those who are in a position to practice it on
purely artistic and disinterested grounds. In their hands, the now
perilous process of "paying attention" would be studied and criticized
in a new spirit. It might still, indeed, be treated arithmetically, as
perhaps the most promising way of reducing it to the precision and
certainty of an exact science. But still the problem would be to
determine, not what is the least possible number of dances, calls, or
compliments which may justify the intervention of a big brother or heavy
father, but what number warrants the assumption that the flirtation has
passed out of the frivolous into the serious stage. Three dances, for
instance, may expose a man to being asked what are his "intentions,"
where six dances need not imply that he really has any. The mercenary
match-maker considers only the first point; our ideal match-maker would
lay far more stress upon the second. But still, in any case, this
growing tendency to treat the practice of "paying attention" in the
spirit of exact science offers at least one ray of hope to those who
complain that, do what they will, they cannot escape having to pay this
dangerous tribute. The tendency must sooner or later bear fruit in a
generally recognised code of courtship (whether written or unwritten
does not much matter), prescribing the precise number and character of
the "attentions"--in their adaptation to dancing, croquet-playing,
cracker-pulling, and other conventional pretexts for flirtation--which
virtually amount to an offer of marriage. This scheme, we may mention,
is not wholly imaginary. There is somewhere or other a stratum of
English society in which such a code already exists. At least we have
seen a book of etiquette in which, among similar ordinances, it was laid
down that to hand anything--say a flower or a muffin--to a lady with
the left hand was equivalent to a proposal. The general introduction of
a system of this kind, although it might shorten the lives of timid or
forgetful men, would obviously confer an unspeakable boon upon the
majority of the match-maker's present victims. They would not only know
exactly how far to go with safety, but also how at once to recede. To
offer, for instance, two pieces of muffin firmly and decidedly with the
right hand would probably make up for offering one flower with the left,
at least if there were no guardian or chaperon on the spot to take
instant advantage of the first overture. But it would now perhaps be
premature to enter into the details of a system which it may take a
generation or so more of match-making to introduce.
WOMEN'S HEROINES.
A vigorous and pertinacious effort has of late years been made to
persuade mankind that beauty in women is a matter of very little moment.
As long as literature was more or less a man's vocation, an opposite
tendency prevailed; and a successful novelist would as soon have thought
of flying as of driving a team of ugly heroines through three volumes.
The rapid and portentous increase of authoresses changed the current of
affairs. As a rule, authoresses do not care much about lovely women; and
they must naturally despise the miserable masculine weakness which is
led captive by a pretty face, even if it be only upon paper. They can
have no patience with such feebleness, and it may well seem to them to
be a high and important mission to help to put it down.