Lately in company with my friend in black, whose conversation is now
both my amusement and instruction, I could not avoid observing the
great numbers of old bachelors and maiden ladies with which this city
seems to be over-run. "Sure marriage," said I, "is not sufficiently
encouraged, or we should never behold such crowds of battered beaux
and decayed coquettes still attempting to drive a trade they have been
so long unfit for, and swarming upon the gaiety of the age. I behold
an old bachelor in the most contemptible light, as an animal that
lives upon the common stock, without contributing his share: he is a
beast of prey, and the laws should make use of as many stratagems, and
as much force to drive the reluctant savage into the toils, as the
Indians when they hunt the rhinoceros. The mob should be permitted to
halloo after him, boys might play tricks on him with impunity, every
well-bred company should laugh at him, and if, when turned of sixty,
he offered to make love, his mistress might spit in his face, or, what
would be perhaps a greater punishment, should fairly grant the favour.
"As for old maids," continued I, "they should not be treated with so
much severity, because I suppose none would be so if they could. No
lady in her senses would choose to make a subordinate figure at
christenings and lyings-in, when she might be the principal herself;
nor curry favour with a sister-in-law, when she might command an
husband; nor toil in preparing custards, when she might lie a-bed and
give directions how they ought to be made; nor stifle all her
sensations in demure formality, when she might with matrimonial
freedom shake her acquaintance by the hand, and wink at a double
entendre. No lady could be so very silly as to live single, if she
could help it. I consider an unmarried lady declining into the vale of
years, as one of those charming countries bordering on China that lies
waste for want of proper inhabitants. We are not to accuse the
country, but the ignorance of its neighbours, who are insensible of
its beauties, though at liberty to enter and cultivate the soil."
"Indeed, sir," replied my companion, "you are very little acquainted
with the English ladies, to think they are old maids against their
will. I dare venture to affirm, that you can hardly select one of them
all but has had frequent offers of marriage, which either pride or
avarice has not made her reject. Instead of thinking it a disgrace,
they take every occasion to boast of their former cruelty; a soldier
does not exult more when he counts over the wounds he has received,
than a female veteran when she relates the wounds she has formerly
given: exhaustless when she begins a narrative of the former
death-dealing power of her eyes. She tells of the knight in gold lace,
who died with a single frown, and never rose again till--he was
married to his maid; of the squire, who being cruelly denied, in a
rage flew to the window, and lifting up the sash, threw himself in an
agony--into his arm chair; of the parson who, crossed in love,
resolutely swallowed opium, which banished the stings of despised love
by--making him sleep. In short, she talks over her former losses with
pleasure, and, like some tradesmen, finds some consolation in the many
bankruptcies she has suffered.
"For this reason, whenever I see a superannuated beauty still
unmarried, I tacitly accuse her either of pride, avarice, coquetry, or
affectation. There's Miss Jenny Tinderbox, I once remember her to have
had some beauty, and a moderate fortune. Her elder sister happened to
marry a man of quality, and this seemed as a statute of virginity
against poor Jane. Because there was one lucky hit in the family, she
was resolved not to disgrace it by introducing a tradesman. By thus
rejecting her equals, and neglected or despised by her superiors, she
now acts in the capacity of tutoress to her sister's children, and
undergoes the drudgery of three servants, without receiving the wages
of one.
"Miss Squeeze was a pawnbroker's daughter; her father had early taught
her that money was a very good thing, and left her a moderate fortune
at his death. She was so perfectly sensible of the value of what she
had got, that she was resolved never to part with a farthing without
an equality on the part of her suitor: she thus refused several offers
made her by people who wanted to better themselves, as the saying is;
and grew old and ill-natured, without ever considering that she should
have made an abatement in her pretensions, from her face being pale,
and marked with the small-pox.
"Lady Betty Tempest, on the contrary, had beauty, with fortune and
family. But fond of conquest, she passed from triumph to triumph; she
had read plays and romances, and there had learned that a plain man of
common sense was no better than a fool: such she refused, and sighed
only for the gay, giddy, inconstant, and thoughtless; after she had
thus rejected hundreds who liked her, and sighed for hundreds who
despised her, she found herself insensibly deserted: at present she is
company only for her aunts and cousins, and sometimes makes one in a
country-dance, with only one of the chairs for a partner, casts off
round a joint-stool, and sets to a corner-cupboard. In a word, she is
treated with civil contempt from every quarter, and placed, like a
piece of old-fashioned lumber, merely to fill up a corner.
"But Sophronia, the sagacious Sophronia, how shall I mention her? She
was taught to love Greek, and hate the men from her very infancy: she
has rejected fine gentlemen because they were not pedants, and pedants
because they were not fine gentlemen; her exquisite sensibility has
taught her to discover every fault in every lover, and her inflexible
justice has prevented her pardoning them: thus she rejected several
offers, till the wrinkles of age had overtaken her; and now, without
one good feature in her face, she talks incessantly of the beauties of
the mind."
_Goldsmith._