gives instead of receiving. This kind is of variable conditions. She
may be old, she may be ugly; in fact, she is more often both than
neither; but she is a universal favourite notwithstanding, and no
woman is more sought after nor less wearied of, although few can say
why they like her. She may be married; but generally she is either a
widow or an old maid; for, if she be a wife, her sympathies for things
abroad are necessarily somewhat cramped by the pressure of those at
home;--and her sympathies are her claim to popularity. She is sincere
too, as well as sympathetic, and she is safe. She holds the secrets of
all her friends; but no one suspects that any before himself has
confided in her. She has the art, or rather the charm, of perpetual
spiritual freshness, and all her friends think in turn that the
fountain has been unsealed now for the first time. This is not
artifice; it is simply the property of deep and inexhaustible
sympathy. It is not necessary that she should be a wise adviser to be
popular. Her province is to listen and to sympathize; to gather the
sorrows and the joys of others into her own breast, so as to soften by
sharing or heighten by reduplication. Most frequently she is not over
rigid in her notions of moral prudence, and will let a lovesick girl
talk of her lover, even if the affair be hopeless and has been
forbidden; while she will do her best to soothe the man who has had
the misfortune to get crazed about his friend's wife. She has been
even known, under pressure, to convey a message or a hint; and of the
two she is decidedly more pitiful to sorrow than severe to
wrong-doing. She is in all the misfortunes and maladies of her
friends. No death takes place without her bearing part of the
mourning on her own soul; but then no marriage is considered complete
in which she has not a share. She is called on to help whenever there
is work to be done, if she be of the practical type; if of the mental,
she has merely to give up her own pleasures and her time that she may
look on and sympathize. Every one likes her; every one takes to her at
first sight; no one is jealous of her; and the law of her life is to
spend and be spent for others. It not rarely happens though, that she
who does so much for those others has to bear her own burden
unassisted; and that she sits at home surrounded by those spectres of
despair, those ghosts of sorrow, which she helps to dispel from the
homes of others. But she is not selfish; and while she trudges along
cheerfully enough under the heavy end of her friend's crosses, she
asks no one to lay so much as a finger on her own. In consequence of
which no one imagines that she ever suffers at all on her own account;
and most of her friends would take it as a personal affront were she
to turn the tables and ask for the smallest portion of that of which
she had given so much to others. She is the moral anodyne of her
circle; and when she ceases to soothe, she abdicates the function
assigned to her by nature and dies out of her allotted uses.
Another kind of popular person is the woman whose sympathies are more
superficial, but whose faculties are more brilliant; the woman who
makes herself agreeable, as it is called--that is, who can talk when
she is wanted to talk; listen when she is wanted to listen; take a
prominent part and some responsibility or keep her personality in the
background, according to circumstances and the need of the moment; who
is eminently a useful member of society, and popular just in
proportion to the pleasure she can shed around her. But she offends no
one, even though she is notoriously sought after and made much of; for
she is good-natured to all, and people are not jealous of those who do
not flaunt their successes and whom popularity does not make insolent.
The popular woman of this kind is always ready to help in the pleasure
of others. She is a fair-weather friend, and shrinks with the most
charming frankness from those on whom dark days have fallen. She is
really very sorry when any of her friends fall out from the ranks, and
are left behind to the tender mercies of those cruel camp-followers in
the march of life--sorrow or sickness; but she feels that her place is
not with them--rather with the singers and players who are stepping
along in front making things pleasant for the main body. But if she
cannot stop to smooth the pillows of a dying-bed, nor soothe the
troubles of an aching heart, she can organize delightful parties; set
young people to congenial games; take off bores on to her own
shoulders, and even utilize them for the neutralization of other
bores. She is good for the back seat or the front, as is most
convenient to others. She can shine at the state-dinner where you want
a serviceable show, or make a diversion in the quiet, not to say
stupid, conglomerate of fogies, where you want a lively element to
prevent universal stupor. She talks easily and well, and even
brilliantly when on her mettle, but not so as to excite men's envy;
and she has no decided opinions. She is a chameleon, an opal, changing
ever in changing lights, and no one was yet able to determine her
central quality. All that can be said of her is that she is
good-natured and amusing, clever, facile, and ever ready to assist at
all kinds of gatherings, which she has the knack of making go, and
which would have been slow without her; that she knows every game ever
invented, and is good for every sort of festivity; that she is always
well-dressed, even-tempered, and in (apparently) unwearied spirits and
superb health; but what she is at home, when the world is shut out,
never troubles the thoughts of any. She is to society what the
sympathetic woman is to the individual, and the reward is much the
same in both cases. But unless the socially useful woman has been able
to secure the interest of the sympathetic one, the chances are that,
popular as she is now, she will be relegated to the side when her time
of brilliancy has passed; and that, when her last hour comes, it will
find her without the comfort of a friend, forsaken and forgotten. She
is of the kind to whom _sic transit_ more especially applies; and if
her life's food has not been quite the husks, at all events it has not
been good meat nor fine meal.
_CHOOSING OR FINDING._
The controversy as to which is the better of the two methods of
marrying one's daughter, in use in France and England respectively,
has not yet been decided by any preponderating evidence. Whether the
parents--especially the mother--ought to find a husband for the
daughter, or whether the girl, young and inexperienced as she is,
should seek one for herself, with the chance of not knowing her own
mind in the first place, and of not understanding the real nature of
the man she chooses in the second--these are the two principles
contended for by the rival methods; and the fight is still going on.
The truth is, the worst of either is so infinitely bad that there is
nothing to choose between them; and the same is true, inversely, of
the best. When things go well, the advocates of the particular system
involved sing their pæans, and show how wise they were; when they go
ill, the opponents howl their condemnation, and say: We told you so.
The French method is based on the theory that a woman's knowledge of
the world, and a mother's intimate acquaintance with her daughter's
special temper and requirements, are likely to be truer guides in the
choice of a husband than the callow fancy of a girl. It is assumed
that the former will be better able than the latter to separate the
reality from the appearance, to winnow the grain from the chaff. She
will appraise at its true value a fascinating manner with a shaky
moral character at its back; and a handsome face will go for little
when the family lawyer confesses the poverty of the family purse. To
the girl, a fluent tongue, flattering ways, a taking presence, would
have included everything in heaven and earth that a man should be; and
no dread of future poverty, no evidence of the bushels of wild oats
sown broadcast, would have convinced her that Don Juan was a _mauvais
parti_ and a scamp into the bargain. Again, the mother usually knows
her daughters' dispositions better than the daughters themselves, and
can distinguish between idiosyncrasies and needs as no young people
are able to do. Laura is romantic, sentimental, imaginative; but Laura
cannot mend a stocking nor make a shirt, nor do any kind of work
requiring strength of grasp or deftness of touch. She has no power of
endurance, no persistency of will, no executive ability; but she falls
in love with a younger son just setting out to seek his fortunes in
Australia; and, if allowed, she marries him, full of enthusiasm and
delight, and goes out with him. In a year's time she is
dead--literally killed by hardship; or, if she has vitality enough to
survive the hard experience of roughing it in the bush, she collapses
into a wretched, haggard, faded woman, prematurely old, hopeless and
dejected; the miserable victim of circumstances sinking under a burden
too heavy for her to bear.
Now a French mother would have foreseen all these dangers, and would
have provided against them. She would have known the unsubstantial
quality of Laura's romance, and the reality of her physical weakness
and incapacity. She would have kept her out of sight and hearing of
that fascinating younger son just off to Australia to dig out his
rough fortunes in the bush, and would have quietly assigned her to
some conventional well-endowed man of mature age--who might not have
been a soul's ideal, and whose rheumatism would have made him chary of
the moonlight--but who would have taken care of the poor little frail
body, dressed it in dainty gowns and luxurious furs, given it a soft
couch to lie on and a luxurious carriage to drive in, and provided it
with food convenient and ease unbroken. And in the end, Laura would
have found that mamma had known what was best for her; and that her
ordinary-looking, middle-aged caretaker was a better husband for her
than would have been that adventurous young Adonis, who could have
given her nothing better than a shakedown of dried leaves, a deal box
for an arm-chair, and a cup of brick tea for the sparkling wines of
her youth.
It may be a humiliating confession to make, but the old saying about
poverty coming in at the door and love flying out of the window holds
true in all cases where there is not strength enough to rough it; for
the body holds the spirit captive, and, however willing the one may
be, the weakness of the other conquers in the end.
On the other hand, Maria, square-set, defying, adventurous, brave, as
the wife of a rich man here in England, would be as one smothered in
rose leaves. The dull monotony of conventional life would half madden
her; and her uncompromising temper would break out in a thousand
eccentricities, and make her countless enemies. Let _her_ go to the
bush if you like. She is of the stamp which bears heroes; and her sons
will be a stalwart race fit for the work before them. The wise mother
who had it in hand to organize the future of her daughters would take
care to find her a man and a fortune that would utilize her energy and
courage; but Maria, if left to herself, might perhaps fall in love
with some cavalry officer of good family and expectations, whose
present dash would soon have to be exchanged for the stereotyped
conventionalities of the owner of a place, where, as his wife, her
utmost limit of physical action would be riding to hounds and taking
off the prize for archery.
Such well-fitting arrangements as these are the ideal of the French
system; just as the union of two hearts, the one soul finding its
companion soul and both living happily ever after, is the ideal of the
English system. Against the French lies the charge of the cruel sale,
for so much money, of a young creature who has not been allowed a
choice, scarcely even the right of rejection; against the English the
cruelty of suffering a girl's foolish fancy to destroy her whole life,
and the absurdity of treating such a fancy as a fact. For the French
there is the plea of the enormous power of instinct and habit, and
that really it signifies very little to a girl what man she marries;
provided only that he is kind to her and that she has not fallen in
love with any one else; seeing that she is sure to love the first
presented. For the English there is the counter plea of individual
needs and independent choice, and the theory that women do not love by
instinct but by sympathy. The French make great account of the
absolute virginity in heart of the young girl they marry; and few
Frenchmen would think they had got the kind of woman warranted if they
married one who had been engaged two or three times already--to whose
affianced lovers had been accorded the familiarities which we in
England hold innocent and as matters of course. The English, in
return, demand a more absolute fidelity after marriage, and are
generous enough to a few false starts before. To them the contract is
more a matter of free choice than it is in France; consequently
failure in carrying out the stipulations carries with it more
dishonour. The French, taking into consideration that the wife had
nothing to say to the bargain which gave her away, are inclined
to be more lenient when the theory of instinctive love fails to
work, and the individuality of the woman expresses itself in an
after-preference; always provided, of course, that the _bienséances_
are respected, and that no scandal is created.
Among the conflicting rights and wrongs of the two systems it is very
difficult to say which is the better, which the wiser. If it seems a
horrible thing to marry a young girl without her consent, or without
any more knowledge of the man with whom she is to pass her life than
can be got by seeing him once or twice in formal family conclave, it
seems quite as bad to let our women roam about the world at the age
when their instincts are strongest and their reason weakest--open to
the flatteries of fools and fops--the prey of professed
lady-killers--the objects of lover-like attentions by men who mean
absolutely nothing but the amusement of making love--the subjects for
erotic anatomists to study at their pleasure. Who among our girls
after twenty carries an absolutely untouched heart to the man she
marries? Her former predilection may have been a dream, a fancy--still
it was there; and there are few wives who, in their little tiffs and
moments of irritation, do not feel, 'If I had married my first love,
_he_ would not have treated me so.' Perhaps a wise man does not care
for a mere baseless thought; but all men are not wise, and to some a
spiritual condition is as real as a physical fact. Others however, do
not trouble themselves for what has gone before if they can but secure
what follows after; but we imagine that most men would rather not
know their wives' dreams; and _cet autre_, however shadowy, is a rival
not specially desired by the average husband.
If the independence of life and free intercourse between young men and
maidens is in its degree dangerous in England, what must it be in
America, where anything like chaperonage is unknown, and where girls
and boys flock together without a mamma or a guardian among them?
where engaged couples live under the same roof for months at a time,
also without a mamma or a guardian? and where the young men take the
young women about on night excursions alone, and no harm thought by
any one? Is human nature really different in America from what it is
in the Old World? Are Columbia's sons in truth like Erin's of old
time, so good or so cold? It is a saying hard of acceptance to us who
are accustomed to regard our daughters as precious things to be taken
care of--if not quite so frail as the French regard theirs, yet not
too secure, and certainly not to be left too much to themselves with
only young men for their guardians. They are our lambs, and we look
out for wolves. To be sure the comparative paucity of women in the
United States, and the conviction which every girl has that she may
pretty well make her own choice, help to keep matters straight. That
is easy to be understood. There is no temptation to eat green berries
in an orchard full of ripe fruit. But if this be true of America, then
the converse must be true of England, where the redundancy of women
is one of the most patent facts of the time, and where consequently
they cannot so well afford to indulge that pride of person which
hesitates among many before selecting one. In America this pride of
person of itself erects a barrier between the wolves and the lambs;
but where the very groundwork of it is wanting, as in England, it
behoves the natural guardians to be on the watch, and to take care of
those who cannot take care of themselves. Whether or not that care
should be carried to the extent to which French parents carry
theirs--and especially in the matter of making the marriage for the
daughter and not letting her make it for herself--we leave an open
question. Perhaps a little modification in the practice of both
nations would be the best for all concerned. Without trusting quite so
much to instinct as the French, we might profitably curtail a little
more than we do the independent choice of those who are too young and
too ignorant to know what they want, or what they have got when they
have chosen; and without letting their young girls run all abroad
without direction, the French might, in turn, allow them some kind of
human preference, and not treat them as mere animals bound to be
grateful to the hand that feeds them, and docile to the master who
governs them.
_LOCAL FÊTES._
The efforts of country places in the matter of local fêtes and shows
are often beset with difficulties. The great people, who have seen the
best of everything in Paris and London, give their money sparsely and
their energies with languor; or it may be that certain of the more
good-natured kill the whole affair by their superabundant patronage,
as nurses stifle infants by over-care. The very poor can only
participate to the extent of pence when the thing is organized; they
can neither subscribe for the general expenses nor give time to the
arrangements; consequently the burden rests on the shoulders of the
middle class, which in a small country neighbourhood is represented by
the well-to-do tradesmen, the innkeepers, and the rival professionals.
Once a year or so the desire fastens on these people to get up a local
fête--say a flower-show, or games, or both combined--as an evidence of
local vitality; a claim on the county newspaper for two or three
columns of description with all the names in full flanked by a
generous application of adjectives; an occasion for mutual
self-laudation; and a pleasing impression of the eyes of England
being turned upon them. They find their work cut out for them when
they begin; and before the end most of them wish they had never been
bitten by the mania of parochial ambition, but had let the old place
lie in its wonted stagnation without attempting to stir it at the cost
of so much vexation and thankless trouble.
Jealousy and huffiness are the dominant characteristics of small
communities, as all people know who have had dealings therewith. The
question of precedence affects more than the choice of the First Lady
in an assembly where there are no ladies to be first, though there may
be plenty of honest women; and the men squabble for distinctive
offices and the recognition of services to the full as much as the
lawyer's wife squabbles with the doctor's, and both with the wholesale
grocer's, as to which of the three is to be first taken down to supper
and set at the head of the table with the master of the house. One
wants to be the secretary, that he may display his power of fine
writing when he asks the resident nobility and gentry for their
subscriptions, and draws up the final report for the press. Another
thinks he should be made chairman of the acting committee, because he
imagines he has the gift of eloquence, and he would like to use the
time of the association in airing his syntax. A third puts in his
claim to be elected one of the judges of things he does not
understand, because his son-in-law is to be an exhibitor, and he would
be glad to be able to say a good word for him; and all decline those
offices which have no outside show, where only work is to be done and
no credit gained. It requires a considerable amount of tact and
firmness to withstand these clamorous vanities, to put the right men
in the right places, and yet not make enmities which will last a
lifetime. But if the thing is to succeed at all, this is what must be
done; and the little committee must stick to its text of _pro bono
publico_ as steadfastly as if the flower-show were a conqueror's
triumph, and the rules and regulations for its fit management consular
decrees.
When the eventful day arrives, every one feels that the eyes of
England are indeed turned hither-ward. If the great people are
languid, the meaner folks are jocund, and the stewards are as proud as
the proudest ædiles of old Rome. Their knots of coloured ribbon make
new men of them for the time, and justify the instinct which puts its
trust in regalia. They are sure to be on the ground from the earliest
hours in the morning; and though scoffers might perhaps question the
practical value of their zeal, no one can doubt its heartiness. If it
is fussy, it is genuine; and as every one is fussy alike, they cannot
complain of one another. A band has been lent by a neighbouring
regiment, and the men come radiant into the little town. It is
delightful to see the cordial condescension with which the trombone
and the cornet, the serpent and the drum shake hands with their
civilian friends; and how the fine fellows in scarlet accept drinks
quite fraternally from fustian and corderoy. For a full half-hour the
town is kept alive by the dazzle and resonance of these musical heroes
as they stand before the door of the 'public' which they have elected
to patronize, and lighten the pockets of the lieges by the successive
'go's' drained out of them. Then the church clock chimes the appointed
hour; the last flag is run up; the finishing touch is given to the
calico and the moss; the last award has been affixed; and the
policeman stationed at the gate to keep order among the little boys
has tightened his belt and drawn on his gloves ready for action. The
band marches through the town, drums beating and fifes playing, and
when the gates are opened as the clock is on the stroke of twelve,
they are all settled in their places with their music handy, ready to
salute the gentry with the overture from _Zampa_, taken in false time.
The imposing effect however, is rather marred by the friendly feelings
of the public; for when jolly farmers and small boys insist on sharing
the benches assigned to the red coats, the orchestra has necessarily a
patchwork kind of look that does not add to its dignity.
The great people do their duty as they ought, and come in their
carriages; which make a show and give an air of regality to the
affair. Many of them have had early high-priced tickets given to them
in consideration of their subscribed guineas; it being held the right
thing to do to give to those who can afford to pay, trusting to the
pence of the multitude for the rest. Nevertheless these great
creatures regard their presence there as a _corvée_ which they must
fulfil, but at the least cost possible to themselves; so they make up
parties to meet at a certain time, and endure the stewards, who talk
fine and are important, with the best philosophy granted them by
nature. When the second prices come, then the real fun of the fair
begins. The great people are uninterested. The indifferently grown
flowers which are offered for prizes do not call forth their
enthusiasm; but the smaller folk think them superb, and express their
admiration with unstinted delight. When the gardener of a neighbouring
lord exhibits a good specimen from his choicest plants, not for
competition but as a model for imitation, their enthusiasm knows no
bounds; and a fine alamanda or a richly-coloured dracæna receives
almost divine honours. As a rule, the flowers in these local shows are
poor enough; but the fruit is often good and the vegetables are
magnificent. The highest efforts of competition are usually devoted to
onions and beans; but potatoes come in for their due share, and the
summer celery is for the most part an instance of misdirected power.
The great houses carry off the first prizes--the poor little cottage
plots, cultivated at odd hours under difficulties, not touching them
in value. The gentlemen say they give their prizes to their gardeners;
but that does not help the cottagers who have spent time and money and
hope in this unequal struggle of pigmies with giants. In some places
they divide the classes, and give prizes to the gentlefolks apart, and
to the cottagers by themselves. In which case they fulfil the
Scriptures literally, and give most to those who already have most.