There is no subject in the whole range of human affairs so interesting to
a working majority of the race as the theory and practice of proposals of
marriage. Men perhaps cease to be very much concerned about the ordeal
when they have been through it. But the topic never loses its charm for
the fair, though they are presumed only to wait and to listen, and never
to speak for themselves. That this theory has its exceptions appears to
be the conviction of many novelists. They not only make their young
ladies "lead up to it," but heroines occasionally go much further than
that, and do more than prompt an inexperienced wooer. But all these
things are only known to the world through the confessions of novelists,
who, perhaps, themselves receive confessions. M. Goncourt not long ago
requested all his fair readers to send him notes of their own private
experience. How did you feel when you were confirmed? How did Alphonse
whisper his passion? These and other questions, quite as intimate, were
set by M. Goncourt. He meant to use the answers, with all discreet
reserve, in his next novel. Do English novelists receive any private
information, and if they do not, how are we to reconcile their
knowledge--they are all love-adepts--with the morality of their lives?
"We live like other people, only more purely," says the author of "Some
Private Views," which is all very well. No man is bound to incriminate
himself. But as in the course of his career a successful novelist
describes many hundreds of proposals, all different, are we to believe
that he is so prompted merely by imagination? Are there no "documents,"
as M. Zola says, for all this prodigious deal of love-making? These are
questions which await a reply in the interests of ethics and of art.
Meanwhile an editor of enterprise has selected five-and-thirty separate
examples of "popping the question," as he calls it, from the tomes of
British fiction. To begin with an early case--when Tom Jones returned to
his tolerant Sophia, he called her "Madam," and she called him "Mr.
Jones," not Tom. She asked Thomas how she could rely on his constancy,
when the lover of Miss Segrim drew a mirror from his pocket (like
Strephon in "Iolanthe"), and cried, "Behold that lovely figure, that
shape, those eyes," with other compliments; "can the man who shall be in
possession of these be inconstant?" Sophia was charmed by the "man in
possession," but forced her features into a frown. Presently Thomas
"caught her in his arms," and the rest was in accordance with what Mr.
Trollope and the best authorities recommend. How differently did Arthur
Pendennis carry himself when he proposed to Laura, and did not want to be
accepted! Lord Farintosh--his affecting adventure is published
here--proposed nicely enough, but did not behave at all well when he was
rejected. By the way, when young men in novels are not accepted, they
invariably ask the lady whether she loves another. Only young ladies,
and young men whom they have rejected, know whether this is common in
real life. It does not seem quite right.
Kneeling has probably gone out, though Mr. Jingle knelt before the maiden
aunt, and remained in that attitude for no less than five minutes. In
Mr. Howell's "Modern Instance," kneeling was not necessary, and the
heroine kept thrusting her face into her lover's necktie; so the author
tells us. M. Theophile Gautier says that ladies invariably lay their
heads on the shoulder of the man who proposes (if he is the right man),
and for this piece of "business" (as we regret to say he considers it) he
assigns various motives. But he was a Frenchman, and the cynicism of
that nation (to parody a speech of Tom Jones's) cannot understand the
delicacy of ours. Mr. Blackmore (in "Lorna Doone") lets his lover make
quite a neat and appropriate speech, but that was in the seventeenth
century. When Artemus Ward began a harangue of this sort, Betsy Jane
knocked him off the fence on which he was sitting, and first criticising
his eloquence in a trenchant style, added, "If you mean being hitched,
I'm in it." In other respects the lover of Lorna Doone behaved as the
best authorities recommend.
Mr. Whyte Melville ventured to describe Chastelard's proposal to Mary
Stuart, but it was not exactly in Mr. Swinburne's manner, and, where
historical opinions disagree, no reliance can be placed on speeches which
were not taken down by the intelligent reporters. Mr. Slope had his ears
boxed when he proposed to Mrs. Bold, but such Amazonian conduct is
probably rare, and neither party is apt to boast of it. He also, being
accepted, behaved in the manner to which the highest authorities have
lent their sanction, or, at least, he meant to do so, when the lady "fled
like a roe to her chamber." For all widows are not like widow Malone
(ochone!) renowned in song. When Arbaces, the magician, proposed to
Ione, he did so in the most necromantic and hierophantic manner in which
it could be done; his "properties" including a statue of Isis, an altar,
"and a quick, blue, darting, irregular flame." But his flame, quick,
blue, darting, and irregular as it was, lighted no answering blaze in the
ice-cold breast of the lovely lone. When rejected (in spite of a
splendid arrangement of magic lanterns, then a novelty, got up regardless
of expense) Arbaces swore like an intoxicated mariner, rather than a
necromaunt accustomed to move in the highest circles and pentacles.
Nancy, Miss Broughton's heroine, tells her middle-aged wooer, among other
things, that she accepts him, because "I did think it would be nice for
the boys; but I like you myself, besides." After this ardent confession,
he "kissed her with a sort of diffidence." Many men would have preferred
to go out and kick "the boys."
Mr. Rochester's proposal to Jane Eyre should be read in the works both of
Bret Harte and of Miss Bronte. We own that we prefer Bret Harte's Mr.
Rawjester, who wearily ran the poker through his hair, and wiped his
boots on the dress of his beloved. Even in the original authority, Mr.
Rochester conducted himself rather like a wild beast. He "ground his
teeth," "he seemed to devour" Miss Eyre "with his flaming glance." Miss
Eyre behaved with sense. "I retired to the door." Proposals of this
desperate and homicidal character are probably rare in real life, or, at
least, out of lunatic asylums. To be sure, Mr. Rochester's house _was_ a
kind of lunatic asylum.
Adam Bede's proposal to Dinah was a very thoughtful, earnest proposal.
John Inglesant himself could not have been less like that victorious
rascal, Tom Jones. Colonel Jack, on the other hand, "used no great
ceremony." But Colonel Jack, like the woman of Samaria in the Scotch
minister's sermon, "had enjoyed a large and rich matrimonial experience,"
and went straight to the point, being married the very day of his
successful wooing. Some one in a story of Mr. Wilkie Collins's asks the
fatal question at a croquet party. At lawn-tennis, as Nimrod said long
ago, "the pace is too good to inquire" into matters of the affections. In
Sir Walter's golden prime, or rather in the Forty-five as Sir Walter
understood it, ladies were in no hurry, and could select elegant
expressions. Thus did Flora reply to Waverley, "I can but explain to you
with candour the feelings which I now entertain; how they might be
altered by a train of circumstances too favourable, perhaps, to be hoped
for, it were in vain even to conjecture; only be assured, Mr. Waverley,
that after my brother's honour and happiness, there is none which I shall
more sincerely pray for than yours." This love is indeed what Sidney
Smith heard the Scotch lady call "love in the abstract." Mr. Kingsley's
Tom Thurnall somehow proposed, was accepted, and was "converted" all at
once--a more complex erototheological performance was never heard of
before.
Many of Mr. Abell's thirty-five cases are selected from novelists of no
great mark; it would have been more instructive to examine only the
treatment of the great masters of romance. But, after all, this is of
little consequence. All day long and every day novelists are teaching
the "Art of Love," and playing Ovid to the time. But what are novels
without love? Mere waste paper, only fit to be reduced to pulp, and
restored to a whiteness and firmness on which more love lessons may be
written. {135}