Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

All of these female varieties have their counterparts among male flirts, and besides, there are some masculine types flagrantly and universally common. Such is the bold, handsome bird of prey, who advances just far enough to raise expectation and then suddenly retires. Or the men who are always insinuating, but who never make an honest declaration; who raise vague hopes with admirable skill and poetic backgrounds, and keep women madly and hopefully in love with them by looks and gestures they never give an interpretation to. When they are tired they retire slowly, without quarrel, without explanation; they simply allow their implied promises to die of neglect.

Then there is the prudent flirt, who trifles only with married women; dangles after those subtle, handsome creatures who affect blighted lives and uncomfortable husbands, and who, having married for convenience, are flirting for love. Such women are safe entertainment for the cowardly male flirt, who fears a flirtation that leads perchance to matrimony, but who has no fears about his liability to commit bigamy. There are “fatherly” male flirts, and “brotherly” and “friendly” flirts, but the title is nothing but an agreed-upon centre of operations.

Yet it is difficult to imagine how, in a polished state of society, flirting could be done without. Some sort of preliminary examination into tastes, disposition, and acquirements is necessary before matrimony, and a woman cannot carry a list of her desirable qualities, nor a man advertise his temper and his income. The trouble is that no definite line can be drawn, no scale of moral values can decide where flirting ends and serious attentions begin; and society never agrees as to what is innocent and what reprehensible.

There are ill-natured people who call every bright, merry girl that is a favorite with gentlemen, that talks, sings, and dances well, a “terrible flirt;” who admit nothing as propriety but what is conventionally correct and insipid. The media of flirting are indeed endless; a clever woman can find in simply listening a method of conveying the most delicate flattery and covert admiration. Indeed, flirting in its highest quality is an art requiring the greatest amount of tact and skill, and women who would flirt and be blameless, no matter how vast their materials, must follow Opie’s plan and “mix them with brains.”

It used to be a maxim that no gentleman could be refused by a lady, because he would never presume beyond the line of her encouragement; therefore it is to be presumed, on this rule, no lady advances further than she is willing to ratify. But such a state of society would be very stupid and formal, and we should miss a very piquant flavor in life, which even very good and great people have not been able to resist.

Upon this rule we must convict Queen Elizabeth as an arrant flirt, and “no lady;” we should be compelled to shake our heads at the fair Thrale and the great Dr. Johnson, at naughty Horace Walpole and Mrs. Hannah More, and to even look with suspicion on George Whitefield and “good Lady Huntingdon.”

No, in polished society flirting in a moderate form is an amusement, and an investigation so eminently suited to the present condition of the sexes that a much better one could be better spared. In one case only does it admit of no extenuating circumstances, – that of the married flirt of both sexes.

A flirt may not indeed be an altogether lovely character, even with all her alluring faults; but she is something a great deal nicer than a prude. All men prefer a woman who trusts them, or gayly challenges them to a combat, in which she proposes their capture, to her who affects horror at masculine tastes and ways, and is always expecting them to do some improper, or say some dreadful, thing. Depend upon it, if all the flirts were turned into prudes, society would have gone further to fare worse.

On Falling in Love

“Something there is moves me to love; and I
Do know I love, but know not how, or why.”

There is in love no “wherefore;” and we scarcely expect it. The working-world around must indeed give us an account of their actions, but lovers are not worth much in the way of rendering a reason; for half the charm of love-making lies in the defiance of everything that is reasonable, in asserting the incredible, and in believing the impossible. And surely we may afford ourselves this little bit of glamour in an age judging everything by the unconditional and the positive; we may make little escapades into love-land, when all the old wonder-lands, from the equator to the pole, are being mapped out, and dotted over with railway depots, and ports of entry.

Falling in love is an eminently impractical piece of business, and yet Nature – who is no blunderer – generally introduces the boy and girl into active adult life by this very door. In the depths of this delicious foolishness the boyish heart grows to the measure of manhood; bats and boats and “fellows” are forever deposed, and lovely woman reigns in their stead. To boys, first love is, perhaps, more of an event than to girls, for the latter have become familiar with the routine of love-making long before they are seriously in love. They sing about it in connection with flowers and angels and the moon; they read Moore and Tennyson; they have perhaps been the confidants of elder sisters. They are waiting for their lover, and even inclined to be critical; but the first love of a boy is generally a surprise – he is taken unawares, and surrenders at discretion.

Perhaps it is a good stimulant to faith in general, that in the very outset of it we should believe in such an unreasonable and wonderful thing as first love. Tertullian held some portions of his faith simply “because they were impossible.” It is no bad thing for a man to begin life with a grand passion, – to imagine that no one ever loved before him, and that no one who comes after him will ever love to the same degree that he does.

This absolute passion, however, is not nearly so common as it might well be; and Rochefoucauld was not far wrong when he compared it to the ghosts that every one talks about, but very few see. It generally arises out of extreme conditions of circumstances or feelings; its food is contradiction and despair. It is doubtful if Romeo and Juliet would have cared much for each other if the Montagues and Capulets had been friends and allies, and the marriage of their children a necessary State arrangement; and Byron is supported by all reasonable evidence when he doubtfully inquires:

“If Laura, think you, had been Petrarch’s wife,
Would he have written sonnets all his life?”

This excessive passion does not thrive well either in a high state of civilization. “King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid” is the ballad of an age when love really “ruled the court, the camp, the grove.” The nineteenth century is not such an age. At the very best, King Cophetua would now do pretty much as the judge did with regard to Maud Muller. Still no one durst say that even in such a case it was not better to have loved and relinquished than never to have loved at all.

“Better for all that some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes.”

How can love be the be-all and the end-all of life with us, when steam-looms and litigation, railway shares and big bonanzas, cotton and corn, literature and art, politics and dry goods, and a thousand other interests share our affections and attentions? It is impossible that our life should be the mere machinery of a love plot; it is rather a drama in which love is simply one of the dramatis personæ.

This fact is well understood, even if not acknowledged in words; the sighs and the fevers, the hoarding of flowers and gloves, the broken hearts and shattered lives, all for the sake of one sweet face, still exist in literature, but not much in life. Lovers of to-day are more given to considering how to make housekeeping as easy as matrimony than to writing sonnets to their mistresses’ eyebrows. The very devotion of ancient times would now be tedious, its long protestations a bore, and we lovers of the nineteenth century would be very apt to yawn in the very face of a sixteenth-century Cupid. Let the modern lover try one of Amadis’ long speeches to his lady, and she would likely answer, “Don’t be tiresome, Jack; let us go to Thomas’ and hear the music and eat an ice-cream.”

Is love, then, in a state of decay? By no means – it has merely accommodated itself to the spirit of the age; and this spirit demands that the lives of men shall be more affected by Hymen than by Cupid. Lovers interest society now solely as possible husbands and wives, fathers and mothers of the republic. Lord Lytton points out this fact as forcibly exemplified in our national dramas. Every one feels the love scenes in a play, the sentimental dialogues of the lovers, fatiguing; but a matrimonial quarrel excites the whole audience, and it sheds its pleasantest tears over their reconciliation. For few persons in any audience ever have made, or ever will make, love as poets do; but the majority have had, or will have, quarrels and reconciliations with their wives.

“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them – but not for love;” and if this was true of Shakespeare’s times, it is doubly so of ours. If there ever was any merit in dying for love, we fail to see it; occasionally a man will wildly admit that he is making a fool of himself for this or that woman, but though we may pity him, we don’t respect him for such a course. Women, still more rarely than men, “make fools of themselves” on this score; and in spite of all poets assert to the contrary, they are eminently reasonable, and their affections bear transplanting.

In other respects we quite ignore the inflation of old love terms. “Our fate,” “our destiny,” etc., resolve themselves into the simplest and most natural of events; a chat on a rainy afternoon, a walk home in the moonlight, mere contiguity for a season, are the agents which often decide our love affairs. And yet, below all this, lies that inexplicable something which seems to place this bit of our lives beyond our wisest thoughts. We can’t fall in love to order, and all our reasoning on the subject resolves itself into a conviction that under certain inexplicable conditions, “it is possible for anybody to fall in love with anybody else.”

Perhaps this is a part of what Artemus Ward calls the “cussedness” of things in general; but at any rate we must admit that if “like attracts like,” it attracts unlike too. The scholar marries the foolish beauty; the beauty marries an ugly man, and admires him. Poverty intensifies itself by marrying poverty; plenty grows plethoric by marrying wealth. But how far love is to blame for these strange attractions, who can tell? Probably a great deal that passes for love is only reflected self-love, the passion to acquire what is generally admired or desired. Thus beautiful women are often married as the most decorous way of gratifying male vanity. A pleasant anecdote, as the Scotch say, anent this view, is told of the Duc de Guise, who after a long courtship prevailed on a celebrated beauty to grant him her hand. The lady observing him very restless, asked what ailed him. “Ah, madame,” answered the lover, “I ought to have been off long ago to communicate my good fortune to all my friends.”

But the motives and influences that go to make up so highly complex an emotion as love are beyond even indication, though the subject has been a tempting one to most philosophical writers. Even Comte descends from the positive and unconditional to deify the charmingly erratic feminine principle; Michelet, after forty volumes of history, rests and restores himself by penning a book on love; the pale, religious Pascal, terrified at the vastness of his own questions, comforts himself by an analysis of the same passion; and Herbert Spencer has gone con amore into the same subject. But love laughs at philosophy, and delights in making fools of the wise for its sake.

It is easy to construct a theory, but the first touch of a white hand may demolish it; easy to make resolutions, but the first glance of a pair of bright eyes may send them packing. It is easy for men to be philosophers, when they are not lovers; but when once they fall in love there is no distinction then between the fool and the wise man. However, we can be thankful that love no longer demands such outward and visible tokens of slavery as she used to. In this day lovers address their mistresses as women – not goddesses. Indeed we should say now of men who serve women on their knees, “When they get up, they go away.”

Engaged To Be Married

“Woo’d and married and a’.
Woo’d and married and a’:
An’ is na she very weel aff
That is woo’d and married and a’?”

It is a beautiful fancy that marriages are ordained in heaven; it is a practical fact that they are made on earth; and that what we call “our destiny,” or “our fate,” is generally the result of favorable opportunities, sympathetic circumstances, or even pleasant contiguity for a season. Hence we always expect after the summer vacation to hear of a number of “engagements.” The news is perennially interesting; we may have seen the parties a thousand times, but their first appearance in their new character excites all our curiosity.

Generally the woman expands and beautifies, rises with the occasion, and puts on new beauty with the confidence of an augmenting wardrobe and an assured position. There is nothing ridiculous in her attitude; her wedding trousseau and marriage presents keep her in a delightful state of triumphant satisfaction, and if she has “done well unto herself,” she feels entitled to the gratitude of her family and the envy of all her female acquaintance.

The case is not so socially pleasant for her accomplice; it is always an awkward thing for a man to announce his engagement. His married friends ask him prosaic questions, and “wish him joy,” – a compliment which of itself implies a doubt; or they tell him he is going to do a wise thing, and treat him in the interval as if he was naturally in a state of semi-lunacy. His bachelor friends receive the news either with a fit of laughter, an expressive, long-drawn whistle, or at best with the assurance that they “consider marriage a good thing, though they are not able to carry out their principles.” But he is soon aware that they regard him virtually as a deserter; they make parties without including him; he drops out of their consultations; he has lost his caste among the order of young men, and has not been admitted among the husbands of the community; he hangs between two states; is not of that, nor yet quite of this.

Naturally enough, there are a variety of opinions on the subject of prolonging or cutting as short as possible this preliminary stage. Those who regard marriage as a kind of commerce, whose clearing house is St. Thomas’s or St. Bartholomew’s, will, of course, prefer to clinch the contemplated arrangement as soon as possible. Their business is intelligible; there is “no nonsense about them;” and, upon the whole, the sooner they get to ordering dinner and paying taxes the better. Many of us have sat waiting in a dentist’s room with a tooth-ache similar to that which made Burns and some of us have watched for an editor’s decision with feelings which would gladly have annihilated the interval.

“Cast the wee stools owre the meikle;”

But it is not alone the prosaic and the impatient who are averse to a long engagement: the methodical, whose arrangements it tumbles upside down; the busy, whose time it appropriates; the selfish, who are compelled during it to make continual small sacrifices; the shy, who feel as if all the other relations of life had retired into the background in order to exhibit them as “engaged men;” the greedy, who look upon the expected love-offerings as so much tribute money, – these and many other varieties of lovers would gladly simplify matrimony by reducing its preliminaries to a question and a ceremony. Yet if Love is to have anything like the place in life that it has in poetry; if we really believe that marriage ought to be founded on sympathy of tastes and principles; if we have any faith in that mighty ruler of hearts and lives, a genuine love affair, – we shall not wish to dim the glory of marriage by denying it this sojourn in a veritable enchanted land; for in its atmosphere many fine feelings blossom that never would have birth at all if the niceties of courtship were superseded by the levelling rapidity of marriage. If people are really in love they gain more than they lose by a reasonable delay. There is time for the reading and writing of love-letters, one of the sweetest experiences of life; the tongue and pen get familiar with affectionate and noble sentiments; indeed I doubt if there is any finer school for married life than a full course of love-letters. But if the marriage follow immediately on the engagement, all love-letters and all love-making must necessarily have a flavor of furniture and dress, and of “considerations.” I admit that love-making is an unreasonable and impractical piece of business; but in this lies all its charm. It delights in asserting the incredible and believing the impossible. But, after all, it is in the depths of this delicious foolishness that the heart attains its noblest growth. Life may have many grander hopes and calmer joys in store, —

“But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As Love’s young dream.”

Therefore we ought to look with complaisance, if not with approbation, on young people serenely passing through this phase of their existence; but the fact is, we are apt to regard it as a little trial. Lovers are so happy and self-satisfied that they do not understand why everybody else is not in the same supreme condition. If the house is ever so small, they expect a clear room to themselves.

Yet such an engagement, of reasonable length, is to be advised wherever young people are tender and constant in nature, and really in love with each other. I would only ask them to be as little demonstrative in public as possible, and to carry their happiness meekly, for, in any case, they will make large demands on the love, patience, and toleration of their friends. But perhaps one of the greatest advantages of a prolonged engagement is the security it brings against a mésalliance. Now, to a man a mésalliance is the heaviest weight he can carry through life; but to a woman it is simply destruction.

The best women have an instinctive wish to marry a man superior to themselves in some way or other; for their honor is in their husbands, and their status in society is determined by his. A woman who, for a passing fancy, marries a man in any way her inferior wrongs herself, her family, and her whole life; for the “grossness of his nature” will most probably drag her to his level. Now and then a woman of great force of character may lift her husband upward, but she accepts such a labor at the peril of her own higher life. Should she find it equally impossible to lift him to her level or to sink to his, what remains? Life-long regrets, bitter shame and self-reproach, or a forcible setting of herself free. But the latter, like all severe remedies, carries desperation instead of hope, with it. Never can she quite regain her maiden place; an aura of a doubtful kind fetters and influences her in every effort or relation of her future life.

In the early glamour of a love affair, women do not see these things, but fathers and mothers do; they know that “the world is not well lost for love,” and they have a right to protest against such folly. In an imprudent love affair, every day is so much gained; therefore when this foolishness is bound up in the heart of a youth or a maiden, the best of all plans is to arrange for time, – as long an engagement as possible.

But I will suppose that all my unmarried readers have found proper mates who will stand the test of parental wisdom and a fairly long and exacting engagement, and that after some happy months they will not only be “woo’d,” but “married and a’.” Now begins their real life, and for the woman the first step is renunciation. She must give up with a good grace the exaggeration and romance of love-making, and accept in its place that far better tenderness which is the repose of passion, and which springs from the tranquil depths of a man’s best nature.

The warmest-hearted and most unselfish women soon learn to accept quiet trust and the loyalty of a loving life as the calmest and happiest condition of marriage; and the men who are sensible enough to rely on the good sense of such wives sail round the gushing adorers, both for true affection and comfortable tranquillity.

Just let a young wife remember that her husband necessarily is under a certain amount of bondage all day; that his interests compel him to look pleasant under all circumstances to offend none, to say no hasty word, and she will see that when he reaches his own fireside he wants most of all to have this strain removed to be at ease; but this he cannot be if he is continually afraid of wounding his wife’s sensibilities by forgetting some outward and visible token of his affection for her. Besides, she pays him but a poor compliment in refusing to believe what he does not continually assert; and by fretting for what it is unreasonable to desire she deeply wrongs herself, for —

“A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.”

Shall our Daughters have Dowries?

Those who occupy themselves reading that writing on the wall which we call “signs of the times” may ponder awhile the question which Mr. Messinger puts with such plaintive appeal to the parents of this generation: “Shall our daughters have dowries?” But in the very commencement of his argument he abandons the case he has voluntarily taken up, and enters a plea, not for the daughters, but for the young men who may wish to marry the daughters. Also in urging upon parents the duty of endowing their daughters he seems to have lost sight of the fact that “dowry,” in its very spirit and intention, does not propose to care for the husband, but is solely in the interest of the wife.

He asserts, doubtless with accuracy, that the average income of young men is $1,100 a year, and he finds in this fact a sufficient reason for the decrease of marriage among them. It is no reason at all; for a large and sensible proportion of young men do marry and live happily and respectably on $1,100 a year, and those who cannot do so are very clearly portrayed by Mr. Messinger, and very little respected by any sensible young woman.

But it is not to be believed that they form any preponderating or influential part of that army of young men who are the to-morrow of our great republic. Let any reader count, from such young men as are known to him, the number who would divide their $1,100 as Mr. Messinger supposes them to do: —