| <The Saturday Review Oct. 12, 1861>
| <Match-Making Mammas>
| <Lord Robert Cecil>
| <pb n="374">
| A wise man has said that it is impossible to tell the 
| true character of a woman till she has marriageable 
| daughters to bring out.  There is no doubt that the test 
| is a very searching one.  Our social system is 
| peculiarly hard on matrons who are in that 
| unfortunate position.  Our decorous practice of 
| conventionally disavowing facts of whose truth 
| <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> is convinced, 
| imposes on her burdens which she has to bear in no 
| other country.  There are two ways in which a prudent 
| mother can get her daughters off her hands ~~ she can 
| either negotiate husbands for them, or leave them to 
| procure husbands for themselves.  So far as the 
| primary object of securing them a life-long guarantee 
| of board and lodging is concerned, both methods are 
| equally effectual.  One of them is popular in France, 
| the other in America; but neither of them suits our 
| more fastidious taste.  Our romance is shocked at the 
| idea of finding a husband for a young lady, and our 
| delicacy revolts at the idea of her finding one for 
| herself; and the feeling, from which the French 
| system took its rise, that children are a species of 
| capital to be invested judiciously in a remunerative 
| marriage, is still extensively prevalent among us.  So, 
| according to a very common national habit, we 
| compromise between the conflicting practices to 
| which we object by selecting and combining the evils 
| of all; and the victim of the compromise is the 
| unfortunate mamma.  The arrangement is that the 
| mother is to choose really, and the daughter to choose 
| apparently.  The lacquer of romance is to cover the 
| homely reality of bargain and sale.  Nothing would 
| shock us more than that a young lady should go out 
| walking or riding, as in America, with any male 
| friend she might think fit, and so have the opportunity 
| of making a genuine and independent choice.  
| Nothing would horrify us more than that the mother 
| of a marriageable young lady should openly, as in 
| France, without management or trick of any kind, 
| negotiate a marriage with an eligible young man.  
| Accordingly, an English mother never conducts a 
| formal treaty of marriage.  Her language always is, 
| that her daughters are perfectly free to choose for 
| themselves. In her opinion, marriages are made in 
| heaven; and no good ever comes of forcing young 
| people's inclinations.  By such professions she 
| satisfies the requirements of English opinion, and 
| spreads over her proceedings that varnish of 
| disinterestedness which decorum rigorously exacts.
| But in spite of these romantic views, she maintains an 
| espionage over her daughter as vigilant and untiring 
| as a detective maintains over a pickpocket in a crowd.  
| Of course she does not interfere with the choice of her 
| daughters:  but nevertheless, if she be skilful, they 
| marry the husbands whom she selects.  She cannot be 
| said to force them any more than beaters force 
| partridges into any particular turnip field.  But they 
| accomplish the same object by driving them out of 
| every other; and the skilful mother effects all the 
| objects of a French matron by very much the same 
| policy.  And as the partridges, after having tried many 
| stubbles in vain, at last, in sheer weariness, resign 
| themselves to be walked up quietly in the turnips, so 
| the young ladies, after a dozen flirtations have been 
| pitilessly broken off, resign themselves in despair to 
| the wealthy louts for whom they were originally 
| destined in the maternal mind.  And at the wedding 
| breakfast the mamma piously observes to her 
| neighbour that she thinks it wicked in people to sell 
| their daughters, as the French do, and that for her part 
| she never will put any force upon any of hers.  But 
| still she does not go into the opposite extreme.  She 
| has a horror of the vulgar freedom of American girls, 
| and avoids it in the same discriminating way.  As a 
| rule, nothing can be better brought up than her girls.  
| If a young man comes into a room where they are 
| alone, they immediately remember that they have left 
| their work upstairs.  If a young man tries to speak to 
| them in Rotten-row, they look the other way, and 
| whip their horses.  If, in the country, a general walk 
| into the park is proposed, they are all gar<?> <?> one 
| by a strong detachment of hard-featured governesses 
| from the putting on of their bonnets till the pulling off 
| of the same.  These are the general rules, to be 
| boasted of and ostentatiously enforced on all suitable 
| occasions.  But rules should be made of leather, not of 
| iron; and it is quite proper that they should bend a 
| little at the instance of a companion whose propriety 
| is guaranteed by a respectable rent-roll.  On such 
| occasions rules fall into desuetude, and a few 
| American customs are borrowed for the occasion.  
| London parties are not very convenient for the 
| purpose, for observers are so numerous and gossip is 
| so active that these judicious relaxations are apt to be 
| noticed by those who have not enjoyed the benefit of 
| them; and therefore country-house society is 
| cultivated in preference by all prudent mothers.  They 
| have so many conveniences for bringing about 
| involuntary <hi rend="italic"> tetes-a-tetes. </hi>  
| There are shrubberies in which people may meet by 
| more chance, and labyrinths in which they can be 
| accidentally left behind when the party is seeing the 
| house.  Then there are terraces where people walk out 
| on warm nights after dinner, and where nobody 
| knows exactly where anybody else is, and spare 
| drawing-rooms where people go to listen in order to 
| hear the music better, and dances in which, from mere 
| want of partners, it is sometimes inevitable that the 
| same couple should dance together more than once.  
| A great deal is forgiven to properly brought-up 
| maidens, if they take advantage of these opportunities 
| with due discrimination of persons.  In fact, in a 
| country-house well stocked with elder sons, the very 
| existence of such aids to flirtation never occurs to an 
| unsuspicious mother's mind.  Woe to the importunate 
| governess who, on such occasions, shall pedantically 
| call to mind the rules which have become obsolete.  
| But still greater woe to any backless young man on 
| whom such favours have been lavished, and who is 
| afterwards discovered not to have deserved them 
| either by his present or prospective income.
| This mode of operation is so universal among the 
| class of match-making mammas that it has passed 
| into a proverb.  At first sight it is difficult to 
| understand how it has withstood so long the attacks of 
| moralists, both serious and satirical, and borne up 
| against an amount of alternate ridicule and invective 
| which would have uprooted a dozen of the ordinary 
| fashionable misdoings.  But the truth is, the 
| matchmaking mothers are not the chief culprits.  The 
| elastic prudery and the calculating gaiety for which 
| they are laughed at are only a despairing effort to free 
| themselves from the burden which society lays upon 
| them.  The whole strain of reconciling English 
| conventionalities with the stern logic of facts falls 
| upon them.  It is their onerous function to make 
| American <p> "fastness" </p> the work of French 
| bargaining, and, at the same time, in outward 
| appearance, to seem to be repudiating both.  To carry 
| through creditably such a delicate piece of diplomacy 
| requires no little labour.  It is only by constant 
| attention that practical argument of exclusion can be 
| conducted which distances all aspirants but the right 
| one.  If the mother could fix upon her 
| <hi rend="italic"> parti </hi> and open negotiations 
| without any circumlocution, a few letters or at worst 
| one or two interviews, would be sufficient to 
| conclude the bargain.  Or, if the mother might leave 
| the matter entirely to her daughters to settle for 
| themselves, it is obvious that she would not need to 
| alter very much her own habitual mode of life.  But 
| the compromise between the two forces her to be in 
| constant attendance at the various marriage-markets.  
| She cannot keep the daughters at home, because, as 
| their choice is to be ostensibly free, the comedy must 
| be played out, and accidental meetings must be 
| provided.  And she cannot let the daughters go out 
| without a chaperon, for that would be equally sinning 
| against the conventionalities, and might end in an 
| unprofitable marriage.  Therefore they must work 
| through the round of laborious gaiety in the season 
| and out of it, and they must drag her after them.  The 
| situation has become much more arduous since the 
| introduction of railways.  The facilities of 
| communication have prolonged the toils of the season 
| into the recess.  No sooner has the beneficent 
| interposition of the grouse put a stop to the London 
| season than the country season begins.  No sooner has 
| the expiry of the pheasant shooting brought the 
| country balls to a close than the migratory dancers 
| recommence their labours in London.  This is all very 
| well for the young ladies.  To those whose health is 
| unbroken and whose nerves are still strong, and for 
| whom the whole life possesses the charm of novelty, 
| the round of excitement is intensely enjoyable.  Even 
| to those who have exhausted all the pleasurable 
| sensations that can be extracted out of whirling round 
| your own axis in a stuffy room, youth and good spirits 
| may make the occupation tolerable.  But to the 
| chaperons who are not allowed to whirl, and who 
| have long ceased to invest either guardsmen or 
| Foreign Office clerks with a romantic halo, a ball 
| means sitting four hours against a wall, trying to 
| interpret the smiles of your charge's partners, and to 
| find out, if you can, their worldly prospects from the 
| rival dowagers who are engaged in a similar study on 
| each side of you.  Is it a wonder that the average 
| woman, not endowed with the spirit of a martyr, tries 
| to escape this doom of eternally sitting against a wall?  
| St. Simeon
| <pb n="375">
| Stylites, after all, had the benefit of fresh air.  
| Moreover, he did not have a dowager on each side of 
| him, and was under no obligation to study the 
| expression of successive guardsmen's lips.  No 
| reflective person can seriously blame any woman for 
| resorting to any number of discreditable manoeuvres 
| in order to rid herself somehow of such a life without 
| damage to the prospects of her children.
| Match-making mammas are not a very important 
| section of the community, or even of the class to 
| which they belong.  But they deserve commiseration 
| as an injured race.  They are more sinned against than 
| sinning.  They deserve, if any do, to be called <p> 
| "unfortunate females," </p> and to be made the 
| subjects of special clerical sympathy.  They are the 
| victims of English shams ~~ of the conflict between 
| our professions and our deeds.  So long as we insist 
| on attempting to combine marrying well with 
| romance, and prudery with love-making, the class of 
| match-making mammas will endure.  But they ought 
| not to suffer for the sins of society, or to be supposed 
| to be acting from mere worldliness when they are 
| simply anxious to get their term of servitude over, and 
| to find some repose for their ball-worn frames.