| <The Saturday Review articles 1866-68 reprinted in>
| <Modern Women and What is said of Them>
| <New York 1868>
| <The Perils of "Paying Attention">
| <pb n="118">
| We have elsewhere asserted that the art of match-making 
| requires cultivation. We are told, however, that, on the 
| contrary, match-making is so zealously studied and 
| skillfully pursued that it bids fair to be the great social evil 
| of nineteenth-century civilization. The growing difficulty 
| of procuring sons-in-law has called forth a corresponding 
| increase in the skill required for capturing them, just as the 
| wits of the detective are sharpened to keep pace with the 
| expertness which the general spread of useful knowledge 
| has conferred upon the thief. Eligible bachelors complain 
| that scarcity of marrying men has much the same effect 
| upon the match-making mother as scarcity of food upon the 
| wolf. It makes her at once more ferocious and more 
| cunning. Her invitations to croquet-parties and little dinners 
| are so constant and so pressing that it is scarcely possible 
| for her destined prey to refuse them all without manifest 
| rudeness, and yet it is equally hard for him to go without 
| being judiciously manoeuvred into <p> "paying attention" 
| </p> to the one young lady who has been selected to make 
| him happy for life.
| This chivalrous and graceful synonym for courtship in itself 
| speaks volumes for the serious nature of the risk which he 
| runs. The truly gallant assumption
| <pb n="119">
| which underlies it, that an Englishman only <p> "pays 
| attention" </p> to a woman when he has a solid 
| businesslike offer of marriage to make her, not only puts a 
| formidable weapon into the hands of the match-maker, but 
| also leaves her victim without a most effectual means of 
| protection. The national gallantry towards women upon 
| which a Frenchman so plumes himself may be, as your true 
| Briton declares, a poor sort of quality enough; a mere 
| grimace and trick of the lips ~~ not genuine stuff from the 
| heart; having much the same relation to true chivalry that 
| his <hi> biere </hi> has to beer, or his <hi> potage </hi> to 
| soup. But at any rate it has this advantage, that it enables 
| him to pay any amount of flowery compliments to a woman 
| without risk of committing himself, or of being 
| misunderstood.
| If an Englishman asks a young lady after her sore throat, or 
| her invalid grandmother, and throws into his voice that tone 
| of eager interest or tender sympathy which a polite 
| Frenchman would assume as a matter of course, he is at 
| once suspected of matrimonial designs upon her. He is 
| obliged to be as formal and businesslike in his mode of 
| address as the lawyer’s clerk who added at the end of a too 
| ardent love-letter the saving clause <p> "without 
| prejudice." </p> We have heard of a young lady who 
| confided to her bosom friend that she that morning 
| expected a proposal, and, when closely pressed for her 
| reasons, blushingly confessed that the night before a 
| gentleman had twice asked her whether she was fond of 
| poetry, and four times whether she would like to go into the 
| refreshment-room.
| <pb n="120">
| We do not mean to say that this tendency to look upon 
| every <p> "attention" </p> as a preliminary step to an offer 
| is entirely, or even principally, sue to British want of 
| gallantry. Our national theory of courtship and marriage 
| has probably much more to do with it. We say <p> "theory" 
| </p> advisedly, for our practice approaches every day 
| nearer to that of the Continental nations whose mercenary 
| view of the holy estate of matrimony we righteously abjure. 
| Our system is, in fact, gradually becoming a clumsy 
| compromise between the <hi> marriage de convenance 
| </hi> and the <hi> marriage d’amour, </hi> with most of 
| the disadvantages, and very few of the advantages, of 
| either. Theoretically, English girls are allowed to marry for 
| love, and to choose whichever they like best of all the 
| admiring swains whom they fascinate at croquet-parties or 
| balls. Practically, the majority marry for an establishment, 
| and only flirt for love. They leave the school-room, no 
| doubt, with an unimpeachably romantic conception of a 
| youthful bridegroom who combines good looks, great 
| intellect, and fervent piety with a modest four thousand a 
| year, paid quarterly.
| But they are not very long in finding out that the men 
| whom they like best, as being about their own age or still 
| young enough to sympathise with their tastes and enter 
| heartily into all their notions of fun, and are rarely such as 
| are pronounced by parents and guardians to be eligible; and 
| so, after one or two attacks, more or less serious, of 
| love-fever, they tranquilly look out for an admirer who can place 
| the proper number of servants and horses at their disposal,
| <pb n="121">
| while they in return magnanimously decline to make 
| discourteously minute inquiries as to the condition of his 
| hair or teeth. A marriage made in this spirit, even where no 
| pressure is put upon the young lady by parents or friends, 
| and she is allowed full liberty of action, is open to all the 
| charges ordinarily brought against the Continental <hi> 
| marriage de convenance. </hi> Yet, on the other hand, it 
| has not the advantage of being formally arranged 
| beforehand by a couple of elderly people, who are in no 
| hurry, and who have seen enough of the world to know 
| thoroughly what they are about; nor, we may add, does it 
| usually take place in time to avert some one or more of 
| those troublesome flirtations with handsome, but penniless, 
| ball-room heroes which are not always calculated to 
| improve either temper or character.
| Still, whatever our practice may be, we nevertheless do 
| homage to the theory that, in this favored country, young 
| ladies choose whatever husbands they like best, and marry 
| for love; and although this theory is in some respects a 
| serious obstacle to marriage, and often stands cruelly in the 
| way of people with weak nerves, it places a powerful 
| weapon in the hands of the dauntless and determined 
| match-maker. If young people are to marry for love, they 
| must obviously have every facility afforded them for 
| meeting and fascinating each other. It is this consideration 
| which reconciles the philosopher to some of our least 
| entertaining entertainments, although, at the same time, it 
| makes so much of our hospitality an organized hypocrisy.
| <pb n="122">
| It is, indeed, a hard fate to be obliged to leave your 
| after-dinner cigar and George Eliot’s last novel in order to 
| drive four miles through wind and snow to a party which your 
| hostess has given, not because she has good fare, or good 
| music, or agreeable guests, or anything, in short, really 
| calculated to amuse you, but simply and solely because she 
| has a tribe of daughters who somehow must be disposed of. 
| Yet even a man of the Sir Cornewall Lewis stamp, who 
| thinks that this world would be a very tolerable place but 
| for its amusements, may forgive her when he reflects that 
| business, not pleasure, is at the bottom of the invitation. If 
| marriage is to be kept up, we must either abandon our 
| theory that young ladies are allowed to choose husbands for 
| themselves, or we must give them every possible facility 
| for exercising the choice. Bachelors must be dragged, on 
| every available pretext, and without the slightest reference 
| to the nominal ends of amusement or hospitality, from the 
| novel or cigar and made to run the gauntlet of female 
| charms.
| From the Sir Cornewall Lewis point of view, with which 
| nearly all Englishmen over thirty more or less sympathise, 
| it is the only sound defence of many of our so-called 
| entertainments that they are virtually daughter-shows ~~ 
| genteel auctions, without which a sufficiently brisk trade in 
| matrimony could not possibly be carried on. The 
| consciousness of this is doubtless in one way somewhat of 
| an obstacle to flirtation and gives the frisky matron a cruel 
| advantage over her unmarried rival. A man must have oak 
| and triple brass round his heart who can flirt perfectly at
| <pb n="1243">
| His ease when he knows that his <p> "attentions" </p> are 
| not merely watched by vigilant chaperons, but are actually 
| reduced to a matter of numerical calculation ~~ that a 
| certain number of dances, or calls, or polite speeches will 
| justify a stern father or big brother in asking his <p> 
| "intentions." </p>
| This application of arithmetic is, in some respects as 
| dangerous to courtship as to the Pentateuch. But, 
| nevertheless, it gives the clever and courageous 
| match-maker an advantage of which the eligible bachelor 
| complains that she makes the most pitiless use. He finds 
| himself manoeuvred into <p> "paying the attentions" </p> 
| which society considers the usual prelude to a marriage, 
| with a dexterity which it is all but impossible to evade. The 
| lady is played into his hands with much the same sort of 
| skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There are 
| perhaps a number of other ladies present, in promiscuous 
| flirtation with whom he sees, at first glance, an obvious 
| means of escape. But this hope speedily turns out a 
| delusion. One lady is vigilantly guarded by a jealous 
| betrothed; a second is a poor relation, or a humble friend, 
| who knows that she would never get another invitation to 
| the house if she once interfered with her patron’s plans; a 
| third is too plain to be approached on any ordinary 
| calculation of probabilities; a fourth is hopelessly dull; the 
| rest are married, and if not actually themselves in the 
| conspiracy ~~ which, however, is as likely as not ~~ are 
| still carefully chosen for their freedom from the flirting 
| propensities of the frisky matron. The destined victim finds, 
| in short, that he
| <pb n="124">
| Must either deliberately resign himself to be bored to death, 
| or boldly face the peril in store for him, and take his chance 
| of evading or breaking the net. Nine men out of ten 
| naturally choose the latter alternative, too often in that 
| presumptuous spirit of self-confidence which is the 
| match-maker’s best ally.
| A bachelor is perhaps never in so great danger of being 
| caught as when he has come to the conclusion that he sees 
| perfectly through the mother’s little game and merely 
| means to amuse himself by carrying on a strictly guarded 
| flirtation with the daughter. We mean, of course, on the 
| assumption that the daughter is either a pretty or clever girl, 
| with whom any sort of flirtation is in itself perilous. His 
| danger is all the greater if it happens ~~ and it is only fair 
| to young-ladydom to admit that it often does happen ~~ 
| that the daughter has sufficient spirit and self-respect to 
| repudiate all share in the maternal plot. Many a man has 
| been half surprised, half piqued, into serious courtship by 
| finding himself vigorously snubbed and rebuffed where he 
| had been led to imagine that his slightest advances would 
| be only too eagerly received. But, in any case, the 
| match-maker knows that, if she can only bring the two people 
| whom she wishes to marry sufficiently often into each 
| other’s society, the battle is half won. According to Lord 
| Lytton, whom <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> 
| will admit to be an authority on 
| the philosophy of flirtation, <p> "proximity is the soul of 
| love." </p> And eligible bachelors complain that it 
| becomes every day harder to avoid this perilous proximity, 
| and the duty of <p> "paying attention" </p> which it 
| implies, without being positively rude.
| <pb n="125">
| We have not much consolation to offer the sufferers who 
| prefer this complaint. As regards our own statement that the 
| art of match-making requires cultivation, we did not mean 
| by it to imply that match-making is not vigorously carried 
| on. So long as there are mothers left with daughters to be 
| married, so long will match-making continue to be pursued; 
| and it must obviously be pursued all the more energetically 
| to keep pace with the growing disinclination of bachelors 
| among the upper and middle classes to face the 
| responsibilities of married life. We meant that 
| match-making does not receive the sort of cultivation which 
| it seems to us fairly to deserve, when we consider the 
| paramount importance of the object which it at least 
| professes to have in view, and the delicate nature of the 
| instruments and experiments with which it is concerned.
| We have not yet mustered up courage for the attempt to 
| show what should be its proper cultivation; but we may 
| safely say that so long as it is left in the hands of those who 
| are influenced by merely mercenary or interested motives, 
| and who watch the <p> "attentions" </p> of a bachelor, not 
| in the spirit of a philosopher or a philanthropist, but in that 
| of a Belgravian mother, it cannot be cultivated as a fine art. 
| It can only be rescued from the unmerited odium into 
| which it has fallen by being taken under the patronage of 
| those who are in a position to practice it on purely artistic 
| and disinterested grounds. In their hands, the now perilous 
| process of <p> "paying attention" </p> would be studied 
| and criticized in a new spirit. It might
| <pb n="126">
| Still, indeed, be treated arithmetically, s perhaps the most 
| promising way of reducing it to the precision and certainty 
| of an exact science. But still the problem would be to 
| determine, not what is the least possible number of dances, 
| calls, or compliments which may justify the intervention of 
| a big brother or heavy father, but what number warrants the 
| assumption that the flirtation has passed out of the frivolous 
| into the serious stage. Three dances, for instance, may 
| expose a man to being asked what are his <p> "intentions," 
| </p> where six dances need not imply that he really has 
| any. The mercenary match-maker considers only the first 
| point; our ideal match-maker would lay far more stress 
| upon the second. But still, in any case, this growing 
| tendency to treat the practice of <p> "paying attention" 
| </p> in the spirit of exact science offers at least one ray of 
| hope to those who complain that, so what they will, they 
| cannot escape having to pay this dangerous tribute. The 
| tendency must sooner or later bear fruit in a generally 
| recognized code of courtship (whether written or unwritten 
| does not much matter), prescribing the precise number and 
| character of the <p> "attentions" </p> ~~ in their 
| adaptation to dancing, croquet-playing, cracker-pulling, and 
| other conventional pretexts for flirtation ~~ which virtually 
| amount to an offer of marriage. This scheme, we may 
| mention, is not wholly imaginary. There is somewhere or 
| other a stratum of English society in which such a cod 
| already exists. At lest we have seen a book of etiquette in 
| which, among similar ordinances, it was laid down that to 
| hand anything ~~ say a flower or a
| <pb n="127">
| muffin ~~ to a lady with the left hand was equivalent to a 
| proposal the general introduction of a system of this kind, 
| although it might shorten the lives of timid  or forgetful 
| men, would obviously confer an unspeakable boon upon 
| the majority of the match-maker’s present victims. They 
| would not only know exactly how far to go with safety, but 
| also how at once to recede. To offer, for instance two 
| pieces of muffin firmly and decidedly with the right hand 
| would probably make up for offering one flower with the 
| left, at least if there were no guardian or chaperon on the 
| spot to take instant advantage of the first overture. But it 
| would now perhaps be premature to enter into the details of 
| a system which it may take a generation or so more of 
| match-making to introduce.