The Perils Of "Paying Attention"

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Title:     The Perils Of "Paying Attention"
Author: E. Lynn Linton [More Titles by Linton]

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 "paying attention" 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 which underlies it, that an Englishman only "pays attention" 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 bière has to beer, or his potage 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 "without prejudice." 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.

We do not mean to say that this tendency to look upon every "attention" as a preliminary step to an offer is entirely, or even principally, due to British want of gallantry. Our national theory of courtship and marriage has probably much more to do with it. We say "theory" 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 mariage de convenance and the mariage d'amour, 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, 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, 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 mariage de convenance. 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.

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 his ease when he knows that his "attentions" 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 "intentions."

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 "paying the attentions" 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 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 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 every one will admit to be an authority on the philosophy of flirtation, "proximity is the soul of love." And eligible bachelors complain that it becomes every day harder to avoid this perilous proximity, and the duty of "paying attention" which it implies, without being positively rude.

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 "attentions" 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 "paying attention" would be studied and criticized in a new spirit. It might still, indeed, be treated arithmetically, as 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 "intentions," 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 "paying attention" in the spirit of exact science offers at least one ray of hope to those who complain that, do what they will, they cannot escape having to pay this dangerous tribute. The tendency must sooner or later bear fruit in a generally recognised code of courtship (whether written or unwritten does not much matter), prescribing the precise number and character of the "attentions"--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 code already exists. At least 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 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.

[The end]
E. Lynn Linton's essay: Perils Of "Paying Attention"

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