LADIES’ COLUMN.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1657, 12 June 1879, Page 4

LADIES’ COLUMN.

FLIRTING. [Prom the “ Queen.”] Apparently one o? the most delightful certainly one of the most dangerous as well as the most despicable occupations, is that silly waste of time and perilous playing with edged tools called generally flirting. No country holds the monopoly of this questionable diversion—this cruel employment for empty hearts and idle heads—this flinging of stones and arrows at a living mark, which, if sport to the one, is often death to the other ; and both sexes sin alike in about equal proportions. Male flirts, who do all but make the decisive offer, are matched with female coquettes, who lead men on to the conclusive confession, only to turn round blankly and say ‘‘No, I never meant it.” Joconde has Jocrisse, Don Juan '■ her frolic Grace,” as their several counterparts and foils 5 and when these meet those no harm ia done ; for the heartlessness of the one is well matched by the heartlessness of the other, and diamond cuts diamond in the most approved fashion. There are two kinds of flirts ; the frivolous and the serious, the frothy and the sentimental, those who are mere light comedians throughout—whose proper costume would be periwigs and ruffles, hoops and stomachers, powder and patches and red-heeled shoes, swords and loveknots, pug dogs and rich brocade—and those who have a touch of tragedy and who talk largely of the hollowness of life, the affinity of souls, the sorrows of the heart, the miseries found in lone'iness, and their need of a sympathetic nature to understand their own. The first are of course the least dangerous, if the moat contemptible ; the last are the moat wicked. Two frothy flirts sailing round each other with manifold dippings and salutes, like two yachts which will neither race nor sail apart, make good fun for the bystanders who read the various signals aud understand the whole of the by-play. They see that it means nothing when he sits out with her for a whole evening under the pretence of being tired. They are only flirting, as they lounge together on the settee in the dimmest corner of that little off-room, and be pUys with her fan while she twists her bracelets round her arms, o’*, if she is quite cool and knows her part to perfection, lets her hands lie idle in her lap, while only her lips and eyes move Wanderers drift into the little sanctuary unawares, but are sure to drift out of it again. The densest arc made to feel that they are not wanted, and their presence is an intrusion. Though the room is nominally free to all, these two have usurped the sole possession ; and if the dancing room rings with indignant remarks or jeering commentaries, the two sitting therein care nothing, absorbed as they are in the fascinations of flirting—which is to serious love making what harnessing butterflies to acorn cups is to the capture of a siren, or the race wherein failure is followed by death. This kind of open flirting exists only in England and America, where the women, more especially the unmarried girls, are free. Even where flirting is allowed to the married—as in the southern nations, where the girls are kept alone prisoners and only their mothers may move in liberty—even then, when the woman is forty, no such open and confessed flirtations go on in society as do in the two great English speaking countries. Whether the result is favourable to manners, and even morals, or the contrary, ia a question on which there is much to be said. One thing we can all see, and that is the greater boldness of manners which this modern freedom of habits has induced, in both the English and the Americans, and because the scale of that freedom is so much higher with the latter than the former, the consequent increase of boldness ia the children of our cousin, American men and American women are perhaps the boldest and most uncompromising flirts in the world. It must needs be so in a society which banishes mothers as superfluous, old ladies as nuisances, and any kind of chaperonage as an infringement of the glorious Transatlantic birthright, and an insult to human nature. We do not say for a moment that this unchecked, uncontrolled intercourse between the young men and women in America leads to grave mischances ; but we do say that it leads to an organised system and recognised tone of flirting which strikes us, used to more reticence and less freedom, as odd, to say the least of it, and essentially “bad form” as the youth of the day would call it. If an Englishman were to permit himself to say to a single favoured one anything like what an American man would say to any girl whatsoever with whom he might converse, society would mark him as dangerous, and careful mothers would keap their daughters out of his way as watch dogs guarding the lambs from prowling wolves. But the American girl would and does think nothing of it. She is used to close sailing, and gives as good as she takes, She has made one of a party of youths and maidens who meet up in the mountains for a summer, and who pair oil day after day and far into the night, among the lonely valleys, and in the dusky glades of the silent forest; thinking nothing of it, and not supposing that anyone else will think more than she does. She has been used to being taken to dancing parties by the young man of the hour who calls for her and is her “ friend ” for the occasion. The mother does not go, and the girl ia confided ta the care of her male chaperon without hesitation or repugnance. Human nature demands gallantry in such circumstances as an absolute necessity—the inevitable outgrowth of the occasion ; and, unless she is weaker and rasher than most, she has to take care of herself while paying back her entertainer in his own coin, shielding herself while attacking him, and, above all things, showing no fear. Hence flirting becomes, os we have said, both an organised system of intercourse and a recognised fashion among the American youth ; aud the consequences _re to be found in a certain dash and boldjess and harshness and discretion all combined, whereby the parties engaged in the pleasant game seem always on the brink of danger, and yet secure. Another consequence is, that English men and maidens are at a disadvantage when they meet with their compeers from over the water ; for the American men would be sure to say more than they meant to substantiate to the English girls, and the American girls would lead the Englishmen farther than they meant to follow ; and the chances are that there would be heartaches and disappointments for the more reserved of the wo. We have flirts enough, however, among ourselves ; and we do as much harm to each other as is ever done by outsiders, whose ways we misunderstand because we judge of them by our own. The serious flirt among us is especially dangerous ; and we question if the boldest American, or the most impassioned Italian, ever did more damage than the quiet undemonstrative English flirt, who takes a sentiment as his ground of action and platonism as his “ point d’ appui.” Soft eyes that lock dark and melancholy in the twilight; a sweet sad voice that awakes responsive echoes in the imagination of the hearer ; a languid, still, and self-contained manner, giving the impression of a reserve fund of force, of talent, feeling, of capacity for sorrow, of power of sympathy—these are the various items which make up the stock-in-trade of the sentimental flirt; and with these he or she dispenses sweet pain and pleasant anguish to all around. All, that is, who are weak enough to believe and innocent enough to be deceived; and who take tinsel and tinfoil for shining silver and ruddy gold, How much mischief these sentimental flirts do in their day I They give you the impression that you and you only are the one sweet woman whose love is needed for their happiness. Your touch can heal them, your smile rejoice, your love render blessed You give in to the fond illusion—one of the most seductive to a true woman—and find that you are just taken as an experimentalist takes a cat or a dog for vivisection ; and that 3 on are only one of the many who have been so taken before you—to illustrate that point of female credulity and womanly soft-heartedness which the flirt has set himself to learn by all the methods given to man. Or take the tragic flirt from the other side of the house, that beautiful little woman with the big eyes and the melodious voice, who sings sad love songs as if she felt them, and round whom melancholy clings as a graceful garment. how many men has not she captured and drowned in the unfathomable abyss of her vanity. She looks all sorrow, and her life has not a cloud ; she seems all sentiment, and no nether millstone is harder, more free from care. She ia a sham all throughout, and she attitudinises—she does not feel. Bat clever men believe in her and good ones fall down and werjhip her, and she rides on

the crest of the wave ia the world's esteem ; while her sister, who disdains falsehoods and coquetry alike, gets only scant admiration, and her heart, which never deceived human being, is disregarded as a common kind of thing, worth little love and less endeavor. So they go on, these butterflies on the one hand, and shining, lovely, insidious, bat deadly stinging creatures on the other. The world awards a larger share of blame to the open flirt, but humanity gets its worst smart from the concealed. Sometimes that poetic justice, which is so trebly due, is awarded as it is deserved, and the biter is at last bitten ; and sometimes love, so often desecrated, refuses before the end of all things to return, and the old age of a coquette, male or female, is left dry and arid, without a loving hand to cherish and preserve the failing strength. Then the cry comes in vain.; and he who once had but to choose whom he would to bless, and she who had but to let herself be chosen also to bless, stand on the deserted shoies of life alone ; at their feet lying the wrecked love of those whose happiness they have ruined for vanity and selfishness, and in their hands the Dead Sea Apples of disappointment and despair.