MARRIAGE MARKET AND BELGRAVIAN INTELLIGENCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 16, 17 October 1861, Page 5 (Supplement)

MARRIAGE MARKET AND BELGRAVIAN INTELLIGENCE.

(From the Saturday Review, July G.)

We are not among those who would treat with contempt the wail of despair that has lately issued from Belgravia. Business is slack everywhere; but in the matrimonial market wc are well aware that matters are fast verging to a commercial crisis. The market is absolutely glutted with unsaleable young ladies. Heiresses, of course, are still brisk, and something is doing in pretty orphans. A little inquiry has been made for motherless articles of prime quality, the absence of a mother-in-law increasing the price considerably. But buyers will not look at the ordinary, wellchaperoned, pink and white unexceptionable young lady. Whole rows of them may be seen undisposed of in any ball-room, wrapped up in their own weight of tarlatan, and exhibiting themselves to some sauntering eldest son. They arc of all kinds, fair and dark, simpering and demure, and and of all growtlis, from the blooming debutante of the last drawing-room to the pale ball-room

veteran upon whom the shades of old-maidship are rapidly lengthening. The eldest son eyes them all with a polite insouciance, as a well-fed fish eyes the bait on a bright day. The angler whom ho fears sits against the wall, looking disinterested and indifferent; but he has probably had one or two narrow escapes, and he knows and respects her skill. He is proof against all the allurements she can contrive. In vain has the cost of dress quadrupled in recent years. In vain have the dresses swelled below and shrunk above, resulting in milliners’ bills of extraordinary length, and shoulders of extraordinary expanse. The article is got up for the market with admirable skill, but buyers have lost all confidence, and the commoner qualities are quite unmarketable. Under these circumstances Belgravia has uttered a piteous appeal for succour to the public opinion of the world that lives outside its charmed circle. Such an appeal speaks for itself. Nothing but the extremity of distress could have extracted it. A trader would as soon think of prematurely publishing his own bankruptcy as a mother needlessly admitting that she had failed in the great maternal function of catching elder eons. The confession will not be extorted from her till July after July has passed over her head, and each time she has felt that she has lost the season. Many various reasons have been assigned for this melancholy stagnation in an interesting trade. Some lay it to the unparalleled selfishness of the young men of the present day, others to the luxury of the clubs. But the favorite theory attributes the cause to the unusual fascinations wliich are on all hands ascribed to the present race of pretty horse-breakers.” This subject has elicited an amount of enthusiasm from some of the newspaper correspondents which makes us hope that the days of Ovidian poetry are not absolutely extinct. One gentleman attributes to the Corinnas of his acquaintance a list of virtues far surpassing those wliich ordinarily appear upon the tombstones of late lamented wives. He sees in them not only the usual charms which their success implies, but even the refinement of manner and the economy of domestic management which he professes himself unable to discover in fashionable matrons. He evidently represents the most advanced school upon the conjugal question. He belongs to the party of progress in domestic politics. He looks upon the marriage ceremony as a medhoval rite of a deleterious character, which quite accounts for all feminine shortcomings. No doubt, when Sir Cresswell has pursued his congenial labours a little longer, we shall be of his mind. But at present we cannot profess to go the whole way with him. We incline to the old belief that pretty horse-breakers occasionally spend money, and tbi t superior refinement is not necessarily the result of a vicious life. If we might venture to assign a cause for the present paralysis of that commerce whose clearing-house is in St. George’s, Hanover-cquaro, we should say that it vis much the same cause as that to which all trade failure.! arc owing. No one believes a tradesman who imputes his ill-success to the unaccountable ill-temper of his customers ; and wo are not inclined to give more credit to the mammas who attribute the scarcity of marriages to the abominable backwardness of young men. The truth is, that the evil in both eases has the sameorigin.. Customers and bridegrooms will come fast enough if the goods offered arer worth the price they are asked to pay. But in both eases the price is too large,- and the goods are too worthless.

; Tho cnterprisirj mothers who get up their daughters Tor the wife market appear to labor under the pennamcnt delusion that v/hat a man looks for in a wife is a bad imitation of a “ pretty horse breaker”. Putting morality aside for a moment the fnu ctions of those two institutions are very intelligible end very distinct. The aim of the latter js sheer amusement. When she has succeeded in amusing the nan whom she is fleecing, she has accomplished the end of her elevated vocation; and as soon as by that means she has taken all the available wool off him, she has nothing to do but to get rid of him as fast as possible, and look for some one else. If therefore such a thing exists as a woman brought up for this trade, her education would correspond with this end. She would be gedsdously taught every kind of accomplishment. She would learn to sing well, dance well, ride well, to flirt amusingly, to move gracefully, to dress attractively. Go she would be best fitted to afford ;men the amuEement, for which during the earlier years of life, they arc willing to pay so dearly and to go through so much moral degradation. Oddly enough, this is precisely the education which numbers ol careful mothers give to their daughters. Any stranger who know nothing of our customs and judged of people’s motives merely from their acts would imagine that most of the young ladies .in Belgravia were being educated for pretty horse breakers. Their training is concentrated on this one point, that they may bo eligible objects for young gentlemen to make love to. It never seems to have occur red to those who have had the devising of fashionable female education that there will be a period in a woman’s life when she will or , ought to cease being made love to. On the prosaic duties which lie beyond that interesting epoch no educator bestows a thought. The whole training is devoted to a preparation for her young lady existence, which is, according to the present fashion diametrically the reverse of what the whole of the rest of her life ought to be. It is strange enough that any rational beings should think this a wholesome education for their daughters; but it is stranger still that they should think it the way to ensure their getting husbands. All that it docs ensure them is plenty of flirtation. The idea seems to he, that whatever men may flirt with that will they also marry—an idea which a very brief experience should have sufficed to dispel. The majority of fashionable mothers appear to have studied with envy the accomplishments of the pretty horse breakers, and to have conceived the ingenious plan of entrapping men to make wives of their daughters by fitting them to be their mistresses. No wonder this ingenious scheme breaks down in practice. In the first place it is idle for the amateurs to attempt to compete with the profession. If mere power of amusement is to be the object of education, those who ars weighted with any of the shackles of however slight will be outrun by those who are absolutely free. In the second place men are not quite such lunatics as the fashionable mothers appear to think. They know that

j the power of amusement may beguile odd evenings | during a few years of life. But to pass a whole j life with a woman who can do nothing to amuse, lis like dining for life on sugar candy. The mass | of men, moral or immoral, are perfectly aware that i the qualifications of a companion for life are of a ; very different kind, and that a lively mistress | would be a most intolerable wife. Young ladies i are taught to play to admiration, to dance beauti- | fully, and to chuff saucily; and if they were intend--1 ed for “ temporary engagements", the preparation j would be perfect. The choice of Hercules before j the eldest son, therefore, is this:—St. John’s Wood I offers him the real thing; Belgravia offers him a j washed-out and imperfect imitation. But Belgra- | via insists that he shall tie himself to the inferior ! article for life ; wliile St. John’s Wood is content j that he shall change whenever he thinks fit. | The results to which a rivalry conducted on these j terms generally leads maj be deplorable, but can j hardly bo called wondenul. .Belgravia must not j be surprised if the immoral men prefer temporary jto permament Hetmrce, and if the moral men look | elsewhere for genuine wives. Unluckily, the mo- | them do not take this view of the subject.. They (imagine that their daughters, having been duly j crammed with ornamental accomplishments, and (with nothing else, are all that men could desire I for wives. Under tliis impression they charge for ithem a price wliich is prohibited to all but eldest : sons. The young lady must “be supported in the (style of living to which she has been accustomed.” .In other words her husband must be as rich as her (father is, and as her eldest brother will be. Then (there is that feudal heriot levied by the Attorneys jupon all marriages in the upper class, which goes 'by the name of settlements. Of course these dif- ! Acuities do not affect an eldest son. Except in (paying a heavy black mail to the lawyers and severely trying every body’s temper, settlements do jnot do much harm to those happy mortals who fare able to rest content with investments in land, jor in the Three per Cents. But, by a cruel dispenjsation of Providence, the number of eldest sous is (limited ; and the doctrine that every young lady must live as luxuriously as her mother is living, and is to marry no one who is not in a position to settle” all his own money—that is, to part with jail control over it —effectually puts the younger sons out of the question. No wonder there is a .famine of bridegrooms. Wo can only suggest one (remedy to the distressed Belgravian mothers. It may seem startling at first sight, but wo are sure (that, the more they think over it, the more it will commend itself to their maternal aspirations. It .is that the eldest sons should be allowed, like the Mahommedans, to marry four wives a-piece. If this measure docs not remedy the evil, of.course it will be open to consideration whether the permissive legislation should not be made compulsory, and the eldest sons forced to marry four wives ■a-piece. But we entertain a sanguine hope that no such harsh proceeding would bo necessary. It is generally acknowledged that the tendency of polygamy is to reduce wives to the conditon of mistresses —a change that would exactly adapt itself jto the education of most Belgravian young ladies; -and the new law would, of course get rid of the ap--palling scarcity of partis which carries ten or to .‘every maternal heart. As for the younger sons, they should, in such a case no longer be allowed to tempt unwary young ladies from a loyal and steady devotion to the main chance. Perhaps the best way would be to retort on them the insult of mount Athos, and to forbid them even to darken the Belgravian pavement with their detrimental shadows.