Woman's World

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 24, 18 June 1914, Page 6

Woman's World

LOVE AND MARRIAGE. The French, marriage, like the French Sunday, has come in for a good deal of undeserved criticism, although most of it is actuated by the deep-seated condition that customs different from our own must necessarily be immoral. That French marriages are usually happy and that our own are often unhappy makes no difference at all to our judgments. We are satisfied that some epecial virtue exists in the fact of spontaneous falling in love, whatever that may be, and that we are all being divinely guided in some mysterious way whenever we. arc attracted by a pretty face or a fascinating manner. And even when our mar- . riages are frankly mercenary we still suppose that they, are superior to those domestic treaties popular in France and that are arranged in the family conclaves to which everyone is admitted, and in which everyone has a voice except the young people themselves, who are content to abide .by the judgment of their ciders.

And now comes Mms. Washington, the English wife of a distinguished Frenchman with a word of defence ior the French way of doing things. She says:-^

I think, on the whole, the arranged marriages turn out as well as any others. They are generally made by people of the same monde, accustomed to the same way of living, and the fortunes are nearly alike as possible. Everything is calculated. The young couple usually spend the summer with parents or parents-in-law in the chateau, I and I know some cases where there are 1 curious details about the number of I lamps that can be lighted in the rooms of the young people, and the use of the | carriage on certain days. I am speak- i ing, of course, of purely French mar- j riages. < The whole matter resolves itself into | the simple question whether it is better to fall in love before marriage or after marriage, and which of the two is likely to be more permanent. Personally our vote is vociferously and unanimously anil enthusiastically for the latter course. Those mysterious selective affinities that lend themselves so admirably to the purpose of sentimental poetry probably have no existence at all. All too often they are the preliminaries to the divorce court. Wo may doubt if genuine love ever comes before marriage. If it comes at all it will come after mariage. There can be no falling in love without propinquity but propinquity will nearly always produce love if circumstances are fairly favorable. The couple that have married according to French procedure are far more likely to fall really in love with each other than the couple that have imagined themselves to be in love before marriage and to whom propinquity is only too likely to bring disillusion. We have not yet fully decided to make the French* system compulsory here, but the matter is under consideration.

KIN T (; A.ND QUEEN" "DROP IN." One of the events most discussed in Anglo-American circles in London when the last mail left was the great costume ball which was arranged to take place at the Albert Hall on June 10 in commemoration of the centenary of AngloAmericaii pace. Tt is imderstood that the Duchess of Teck, who is chairman of the committee had a promise from the King and t v Hieen to "drop in." All the American women in London were workin™ hard to make it a success. It is not often the Duchess of Teck is induced to come forward in an affair of this kind. A sister-in-law of the Queen, she is enormously rich, being a daughter of the late Duke of Westminster by his "first marriage. It is commonly reported that the Duclacss won't allow any sitting on the various stairs of the Albert Hall. At a recent function there a variety of scenes, which were the talk of London for weeks afterwards, took place.