| | | | | | It is a pity that when, by some train of ill-luck, a word of | respectable parentage, and well brought up, is led astray, it | cannot adopt Goldsmith's recipe and die. It has not even | the more prosaic alternative of being made an honest word | by marriage, and escaping the name under which it stooped | to folly, and was betrayed. It drags on a dishonored life, | with little or no chance of recovering its character, | inflicting cruel disgrace upon the unlucky family of ideas, | no matter what their own innocence and respectability, to | which it happens to belong. Thus Casuistry, if not a very | useful, was at least a perfectly harmless, member of | society, and moved in the best circles, until in an evil hour | she became too intimate with the unpopular Jesuits. | A few years ago, when high feeding and sermonizing | proved too much for the virtue of garotters, and, waxing | fat, they not only kicked society, but danced hornpipes in | hobnailed boots upon its head and stomach, even | Philanthropy, at once the most fashionable and popular | word of this century, was all but compromised by Sir | Joshua Jebb and Sir George Grey. Baron Bramwell | fortunately came to the | | rescue, and saved it from permanent loss of character. But | still to this day the word is sometimes used in a sense by no | means complimentary. If the battue-system continues long | enough,

"good sport"

will become a synonym for | cold-blooded clumsy butchery, and thus all sport | whatsoever will be more or less discredited. The | of one member disgraces the | whole family. A few men may be the lords of language, | but the great majority are its slaves. They can no more | disconnect the innocent idea from soiled word that | accompanies it than they can see a blue landscape through | green glass. Let us hope that one of the first sets of Mr. | Bright's millennial Parliament will be the establishment of | a tribunal empowered to take a word when it arrives at this | pitiable condition, and either in mercy knock it on the head | altogether, or else formally readmit it into good society, | and give it all the advantages of a fresh start. | We take an early opportunity of inviting their special | attention to the much-injured word

"Match-making." |

The practice which it describes is not only harmless, | but, in the present state of society, highly useful and | meritorious. Yet there can be no doubt that there is a | powerful prejudice against it. Although all women ~~ or | rather, perhaps, as Thackeray said, all good women ~~ are | at heart match-makers, there are very few who own the soft | impeachment. Many repudiate it with indignation. It is on | the whole about as safe to charge a lady with Fenianism as | facetiously to point out a young couple in her | drawing-room, | | whose flirtation has a suspicious business-like look about | it, and to hint that she has deliberately brought them | together with a view of matrimony. It may be true that she | has no selfish interest whatever in the matter. The criminal | conspiracy in which she so strenuously repudiates any | concern is, after all, nothing worse than the attempt to make | two people whom she likes, and who she thinks will suit | each other, happy for life. By any other name such an | action ought, one would think, to smell sweet in the nostrils | of gods and men. | But, whatever the gods think of it, men cannot forget that | the practice, whether harmless or not, goes by the | objectionable name of match-making. She the lady replies, | not, perhaps, without the energy of conscious guilt, that |

"things of this sort are best left to themselves,"

| and piously begs you to remember that marriages are made | in Heaven, not in her drawing-room. The melancholy truth | is that the gentle craft of match-making has been so | vulgarized by course and clumsy professors, and its very | name has in consequence been brought into such disrepute, | that few respectable women have the courage openly to | recognise it. They are haunted by visions of the typical | match-maker who does work for fashionable novels and | social satires, and who is a truly awful personage. To her | alone of mortals is it given to inspire, like the Harpies, at | once contempt and fear. Keen-eyed and hook-nosed, like a | bird of prey, she glowers from the corner of crowded | ball-rooms upon the unconscious heir, hunts him untiringly | from | | house to house, marries him remorselessly to her eldest | daughter, and then never loses sight of him till his spirit is | broken, his old friends discarded, and his segar-case thrown | away. | It is scarcely necessary to say that this fearful being exists | only in fiction. In real life she has not only to marry her | daughters, but also, like other human beings, to eat, drink, | sleep, and otherwise dispose of the twenty-four hours of the | day. She cannot therefore very well devote herself, from | morning to night, to the one occupation of heir-hunting, | with the precision of a machine, or one of Bunyan's | walking vices. But still there must be some truth even in a | caricature, and a man sometimes finds a girl

"thrown | at his head,"

as the process is forcibly termed, with a | coarse-mindedness quite worthy of the typical | match-maker, though also with a clumsiness which she would | heartily despise. | He goes as a stranger to some place, and is astonished to | find himself at once taken to the bosom and innermost | confidence of people whose very name he never heard | before, as if he were their oldest and most familiar friend. | He is asked to dinner one day, to breakfast the next, and | warmly assured that a place is always kept for him at lunch. | Charmed and flattered to find his many merits so quickly | discovered and thoroughly appreciated by strangers, he | votes them the cleverest, most genial, most hospitable | people he ever met; and everything goes on delightfully | until he begins to think it odd that he should be constantly | left alone with, and now and then delicately | | chaffed about some , ill | favored woman, whom he no more connects with any | thought of marriage than he would a female rhinoceros. | And then slowly dawns upon him the cruel truth that his | kind hosts have had their appreciation of his merits | considerably sharpened by the fact that there is an ugly | daughter or sister-in-law in the house whom they are sick to | death of, whom they are always imploring

"to marry or | do something,"

and who having for years ogled and | angled for every marriageable pair of whiskers and | pantoloons within ten miles, has gradually become so well | known in the neighborhood that her one forlorn hope is to | carry off some innocent stranger with a rush. | ; and if the | happens to be young and verdant, and, having just been | given a good appointment, feels, with the Vicar of | Wakefield, that one of the three greatest characters on earth | is the father of a family, he is possibly hooked securely | before he discovers his danger. He discovers it to find | himself tied for life to a woman with whom he has not a | sympathy in common, and for whom every day increases | his disgust. And the people who have ruined his life have | not even the sorry excuse that they wished to better hers. | Their one thought was to get rid of her as speedily as | possible, no matter to whom; and they would rather have | had Bluebeard at a two-months' engagement than any other | man at one of six. There is something so coarse and | revolting, so brutal, in the notion of bringing two people | together | | into such a relation as that of marriage on purely selfish | grounds, and without the slightest regard to their future | happiness, that anyone | who has seen the snare laid for | himself or his friends may well shudder at the mere sound | of match-making. Mezentius was more merciful, for of the | two bodies which he chained together only one had life. | The clumsy match-maker is a scarcely less dangerous, | though a far more respectable, enemy to the gentle craft | than the coarse one. She makes it ridiculous, while the | latter makes it odious, and it is ridicule that kills. She is, | perhaps, a well-meaning woman, who would be sorry to | marry two people unless she thought them suited to each | other but the moment she has made up her mind that they | ought to marry, she sets to work with a vigor which, unless | she has a very young man to deal with, is almost sure to | spoil her plans. This would not be surprising in a silly | woman; but it is odd that the more energetic, and, in some | respects, the more able a woman is, the more likely | sometimes she is to fall into this error. | A woman may be the life and soul of a dozen societies, | write admirable letters, get half her male relatives into | Government offices, and yet be the laughing-stock of the | neighborhood for the absurd way in which she goes | husband-hunting for her daughters. The very energy and | ability which fit her for other pursuits disqualify her for | match-making. She is too impatient and too fond of action | to adopt the purely passive expectant attitude, the masterly | inactivity, | | which is here the great secret of success. She is always | feeling that something should be said or done to help on the | business, and prematurely scares the shy or suspicious bird. | Many a promising love-affair has been nipped in the bud | simply because the too eager mother has drawn public | attention to it before it was robust enough to face publicity, | by throwing the two lovers conspicuously together, or by | some unguarded remark. | When one thinks of all that a man has to go through in the | course of a love-affair ~~ especially in a small society | where everybody knows everybody ~~ of all the chaffing | and grinning, and significant interchange of glances when | he picks up the daughter's fan, or hands the mother to her | carriage, or laughs convulsively at the old jokes of the | father, one is almost inclined to wonder how a Briton, of | the average British stiffness and shyness, ever gets married | at all. The explanation probably is, that he falls in love | before he exactly knows what he is about, and, once in | love, is of course gloriously blind and deaf to all obstacles | between him and the adored one. But to subject a man to | this trying ordeal, as the too eager match-maker does, | before he is sufficiently in love to be proof against it, is like | sending him into a snow-storm without a great-coat. | The romantic match-maker is, in her way, as mischievous | as the coarse or the clumsy one. She is usually a good sort | of woman, but with decidedly more heart than head. She | gets her notions of political economy from Mr. Dickens' | novels, and holds | | that, whenever two nice young people of opposite sexes | like each other, it is their business then and there to marry. | If Providence cannot always, like Mr. Dickens, provide a | rich aunt or uncle, it at least never sends mouths without | hands to feed them. Let every good citizen help the young | people to marry as fast as they can and let there be lots of | chubby cheeks and lots of Sunday plum-pudding to fill | them. There is no arguing with a woman of this kind, and | she is perhaps the most dangerous of all match-makers, | inasmuch as she is usually herself a warm-hearted pleasant | woman, and there is a courage and disinterestedness about | her views very captivating to young heads. There is no | safety but in flight. Even a bachelor of fair prudence and | knowledge of the world is not safe in her hands. We mean | on the assumption that he is not in a position to marry. If | he is

"an eligible,"

he cannot, of course, be | considered safe anywhere. But otherwise he knows that | match-makers of the unromantic worldly type will be only | too glad to leave him alone. | And having, perhaps, been accustomed on this account to | feel that he may flirt in moderation with impunity, as a man | with whom marriage is altogether out of the question, he is | quite unprepared for the new and startling unconventional | view which the romantic match-maker takes to him. He is | horrified to find that, ignoring the usual considerations as to | the length of his purse, she has discovered that he and the | pretty girl with whom he danced three consecutive dances | last night must have been made expressly | | for each other, and that she has somehow contrived, by the | exercise of that freemasonry in love-affairs which is | peculiar to women, to put the same ridiculous notion into | the young lady's head. In fact, he suddenly finds to his | astonishment that he must either propose ~~ which is out of | the question ~~ or be considered a cold-blooded trifler with | female hearts. And so he has nothing to do but pack up his | portmanteau and beat an ignominious retreat, with an | uncomfortable consciousness that his amiable hostess and | pretty partner have a very poor opinion of him. | It is rather hard, however, that these and other abuses, | which we have not space to enumerate, of the great art of | match-making should bring the art itself into odium and | contempt. In all of them there is a violation of some one or | more of what we take to be its three chief canons. First, the | objects to be experimented upon should be pecuniarily in a | position to marry. Secondly, care should be taken that they | seem on the whole not unlikely to suit each other. Thirdly, | the artist should be content, like a photographer, to bring | the objects together, and leave the rest of the work mainly | to nature. We confess that we feel painfully the | unscientific vagueness of this last axiom, since so much | turns upon the way in which the objects are brought | together. But, as we only undertook to treat of the abuse of | match-making, the reader must consider these maxims for | its proper use to be thrown into the bargain | , and not therefore | to be scrutinized severely. Some other | | day, if we can muster up courage enough for so delicate | and arduous a task, we may perhaps attempt to show that, | in the present state of society, the art of match-making | deserves and requires cultivation, and how, in our humble | opinion, this cultivation should be carried on.