The Europeans

The most adventurous wooing, in Stendhal's view, is to be found in Protestant Germany. 'The open and passionate way in which these lovers pay their court to their mistresses would be the height of indecency and absurdity in France.' It is the custom in Germany to organize dances which are attended by the whole family; that is, the mothers play games, the men talk politics and the young folk dance. Stendhal wishes he could introduce the same custom in France, so that girls could get to know young men. 'They would soon come to loathe fatuity and the indiscretion it is responsible for. . .. Nothing is more favourable to the birth of love than a life of irksome solitude broken now and again by a long-desired ball. This is the plan of wise mothers who have daughters.'

In the Bernese Oberland audacity reaches new heights. Stendhal has seen for himself how girls spend Saturday nights with their lovers. An advanced form of bundling is evidently the local custom. Stendhal quotes from Colonel Weiss a charming story about a peasant in those parts who complained about the losses in his orchards. 'Why not get a dog?' he was asked. The reply was, 'If I got a dog my daughters would never get married'-the reason being that the dog would prevent young men from climbing in through the girls' bedroom windows. The gallant Colonel Weiss has an even more remarkable story about a much-respected Colonel who called at the home of the first magistrate in the district in which he was visiting. So much impressed was he by the sight of the magistrate's pretty sixteen-year-old daughter that he asked the girl if he might 'keep watch' with her. The answer was no. 'I share a room with my cousin,' explained the maiden, 'but I will come to yours.' She ushered him into his room and then said, 'I must ask Mamma's permission'. The fascinated Colonel contrived to overhear the girl's application to her parents. 'Old man, do you allow Trineli to spend the night with the Colonel?' asked the good lady of her husband. He replied: 'With all myheart. I think I'd even lend my wife to such a man.' This convinced the girl's mother, who said, 'Right then, go, but be a good girl and don't take off your petticoat'. In the morning she rose, still virgin, smoothed the bedclothes, heated some coffee, gave her bedfellow as a souvenir a little piece of cloth from the bosom of her dress, bestowed on him a last kiss and ran away. Which shows that a military gentleman of strict principles may sometimes receive uncommon privileges.

Some, like Stendhal, commended dancing as a means of throwing young people together; others were still condemning it for the same reason. Europe was in the grip of what one critic called 'the most degenerating dance for more than a hundred years', a dance which was inspiring dismay among old-fashioned suitors: namely, the waltz. In 1813 Byron, tongue in cheek, had described how this dance could be relied on to 'wake to wantonness the willing limbs'. Pity the honest suitor who went to dance with his young lady-

Hot from the hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side,
Where were the rapture then to clasp the form
From this lewd grip and lawless contact warm?

Twenty-seven years later, with Victoria on the throne, these lines were to be quoted approvingly by the author of the Ladies' Pocket Book. The 'pollution of the waltz' (he, or she, said) had been encouraged by wickedness in high places. Was it conceivable that any honourable lover could endure 'the sight of the adopted of his heart half embraced and all but reclining in the arms of another? Could he endure to see, which is often seen, the impassioned glance of a stranger turned upon those beauties which were believed to be exclusively his own? Could he bear to witness her lips (which, if he has approached at all, it has been almost with a sentiment of adoration) approach near enough to those of each man who may be a waltzer, "if not to touch, to taint"?'

Yet honourable lovers did indeed concede these privileges, just as their great-grandsons were willing to let other men dance cheek-to-cheek and ventre-d-ventre with their girls- and in ballrooms with half the lights out at that.
The young ladies who ran such fearful risks in the waltz could not say that they had never been warned of the perils of loose behaviour. The Lady's Magazine, in 1818, printed a number of maxims, one of which might well have been framed and hung in every young woman's bedroom:

Such is the depravity of human nature that in certain situations even the purest of men are scarcely to be trusted.

'Matron' in the Lady's Magazine strove hard to encourage the idea of delicacy. 'A woman without delicacy is a beast; a woman without the appearance of delicacy, a monster.' A girl who could familiarly tap a mere acquaintance on the shoulder, and rally him upon the attention he paid to another, might be amusing enough company for a few hours, but was assuredly not the type with whom a man of sense would wish to spend whole years.

'Matron' strove hard to give helpful answers on love problems. She admitted (in 1818) that the 'ancient mode' to be observed by a young man wishing to propose marriage was to obtain prior permission from the girl's father; the modern fashion was to ask the girl first. But 'Matron' did not 'like the new fashion, and advocated a rather tortuous middle course, which involved the young man approaching the girl's father with a pocketful of credentials. Even if, through observing old-fashioned rules, he lost the lady, he would 'gain something by a continued practice of virtue'.