Victorian Etiquette

A half-dozen of these works, considered collectively, will give a useful picture of middle-class Victorian courtship at its most strait-laced. Chief among them are the Ladies' Pocket Book of Etiquitte (1840), The Etiquette of Courtship and Marriage (1844), and The Etiquette of Courtship and Matrimony (1852). All three are by anonymous authors.

One basic problem over which much ink is spilt is: What should a lady do on seeing a gentleman of her acquaintance in the street? One thing is clear: she has to be a quick thinker. 'If... by the expression of his countenance you perceive he recognizes you, if his company has been agreeable, his connections are respectable and you have no objection to his acquaintance, it is your province to salute him; for if he be a decidedly well-bred man and believe you equally a gentlewoman, he will not salute you first.' (The reason why a gentleman does not take the initiative in recognizing the lady is to spare any hurt to his feelings if she does not choose to acknowledge him.)

If a lady thinks the gentleman has not seen her she should not salute him. 'First, he may not perceive your salute and your feelings would then be wounded by the imagined neglect; and second, the salute may be appropriated by some coxcomb whose acquaintance might be anything but agreeable.'
A lady usually has a proper sense of her own importance, says this writer; therefore she will not acknowledge, in the street, a gentleman whose only claim to acquaintance is that he once danced with her at a public ball. Such 'improvisatrice acquaintances' are to be avoided.

The problem of how to engineer an introduction to a young woman who is a complete stranger is tackled warily, and on the whole unsatisfactorily. It is legitimate for the gentleman to find out where she lives and make inquiries through 'the most ready means in the neighbourhood' into her family and friends. A little more information about which sources to consult might have been welcome; as it is, the would-be suitor is merely warned that he must be careful to avoid mentioning the lady's name in his inquiries. If he fails to make contact with her through friends, he is advised to attend her place of worship, or meet her 'so often as to be manifestly for the purpose, in the course of her morning promenades'. He will soon be able to judge, even without speaking, whether his attentions are distasteful or otherwise. A timid blush or 'a smile lurking in the half-dropped eye' are a sign that he may with some confidence attempt the next hurdle-that of writing to her father. This he does on the lines already made familiar in The New London Letter-Writer. All secret and unacknowledged meetings are to be avoided, 'as the repetition of a clandestine intercourse is always more or less injurious through life. The romance evaporates but the memory of indiscretion survives,'

If lucky enough to be invited to the young lady's house, the suitor must strictly ration his visits, since too-frequent calls 'produce that undesirable familiarity which oftener lessens than increases esteem'. He must be careful not to adopt the manners of one of the family. If his journey has been an arduous one, he must not draw attention to the fatigue and inconvenience he has suffered. His dress should be one of 'an elegant and manly simplicity'. On his visits he should watch carefully to see whether his intended fiancee is kind to her sisters and brothers, whether she habitually looks on the bright side of life, and whether 'the holiness of religion hovers like a sanctifying dove above her head'. He may not offer gifts, nor may she accept them, until there is a clear proposal of marriage. Preferably a proposal of marriage should not be made by letter, and certainly a written proposal ought not to be transferred into the lady's grasp on shaking hands.
If a gentleman's proposal of marriage is declined and he has reason to suppose that the lady either dislikes him or is highly indifferent, he should resolutely abandon the pursuit. If he persists he will only rouse her disgust and indignation, or else she will treat him as an object of amusement.

The lady who has rejected a suitor is warned: 'Your young female friends should never be allowed to tease or banter you into the betrayal of the secret.' Younger sisters are, of course, included among these 'young female friends'. If it is necessary to decline a written proposal 'the gentleman's letter should be returned in your reply and your lips should be closed upon the subject for ever afterwards'-though, of course, a well-bred girl will mention the matter to her parents.
Betrothal is the period during which a gentleman should correct any faults in the lady. 'He will find a ready listener, and any impulse given by him will now be pliantly followed. After marriage it may be too late. .. .' In the period of betrothal 'anything like a fondling behaviour' is weak. Courtship in public is selfish, vulgar, indelicate and offensive. 'Lovers would do well to remember that while courtship is the most absorbing and interesting of all occasions to them, it is the most insipid, and when, too manifest, the most distasteful to others.' Gentlemen are warned not to praise or toast a lady in male society, especially over the wine cup. During this period it is the lady's duty 'to repress excess of ardour, whether in her own case or in that of her lover'. She must guard against showing impatience with everyone in her family while awaiting the arrival of her suitor.

Flirting with others during the period of betrothal is 'one of the most sickening, despicable forms of selfishness'. One writer tells of a young man who loved a wealthy woman to idolatry, yet rashly paid court to another woman at an assembly. The wealthy girl took no notice but later reproached him in private. 'A long illness and a disordered mind bordering on insanity was the punishment of his folly.' Similar retribution overtook a flighty young woman who said to her high minded gentleman friend: 'It has been my lot to wound many confiding hearts and I have great numbers of letters which will amuse us in the winter evenings.' The gentleman quickly 'seceded from the engagement', explaining that he 'could have no confidence where the records of honourable affections and of bitter sufferings were the amusements of a female heart'. The lady 'nearly lost her reason and her life together', and her hand was never solicited again. (Insanity seems to have been a common consequence of jilting.)

When breaking off an engagement, 'a lady cannot be bound to declare any other reason than her will', though she ought in fairness to give the gentleman some hint of her motive. If a gentleman breaks an engagement 'the reasons, if really arising from any improprieties on her part, should be mentioned in the gentlest language which is sufficient to convey the truth'.
After the rupture, a gentleman should return all presents, letters and other tokens of regard. 'He will not retain letters or copies of them . . „ and preserve them as evidence, should he have opportunities of future exposure or retaliation. We have known this conduct pursued but never with honour to the gentleman who did it.'

If the engagement prospers, and the wedding day is fixed, there are still letters to be burned-the bridegroom's bachelor letters. This is the time, moreover, when the gentleman will begin to shed his disreputable associates. 'A bachelor is seldom very particular in the choice of his companions. So long as he is amused he will associate freely with those whose morals and habits would point them out as highly dangerous persons to introduce into the sanctity of domestic life.'

If the gentleman has no property of his own he must insure his life; two-thirds of the lady's property should invariably be settled on herself. The suitor is sharply warned against suggesting a registry marriage. Nor should he commit the sottise of suggesting a winter honeymoon in the country or a summer honeymoon in Paris.

Most mentors stress that strong religious convictions are essential in both parties. If the man is irreligious, it is not the least use a woman trying to convert him; as the weaker party she is more likely to be converted to his views. Without a shared religion, the marriage is doomed. The author of How to Woo and How to Win, published in Glasgow in 1856, mingles fire, flood and magnetism in an eloquent warning:

Youthful excitement is a flame which is constantly craving fuel, and for want of a magnet to concentrate their affections on the fireside, thousands have plunged into the polluted stream of folly and vice, which increases in velocity the longer they wallow in its slimy waves, and where, if the grappling irons of religion arrest not their progress, they must ultimately perish.

This author revels in tormenting visions. Castigating as if 'shamelessly avaricious bawds' those mothers who marry their daughters to old men, he says: 'Even murder itself hath been the product of the foul union and hath waved its dark 'crimson wings over the cursed habitation.'
No less intimidating are the results of marrying a woman in weak health:

The house becomes, so to speak, an infirmary, to which every succeeding birth adds a new patient-the pathway from the bedchamber to the churchyard is defined with fearful distinctness-and madness with his rattling chain and gibbering idiocy with his cold and meaningless smile are seldom far from the mansion.

No writer in this genre has more alarmingly portrayed the discomforts which befall a man who marries beneath his social level:

He may be obliged to admit those to his table whom a year ago he would have grudged sitting room in his hall. Strange apparitions, with sandy hair and moleskin small clothes, call him 'brother' and 'cousin', and plague his existence with petitions for employment; and he almost dreads to take up a newspaper or police report lest he should stumble upon some tidings, not of the most flattering nature, connected with his new kith and kin.

Though believing that men and women should keep their appointed stations in life, this counsellor, rather surprisingly, allows that a peer may marry an actress or opera dancer-'the lustre of his coronet will act as an "open Sesame" .. . the dowlas of the wife will be expiated by the ermine of her husband'. But in the middle ranks of life a proletarian has a much thinner time, for the ladies of the bourgeoisie are excessively rank-conscious.

Unlike Adam Petrie, the author of How to Woo and How to Win recommends taking women by surprise. 'Call upon her suddenly and without premonition, when she may not be looking for visitors,' he says, 'and you may be able to form some estimate as to her everyday domestic neatness and habits.' Another useful tip is to ask her, innocently, to 'go with you to the bookshop and choose a book for your sister' and then watch what kind of book she chooses.

As for the bride's domestic knowledge, 'I would not ask her to compound a pudding or ready a steak with her own hands'; but she ought to be able to check carelessness or instruct ignorance in the kitchen. 'I would deem it unreasonable to ask her to adjust the apparatus of the dinner table, but I would like to see her with an eye schooled to detect any irregularity or misplacement.' The writer allows himself a sigh for the days, half a century before, when 'the cookshop was as regularly visited even by the daughters of the higher class of gentry as the music academy'.

The author of Courtship As It Is and As It Ought To Be, published in Otley in 1877, describes himself as 'a careful observer of the first' and 'a practical experimentalist in the latter'. He hopes that his book 'will shed a blaze of lustre over every class of God's created worms and furnish food for lasting happiness'. To the accompaniment of much polysyllabic moralizing, he sketches an imaginary courtship which goes awry, and then rewrites the story on ideal lines. Most courtship of the day, he complains, is riddled with hypocrisy, dishonesty and cupidity. The heart of an honourable woman is ‘a golden fort which must be stormed by ardour, intellect, integrity and truth; not just beleaguered by pretending pride nor circumvested by chicanery; nor sought to be trepanned by mountebanking foppishness, or nature smothered in the glare of art; but fairly, frankly, openly assailed with manly probity and unassuming worth....'

In the author's cautionary tale, Mr Bluster stalks Amelia in the wood and overhears her soliloquizing. She is debating why she does not like him:

Is it because his conversation does not glitter with the deep logic of a reasoner, nor possess the charms of elocutionary melody? Perhaps a little of my rude contempt for him is traceable in this, but there is yet another reason for the feeling. Ah! when love is sterling, does it require the aid of assumption or artifice, or the mock mimicry of laboured show? Does it not rather creep into view with the spontaneity of secret and involuntary fervour pervading every beaming of the eye, movement of the lips and action of the life?

A wiser man would have tiptoed away, and headed for New South Wales. But Mr Bluster does not care to hear his suit described, even to the birds and squirrels, as 'a cold methodical 'intriguing piece of secularity, without sympathy or sentiment, talent or tenderness'. He steps out and grips Amelia's arm, which nearly shocks her into short sentences. Taking a deep breath, she tells Mr Bluster that his intrusion has dealt the death-blow to his reputation; and that 'to be held here as with the gripe of a highwayman more than the gentle importunity of a man who seeks to be my lover is sufficient to hazard your safety in a legal point of view, sir.'
After bringing all his characters to grief, the author rewrites the story, as it might have happened if the parties had acted sensibly. Amelia's real lover, Nat, now addresses her thus:

'O speak unreservedly to me, Miss Somersdown; if your heart be free and unfettered; if your hand have been pledged at the instigation of parental influence; if there be any means by which my immitigable devotion can receive as devoted a return without a compromise of your honour or of mine; speak, speak, my dear Miss Somersdown.'

The lady explains, at some length, that Nat's rival, Mr Bluster, has won the approval and 'coadjutorship' of her mother, and that she is pledged against her will to him. It is a measure of Nat's infatuation that he views Amelia as a terse conversationalist, for he now says: 'You have said to me in an hour what would have taken many of our affected females months tosay.' The news of Mr Bluster's success is, of course, a severe blow. Nat says:

I am imperfect, unsatisfactory and unacceptable in your eyes; my suit is obnoxious to you and I have laid myself open to the mortifying horrors of rejection. Is it indeed so? If I can merit you by a love so chaste and illimitable as ever made the breast of man its tenement you are mine already, my dear Miss Somersdown; if the consecration of a life the topmost of whose aims shill be to charm, can win consent from you, it is already done;. Heaven knows the purity of my intent and the affection which dictates it....
It is not from excess of wealth that nuptial felicity is desirable, it is not from a sumptuousness that social harmony can come, it is only by a reciprocal striving to meet each other's tastes and to cater for each other's pleasures that the rigorousness of worldly cares can be abated and the fireside of home be made the fireside of happiness; and I call God to witness that I shall incessantly do even more than these for you, and that . your life of love with me shall be as near an approach to the utmost height of enjoyment as my pecuniary competence, my untiring zeal and infinite affection can make it. Preferring the manly and instantaneous avowal to the pouting and piecemeal declaration of less straightforward lovers, I have seized the opportunity of the moment and have tried to condense in a few words a momentous proposition which involves the temporal well-being of two mortal creatures.

Amelia capitulates, with an uncommonly brief speech: 'You have my heart, Sir.' Nat presses her lovely lips in ecstasy to his own, a moment he would not have traded for Golconda's 'princely beds of buried gold'. 'What will I not do to constitute your throne elysian?' he asks; and one of the things he undertakes to do is to sing the manly songs of Dibdin to her, at the piano.

Mr Bluster has lost, but there is still Amelia's father to be won over. Ringingly, Nat pleads the case of a daughter 'shorn of the sympathy of those whose life blood should have soiled the earth ere she had been forsaken; impelled to watch unequal warfare with a syncretism and brook contumely from parental lips'.
Then, while the father is pondering 'syncretism', Nat moves in for the kill:

'You brand the legal offspring of your bed because she flies disgusted from a walking lump of drink-produced excrescences Viltoa cleaves to him who loves her as his soul.' The father blenches. Any moment now Nat will refer to the girl as 'the fruit of your loins'. The mother capitulates too, saying, 'I am the errorist in this affair'. The story ends with an all-round 'imbibition of an amiable spirit'.

How many Victorian couples really used words like ‘unmitigable' and 'coadjutorship' in tender conversation will never be known. But in letter-writing high-flown phrases were de rigueur. In 1869 there was a breach of promise case at Nottingham, in which extracts were read from some 134 letters exchanged by a surgeon's daughter and an independent gentleman. 'I'll never leave, deceive or forsake you. Forty summers have I wandered on this terrestrial scene, tossed by various tempests ...' began one of the gentleman's avowals. ; He also claimed that 'Alice is engraven on my breast'. This correspondence inspired a writer in Once a Week to discourse on 'The Rhodomontade of Love' (April 17th, 1869). Unhappily, he said, each generation of lovers persisted in using die worn-out literary conceits of the last, 'fossils of expression 'with snatches of exploded poetry. . .. Must we consider that all the beautiful things that our poets are now singing about love will in time come to be mere rhodomontade and commonplace?' His fears were only too well-founded.