which, though occurring in a different connection, strikes home the truth of the last sentence most forcibly. “Uncertainty,” he says, “has the same effect as opposition. The agitation of the thought, the quick turns which it makes from one view to another, the variety of passions which succeed each other, according to the different views: all these produce an agitation in the mind; and this agitation transfuses itself into the predominant passion. Security, on the other hand, diminishes the passions. The mind, when left to itself, immediately languishes; and in order to preserve its ardour, must be supported every moment by a new flow of passion.”
Of course to those of a girl’s admirers who are for a while left in doubt and finally “get left” altogether, female flirtation may seem a cruel pastime. But there is a sort of historic justice in this torture which, indeed, almost amounts to an excuse for Coquetry; it is a species of feminine revenge for the long centuries of slavery in which muscular man held weak woman. Besides, no man has ever died of a broken heart, except in novels. And, again, who is to blame a pretty girl for having fascinated an unsuccessful lover? A rose yields its fragrance and beauty to all who wish to admire it. If a conceited young man comes along, imagines that all its beauty is for him alone, and tries to pluck it, he has only himself to blame if he feels the thorn of disappointment.
When Lord Chesterfield wrote, “I assisted at the birth of that most significant word ‘flirtation,’ which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world,” he perhaps hardly realised how very significant a factor of social life Flirtation was destined to become. Mr. Galton wrote, not long ago, that without female Coyness “there would be no more call for competition among the males for the favour of the females; no more fighting for love in which the strongest male conquers; no more rival display of personal charms in which the best-looking or best-mannered prevails. The drama of courtship, with its prolonged strivings and doubtful success, would be cut quite short, and the race would degenerate through the absence of that sexual selection for which the protracted preliminaries for love-making give opportunity.” When Mr. Galton wrote this, he did not apparently realise the social revolution that is going on, or understand that frank and natural Flirtation, which recognises every man as a gentleman until he has proved the contrary, affords much better opportunity for Sexual Selection and “protracted preliminaries of love-making” than crude, hypocritical, unnatural Coyness, which regards every gentleman as a beast of prey and a libertine.
Flirtation being the modern art of widening the field of amorous competition and prolonging the duration of Courtship, it follows that there cannot be too much of it—quantitatively speaking. Qualitatively it easily degenerates into frivolity, as in the case of those girls who get engaged repeatedly before marriage, which shows a lack of judgment, of tact, and especially of delicacy, because a peach should never be touched on the tree but allowed to retain its first blush for the man who is to eat it.
Refined flirtation, in truth, requires much more wit, more tact and culture, than Coyness, or than Prudery, which is the north-pole of Coyness. Prudery bears much resemblance to the artificial dignity of a certain class of young men who, by means of persistent reticence, gain a reputation for aristocratic and cynical superiority. Coquetry even is preferable to Prudery, for it is at any rate entertaining.
To sum up this matter in one sentence: The coy Prude says No, even when she means Yes; the cold Coquette says Yes and always means No; the modest and refined Flirt says neither Yes nor No, but looks and smiles a sweet “Perhaps—if you can win my Love.”
Modern Courtship.—What a grotesque and topsy-turvy parody of history it is, this modern comedy of Courtship, in which the man is the slave and walks on his knees! And how gracefully the newly-crowned girl-queen plays her rôle, little suspecting that in the next act the husband will probably throw away his self-assumed mask, and insist again on his historic rights as lord and master of the household!
The shock which follows this transition from the romance of Courtship to the realism of conjugal life is much the greatest in the case of the Prude. The Coquette need not be considered; she was born without a heart, and marriage will not give her one. But the Prude often owes her unnaturalness solely to an absurd educational system, and may be at heart the best of women. Previous to marriage she is taught to rely on passive Coyness to arouse the desires of man. After marriage, when she yields herself up, body and soul, she loses this weapon, the lover recovers his courage and lowers the pitch of his devotional ecstasy. This alarms the girl, who eagerly endeavours to recover the romantic Adoration by trying to please and coax and caress. But pleasing—or active fascination—being an art which she never has practised, she does it in a bungling way—overdoes it, in fact—thus increasing the husband’s indifference. Had she learned the art of refined Flirtation, i.e. active fascination with wit and accomplishments, this domestic tragedy would never have been enacted. Her skill and tact would then have enabled her to preserve her husband’s Gallantry, by supplying a constant variety and novelty in those feminine charms and graces in which a superior woman is as fertile as a man of genius in ideas.
By her extremely reserved and passive attitude during Courtship the Prude not only mars the probabilities of conjugal happiness, she also weakens her own Love directly, through Coyness, and indirectly, by making the man too servile and over-anxious to worship. For if a man immediately yields up his sword and proclaims himself fatally stabbed by a white wench’s black eye, there can be in her mind none of those small obstacles and doubts which, like short absences, increase Love. Love-making should be a duel of wit and mutual fascination. The Flirt does her part of the fencing; the Prude simply hides behind her shield and waits to see if the man can break it, or coax her to throw it away. With a Flirt a man need not be a servile worshipper, but he may be a Flirt likewise: which is a much more desirable attitude, not only because male flirtation will fan the woman’s Love into a brighter flame through the stimulus of uncertainty, but also because it enables the man to preserve his dignity. Hence Beatrix’s pointed advice to Henry Esmond: “Shall I be frank with you, Harry, and say that if you had not been down on your knees, and so humble, you might have fared better with me? A woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry and not by sighs and rueful faces. All the time you are worshipping I know very well I am no goddess, and grow weary of the incense.”
The girl of the period is the girl who flirts, and who expects every eligible man to take up her challenge for a tournament of wit and playing at Courtship. The reason why there is much more Romantic Love in America and England than in other countries is because there is more Flirtation, more opportunity for Courtship. On the Continent young folks are too constantly regarded from the marriage point of view. In Italy and France, when a young lady comes back from boarding-school, she is married as quickly as possible before she has had a chance to fall in love with a man of her choice. Consequence: she falls in love after marriage, and not always with her husband. In Germany a young lady is allowed to see young men and even to walk with them in the street, in the daytime or in the evening, if properly chaperoned; but under no circumstances will she take a young man’s arm, for that would imply an engagement. In America it is otherwise; but even there, in the South, it is taken for granted that if a young man calls on a young lady three or four times he can have no other object than to marry her. His object may be to marry, but not necessarily her. What he wants is to become acquainted, and if acquaintance “by summer’s ripening breath” blossoms into Love, so much the better; if not, it is a thousand times better he should be allowed to depart in peace than that two beings should be mated who do not feel really sympathetic and companionable. How is a young man to find his Juliet if he is not allowed to see a number of women, without being called fickle? And how is Juliet to find her Romeo, if mothers frighten young men into bachelorhood by such absurd customs?
The word Courtship, in fact, should have a wider meaning than it has now. It should be almost synonymous with Flirtation, which provides the means of bringing together, from a wide circle of acquaintances, two beings who are really suited to each other, instead of two whom blind chance, a few “calls,” or the advantages of intimacy resulting from cousinship, have fortuitously mated for a life of probable conjugal misery.
