Goethe, you may remember, makes Werther, whose “sorrows” fascinated a generation in the days of our great grandmothers, fall in love with Charlotte, entirely through seeing her cutting bread and butter—nothing more or less!
A very unromantic situation for fostering the growth of the tender passion, you say?
Ah! but the literary lion of Weimar meant a good deal more in his description than lies on the outer surface. He wished to teach a frivolous school that true affection will ripen better under the genial influences of domestic duties and home surroundings, than the masked world believes.
A girl’s chances of marriage, the usual end and aim of feminine existence, are not increased in a direct ratio with the number of her ball dresses!
Let your eligible suitors but see those young ladies who may wish to change their maiden state of single blessedness, at home, where they are engaged living their simple lives out in the ordinary avocations of the family circle; and not only abroad, in the whirligig of society, where they have no opportunities for displaying their real natures.
Enterprising mammas might then find that their daughters would get more readily “off their hands,” at a less expense than they now incur by pursuing Coelebs through all the turnings and windings of Vanity Fair.
Besides, they would have the additional assurance, that they would be better mated to those who prefer studying them under the domestic regime, than if they were hawked about to parties and concerts without end, to be angled for by the butterflies of fashion, who can only exist in the atmosphere of a ballroom and would die of nil admirari-ism if out of sight of Coote’s baton!
Your man really worth marrying, in the true sense of the word and not speaking of the value of his rent-roll, likes to know something more of his future wife-that-is-to-be, beyond what he is able to pick up from meeting her in society. Think, how many of her most engaging charms he must remain ignorant of; and then, what on earth can he know of her disposition?
The most hot-tempered young lady in the world will manage to control her anger, and tutor herself to smile sweetly, when her awkward, albeit rich, partner tears off her train during his elephantine gambols in the gallop. She may even say, with the most unaffected affectation of perfect candour that “really it doesn’t matter at all,” laughing at the mishap; but I should just like you to hear what she exclaims when her obnoxious little brother, Master Tommy, playfully dabbles his raspberry-jam’d fingers over her violet silk dress, or converts her new Dolly Varden hat into a temporary entomological museum!
Observation in the family would enable Coelebs to mark these little episodes more closely, judging for himself the temper and tact of the idol of his fancy; while, at the same time, he might discover many admirable little traits of kindness and charity and grace, which can only be seen to advantage when displayed naturally in the home circle.