Ladies do not ask gentlemen out on dates. For the sake of the algorithm, I'll add that women should not ask men out on dates.
It was so obvious in 1897 that ladies did not ask gentlemen out on dates that the authoress of Manners for Women didn't mention it there. Mrs Humphry confined her remarks on the subject--which were detailed and sweeping--to Manners for Men.
Manners for Men reveals that in the United Kingdom of 1897, well-bred women did not did not talk to men to whom they had not been properly introduced. Obviously they went into shops and spoke to attendants, but if they were so unfortunate as to drop their umbrellas or gloves, and gentlemen picked them up for them, the gentlemen had to raise their hats "and withdraw at once."
"Such trifling acts as these do not by any means constitute an acquaintanceship, and to remain by her side when the incident is over would look like presuming on what he had done, as though it gave him a right to her continued acknowledgments," warns Mrs Humphry. "This would be ungentlemanly."
Mrs H is not blind to the fact that young women (although "hardly ever gentlewomen") have been known to drop gloves and umbrellas on purpose to scrape an acquaintance with a good-looking young man. But Mrs H is so disgusted by the practise that she rolls up her sleeves and engages in class warfare:
Picking up promiscuous male acquaintances is a practice fraught with danger. It cannot be denied that girls of the lower middle classes are often prone to it; and there are thousands of young men who have no feminine belongings in the great towns and cities where they live, and who are found responsive to this indiscriminating mode of making acquaintances. But they must often hesitate before choosing as wife a girl who shows such little discretion as to walk and talk with young men of whom she knows nothing beyond what they choose to tell her.
Perhaps you find this depressing. I do, too. I'm not a fan of the "You'll never get married if..." school of argumentation. I'm definitely not a fan of young men tempting young women to do things that the young woman feels she really ought not to do and then despising her (or worse) if she does. This latter thought, however, warms me to Mrs H's overall idea that young ladies should have nothing to do with young men to whom they have not been introduced.
Single girls (but by definition not single ladies) in 1897 could be a wild lot, and so Mrs H has much bracing advice for the would-be gentleman wanting to avoid their charms and just marry a lady. These unladylike girls would attempt to make dates by letter, writing such commands as "Meet me at the tea-rooms, No. 440, Bond Street, to-morrow afternoon." The poor lonely chap, his dear mother and sisters out in the countryside or wherever, is naturally flattered and perhaps "careless of everything beyond the gratification of [his] own vanity." However, giving in to the invitation of a girl to whom he wasn't enough attracted to invite to the tearoom himself could lead to disaster:
It is not at all necessary that a man should accept invitations from a girl to meet her at restaurants, subscription dances, bazaars, or any other place. If a girl so far forgets herself, and is so lacking in modesty and propriety as to make appointments with young men in such ways as these, she cannot be worth much, and may lead the young man into a very serious scrape. A public horse-whipping is an extremely disagreeable thing, and yet cases have been known when such have been administered by irate brothers and fathers, when the only fault committed by the young man had been to obey the commands of a forward and bold young woman...
Brothers and fathers are no longer given to horse-whippings, at least not in traditionalist Catholic circles, although I understand something similar occurs in interfaith communities in Yorkshire. Mrs Humphry makes a much more universal argument later in Manners for Men when she says something in the first sentence that takes my breath away as I have been saying something similar since 2006:
Sometimes a girl falls so wildly in love with a man that she creates a kind of corresponding, though passing, fervour in him, and while it lasts he believes himself in love, though is emotions are only a mixture of gratified vanity and that physical attraction which needs true love to redeem it from the fleshly sort. Should marriage follow upon such courtships as these, where the girl takes ever the initiative, the union is very seldom a happy one. The wife never feels sure that her husband really loves her or would have chosen her. She knows that he was her choice, rather than she his, and a racking jealousy seizes her and makes her not only miserable herself, but a very uncomfortable companion for him. He, too, often finds when it is too late that she fulfils none of his ideals, and is in many ways a contrast to the girl he would have chosen if she had not whirled him into the vortex of her feelings.
I would not go so far to say that the marriage will be an unhappy one. I'm more inclined to think the marriage won't happen at all, at least not without a lot of sulking and temporary break-ups and ultimatums. If it does, however, I am inclined to hope for the best. Often wifely dynamos race around ultra-relaxed husbands and each appreciates the other's contrasting philosophy of living. I will reflect, though, that my own gentle and mild-mannered spouse has roused himself to action when need be, asking me to marry him after 10 days' acquaintance (probably a local peace-time record) and fighting to keep his jobs and going out and getting new jobs if need be.
If I had known, as a young woman, that I had a perfectly lovely husband waiting for me in the 21st century, I would not have wasted so much time and energy asking young men on dates. By the 1980s, it was considered acceptable--at least by seventeen magazine--for girls (nobody talked about ladies in seventeen magazine) to ask boys out on dates. Older now than the mothers of those boys were then, I cringe to think what the immigrant parents thought of me. What I did know at the time was that "having a boyfriend" was thought very glamorous and distinguished among the girls in my high school, and I recorded sadly in my diary that a cooling friend had told me a number of our set were going to a party--"those of us with boyfriends, that is."
By the way, the best rejection I ever received was from a very pleasant young Eastern Catholic who explained that he could only ever marry someone from his own (very persecuted) ethnic group. That was tremendously (and unusually) face-saving for me. (Sadly, when I subsequently told suitors that I could only ever marry a Catholic, they were not as gracious as I had been. In fact, one impressed upon me that I was a terrible bigot for this desire. Do not let anyone convince you that you are a bigot for wanting to marry someone of your own religion or ethnic group. You are not a bigot; you are eminently sensible. The more you have in common with the person you will have to live with all your days, the better.)
When having a boyfriend seems necessary to social success even among one's fellow teenage girls, it is no wonder that girls try to hurry boys along by calling them up, or texting them, or sending them photos on Instagram or whatever you do now. But such things were not considered the done thing even in 1962--at least not according to The Pan Guide to Etiquette and Good Manners.
Mrs Maclean (no relation) discusses the issue under the sub-heading Chasing a Man. Mrs M does not mince words:
Few people today hold the old-fashioned view that a woman who indicates a preference fo a man before he's shown any special liking for her is making herself cheap. But though a girl may no longer lose the good opinion of her friends, she may lose the man if she hunts him too obviously. Most men still like to think that the initiative is theirs.
You meet a man at a party you considered may very well be the man for you. But time goes by and he doesn't ring up to ask you out. Can you ask him? No. But what you can do is invite him among a group of other people to supper, drinks or coffee. After that it's up to him.
I am quite fond of the concept of dinner parties for this reason. It's not that I think they prompt men to ask women out, it's that they give women something to do with our overwhelming desire to ask men out. We have been trained from birth to go out and get what we want; we have almost no training in sitting back to wait. Perhaps a return to the 3-meals-a-day-no-snacking would help--or instruction in other forms of hunting and fishing. (The idea of stalking a deer by running after it in a short skirt is rather comical.)
Right, so if a young lady can't ask men out on dates, and a commitment to returning to the best manners of the 1897 prevents her from talking to those very few men who march up to her on the street*, what can she do? My first thought is that she should go where she will be introduced to the sort of man most likely to want to marry women like her, but this will take another blogpost to explain.
*By the way, if you are sitting in a place set aside for socializing, like the Catholic Student Union or a parish hall or a drawing-room, you are not now--and probably never have been--duty-bound to snub a male stranger who marches up to you to say hello. Street, yes. CSU, no. But it would be so nice for everyone if young men would go back to finding a mutual friend to make introductions. Even horrible men can turn up at church or at events of interest to Catholics, so for goodness sake, don't assume anyone is a good sort just because they appear among Catholics. In the course of my long life, I have met atheists and libertines at church.
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