Lovemaking in England.

Evening Star, Issue 6819, 5 February 1886, Page 2

Lovemaking in England.

English girls seldom marry before the age of twenty-two or twenty'three. Some many well at the age of thirty. A marriage In England is not arranged in a few days or even a few months. A young man of about twenty engages himself t» a young lady of say eighteen, and the lovers remain engaged for three or even five years. These are the woman’s good time. During the engagement she enjoys almost all the sweets of married life without any ol its troubles, and she is free. Sometimes she does her best to make the engagement last os long as possible. She prefers to murmur words of love to her betrothed to shutting herself up with him in some semi-detached cottage wherein to bemoan the high price of bread and butter and coal. On the day she is married she is settled, as they say in England ; that means she is established. I would define this word “ settled” more correctly by saying that her business is done for her, I do not wish at all to convey the idea that woman finds im happiness in the English household; nothing is further from my mind. 1 think, on tbe contrary, she can enter it with more confidence than can her sister across the Channel, because she assumes less responsibility and because her mother has invariably versed her moat thoroughly in domestic economy. Women in England know nothing 9,ta1l about their husbands’ business, 110 more than a clerk about the private affairs of hig employer j and it Is even ; a difficult thfng for her to say whether he »» making a fortune ox on the verge of bankruptcy. When her husband dies, an Englishwoman who has no fortune may becoiue a governess, a or & uyp'se. That is servitude. A n gives his wife so much a month for household expenses a,nd so muph for her wardrobe, —her wages, a§ it were. She evinces no surprise when s|ie leanßS one fine monring

that her husband is taking her to a sumptuous abode, nor when she learns that they must move some evening in the dark without making a noise. .She goes with the furniture—in a double sense.