WHEN LOVE WAS INDELICATE

Evening Star, Issue 21622, 18 January 1934, Page 4

WHEN LOVE WAS INDELICATE

On night nearly eighty years ago a “ youim ladv,” blushing at her own da'riim,°sat down to write for advice to her lavourite weekly periodical. Shortly afterwards the ‘ Answers to Correspondents ’ oi the London Joui. nal ’ included the warning paragraph: —“ Ada must not enter into any tender engagement without consulting her parents. Society teems with well-bred adventurers,” says the ‘ Morning Post.’ ■ , . The ‘ London-Journal could claim a vast experience of these delicate matters and a ' writer who signs himself “ R,’.D.” has now had the amusing idea of reprinting a number of ‘ Answers,' in a book. We learn some of the problems of maidenly conduct which so perplexed our grandmothers. Thus “R.AV.” was told that “ the present of a pair of embroidered braces to the young clergyman previous to his leaving his curacy was not inappropriate; hut if your description of him be a true one we think ho would have preferred that vou should have expended the same amount of labour in some article lo have been sold for the benefit of the poof.” . “ Ada and Fvelme were seriously reprimanded for confessing that they had fallen in love with gentlemen with whom they had never exchanged a single word of conversation. ■ “ It is indelicate—markedly indelicate,” said the ‘Journal.’ “ We feel

surprised at girls of education making such an avowal. Their moral' susceptibilities must be much blunted.” Poor young ladies! The ‘Journal' had no mercy. If they had “ foolishly lent themselves to clandestine courtships ” and “ corresponded with the gentlemen ” unknown to their fathers they were publicly pilloried for rashness and indecorum. “Laura J,” learned that “she must think as well as act with maidenly discretion.” “ Lily Norman,” on the other hand, reccivccl encouragement.“ The habit of blushing,” she was told, “ is natural to young people, and a very graceful habit it is. Most men regret that it wears away so suddenly after young ladies have been accustomed for a little while to good society.” Tho two most melodramatic replies are those to Alice Arden—“ r .l he marriage is illegal and void; it was lucky for you the real wife pounced upon the villain at the church door,” and lo an orphan girl—“ Yon are in great peril. The visitor is' a monstrous scoundrel.”