How to Find a Wife or a Husband
Update: 10 June 2015
Criticism and quotation published in
The Citizen at page 274
1840
Travelling Sketches in Various Countries
by Dr. Fulton
When a portion of the first volume of this work was previously published, the critics complained that the travels were not of recent date. Nettled at this, and not unreasonably thinking that good travels are like good wine, the older the better, Dr. FULTON has, in the present enlarged edition, put it out of their power to reprimand him on the score of tardy publication. We could not discover a single date in the whole of his two volumes: judging, however, from internal evidence, we should say, that his European adventures must have occurred some ten or fifteen years ago, but that his experience of India and China is comparatively much more recent.
When STERNE made his famous classification of the genus "Traveller," he did so with a reference to the characteristics of the race when migratory, and not when incubatory. He thought of them chiefly as playing the fool abroad, and not as acting the wise man at home, in two volumes, octavo, with illustrations, (for as yet COLBURN and BENTLEY were not;) and therefore it is that we cannot in his arrangement find any place for our author. He is decidedly of the species "gossiping traveller," (not found in STERNE,) and not a bad specimen either in his way. His book has sometimes quite the air of an after-dinner conversation, so sudden and grotesque are the transitions from one subject to another; for example:- apropos of Hindu courtship, we have an anecdote of a Scotch subaltern in a fencible regiment, who, though old and ill-favoured, won the affections of the young and lovely daughter of an Irish fox-hunter; in another place, a dozen pages, headed "Poland," on one side, and "Duchy of Varsovie" on the other, will be found, on inspection, to contain a dissertation on nationality in general, and on Irish absenteeism and the Viceregal Court in particular, but of Poland hardly a word.
All this, however, has a pleasant effect enough. Of all gossips, commend us to the gossips on paper: there is none you can treat so unceremoniously while you choose to listen to them; none, of whom when you are weary, you can so quickly get rid; 'tis only pitching the book or letter out of the window or into the fire, which with a grandaunt, or a nurse-tender, or the wife of your attorney, were rather a hazardous proceeding. ...
The following account of Anglo-Indian courtship arrested our attention by its pith and brevity:-
Many persons in England know little of our empire in India, except as a place from which distant relatives sometimes send home large fortunes, or migrate to Portland Place and Cheltenham, and as sometimes convenient for the disposal of the hands of young ladies. Large fortunes are not now made every day in India; but the marriage mart, although occasionally overstocked, is still open for speculators. For the most part, young ladies go out to their relatives in India, or return to it as a home, after being educated in England, where, on many accounts, it is more desirable they should pass their early youth than in the enervating climate of the East.
A young lady, when she arrives in India, with her usual stock of Regent-street dresses and bonnets, as unsuited to the climate of the country as to that of Greenland, is quite the fashion, which she leads for a time. I may here remark that showy dress and ornaments never were in vogue in India, except with the dark eyed Anglo-Indian belles, who have an innate love of finery. At first, amongst her numerous admirers, none has any chance except he be a civilian, with a lac or two of rupees and half a liver: failing to make an impression in that quarter, a Held officer, or a chaplain may be accepted, and eventually a subaltern may be the fortunate swain; and a European lady may always calculate, as a dernier resource, on a drive in a subaltern's buggy on the esplanade. A tilbury is always called a buggy in Bengal, and a drive with an unmarried gentleman in one, is considered equivalent to a publication of banns, and invariably intervenes between the declaration and the ceremony itself.
When European ladies are scarce, the poor subaltern must look for a partner amongst the Anglo-Indians, and can be at no loss at any of the orphan schools, some of which are supported by the officers of the army, for the asylum and education of the daughters of deceased officers of the Company's service. In these schools, the young ladies are carefully and well brought up, and they are most praiseworthy institutions: here the suit matrimonial may be concluded quite as expeditiously as the suit fashionable by a London tailor - namely, at a few hours' notice. The only question said to be asked by the lady is, "Have you got a buggy and a silver tea-pot?" the possession of which is supposed to indicate a certain degree of freedom from debt, and some attention to the comforts and conveniences, if not the elegancies of life. On the young lady being satisfied as to the tea and driving equipages, she fixes her lovely dark eyes on the ground, and allows the happy swain to retain her hand for life. Nor does she fear any change of mind on the part of her admirer before she can enjoy the drive on the esplanade, as she well knows his commission is plighted with his troth, and that he would be dismissed the service for attempting to trifle with her affections.