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The Way We Go Ins and Outs of Life

Told By Leo Fanning

These be the days when woman's super-conquest of man includes the capture of the term “bachelor,” for no unmarried lady will agree to be classed as a spinster, except on a census schedule or other formal paper which is not much in the public eye. Many of the “bachelor birds” (masculine and feminine) to-day are blithesome flutterers who yearn not for the cage, however gilded.

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Let no reader imagine that the “bachelor girl is a product of the Great War, which has already been blamed too much for some things and not enough for others. The “bachelor girl” came on to the world's stage before 1914, and she arrived respectably. Nothing would be more absurd than to define a “bachelor girl” as a person who is an ardent lover of cigarettes and spiritous liquors. We all know some “bachelor girls” who are merry souls although they have no yearning to smoke nor sip the insidious cocktail. What then is the “bachelor girl?” Doth she scoff at Cupid and spurn the worshipful wooer? Is she wedded to her own notions of life? No, dear friends. She is simply a young citizen (not always so young) who wishes to, live along peacefully and brightly, with well-paid work and enough play to keep her heart bright and her eyes sparkling. She has no unchangeable attitude for or against marriage, but has no eagerness to change the comfortable single way for any doubtful condition of matrimony. Good luck to her!

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Now for the men. First of all, it is well to recall some of the old-fashioned types of bachelor (the chaps who have figured in and out of novels).

(a) The man who has suffered heart blight. This type is seldom seen outside of a novel. The girl of his heart, a peerless beauty (which has taken the best part of a chapter to describe) pines away and dies, or is killed in an accident. The man is as near heart-broken as Nature will permit. A gentle melancholy comes upon him. All women are as one to him now–unseen, unheard, unnoticed. He takes to astronomy and falls from a tower, to rejoin his soul's mate in the Better Land.

(b) The man who has been cruelly jilted. In some cases (especially in the books) he dallies with drink, dice and the devil to beguile the torturing time. He may become coldly cynical or savagely murderous.

(c) The jolly old bachelor. He has often figured in fiction as a rich uncle who comes to the rescue of erring nephews and a comforter of beautiful nieces who have been crossed in love or otherwise vexed.

(d) The wily young handsome bachelor. He goes among winsome maids on the principle that he who hesitates is saved. The best of the blondes and brunettes have not interested him enough to peg him down to a twelfth of an acre and a bungalow for life, but suddenly a little lady, as demure as a nun, swings him to the altar. So that is the end of him who used to think that to be married was to be marred (or “ma'd-in-law,” as one of my punny friends might say)—debarred from the cup that cheers and oft inebriates.

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Before I go further with the men I must discuss for a few moments the wife who has captured the wild bachelor. Does she always give a warm welcome to his old-time bachelor pals? She does not. Does she not fear that he may step again among the hops or slip not the amber slide of whisky? Does she not so artfully manage things that gradually but surely there is a page 38 parting of the ways? Well, it used to be thus. She kept him busier with flower-pots than pewters, and more with garden-hose than with a soda syphon.

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There are two kinds (perhaps more) of married bachelor-the kind of man who does not get the married state of mind, no matter how long he has been wedded. To some extent his wife is widowed while wedded.

There is the man who married in the heyday of his bachelorial haymaking and has never settled down into sedateness. If his wife fails to get a disciplinary grip of him during the first year or two of married life, he will probably be untamed for the rest of his days or until rheumatism or other ailment makes him mend his ways and glad to accept kind, but undeserved, nursing at home.

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There is the bachelor who has married in his late forties, or after. He is usually fat, unwieldy, ponderous, dogmatic-“set in his ways,” as his friends would say. He may be very untidy, too, not at all a good bargain in the marriage mart, unless he has plenty of money. But even when he is encrusted with wealth as well as selfishness, he may be a very poor catch.

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Some bachelors cling to their unblessed singleness for decades in sheer selfishness, and then marry in the same spirit-selfishness. They fear a lonely old age in lodgings, and so manage to mesmerise simple women into caretaker jobs.

This class may include the hoarding type of bachelor. He has long been much more deeply interested in making money than in matrimony (which has turned out to be too much mater and too little money for some of his acquaintances). However, eventually, the penurious pecunious person may become infatuated with a charming fluffy young blonde or a romantic brunette, or he may decide to marry as a matter of deliberate policy, which he learns to regret. His friends and enemies have usually the satisfaction of seeing him yoked to a lady who loves the gay life and likes to see money going only the one way, over the counter in rolling platoons of coins and squads of notes.

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Some of these elderly bachelors, especially the ones who have plenty of property, are not indifferent to the smiles of the fair, but they are wary of the altar or the Registrar's office. To them Cupid's dart gives no more pain than the pin does to the cushion. It is easy to imagine their hearts as the untroubled butt of many Cupid's darts which stick there in pathetic ineffectiveness until some day a super-Cupid looms up with a harpoon-gun which gets through the old crust, and the chronic bachelor loses his treasured liberty.

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Perhaps the greatest peril of the bachelor who is trying to hold fast to freedom is the woman with the haunting eyes; lips, too; in fact, the whole face; altogether an alluring, mysterious personality. She has been mentioned by various writers; I have seen her myself, for she is a type who belongs to all countries. You may see her once in a year, or once in a life-time, or not at all; it depends on your good or bad luck.

This is how it happens. The bachelor, not yet too old to be unattractive, is going gaily along a city street. He has just had a satisfactory interview with a cold and stern bank manager. He feels as blithe as a bell-bird in spring. Everything is right with him and the world. Then, suddenly, has gaze meets the woman with the haunting eyes, which hold his for some moments. Then she has passed. What of the world now and his bell-bird blitheness? The man has not exactly fallen in love; at least, not at the moment. Poor fool. He comforts himself with that thought, and hurries into his club for something to cure his fright. What avails the potion? It turns against him. By the time he has five or six uplifts he knows he loves the lady, and that he will never be happy till he gets her. He knows that the girl and he are born affinities, destined for each other since the beginning of time. He feels that they lived and loved in the long-gone centuries. In ancient Greece or Rome? In old Egypt? Anyhow, somewhere it was in a previous life, and now he must find his love again. So he hunts about, and battles about until he gets her. Is he happy ever after?

The novelist does not say, but leaves us with the hope that the haunting and the hunting made a perfect match.