Matrimony, Inc. by Francesca Beauman

Author:Francesca Beauman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2020-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

The ad, which appeared on November 29, 1852, a few days after Franklin Pierce was elected the fourteenth president of the United States, is from “a young gentleman, of respectable appearance and address, having formed a business connection sufficiently remunerative to warrant the extension of his social relations.” Romantic, huh? He is looking for a wife of “modesty, morality, and strict neatness,” and goes on to suggest that he has placed the ad primarily for the purposes of efficiency: “Any lady willing to forego the frivolities of a silly courtship for the more immediate prospect of a sensible marriage” is encouraged to get in touch. One wonders whether anyone responded to this exceedingly pragmatic invitation.

Thereafter, the New York Times featured about one personal ad a week, apart from 1860 to 1868, when a dedicated matrimonial column resulted in more. One early advertiser, “Bertram,” laid out the case for them, condemning “the narrow bigotry and conventionalities of society, which, by interposing barriers to the free intercourse of the sexes, and thus limiting our choices, condemn multitudes of even the most favored to lives of celibacy and misery.” He exhorts readers to “rise above the prejudice of mode and tyranny of custom in the search for happiness, and in the hope of escaping the relentless social constriction which crushes our best aspirations within the folds of its ‘circles’ and thus dooms us to become the helpless victims of mere matrimonial chance or accident.” No doubt many shared his frustration with the restrictive social etiquette of the day.

The personal ads in the New York Times were placed by a different set than those in the New York Herald. They are of a grander sort, among them a “young gentleman who is about to graduate at New-England college,” a twenty-four-year-old owner of a dry goods importer, and a “young, able politician, capable of going to the United States Senate” who expressed his need for “a matrimonial alliance with a young, wealthy lady; a political writer preferred.”

In general, though, readers of the New York Times wanted the same sort of wife as everyone else: “young, pretty and intelligent.” What is entirely new, however, is the emphasis on the home. Take Willie Sumpter, “lately from the South,” “engaged in the mercantile business down town” and looking for “a young lady of good family, who is amiable, pretty and intelligent.” He goes on:

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