Vizetelly & Co. first edition - 1881
After all those Crime-Book Society, mainly fast-paced, paperbacks, it was a bit of a struggle to concentrate on this much longer (and rather repetitive) volume. This is the fourth work of Murray's I have read, having started with his very readable The Member for Paris (1871), a cutting dissection of morals in Napoleon III's France (see my Blog for 29th April 2023). I recall that Murray was horse-whipped outside the Conservative Club in 1869 by Lord Carington, who had taken exception to Murray's casting aspersions on his deceased father. Much of Murray's writings cast similar aspersions or other cynical ploys on his contemporaries (particularly politicians and diplomats), so it is no wonder he based himself in Paris from then on. Side Lights was published in the year of his death.
Murray dedicates his work to Queen Victoria and the language is so couched that the reader (and the queen?) can't quite make out if it is a genuine tribute or satirically taking the proverbial Michael! ...as a loyal subject, I eagerly embrace the opportunity of laying before you the tribute of my homage. I am proud, as a man of letters, to seek for my work the notice of a Sovereign, not the least of whose titles to the gratitude of distant posterity will be, that in her reign, and owing, in no small degree, to her fostering care, arts and letters have so flourished in this island that the Age of Victoria may challenge comparison with the Ages of Elizabeth and Anne. And he ends: that your Majesty may long be spared to be the protectress of the weak and the terror of evil-doers, and still to direct your people in the way of peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, is the fervent prayer. Hmm. Take your pick.
In a longish Preface, Murray can't help but put the knife into Authority: when there is a tacit understanding among public men that Government must be carried on by an organised system of falsehood, deceit, and injustice... nepotism and patronage are at the bottom of it. Are you listening Victoria? After all, it is your Government. Murray bemoans the fact that I have written these lines with all the sad and yearning love which an exile feels towards his country. I have suffered twelve years of banishment. However, from this rather bitter harangue, comes a first Volume devoted to distinguishing between the various types of Flirts, whom the author appears to have studied in passionate detail!
Here are a few extracts, which give a flavour of the volume as a whole.
About Flirts in general:
A girl is a Flirt who exchanges a coy glance with a middle-aged eligible bachelor who picks up a glove she has dropped; she is something worse than a Flirt - a minx - if she makes herself pleasant to another girl's betrothed.
Women are less able than men to live without admiration, and have less other work in life than the labour of securing praise.
...the first-class Flirt cares not a pin for scorches. She is the salamander who lives in the fire. Sparks fly round her and she revels in them...
The Flirt's power:
The goal of woman is marriage, and flirting is to girls a means of reaching the goal; in the case of married women it is a pastime, a consolation, or a vengeance...flirting is flattery in action...
The girl smiles...grizzled veterans, whose breasts are covered with medals, nudge each other at her approach; and sundry old ladies, with mortally plain daughters, eye her with that stony stare which, when it is levelled by woman at woman, is as good as purest incense.
And so Murray goes on, with sections on The Flirt who has Plain Sisters; The Ecclesiastical Flirt; Regimental Flirts; The Seaside Flirt (including the one-month-a-year Flirt [who] has a keen eye for the names on the visitors' list of the seaside town to which she resorts); The Studious Flirt - many of whom patrol the British Museum!
Over one hundred pages are devoted to Flirts embedded with those On Her Majesty's Service - whose targets are Attachés, Consuls and Vice-Consuls, Ambassadors and Interpreters. The final section is headed Semi-Detached Wives, where the contents may well have occasioned both most mirth and most anger. Murray begins with the Semi-detached Wife is a lady whose husband exists, but not for her. He may be in prison, or mad, or playing truant...the Semi-detached Wife is an 'acting' widow, but without widow's rank or privileges. Much of the book is very droll and I found myself smirking and mildly chuckling on several occasions. However, to sustain such a myopic Aunt Sally for over 300 pages is really beyond any author, and Murray's shafts become rather repetitive, somewhat tiresome and even bordering on the misogynistic.
The book was much enhanced by the scores of illustrations - redolent of Punch, The Illustrated London News, The Graphic and The Girls' Own Paper. i.e. very nineteenth century.
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