University of Virginia Library

BOY-MEN AND GIRL-WOMEN.

These are two species of the human family not
yet distinctly classed or named by naturalists, and
must, therefore, be designated by compounds. The
individuals which compose them, are hovering between
the last stages of boy and girlhood, and the
first dawnings of a more mature state of existence
full-grown children, or incipient men and women.
They are the unfinished portions of humanity
which poets and sentimentalists have, from time
immemorial, sung and said so much about, though
for what especial reason is more than many worldly
people are able to discover. Poets are fine fellows;
but a love of truth, or a desire to represent things
as they really are, is not to be found in the list of
their good qualities. They warp and twist their
materials, to suit their own purposes, more than a
theological disputant or a petty sessions lawyer, and
build a towering structure on a slighter foundation

than a purblind antiquary. They are much given
to the use of hypotheses; and after they have once
supposed that a thing can be so, they immediately
set it down that it is so. Exaggeration is another
of their foibles:—with them a glimpse of goodness
signifies perfection, and a glimmering of sin the
essence of iniquity; and it is in consequence of this
that they come to make such delightful and diabolical
pictures out of nothing at all. Some of the
cleverest of them have, at one period or other of
their lives, met with two or three charming young
girls, just “bursting into womanhood,” or a few intelligent
boys, and, being great generalizers, they
have taken it for granted that all were so; and
thus it has come to pass in English poetry, that
this is celebrated as the most delectable stage of
existence. It is a state that may or may not be
pleasant enough to those who are passing through
it, but it is by no means productive of much pleasure
and gratification to those with whom they come
in contact; and whatever prose or poetry may say
to the contrary, I think worldly experience will bear
me out in upholding that boy-men and girl-women,
are neither more nor less than bores of very considerable
magnitude.

The girl-woman is generally a rather pretty creature,
dressed in something between a frock and a

gown, made of white muslin, with a pink sash
round her waist. Her face has lost the free and
unembarrassed expression of childhood, without
having obtained the self-possession and dignity of
woman. The graces of her person are as yet but
half developed; her shoulders are sharp and angular,
and her arms long and unpleasantly slender.
She is too mature to wear her hair in a crop, and
too childish to have it piled in towers of curls and
combs on the top of her head. Indeed, let her
dress be what it may, it appears alike unfit for the
stage through which she has just passed, or the one
on which she is about to enter. Her intellectual
faculties and conversation are in an equally uncertain
state; and the person who addresses her is sorely
puzzled how to hit the right medium between
juvenility and maturity. She has not made up her
mind whether she likes Byron or skipping-rope best;
but decidedly prefers Mrs. Opie to the author of
Waverley. If you talk of school, you offend her;
and yet she knows not how to discourse about any
thing else—so that all the conversation consists of
an abrupt observation and an embarrassed rejoinder.
If she can be prevailed upon to venture more than
six syllables at a time, she has a bad habit of speaking
unpleasant truths, and afterwards looking distressingly
conscious, not exactly knowing whether
she has done right or wrong. She sits on her chair,
holding in one hand a white pocket-handkerchief,
and not a little perplexed what to do with the other;
with an eternal simper hanging around her mouth,
ready to be aggravated into a laugh upon the most
trivial occasion. If any body tells a joke with a
grave face, she looks grave too; but is mightily tickled
with the hymeneal allusions and matrimonial
witticisms of which the more mature part of the
company are delivered. She does not understand
or appreciate worldly knowledge, yet she has school
learning enough to find you out if you talk foolishly.
In short, she is altogether in a very unsettled state,
filled with childish reminiscences and womanly aspirations,
and is, when a man feels grave or low-spirited,
one of the most unendurable annoyances with
which he can well be afflicted.

But if your girl-woman is an undesirable individual,
your boy-man is one of the greatest nuisances
in civilized society. There is something
charming about the female sex at almost every period
of their existence; and even in town a very
young lady, though certainly a subject for apprehension,
has some redeeming points; while in the
country, after a scamper in the fields, or a chase
after a bird or butterfly, with her eyes filled with
fire and animation, her cheeks glowing with health

and exercise, her clustering curls dancing in the
wind, and her pretty bonnet hanging loosely and
carelessly on the back part of her head, she is a
truly beautiful and poetical object. But your boy-man
is a monster wherever you meet with him.
In the country he is an “unlicked cub,” a lout, a
bumpkin; in town, a half made up coxcomb, an
unfinished puppy, a thing with nearly all the vices
and follies of a man, without his sense or passions.
It is his oath that rings loudest in the tavern, and
his tongue that is most clamorous in its demands
for strong drink to destroy his puny constitution,
merely because he thinks it looks manly. He is
altogether a foolish and contemptible creature; for
even his vicious habits do not afford him pleasure.
He does not, like the real voluptuary, “roll sin like
a sweet morsel under his tongue;” but he counterfeits
bad habits, and will drink and smoke, though both
be unpleasant to him and make him sick, merely
because older people do so; and this it is which
prevents him from ever becoming what it is the
height of his ambition to appear—a man. Then the
swearing of these grown children is perfectly disgusting.
From a man, borne away by passion, or from
an old sailor, to whom it has become a trick of
custom, and who, moreover, seems a sort of perperson
privileged to wish his eyes no good, a few
anathemas do not come with so bad a grace; but
to hear these would-be men repeating, like parrots,
all the vulgar oaths that low blackguardism has invented
and perpetuated, merely because they have
arrived at the dignity of shaving, is very nauseous.
These too are the small fry that swarm about billiard-rooms
and theatre-lobbies; that open box-doors
and stand in the doorways adjusting their ringlets,
much to the discomfort of shivering ladies and rheumatic
old gentlemen, imagining all the time that
the eyes of the whole audience are turned to the
particular spot which they occupy. They are, indeed,
take them altogether, simply the most empty,
impudent, noisy, impertinent, obtrusive set of varlets
that can be imagined, and are not ashamed of
any thing—except having no whiskers.