UNRECORDED. Not in ESTC. The American Antiquarian Society has a group of seven broadsides in an almost identical style, two of which have a John Evans imprint at West Smithfield and are dated between 1791-1792. (See for example “Wives & sweethearts or, Saturday night,” Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project, accessed October 12, 2026, https://collections.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/34.
In choice of a husband girls be not too nice
What with Maning our ships and protecting our shores
You cannot have lovers at once by the score
Three separate broadside ballad sheets on the subject of women, courtship and marriage.
1.ADVICE TO THE LADIES IN THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND
This broadside features an etching in an oval frame which shows three handsomely dressed women sat around a table in a parlour. Of the group, the woman pictured on the right is poised on her chair with her hands in a gesture of explication, across from her on the right is her audience; a girl with a book open in her lap and another with her sewing basket resting on the table. The text is printed as, A Favourite Song, Sung by Mrs. Wrighten at Vauxhall“ in the The Westminster Magazine Vol 8, 1780.
The verse offers direct instruction to young women of marriageable age hoping to find a husband during a period of wartime, they are advised: “In choice of a husband girls be not too nice/ what with Maning our ships and protecting our shores/ you cannot have lovers at once by the score”. “Since love may not wait till the wars are all o’er’ they had better be practical and flexible in their suits, ‘to look once at his person and twice at his mind”, not to expect someone “rich handsome and courtly” and “when a husband you’ve got think your labour not o’er,/ But the means that obtain’d him use still to secure”.
2. A HINT TO THE LADIES
An etching in a shield-shaped vignette is positioned in the centre of this broadside with verses printed above and below. Within the frame, two women sit in conversation on a bench under a gnarled tree amid a rural landscape. A man carrying a walking stick stands in front of the women and points with his right hand to a peacock that fans its feathers in-front of a pergola on the opposite bank of a stream.
The text, taken from Charles Dibdin’s “Hint to the Ladies”, opens:
Pray ladies think not I presume,
The art of love to teach you,
Proficient long ago become,
My counsel could not reach you;
A hint I offer nothing more,
For your determination,
Loves mysteries would you explore,
Observe the feathered nation
As in a mirror may you there,
of love make your elections,
As you chose ribands at a fair,
To suit with all complexions.
The man proceeds with his allegory of love and “the feathered nation”. He argues that the cuckoo might find a lover sooner than a dove through the repetition at volume of its “fulsome tale”, but that the dove is more given to ‘true love’. Meanwhile, he warns against the peacock’s dismissal of the humble robin with the note that “But sparingly true joy is lent/ To envy, pride or malice;/’Tis said a Cottage and content/Sometimes outweighs a Palace.” Ultimately his council is to measure love by virtue over frivolity or fashion.
3. THE LADY AND THE ‘PRENTICE BOY
A hand-coloured etching within an oval frame shows the meeting of a lady and gentleman within a tended garden. The lady, finely dressed, wearing a well-trimmed hat is pictured on the left walking from a bench towards the gentleman who offers her a ring. In the surrounding grounds are flowers, trees, fountains, and in the distance a church.
The verse (a much re-printed and popular song) printed below tells the story of how a young lady courted a “young prentice boy”. She pledged “my dear if e’er I marry I’m sure it shall be to thee” but her parents on discovery of the romance brought it to a swift end by having him banished into “some foreign land”. While she mourned her “handsome, charming Prentice” and declared “a maid I’ll live & die”, he, working for a merchant was promoted from waiting man to butler to steward. Returning to England having made his fortune he proposes to the Lady etc.: “When she beheld his features she flew into his arms/ with kisses out of measure she did enjoy his charms […]”.
