VI
FAMOUS COURTSHIPS
Courting by Poetry.—One of the invariable effects of the love emotion is to inspire, in the amorous breast, the delusion that the man or woman who is in love can write poetry. Most people can feel poetry, but writing it is another story. Yet, whenever any celebrated case of breach of promise comes up, we have the poetic effusions of him and her published in the papers, for the delectation of the multitude. There is good propaganda in courting the lady of your heart, or in replying to the man of your heart, in the words of Shelley or some other great lover—but your own words may not be as efficacious. Countless poetic first volumes (and later ones, too), however, are filled up with the overflow at wooing time, and occasionally such books are books which the world would not willingly spare.
A favorite record of courtship by rhyme is Lilies of the Valley, by Percival W. Wells, of Wantagh, New York. Could any woman resist strains like this:
Faulty as the rhyme may be, the sentiment is flawless. Again,
How magically the “soft” evokes its rhyming mate, “oft.” “Soft,” which at times is applied to brains, here refers to the lips. But for the magic of rhyme, could we have had the picture of “Lilian” in the last two words of this masterly confession?
Yet a poet out of the Village Milton class, say Shakespeare, might be a safer guide in your own Muse flights. Shakespeare’s plays are saturated with gorgeous examples of courtship. Othello’s magical wooing of Desdemona is one type. Here the simple warrior and conqueror used no method but the plain unadorned story of his deeds of daring. The maiden’s heart capitulated to his indirect siege at the first attack. A different love is Romeo’s, saturated with poetry:
Then there is the caveman-wooing of Catherine the shrew by Petruchio the roistering gallant—the most amusing courtship in Shakespeare, with the possible exception of his bluff English king, who knows no French, and his wooing of the spirited French princess, who knows no English. But love speaks a language of its own and even this bar did not keep the royal lovers from understanding each other. There is the simple, childlike wooing of Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest, and there is the passionate wooing—by the woman this time—of Adonis by Venus:
Timid maids and men may well be reassured by this tempest of passion on the part of love’s queen, and by the whole gallery of Shakespeare’s great lovers.
Great Lovers.—The world has its long roll of great lovers, whose names are sweet on the tongues of the generations that come after them. The Bible, in the Song of Solomon, has one of the greatest series of love lyrics in all literature. David loved his Bath-Sheba as a king loves; and Solomon was at least efficient, with his seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines. Helen of Sparta eloped with Paris of Troy, and lighted the conflagration that burned the topless towers of Troy to the ground, and embroiled the world in the Trojan War and inspired the first two Greek epics. Dante saw the girl Beatrice passing him on the street and as a result, he worshipped her thereafter from a distance, and lifted her in imagination, in his Divine Comedy, to the high throne of heaven. Don Juan was the great predatory lover, putting on a new love as easily as he slipped on a new garment. Bluebeard (or Gilles de Rais) was the bloodthirsty lover; Cleopatra was the world’s queen, with Pompey, Caesar, and Antony successively at her feet. In more modern times, Casanova was the gentlest great lover of all time, with a roll of loves as long as Solomon’s, and far more varied. Great secular popes, like Alexander VI, the Borgia, were great in love; many of the Roman emperors were chiefly distinguished in the lists of Cupid. Caesar himself was nicknamed “the husband of all women.” Such men and women have made the history of love. Read their love stories, as aids in your own suits.
Among the poets, we have had many great lovers. Shelley spent his life in a high idealistic pursuit of the ideal woman, pouring out his deathless lyrics to some Harriet or Mary or Jane or Emilia who captured his fancy for the moment. Byron loved all over Europe, Keats burned out his young life in a wild adoration of Fanny Brawne, as in this sonnet:
Burns was a magnificent voice of love, who enriched man with many of his choicest love-songs. Poe not only was a great lover, but used the same poems successively with a number of desired women. Edna St. Vincent Millay, among modern poets, has a charming cleverness in her love-songs; and, indeed, modern poetry is full of excellent love material. One of the most effective modern love sonnets is the dramatic Pirate Song, from “Leaf Buds Turning Rose,” by the author of The Eagle Sonnets:
An amusing love story in rhyme is The Lang Coortin’, by Lewis Carroll, best known for Alice in Wonderland. The lover for years wooed the lady, saying no word of his love. She used his gold rings as a chain for her doggie; stuffed the dog’s pillow with his repeated locks of hair; and when he sent love letters from a far country, with the postage still due on them, she had the postman take them all away. For thirty years he had kept up this courtship: and now at last he has come to propose. But the lady tells him, that, since he has lived so satisfactorily for thirty years, he can wait a bit longer yet. He repents, as he leaves her:
There is a real lesson for lovers here. Do not postpone your proposal until your grandchildren are old enough to laugh at your tardiness.
The first lovers were Adam and Eve, according to the Genesis story; and Milton, in his largely unread Paradise Lost, has told their love in resounding lines. The most recent lovers assumably include you who are reading this book. Love is an art, as courtship and wooing is an art: and your task is to perfect yourself in the art. You should make your wooing serve the double function of winning the mate you desire at the moment, and at the same time serve as an education to you in the loved one, and the opposite sex in general. Both the educational function, and the task of winning the desired one, call for your highest abilities: and these abilities will be sharpened and increased by a knowledge of man’s lore upon love, and the ups and downs of the great lovers of the past. So saturate yourself, during the loving period, with the literature of love: read carefully the love stories of the world’s great lovers, and constantly increase your technique as wooer, in the beginning of the courtship, in the actual engagement, and in the most perilous of all periods—that period after the marriage has commenced.
There is a third purpose, which hardly needs mention, and that is, the pleasure that you yourself have in wooing. Pleasure consists in the satisfying of an appetite—not in the satisfaction of it; when the appetite is satisfied, your feeling becomes negative. The chase is the fun; the gaining of the goal is a mere sense of accomplishment, far below the joy of the running. Man has not only the appetite to enjoy love, but the added appetite for the chase: and woman, daughter of man, has this delight too, and an implanted pleasure in her part of the wooing. Her part is, in general, more passive than man’s: she gets her thrill from seeing the male or males cavorting before her, in the endeavor to gain her approval. Yet, at times, when the worthy male is backward or bashful, or young and inexperienced, she will assume the aggressive, and be a very Venus in action. As a matter of fact, no matter who does the actual wooing and proposing, it is today, largely, woman who rules the field. How else explain her elaborate and seductive dressing, to win man’s approval? Her concealment of this, and display of that charm, her alluring perfume, her flattering pretense that the man is the wisest being in the universe, her continuing attentions to him in a thousand subtle little ways? These collectively weave a net which even the wariest male fish may not often escape. Go to your wooing, men, with all the courage you can: it is hardly the time to reflect that you are being summoned to the slaughter, as the spider nets her prey, as the spider nets her mate. It is pleasant to be a victim of love: and some men found it a pleasure to be such a victim constantly.
And when you have made yourself an artist in wooing, both in theory and practice, do not be stingy with your lore, but pass it on to other men and women, who lack it. For only the great in love are great in life, and great in joy.