may depend on the start, I would fain reply: Remember that the first time a man whispers words of love he is a fearful stammerer.
Mrs. Grundy is a very moral person for whom I cannot help feeling some respect; but she is the cause of a great deal of happiness being missed in Anglo-Saxon lands. My greatest grudge against that lady is that she is the bitter, implacable enemy of the artistic, the beautiful, and the truthful, of which she has succeeded in denuding art, literature, and life itself. Anglo-Saxon intelligence – 'the intellectuals,' as we call them in France, are dead against her, loathe her, but the masses of the people are crawling on their knees before her. All the conventionalities of English life have been invented to suit her tastes, and to please her the most innocent pleasures have had to be transformed into funereal functions. Everything suggests impropriety and indecency to her distorted mind, and she is the cause that, in England, and also to some extent in America, art, literature, and life, have to lie in order to avoid running the risk of deserving her frowns.
CHAPTER X
SORE TRIALS FOR PEOPLE IN LOVE – WILL LOVE TRIUMPH OVER THE AFFLICTIONS OF THE BODY?
The following reflections were suggested to me by a pitiful story that I heard a few days ago only. A young, beautiful girl, belonging to the best society, was engaged to be married. During her lover's absence she had typhoid fever. She recovered and is now quite well, but (the 'but' is terrible) she has not a single hair left on her head. Of course, she wears a wig, but she has tried every possible thing, consulted the most eminent specialists, to no avail. Her lover is returning very soon. He knew she was ill, but does not know the terrible misfortune which has befallen his beautiful fiancée. Will he marry her? Will his love be powerful enough to overlook the loss of woman's best ornament on his sweetheart's head? Will he be able to behold her with the wig off, and say to her: 'I love you just the same?' In a melodrama he would, but will he? I dare not answer the question. We do not live in heroic times nowadays, and you must not ask too much of man.
As physical beauty is an appanage far more precious to a woman than a man, the question may perhaps be better put in the following manner: If a man loves a woman, will her disfigurement – the loss of a limb, the loss of her hair, deafness, blindness, or any other calamity of this sort which may afflict her – destroy the love of that man for that woman?
It is all very well to say that love is the yearning of the soul, but it must be admitted that the man himself is closely associated with it, and that the face is the means of expressing what the soul feels. You can softly whisper 'I love you' in a woman's ear; but if the poor thing is deaf, you cannot shout these three words at her, much less blow them through a trumpet. If you doubt me, try it in a play, and you will see the effect it will infallibly produce on the audience. Why, they will roar. Deafness is terrible, so dull, so prosaic, so suggestive of old age; I have sometimes heard men wish their wives were dumb, but deaf never.
I remember once seeing a play at a Paris Boulevard theatre, frequented by the emotional portion of the Parisian public, in which the heroine, in the fourth act, appears with a thick veil over her face. She has had small-pox and she is sadly disfigured for life; she expects her lover, who is returning from the war. A year has elapsed since the curtain went down over the third act; she has just received a letter announcing his arrival safe and sound. She is happy, radiant; then she looks at herself in a glass and weeps bitterly; she has told him of her illness, but not of her misfortune; he knows nothing about it. Will he love her still when he sees her, or will he go away from her? The suspense is awful, and the situation dramatic. At last he appears on the threshold of the door, and stretches out his arms to her; she remains speechless, motionless, and the audience breathless. He rushes up to her to take her in his arms. With a dramatic gesture of the hands she bids him stand back. Then she tells him what has happened; but he is one of those worthy, undaunted heroes of the Boulevard melodramas whose love can triumph over all obstacles. He swears that it will make no difference to his sentiments; she lifts up her veil; then he falls at her feet and exclaims from the depths of his heart: 'I love you just the same, my darling.' (Tableau, cheers, and applause.) Of course he does not say to her that he finds her more beautiful than ever, and that the marks suit her style of beauty and all that sort of thing, but he swears again that his love has not altered, and the audience applaud this lofty sentiment, and the women say: 'That's a man!'
H'm! is it, though?
A friend who was with me on that occasion, and who is a bit of a cynic, said to me: 'There was only one possible dénouement for that play to give satisfaction to an audience that must go home perfectly persuaded that the hero and the heroine will be happy and in love with each other for ever and ever. The author missed a fine dramatic curtain. As the small-pox marks cannot be taken away, that man should have carried his love for that girl further than he did. He should have torn his eyes out in her presence. The sacrifice would have gone straight to her heart, and would have made the continuation of his love possible.'
'Well,' I said, 'yes, I see what you mean, but how do you know that the girl would have cared to marry a blind man? Maybe her love would not triumph over the difficulty.'
I may tell you that I knew a loving married couple who ceased to love each other, he because her hair turned white, and she because his turned outwards.
This is a psychological subject that may well puzzle the best sociologist.
I have not tried to answer the question, but merely intended to offer it for discussion.
However, this I will say to my fellow-men: 'I know how truly and deeply you love your wives and sweethearts, but let me advise you: Don't try the experiment; don't put your love to so severe a test. Take the greatest care of the said wives and sweethearts, and see that no accident happens to them, that no disease disfigures them or permanently injures their health. This is wisdom.'
CHAPTER XI
MAN VERSUS WOMAN IN LOVE
Man is capable of love as earnestly as woman is; but love is not the whole business of his life, whereas it is a woman's. When a child, she loves her doll; when a girl, her mother; when a woman, a man. She can feed on love and die of it. When a mother, she loves her children; when she dies, surrounded by beloved grandchildren, she may say that her life has been well filled.
I believe that a woman can love more than once. I have known widows remarry, and love their second husbands with the same devotion as their first.
A man really loves once only. I knew a man under fifty who was married three times. He was a good and devoted husband to his three wives, but he never really loved but the second. If he dies suddenly without having time to take all his precautions, the portrait of his second wife will be found on his heart.
The reason of this is that men and women love in different ways. A man loves because his whole being – heart, soul, and body – craves for a woman. A woman often gives herself to a man because it pleases her to be loved by him. For a man, love is the pleasure he feels in the company of a woman; for a woman, it is the enjoyment of the pleasure she gives to a man. A woman is proud to call herself a reward, and that is why all heroes appeal to her so much. Mirabeau was the plainest of men, with his face covered with smallpox marks, yet no man ever made so many conquests among women. Successful generals, explorers, great orators, authors, artists, singers, all appeal to women. They may not love them personally, but it affords them great pleasure to be loved by them. There is in every woman a craving for a man superior to herself, and that is why women who try to dominate men are such dismal failures.
To
