Part 28

The happiest moment in the life of the happiest man is that when he is allowed for the first time to “steal immortal blessing” from the lips of her who has just promised to be his for ever. No wonder the poets have grown eloquent over this supreme moment of pre-heavenly rapture—

TENNYSON—

“O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.”

MOORE—

“Grow to my lips thou sacred kiss.”

SHAKSPERE—

“As if he plucked up kisses by the root That grew upon my lips.”

RÜCKERT—

“Meine Liebste, mit den frommen treuen Braunen Rehesaugen, sagt, sie habe Blaue einst als Kind gehabt. Ich glaub’es. Neulich da ich, seliges Vergessen Trinkend hing an ihren Lippen, Meine Augen unterm langen Kusse Oeffnend, schaut’ ich in die nahen ihren, Und sie kamen mir in solcher Nähe Tiefblau wie ein Himmel vor. Was ist das Wer gibt dir der Kindheit Augen wieder? Deine Liebe, sprach sie, deine Liebe, Die mich hat zum Kind gemacht, die alle Liebesunschuldsträume meiner Kindheit Hat gereift zu sel’ger Erfüllung. Soll der Himmel nicht, der mir im Herzen Steht durch dich, mir blau durch’s Auge blicken?”

Love-kisses are silent like deep affection—

“Passions are likened best to floods and streams: The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.”—RALEIGH.

True, Petruchio kissed Katrina “with such a clamorous smack, that at the parting all the church did echo”; but his object was not to express his Love, but to tease and tame the shrew. Loud kisses, moreover, might betray the lovers to profane ears, and bring on a fatal attack of Coyness on the girl’s part—

“The greatest sin ’twixt heaven and hell Is first to kiss and then to tell.”

Love-kisses are passionate and long; for Love is Cupid’s lip-cement—

“Oh, a kiss, long as my exile, Sweet as my revenge.”—SHAKSPERE.

“A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love.”

“For a kiss’s strength I think it must be measured by its length.”—BYRON.

“A kiss now that will hang upon my lip As sweet as morning dew upon a rose, And full as long.”—THOMAS MIDDLETON.

Perhaps the longest kiss on record is that which Siegfried gives Brünnhilde in the drama of _Siegfried_. But this is not an ordinary kiss, for the hero has to wake with it the Valkyrie from the twenty years’ sleep into which old Wotan had plunged her for disobeying his orders. Thanks to Wagner’s art, the thrill of this Love-kiss, magically transmuted into tones, is felt by a thousand spectators simultaneously with the lover.

Love-kisses are innumerable. Thus sings the Italian poet, Cecco Angiolieri, in the thirteenth century—

“Because the stars are fewer in heaven’s span Than all those kisses wherewith I kept time All in an instant (I who now have none!) Upon her mouth (I and no other man!) So sweetly on the twentieth day of June On the New Year twelve hundred ninety-one.” ROSSETTI’S TRANSL.

Novelists and poets have exhausted their ingenuity in finding adjectives descriptive of Love-kisses and others. An anonymous essayist has compiled the following list:—

“Kisses are forced, unwilling, cold, comfortless, frigid, and frozen, chaste, timid, rosy, balmy, humid, dewy, trembling, soft, gentle, tender, tempting, fragrant, sacred, hallowed, divine, soothing, joyful, affectionate, delicious, rapturous, deep-drawn, impressive, quick, and nervous, warm, burning, impassioned, inebriating, ardent, flaming, and akin to fire, ravishing, lingering, long. One also hears of parting, tear-dewed, savoury, loathsome, poisonous, treacherous, false, rude, stolen, and great fat, noisy kisses.”

HOW TO KISS

Kissing comes by instinct, and yet it is an art which few understand properly. A lover should not hold his bride by the ears in kissing her, as appears to have been customary at Scotch weddings of the last century. A more graceful way, and quite effective in preventing the bride from “getting away,” is to put your right arm round her neck, your fingers under her chin, raise the chin, and then gently but firmly press your lips on hers. After a few repetitions she will find out it doesn’t hurt, and become as gentle as a lamb.

The word adoration is derived from kissing. It means literally to apply to the mouth. Therefore girls should beware of philologists who may ask them with seemingly harmless intent, “May I adore you?”

In kissing, as in everything else, honesty is the best policy. Stolen kisses are not the sweetest, as Leigh Hunt would have us believe. A kiss to be a kiss must be mutual, voluntary, simultaneous. “The kiss snatched hasty from the sidelong maid” is not worth having. A stolen kiss is only half a kiss.

“These poor half-kisses kill me quite; Was ever man thus served? Amidst an ocean of delight, For pleasure to be starved?”—MARLOWE.

HOW TO WIN LOVE

BRASS BUTTONS

Inasmuch as language is the least eloquent and effective mode of expressing Love, and inasmuch as Love is commonly inspired in woman by the possession of qualities which she lacks, it is obvious that Shakspere did not show his usual insight into human nature when he wrote—

“That man that hath a tongue is, I say, no man, If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”

It seems, indeed, quite probable that Bacon wrote those two lines; if Shakspere had written them he would have said—

“That man that hath a uniform is, I say, no man, If with his uniform he cannot win a woman.”

The extraordinary infatuation for military uniforms shown by women of all times and countries is one of the most obscure problems in mental and social philosophy. Whenever an officer, though ever so humble in rank, is present at a ball or other social gathering, all other men, be they merchants, politicians, lawyers, physicians, artists, students, ministers, are simply “nowhere.”

What is the cause of this singular infatuation? Is it the colour-harmony formed by the complementary blue cloth and yellow buttons? No, for various officials, as well as messenger boys, wear similar uniforms without making any special impression on the feminine heart. Is it the beauty or the wit of the soldier? No, for he may be as stupid as a log, and red-nosed and smallpox-pitted, without losing a jot of his popularity. Nor can it be his valour, for he has perhaps never yet been opposite the “business end” of a rifle, as they say out West. Nor, again, is it likely that women admire soldiers from an inherited sense of gratitude for the services they rendered in former warlike times in protecting their great-great-grandmothers from the enemy’s barbarity; for woman’s gratitude is not apt to be so very retrospective, while gratitude itself is less apt to inspire Love than aversion.

Whatever may be the cause of this mysterious phenomenon, the fact remains that officers are woman’s ideals. Hence the first and most important hint to those who would win a woman’s Love is: Put brass buttons on your coat, have it dyed blue, and wear epaulettes and a waxed moustache. This love-charm has never been known to fail.

CONFIDENCE AND BOLDNESS

Women secretly detest bashful men. It is their own duty, prescribed by etiquette, to be passive, shy, and diffident; hence if men were shy and diffident too, no advances would be made, and all progress in Love-making would be retarded.

Women love courage. He who robs lions of their hearts can easily win a woman’s.

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt,”

says Shakspere; and Chesterfield remarks _à propos_, that “that silly sanguine notion which is firmly entertained here, that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen, encourages and has sometimes enabled one Englishman in reality to beat two.”

Ovid knew the value of boldness. And although his object was not to teach how to win permanent Love, but how to get honey without taking care of the bees, yet his psychology is correct, and agrees with Goethe’s aphorism that “if thou approachest women with tenderness thou winnest them with a word; but he who is bold and saucy comes off better.”

Perhaps this is one reason why officers are so successful in Love, for several of them have been known to be bold and saucy.

Another reason may be that their pursuit is more distinctively and exclusively masculine than any other profession.

What, for instance, could be more delightfully masculine, _i.e._ mediæval, than the way in which, according to the _Chronicon Turonense_, William the Conqueror wooed and won Mathilde, the daughter of Count Baldwin, Prince of Flanders. At first he was unsuccessful, “for the young girl,” says Professor Scherr, “declared proudly she would not marry a bastard. Then William rode to Bruges, waylaid Mathilde, attacked her when she came from church, pulled her long hair, and maltreated her with his fists and with kicks, after which heroic performance he made his escape. Strange to say, this peculiar mode of Love-making imposed so greatly on the beauty that she declared with tears in her eyes that she would marry no one but the Norman Duke, whom she actually did marry. A parallel case may be found in the German _Nibelungenlied_ (str. 870 and 901).”

Since, according to the old philosophy, human nature, including Love and Love-making, is the same at all times and in all countries, it follows that a modern lover, after donning his brass buttons, should administer his sweetheart a sound thrashing. That will make her mellow and docile.

PLEASANT ASSOCIATIONS

The Germans, it is well known, are deficient in Gallantry, at least in conjugal life, and often treat their wives more as upper servants than as companions. Perhaps it was the unconscious desire to justify this conjugal attitude that induced one of the leading German psychologists, Horwicz, to pen these lines:—

“Love can only be excited by strong and vivid emotions, and it is almost immaterial whether these emotions are agreeable or disagreeable. The Cid wooed the proud heart of Donna Ximene, whose father he had slain, by shooting one after another of her pet pigeons. Such persons as arouse in us only weak emotions, or none at all, are obviously least likely to incline us toward them.... Our aversion is most apt to be bestowed on individuals who, as the phrase goes, are ‘neither warm nor cold’; whereas impulsive, choleric people, though they may readily offend us, are just as capable of making us warmly attached to them.”

How that modern genius, who lived two thousand years ago and called himself Ovid, would have opened his eyes in wonder at this German-mediæval Art of Love! He, queer fellow, believed that a lover should never be otherwise than pleasantly associated in his sweetheart’s mind. If she is spoiled by over-indulgence, do not, he says in effect, take away her dainties with your own hand. If she is unwell, do not hand her the bitter medicine in person: “Let your rival mix the cup for her.”

So long as the professional manslayer is the highest ideal of woman’s tender heart, lovers will do well to follow mediæval methods of Courtship and make themselves as disagreeable as possible. When the millennium arrives, and wholesale duels to avenge offended national “honour” will, like private duels to avenge individual “honour,” have become obsolete, then the Ovidian psychology of Love will begin to prevail. Then will the lover endeavour to avoid all harshness and to be only agreeably associated in the mind of his goddess—through bright, cheerful conversation, harmless and sincere compliments, mutual enjoyment of excursions and artistic entertainments, the avoidance of disagreeable topics, of jealous suspicions and reproaches, etc.; hoping thus to become the nucleus around which her dreams of matrimonial happiness will gradually crystallise.

PERSEVERANCE

Persistence alone may win a woman where all other means fail. She may dream of an ideal lover and vainly wait for his appearance for several years; and in the meantime the image of her ever-present suitor will become brighter and more inviting in her mind. For is not perseverance, is not unflagging devotion to a single aim, one of the noblest of manly attributes, a guarantee of success in life and the highest test of genuine passion?

Perseverance may neutralise more than one refusal.

“Have you not heard it said full oft A woman’s nay doth stand for naught?”

asks Shakspere; and Byron teaches that she

“Who listens once will listen twice; Her heart, be sure, is not of ice, And one refusal no rebuff.”

The fact that a proposal is the sincerest compliment a man can pay a woman, contributes not a little to make a second proposal more acceptable. A third should rarely be attempted. The first proposal may have been refused more from momentary embarrassment than from real indifference. The second, being weighted by reflection, is generally final, though numerous exceptions have occurred; yet in such cases it is probable that the woman gives her hand without her heart, having at last discovered that her heart is impervious to all Love. There are hundreds of thousands of such women, and some of them are very sweet and pretty. The fault lies in their shallow education.

FEIGNED INDIFFERENCE

Of every ten disappointed lovers seven might say: Had I been a less submissive slave, I might have been a more successful suitor.

“It is a rule of manners,” says Emerson, “to avoid exaggeration.... In man or woman the face and the person lose power when they are on the strain to express admiration.”

In other words, one of the ways of winning Love is through stolidity and indifference, real or feigned.

Were women the paragons of subtle insight they are painted, they would favour those who are most visibly affected by their charms, as being best able to appreciate and cherish them. There are such women—a few; but the majority are partial coquettes, to whom Love is known only as a form of Vanity, who neglect a man already won, and reserve their sweetest smiles for those that seem less submissive. The artificial dignity under which so many young society men hide their mental vacuity has an irresistible fascination for the average society girl. And the high collar, which helps to keep the head in a dignified position, unswerved by emotion, is responsible for innumerable conquests.

Ergo, to win a society girl’s heart, wear a high collar, appear awfully dignified and stolid, and show not the slightest interest in anything. Above all, if you are of superior intelligence, carefully conceal the fact. Brains are not “good form” in society; for what’s the use of having flint where there is no steel to strike a spark? “Stolidity,” says Schopenhauer, “does not injure a man in a woman’s eye: rather will mental superiority, and still more genius, as something abnormal, have an unfavourable influence.”

A passage from Diderot’s _Paradox of Acting_ (Pollock’s translation) may be cited in illustration of Schopenhauer’s remark.

“Take two lovers, both of whom have their declarations to make. Who will come out of it best? Not I, I promise you. I remember that I approached the beloved object with fear and trembling; my heart beat, my ideas grew confused, my voice failed me, I mangled all I said; I cried _yes_ for _no_; I made a thousand blunders; I was inimitably inept; I was absurd from top to toe, and the more I saw it the more absurd I became. Meanwhile, under my very eyes, a gay rival, light-hearted and agreeable, master of himself, pleased with himself, losing no opportunity for the finest flattery, made himself entertaining and agreeable, enjoyed himself; he implored the touch of a hand which was at once given him, he sometimes caught it without asking leave, he kissed it once and again. I the while, alone in a corner, avoided a sight which irritated me, stifling my sighs, cracking my fingers with grasping my wrists, plunged in melancholy, covered with a cold sweat, I could neither show nor conceal my vexation. People say of love that it robs witty men of their wit, and gives it to those who had none before: in other words, makes some people sensitive and stupid, others cold and adventurous.”

Another specialist in Love-lore, Lord Byron, discourses on this text in five pithy lines—

“Not much he kens, I ween, of woman’s breast Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs, Do proper homage to thine idol’s eyes, _But not too humbly or she will despise; Disguise even tenderness, if thou art wise_.”

And even the king of German metaphysicians, old Kant, understood this feminine foible, which may have been the reason why he never found a wife: “An actor,” he says, “who remains unmoved, but possesses a powerful intellect and imagination, may succeed in producing a deeper impression by his feigned emotion than he could by real emotion. One who is truly in love is, in presence of his beloved, confused, awkward, and anything but fascinating. But a clever man who merely plays the _rôle_ of a lover may do it so naturally as to easily ensnare his poor victim; simply because, his heart being unmoved, his head remains clear, and he can, therefore, make the most of his wits and his cleverness in presenting the counterfeit of a lover.”

“The counterfeit of a lover.” It is he, then, whom women, according to these French, English, and German witnesses, encourage, instead of the true lover. So that women are not only less capable of deep Love than men, but they do not even promote the growth and survival of Love by favouring the men most deeply affected by it. And the fault, be it said once more, lies in the superficial education not only of their intellect but of their emotions, for the heart can only be reached and refined through the brain. The average woman, being incapable of feeling Love, is incapable of appreciating it when she finds it in a man. She sees only its ridiculous side—and ridicule is fatal, even to Love. Ridicule killed Love in France, which to-day is the most loveless country in the civilised world, its women the most frivolous and heartless,—and its population gradually diminishing.

The ridiculous exaggerations of a lover are indeed harmless if the girl is in love too, for then she does not see them; but to one who has yet to win Love, as girls are now constituted, they are fatal. Perhaps this is the reason why the list of men of genius who failed in their truest Love is so extraordinarily large: for, their Love being more ardent than that of others, they were unable to restrain its excesses and feign indifference; while another way in which they “lost power” was through their extravagant admiration of Beauty, which put their faces “on the strain” to express it.

However this may be, lovers should keep in mind this paradoxical rule, which follows as a corollary from the foregoing discussion:

In order to win a woman, first cure yourself of your passion, then, having won her through feigned indifference (which is easy), fall in love again and bag her before she has had time to discover your change of feeling.

The only difficulty herein lies in the cure. Should this be found impossible, even with the aid of our next chapter, one last resource is open to the lover. Says La Bruyère: “Quand l’on a assez fait auprès d’une femme pour devoir l’engager, il y a encore une ressource, qui est de ne plus rien faire; _c’est alors qu’elle vous rappelle_.” In other words, if you have failed to win her love, with all your attentions, change your policy: leave her alone, and she will be sure to recall you.

This trait is not simply the outcome of feminine perverseness or coquetry. The explanation lies deeper. Every sensible woman, be she ever so vain and accustomed to flattery, is painfully conscious of certain defects, physical or mental. “Has he discovered them?” she will anxiously ask herself when the sly lover suddenly withdraws; “I must recover his good opinion.” So she sets herself the task of fascinating and pleasing him; and this desire to please (Gallantry) being one of the constituent parts of Love, it is apt to be soon joined by the other symptoms which make up the romantic passion.

COMPLIMENTS

“O flatter me, for love delights in praises,”

exclaims one of Shakspere’s characters; and again—

“Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces; Tho’ ne’er so black, say they have angels’ faces.”

There is one advantage in writing about the romantic passion. Love is such a tissue of paradoxes, and exists in such an endless variety of forms and shades that you may say almost anything about it you please, and it is likely to be correct. So again here. It is true, no doubt, that skill in the art of flattery helps a man to win a woman’s goodwill, but how does this rhyme with the doctrine that Feigned Indifference is the lover’s sharpest weapon?

Answer: A compliment is not so much an expression of Love as of simple æsthetic admiration; or else it may spring from the flatterer’s desire to show off his wit. A man may compliment a woman for whom he does not feel the slightest Love; and women know it. Therefore even a coquette does not despise and ignore a man who flatters her, as she invariably does one whose _actions_ brand him as her captive and slave.

At the same time, since the desire to be considered beautiful is the strongest passion in a woman’s heart, the avenue to that heart may often be found by a man who can convince her honestly that she is considered beautiful by himself and others. For, as every man of ability has moments when he doubts his genius, so every woman has moments when she doubts her beauty and longs to see it in the mirror of a masculine eye.

The most common mistake of lovers is to compliment a woman on her most conspicuous points of beauty. This has very much the same effect on her as telling Rubinstein he is a wonderful pianist. He knows that better than you do, and has been told so so many million times that he is sick and tired of hearing it again. But show him that you have discovered some special subtle detail of excellence in his performance or compositions that had escaped general notice, and his heart is yours at once and for ever. A lover can have no difficulty in discovering such subtle charms in his sweetheart, for Cupid, while blinding him to her defects, places her beauties under a microscope.

A man who attends a social gathering comes home pleased, not at having heard a number of bright things, but in proportion to his own success in amusing the company. On the same principle, if you give a girl—especially one who mistrusts her conversational ability—a chance to say a single bright thing, she will love you more than if you said a hundred clever things to her.

Sincerity in compliments is essential; else all is lost. It is useless to try to convince a woman with an ugly mouth or nose that those features are not ugly. She knows they are ugly, as well as Rubinstein knows when he strikes a wrong note. “Very ugly or very beautiful women,” says Chesterfield, “should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.”

A clever joke is never out of place. You may intimate to a comparatively plain woman that she is good-looking, and if she retorts with a sceptical answer, you may snub her and score ten points in Love by telling her you pity her poor taste.