The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 by Various

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[Sidenote: Having hasted from a wedding for the purpose.]

This point struck me forcibly the last time I was present at a wedding.
It was a Jewish wedding, celebrated at the little synagogue behind the
Haymarket. I had no acquaintance with anyone concerned in the ceremony,
but had dropped in quite casually, having heard that Jewish weddings
were picturesque. The one thing that impressed me more than anything
else was the decided undesirability of both the bridegroom and the
bride. That the bride was not comely goes for little. But her forehead
indicated a limited range and low ideals; the corners of her mouth spoke
of an irritable temper; her bearing was vulgar; her voice had a twang
that made one long to take her by the shoulders and shake her violently.
She was also escorted by gaudy female relatives, by looking at whom one
could anticipate the awful possibilities of her maturity. As for the
bridegroom, he was a Hebrew of the florid type. His waistcoat was
protuberant; he had a red face with red whiskers sprawling all over it;
he wore flash jewellery; his hair shone with pomatum; there was that in
his bearing which indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such
as pawnbroking, or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could
see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each
other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power
which had performed it was that Love in which some profess to
disbelieve.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Frank Mathew displays his Ignorance.]

Ignorance--says some wiseacre--is the mother of eloquence, and I take it
that the less one knows of Love the easier it is to write of it. I side
with those who hold that the Love described by poets and other wordy
people is mainly fanciful, a flattering picture, that the best school
for such writing is an unhappy affection, and that no man can want
better luck than to have his heart broken, and so be made proof against
lovesickness. An unrequited love runs no risk of being dulled by the
prose of life. A man so fortunate as to be jilted or rejected finds his
Beloved remaining beautiful and young to him when her husband sees her
an unwieldy and wearisome old woman. And when at times he grows
sentimental--a bachelor's privilege--he can feel again the old hopes
that he never found false, and see the old perfections that were never
disproved. He has a life-companion who comes only when she is wanted,
and then with a "smile on her face and a rose in her hair," whose voice
is always gentle, to whom wrinkles are not necessary and bills are
not known.

[Sidenote: And praises ugliness.]

I am one of those who prefer the luckless adorers in novels to the
conquering heroes; and hold that the quality an ideal lover needs most
is ugliness, so that he may honour beauty the more. Once I knew a boy
who was uglier than sin, and who wrote a story--in a sprawling hand and
on ruled paper--a wonderful story, telling how an unlovely but admirable
Knight, worshipping a Princess, rode out to win her by great deeds, and
how when he came back triumphant, the sight of her brought his
unworthiness home to him so that he dared not claim her. And I knew
another boy who was good-looking, and wrote a story (during study-time,
of course, and by stealth) about a handsome hero who went to Court in
fine clothes, and was worshipped by all the girls. I think now that he
was the manlier, but that the first would have made the more devout
lover. But the drawback of luckless adorers is that their constancy has
not been tried by the ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal
and heart-broken would have made an unfaithful husband.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: 'Q.' is surprised at his sister.]

Love, no doubt, is a subject of popular interest, but a man is always
staggered to find his sister holding an opinion upon it. If I remember
rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged seven) did me
the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest was mainly
acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder head-foremost, while
Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery window-sill as she could
manage without breaking her neck. We "cut" the love speeches. Two years
later, indeed, my sister schemed to marry me to our common governess.
There was no love on my side; so she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping
to find "A man may not marry his governess" in the table of Forbidden
Degrees. Such a prohibition (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to
my native spirit of disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the
nature of true affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely
counted on my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular
verbs. I am delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a
"practical reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom
bestows the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say between
the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much meat and
do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear that in a few
years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by locusts. But at
this season Nature by the simplest stroke--the flush of a commonplace
cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand--in a twinkling redresses
the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only
loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the
clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. Thereon he mops his
steaming brow, bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs
jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this
beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and
commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It
bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good
whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none
more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or
will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity
to love belongs to one man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to
Matthew Arnold:

"But in the world I learnt, what there
Thou wilt too surely one day prove,
That will, that energy, though rare,
Are yet far, far less rare than love."

I go further and believe it rarer even than Genius. Indeed, the capacity
to love, is a specialised form of genius. You understand that I am not
commending it. Its possessors are often disreputable and almost always
unhappy. Their recompense is that they, and they only, have seen the
splendours of the passion, and vibrated to the shaking inner music of
the sheep-boy's pipe.

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