The Art of Wooing

“ ALL the world,” declares the old saying, “ loves a lover,” but it loves different lovers at different ages. In our romantic years we spent sorrowful last days with Bruce, wept over The Scottish Chiefs, and devoured the pages of Eugene Aram, Paul Clifford, and My Novel. It was in the reading of these thrilling pages that our ideals of lovers remodeled themselves. We forgot our earlier hero, the prince of the fairy tales, and became temporarily convinced that Kenelm Chillingly and the dashing Clifford were ideal lovers. Years, however, bring a wisdom which sobers. Other days came, when we recognized ourselves as no longer romantic, and not unwilling to admit the virtues of the excellent young men of Persuasion and Emma. It became possible to smile over Mr. Rochester, and to own to a chill in our ardor for the chivalric Kenelm.

The time also came when, reflecting upon the ways of lovers as revealed in our reading, we asked ourselves if, after all, even so divine a thing as love-making may not be influenced by environment, time, social conditions, and, more material than all, by climate itself.

Take the lovers of the days of Dante. Did they not swoon from the very violence of their feelings, while, according to Chaucer, the suitors of England, after the fashion of Ellen Montgomery, fell to weeping the moment their eyes happened upon the object of their devotion? The Morte D’Arthur, on its part, introduces us to lovers who are subject to constant physical collapses. They lose their appetites, occasionally their minds, always their common sense. They swoon from joy, and make all manner of violent demonstration. Of all lovers they appear to have been the most inconvenient, since how was it possible to be ever ready to restore them with a sight of the lady, when, likely as not, she was locked in a dungeon or confined in a tower ?

The Elizabethan lovers, true to the spirit of their age, sang love songs to the music of the lute. They composed verses to Phyllida’s eyes, and wrote lyrics to Clorinda Maying. A flowery bank, as background to a lady’s charms, was an absolute necessity in the landscape, and, apparently, no one went wooing except in summer. The wearing of lutestring gowns introduced the laborious fashion of wooing by letter-writing, a method by no means inexpensive, when we call to mind the reams of paper consumed by Lovelace and Clarissa alone, not to estimate the excessive postage of the day, nor the payment of the many special messengers employed by the gentleman.

With the passing of hair powder and knee buckles went the last of the romantic wooers. When broadcloth and stiff linen collars claimed the suitors, lovemaking became appropriately commonplace. It being no longer necessary to live up to a plume or lace ruffles, the practice of wooing on the knee fell entirely into disuse. To-day lovers are entirely tailor-made, and state their proposals in a strictly erect position.

But, after all, if we confine our speculations to novels, are not lovers mere puppets in the hands of their authors ? No matter how ardent their feelings, they have no interpreter but the temperament of their writer.

Take the lovers of the Waverleys. Does not Scott precipitate them through their love affairs with a haste which compels us to the belief that the entire party would prefer infinitely to be seated before goodly venison or to be brandishing broadswords in battle ? In the words of Sir Geoffrey Peveril, they act as if the lips of the heroines were red-hot horseshoes. The knight in The Talisman falls on his knees before Edith Plantagenet, but what reader can refuse to acknowledge that it is more than plain that the mysterious warrior would prefer any other position? It is impossible not to see that he only retains that peculiarly uncomfortable attitude because Scott forces him to uncomplaining obedience. Arthur Philipson, we are happy to know, throws himself at the feet of Anne of Geierstein “ with an ardor which he could not repress ; ” but he stays there as short a time as possible, being only too happy to be permitted to go about more congenial occupations.

The author of David Copperfield has scant reason to be proud of his lovers when they betake themselves to wooing. To the minds of most of us, they are as sorry a lot as can well be encountered in the pages of romance, and are as inferior to Mr. Pickwick or Mr. Wilkins Micawber as is ordinary punch to that “ agreeable beverage ” when brewed from the ingredients which Mr. Thomas Traddles had the privilege of ordering. It is hard even to believe in their emotions, embrace as they may, and I for one am frank to confess that I prefer the heroes in the company of their own sex.

According to an old chronicle, a woman invented the art of kissing. This, in part, may account for the very ardent, not to say demonstrative wooing in novels by writers of the more emotional sex. Compare the love scenes of Currer Bell or George Eliot with those of Thackeray or Scott, and note the relative number of embraces. Recall for a moment the loving glances, the hand pressures, the kisses, which enliven the pages of Miss Mulock, and call to mind Stevenson’s complaint concerning his inability to manage the swish of the petticoats. Think how few are the kisses of Kipling, how innumerable those of Mrs. Burnett or the tearful Miss Warner.

Of late, if again we base our conclusions on the novels, love-making has taken on a new and cheerless phase. Each lover, emulating the early example of Narcissus, falls in love with his or her own image, expects the other to do likewise, and sets about wooing with that end in view. Imagine, if one can, a more dismal vision than a procession of modern lovers. Contrast with the princes of the plumes and loving hearts the Reverend John Storm, the religious Mr. Helbeck, the incomprehensible Mr. Ware. Fancy any princess having the inclination, much less the time, to listen to the interminable discussions of any one of them !

Justice, however, recalls to our memory The Prisoner of Zenda, and we acknowledge the presence of a very prince of lovers, worthy a fairy tale itself.

All the world, we frankly admit, loves a lover, but never one who loves self. Self-love is the unpardonable sin in the kingdom of romance, and therein lies that failure to charm which is the misfortune of our latter-day lovers. The lover whom the world loves best of all must know, before everything else, how to love with all his manly heart. He must know how to woo, and lose no time in going about the winning of the lady. He must know when to fall on his knees, and when to rise therefrom. He must scorn a faint heart, and refuse to recognize failure ; for the world loves with its heartiest love that lover who wins the hand of “ the most beautiful princess in the world,” and in her society “ lives happily ever after.”