Boswell in Love

I

IN all the varied business of living there is perhaps no matter which must lie conducted more strictly according to rule and precedent, than the business of wooing a wife. There is a recognized way of getting the thing accomplished (based, no doubt, on the instinct and experience of the race), and brave is the man who dares to adopt any other. ‘All the world loves a lover’ — if he observes the conventions of the game; but if he does not, the world pours out upon the unfortunate creature the contempt which it always feels for those who do not accept its own methods.

One of these is furtiveness. There must be something clandestine about the first stages, if not all stages, of the process. Courtship is a kind of theft, and the amorous pair continue the policy of stealth long after their secret is known to the world. Indeed, the public demands it. If you feel the impulse to tell the story of your passion to a friend at Piccadilly Circus, you must refrain, even though he be the friend of your bosom. If you desire to print the verses which you have addressed to the lady of your choice, you must remind yourself that it is not done. Let the verses be discovered in the secret drawer of the escritoire after your death, and the public will be glad to read them.

Again, you must not seek advice. You may have the counsels of the world on every subject but this; but unless you are willing to be dubbed a fool, you must go unaided to meet this most momentous issue of life. Your friends, to be sure, will be the first to criticize you for not having somehow divined (and followed) the advice which they could not and would not give; but to this criticism you must be deaf. It is true that, if you care at all for your friends, the introduction of a new person into your old relationships may be fraught with consequences of the gravest importance; but to all these you must be blind.

Finally, you must be sure of yourself: you are not permitted to be in doubt whether the emotions you are experiencing may be true love or not. You may be wrong, but you must not doubt. If you finally wake to the realization that you are, and have been, wrong, you may try again; but, again, you are not permitted to waver. You may, perhaps, be of so happy a temperament that a thousand ladies seem to you wort hy of your love and capable of making you happy, but this view you must conceal as a heresy. The prize that you draw must make all other drawings seem blank; you must not scan and compare the blessings of other men. You may let men know of your disillusion or (ultimately) of your success, but you must not tel! the story of your doubt, as you must not tell the story of your progress to success.

It has been necessary to analyze these rules, because, in the love-story that is to follow, every one of them was outraged, and outraged repeatedly. To many the story will seem so preposterous as to be incredible. Let such readers recall the conventions of society and their life-long observance of them, and get such satisfaction as they may out of the thought that they are not as James Boswell. Yet Boswell was a human being, who, after his strange wooings, became a loving husband.

Let; the reader remember that the evidence which is to be placed before him is,in general, taken from letters written to the best loved of all his friends, the Reverend William Temple, the friend of his boyhood, his devoted correspondent and confidant . All his days Boswell felt a consuming desire to impart. his emotions to a confidant — a desire worthy of comparison, perhaps, with that of the heroines in Racine’s tragedies, save that it dispenses with the trappings of dignity and reserve, unwillingly abandoned, which distinguish the amorous ladies of the classical drama. There was much to tell, and he could but rejoice that he had a friend to tell it to. The story had begun in their boyhood, when the two foolish youngsters told each other of the kind of woman they would be willing to marry.

James, it would appear, pretended, in the beginning, to be mature and philosophical about it all. His ambitions, from the earliest moment, seem to have been astir, but they prompted him to dreams of greatness in the world of men. With the fulfillment of this dream, might not woman interfere? Long before they come within our ken, Temple and Boswell — or, rather, Willie and James — had made a jest out of this dream of greatness, and they never forgot it as long as they lived. Exactly what it signified to them we do not know,—for who shall interpret the cryptic wit of friendship? — but its general meaning is clear. From the beginning Boswell had determined to be great, and from the beginning his ambition had been the subject of playful jest, such as friend uses with friend. Again and again he writes to Temple of some recent experience, ‘I was the Great Man.’ With this dream of greatness there mingled thoughts of a helpmate who should be a worthy mistress of Auchinleck. Manifold were the natural graces and the endowments of fortune with which this lady must be blessed: wealth, beauty, and affability should unite their charms in the perfect harmony that, was to make up this impossible she. As Shelley, in a later age, was always imagining that he had found at last His ideal embodied in the flesh, so, though in less exalted strains and with more earthly attributes, did our young Boswell dream that he had found his mate. In the first of his letters that has conic down to us, we find the following passage:—

You know I gave you a hint in my last of the continuance of my passion for Miss W—t; I assure you, I am excessively fond of her, so (as I have given you fair warning) don’t he surprised if your grave, sedate, philosophick friend, who used to carry it so high, and talk with such a composed indifference of the beauteous sex, and whom you used to admonish not to turn an Old Man too soon, don’t be thunderstruck, if this same fellow should all at once, subito furore abreptus, commence Don Quixote for his adorable Dulcinea. But to talk seriously, I at first fell violently in love with her, and thought I should be quite miserable if I did not obtain her; but now it is changed to a rational esteem of her good qualities, so that I should be extremely happy to pass my life with her, but if she does not incline to it I can bear it æquo animo and retire into the calm regions of Philosophy. She is, indeed, extremely pretty, and posest of every amiable qualification. She dances, sings, and plays upon several instruments equally well, draws with a great deal of taste, and reads the best authors; at the same time she has a just regard to true piety and religion, and behaves in the most easy affable way. She is just such a young lady as I could wish for the partner of my soul, and you know that is not every one, for you and I have often talked how nice we would be in such a choice. I own I can have but little hopes, as she is a fortune of 30,000 pounds. Heaven knows that sordid motive is farthest from my thoughts. She invited me to come and wait upon her, so I went hist week and drank tea; I was kindly entertained, and desired to come when convenient. I have reason to believe she has a very good opinion of me, and, indeed, a youth of my turn has a better chance to gain the affections of a lady of her character, than of any other; but (as I told you before) my mind is in such an agreable situation that being refused would not be so fatal as to drive me to despair, as your hotbrained. romarttick lovers talk. Now, my dear friend, I sincerely ask ten thousand pardons for giving you the trouble of this long narration; but as it is a thing that concerns me a good deal, I could not but communicate it to you, and I know, when I inform you how happy it makes me to open my mind, you will forgive me. Pray never speak of it; you are the only person knows of it, except Mr. Love who reads to her, and takes every unsuspected method to lend me his freindly assistance. Oh Willie! how happy should I be if she consented, some years after this, to make me blest! How transporting to think of such a lady to entertain you at Auchinleck!

Mr. Love, who was acting as the go-between and from whom the young man had probably first learned of his charmer, was an actor, who eked out a precarious living by teaching elocution and borrowing money from Boswell. Mis efforts at match-making, however, were unsuccessful. The fair Miss W—t remains unidentified. She was not destined to become mistress of Auchinleck or to settle her £30,000 on our hero.

The letter from which t he quotation is drawn is one written by Boswell before he was eighteen years old; he had yet to visit London, to complete his legal studies, and to make the Grand Tour. But; even amid the distractions of London and foreign travel, his thoughts ran continually upon love. The search for his Dulcinea was to share in his search for the Great, and the problem was to be laid before more than one of his heroes.

II

While he was pursuing his legal studies at Utrecht, Boswell, at the age of twenty-three, became intimate with the family of the Baron de Zuylen. His daughter Belle (or Isabella), who preferred the fanciful name, Zélide, which she had fabricated for herself, was exactly of Boswell’s age, and like him in many respects. She was a true and very delightful daughter of the eighteenth century, vivacious in the extreme, yet subject to continual fits of sensibility, romantic yearnings, and dreams of free love. As a keen student of mathematics, — she rose early in the morning to master conic sections, — she soon emancipated hersell Irom the Christian religion, which was not sufficiently exact to commend itsell to her intelligence, and lost hersell in the perplexities of metaphysical speculation. She longed to become rational in thought and conduct. But with all the instincts of a bluestocking, she retained a pardonable vanity, and loved laughter and high spirits. In introspective fashion she wrote a ‘portrait’ of herself, which is perhaps the best introduction to her somewhat complicated personality. It is in French and may be rendered thus: —

Compassionate in temper, liberal and generous by inclination, Zélide is good only by principle; when she is sweet and yielding, give her credit for making an effort. When she is long civil and polite with people for whom she does not care, redouble your esteem, for it is martyrdom. Vain by nature, her vanity is boundless; knowledge and contempt of human kind had long since given her that. It goes, however, further even than that, as Zélide herself must admit. She thinks already that glory is naught in comparison with happiness, and yet she would go far for glory.

At what period do the lights of the spirit take command of the inclinations of the heart? At that period will Zélide cease to be a coquette. Sad contradiction I Zélide, who would not wish to strike a dog unthinkingly or to crush a miserable insect, is perhaps willing, at certain moments, to make a man wretched — and this by way of amusing herself, in order to win a kind of glory which does not even flatter her reason and touches her vanity for but an instant. But the fascination is short; apparent success brings her back to herself; she no sooner realizes her intention than she despises it, abhors it, and would fain renounce it for ever.

You ask me if Zélide is beautiful, pretty, or passable? I am not sure; it. depends on whether she is loved or wishes to make hersell loved. She has a fine throat, she is sure, and makes a little too much of it, at the expense of modesty. Her hand is not white, as she also knows, and she makes a jest of it, but she would prefer not to have to make it a subject of jest.

Tender in the extreme, and no less delicate, she can be happy neither with love nor without it. Friendship never had a holier or worthier temple than Zélide. Realizing that she is too sensitive to be happy, she has almost ceased aspiring to happiness; she devotes herself to virtue, flees repentance, and seeks amusements. Pleasures are rare with her, but lively; she seizes them, and relishes them ardently. Knowing that plans are vain and the future uncertain, she is particularly desirous of rendering the moment happy as it flics.

Do you not guess it? Zélide is a. little voluptuous; her imagination can make her smile, even when her heart is heavy. Feelings too strong and lively for her mechanism, excessive activity, which lacks a satisfactory object — these are the source of all her ills. With organs less sensitive Zélide would have had the soul of a great man; with less wit and sense, she would have been only a feeble woman.

This self-conscious, ambitious young lady and our self-conscious, ambitious young hero immediately became fast friends. They exchanged news of their melancholy symptoms, and Zélide listened with patience, and apparently with appreciation, to James’s eternal advice. Then they would suddenly become hilarious, and the wit, as Boswell afterward described it, flashed like lightning.

But Zélide’s skepticism dismayed Boswell. Why should the mind of a young lady be possessed by the seven devils of rationalism? It is natural enough for a man to fall a victim; but females should not know that rationalism exists. Moreover, Boswell had himself been grounded in the principles of Christianity by Samuel Johnson, and was still reasonably sure of his faith. This was perhaps the most serious obstacle to their union, and Boswell set himself to remove it. But Zélide was not easily influenced, — had she not studied conic sections? — and so Boswell came to feel that perhaps, after all, she was not the bride for him.

It would have been a comparatively simple thing to win her, had he set about it in a determined way, inasmuch as her parents liked the young man and encouraged his advances. ‘II est fort mon ami,’ wrote Zélide, ‘et fort estimé de mon pere et de ma mère, de sorte qu’il est toujours bien reçu quand il vient me voir.’ That he approached the subject a score of times, no one who reads the following letter can doubt. The pair of them seem to have reached a friendly conclusion that they were not suited for each other. He appears, with his infinite naïveté, to have explained her deficiencies to her; for once, when reckoning up her various lovers, she wrote, ‘ Boswell will never marry me; if he did marry me, he would have a thousand regrets, for he is convinced that I would not suit him, and I do not. know that I should care to live in Scotland.’ They agreed, therefore; and yet there was a magnetic force that drew them ever to each other. Boswell would make love to her, in spite of the finest assertions that he was not going to — that he was now a completely rational being, a philosophic creature, and what not. Perhaps, in it all there mingled some misgivings at the thought of confessing to his father that he was desirous of bringing home a Dutch bride.

The letter that Boswell addressed to Zélide a month or so after leaving Utrecht is the only love-letter of his which has been preserved to us. It is also one of the longest that he ever wrote — so long, indeed, that it is inadvisable to print it all. I excerpt those passages of it which deal with love. It is to be hoped that the reader will not be deceived by the calmness and impudence of the opening passages, but will note the crescendo of feeling which culminates in the final postscript.

Consider, my dear Zélide, your many real advantages. You are a daughter of one of the first familys in the Seven Provinces; you have a number of relations of rank. You have a very handsom fortune, and I must tell you, too, that Zélide herself is handsom. You have a title to expect a distinguished marriage. You may support a respected am I an amiable character in life. Your genius and your many accomplishments may do you great honour. But take care. If those enchanting qualitys are not governed by Prudence, they may do you a great deal of harm. You have confest to me that you are subject to hypochondria. I well believe it. You have a delicate constitution and a strong imagination. In order to be free from a distemper which renders you miserable, you must not act like one in despair. You must be carefull of your health by living regularly, and careful! of your mind by employing it moderately. If you act thus, you may expect to be happy; if you resign yourself to fancy, you will have, now and then, a little feverish joy, but no permanent satisfaction. I should think you should believe me. I am no clergyman. I am no physician. I am not even a lover. I am just a gentleman upon his travels who has taken an attachment to you and who has your happiness at heart. I may add, a gentleman whom you honour with your esteem.

My dear Zélide! You are very good, you are very candid. Pray, forgive me for begging you to be less vain; you have fine talents of one kind, but are you not deficient in others? Do you think your reason is as distinguished as your imagination? Beleive me, Zélide, it is not. Beleive me, and endeavour to improve.

After all this serious counsel, I think my conscience cannot reproach me for writing to you, I am sure that your worthy father could not be offended at it. I am sure that I intend to do you service if I can. . . .

As you and I, Zélide, are perfectly easy with each other, I must tell you that I am vain enough to read your letters in such a manner as to imagine that you realy was in love with me, as much as you can be with any man. I say was, because I am much mistaken if it is not over before now. Reynst¹ had not judged so ill. You have no command of yourself. You can conceal nothing. You seemed uneasy. You had a forced merriment. The Sunday evening that I left you I could perceive you touched. But I took no notice of it. From your con versa tion I saw very well that I had a place in your heart, that you regarded me with a warmth more than freindly. Your letters showed me that you was pleasing yourself with having at last met with the man for whom you could have a strong and a lasting passion. But I am too generous not to undeceive you. You are sensible that I am a man of strict probity. You have told me so. I thank you. I hope you shall always find me so. Is it not, however, a little hard that I have not a better opinion of you? Own, Zélide, that your ungoverned vivacity may be of disservice to you. It renders you less esteemed by the man whose esteem you value. You tell me, Me ne vaudrois rien pour votre femme, je n’ai pas les talens subalfemes.’ If by these talents you mean the domestic virtues, you will find them necessary for the wife of every sensible man. But there are many stronger reasons against your being my wife, so strong that, as I said to you formerly, I would not be married to you to be a King. I know myself and I know you. And from all probability of reasoning, I am very certain that if we were married together, it would not be long before we should be both very miserable. My wife must be a character directly opposite to my dear Zélide, except in affection, in honesty, and in good humour. You may depend upon me as a freind. It vexes me to think what a number of freinds you have. I know, Zélide, of several people that you correspond with. I am therefore not so vain of your corresponding with me. But I love you, and would wish to contribute to your happiness.

We may well pause here for breath. There has been little enough so far of what is conventionally regarded as the style of a love-letter; nevertheless, when a gentleman displays obvious annoyance because a lady has so many other correspondents, he may, if a thousand novelists speak the truth, be regarded as having reached that stage of jealousy to which she has labored to reduce him. It is clear that, whether or not Zélide cared to marry our friend, she was not unwilling that he should languish at her feet. Did she not confess herself a coquette? That she knew how to pique his interest is evident from her very words, which have struck him, as she intended they should do, and which rankle. The talents of a subaltern wife she does not possess. Nor, I venture to think, was it wel I for Boswell to marry a woman who had them. But let us return to our letter.

You bid me write whatever I think. I ask your pardon for not complying with that request. I shall write nothing that I do not think. But you are not the person to whom I could without reserve write all that I think. After this I shall write in French. Your correspondence will improve me much in that language. You write it charmingly. Am I not very obedient to your orders of writing des gremdes lettres? You must do the same. While I remain at Berlin, my address is chez Messieurs Splizerber et Daum, Berlin. Adieu. Think and be happy. Pray write soon and cont inue to show me all your heart. I fear all your fancy. I fear that the heart of Zélide is not to be found. It has been consumed by the fire of an excessive imagination. Forgive me for talking to you with such an air of authority. I have assumed the person of Mentor. I must keep it up. Perhaps I judge too hardly of you. I think you have cordiality and yet you are much attached to your father and to your brothers. Defend yourself. Tell me that I am the severe Cato. Tell me that you will make a very good wife. Let me ask you, then, Zélide, could you submit your inclinations to the opinion, perhaps the caprice, of a husband? Could you do this with chearfulness, without losing any of your sweet good humour, without boasting of it? Could you live quietly in the country six months a year? Could you make yourself agreable to plain honest neighbours? Could you talk like any other woman, and have your fancy as much at command as your harpsichord? Could you pass the other six months in a city where there is very good society, though not the high Mode?

At this point the reader interrupts the writer with cries of protest, fortissimo. We all reply unanimously in the negative. Poor Zélide, you certainly could not do these things, and well did James Boswell know it. He knew that Zélide could not be happy at Auchinleck, because he could not be happy there himself; and if the reader will have the patience to look once more at the questions that are asked, he will hear the echoes of a conversation between James and Zélide, in which she had been given an account of the manifold miseries of life in Scotland. Withal, the whole passage is touched with that preposterous humor to which Boswell liked to feel that his friends finally became accustomed. But his catechism is not yet finished.

Could you live thus, and be content? Could you have a great deal of amusement in your own family? Could you give spirits to your husband when he is melancholy? I have known such wives, Zélide. What think you ? Could you be such a one? If you can, you may be happy with the sort of man that I once described to you. Adieu.

Let not religion make you unhappy. Think of God as he realy is, and all will appear chearfull. I hope you shall be a Christian. But, my dear Zélide! worship the sun rather than be a Calvinist. You know what I mean.

I had sealed this letter. I must break it up and write a little more. This is somewhat like you. I charge you once for all, Be strictly honest with me. If you love me. own it. I can give you the best advice. If you change, tell me. If you love another, tell me. I don’t understand a word of your mystery about ‘a certain gentleman whom you think of three times a day.’ What do you mean by it? Berlin is a most delightfull city. I am quite happy. I love you more than ever. I would do more than ever to serve you. I would kneel and kiss your hand, if I saw you married to the man that could make you happy. Answer me this one question. If I had pretended a passion for you, which I might easily have done, for it is not difficult to make us believe what we are allready pleased to imagine — answer me —~ would you not have gone to the world’s end ? Supposing even that I had been disinherited by my father, would you not have said, ‘Sir here is my portion. It is yours. We may live genteely upon it.’ Zélide, Zélide, excuse my vanity. But I tell you, you do not know yourself, if you say that you would not have done thus. You see how freely I write, and how proudly. Write with all freedom, but with your enchanting humility! Me suis glorieuse d’être votre amie.’ That is the stile. Is not this a long letter? You must not expect me to write regularly. Farewell, ray dear Zélide. Heaven bless you, and make you rationaly happy. Farewell.

This letter, I need scarcely remark, is one of Boswell’s most characteristic performances. I have known young ladies to become virtuously indignant over it. There is not in it, we may admit, that note of chivalry which is supposed to indicate a noble devotion to the sex. And yet, when allowance is made for the insolence of it all, for its pomposity and its sermonizing, I do not believe that Zélide was displeased with it. Did she not keep it as long as she lived? The very jumble of the sentences in the postscript is eloquent. ‘I don’t understand a word of your mystery of a certain gentleman whom you think of three times a day. What do you mean by it? Berlin is a most delightful city. I am quite happy. I love you more than ever. ’ If Zélide did not realize that the creature was trapped, she must have been devoid of feminine instinct. If she wanted Boswell, she had but to stoop and pick him up.

For some excellent feminine reason she decided not to take him at the moment. She was not sure. There were, other candidates. And then there was the thought of living in Scotland, which Boswell had done nothing to make attractive to her. It was safer to postpone the whole affair. But she did not neglect him. She continued to write to him, as we know from the fact that Boswell laid her letters before the philosophic gaze of Rousseau.

During my melancholy at Utrecht [he wrote in December to Rousseau] I made the acquaintance of a young woman of the highest nobility, and very rich. I conducted myself in such a way as to win the reputation of a philosopher. Ah, how deceptive are appearances! If you care to amuse yourself by reading some pieces by this young lady, you will find them in a small separate parcel. I should like to have your sentiment on her character. You are the only one to whom I have showed her papers. I could entrust to you anything in the world [vous confier tout au monde].

Perhaps Rousseau coulcl not have done better than to advise Boswell to win Zélide as fast as ever he could. Just why James feared her vivacity is not clear — perhaps it was because she did not have complete respect for the conventions of society. But neither did he. Marrying a girl with the same faults that you have yourself has at least this advantage, that they will not come to her with a shock of painful novelty, or become an increasing burden with the years. There are people (very modern people) who fancy that Benedick and Beatrice quarreled and separated soon after their marriage. Certainly they were too wise to live after the conventional standards set by Claudio and Hero. At any rate, I have never heard of anyone who thought that they were likely to perish of dullness and boredom. We may quarrel with people constituted like ourselves, but we have also the priceless means of understanding them.

Boswell missed the opportunity to marry a girl who understood him. Had they married, very probably she might not have contrived to make of him a steadier or a better man; but I do not think she would have blushed for him. The Boswell family has always been ashamed of the only genius that ever adorned it — a temptation which Zélide, with her more liberal training and temper, might have been depended upon to withstand.

And so Boswell saw Zélide no more. But he could not soon forget her, and she reappears suddenly in his biography at a critical moment in a later affair.

In ‘sweet. Siena,’ he encountered an ‘Italian Signora,’ — of a more than earthly beauty, no doubt, — who detained him there long after he should have been off to Corsica. Of her we know nothing. But we do know that the whole problem of our hero’s relations with the sex was laid before Paoli; that he gave the finest advice, and also promised Boswell that, if he would return in twenty years, he would find in Corsica, not only science and art, but ladies as splendid as those in any Parisian salon.

(The story of ‘ Boswell’s Wooing ’ will appear in February.)