PRIDE AND VANITY
Jealousy and Monopoly are the two selfish features of Love which urge an enamoured couple to flee society and friends, and take refuge on a desert island. Fortunately there is in the chemistry of Love a third selfish element—the Pride of successful wooing, which commonly is strong enough to neutralise the antisocial tendencies of the other two. If a lover’s passion has not yet risen to fever-heat, nothing (except Jealousy) will so suddenly raise it as the Pride and conceit inspired by noticing that people in general admire his chosen girl; the more of the admirers, the greater his Pride. And if, in addition, sympathising friends directly approve his choice and laud her merits in detail, then his transports of ecstasy become celestial.
Inasmuch as in moments of elation over success of any kind a man feels as if nothing were beyond his power, an accepted lover is as proud (I suppose) as if he had conquered not only one girl, but the whole feminine kingdom—or queendom: for surely the one chosen by him is the cleverest and most beautiful of all; whence it follows that all the inferior ones would of course have been only too proud if he had condescended to pay his addresses to them.
Why do great men so often marry women who are not especially attractive as to personal appearance, when often they might have had their choice among a group of beauties? Because the spoiled beauties did not understand the art of flattery, sincere or otherwise. Every man wishes to be considered either a creative genius or a hero. The woman who knows how to touch the sympathetic chord, to make each one’s particular kind of Pride vibrate, has him at her feet in an instant.
In conjugal life the most ludicrous of all sights is the royal self-complacency with which a man accepts the eager worship of his wife.
Conversely, a rejected lover’s heart bleeds from so many wounds that it is difficult to count them; but of all these wounds the one inflicted by the jealous thought that she will now marry another is alone deep as that of his offended Pride. The sense of superiority which every man feels over every other man is crushed, and cannot be laid as a flattering unction to the soul. Hence a girl who refuses a proposal and does not at least keep it a secret, is not only quite as mean, but a thousand times more cruel than a man who will “kiss and tell.”
Coquetry.—Yet of all secrets the compliment of an offer is the hardest for a woman to keep; so, in strictest confidence, she tells it to only one solitary person, who ditto, who ditto, who ditto, etc. etc. etc. etc. and so on.
There is a class of women whose sole pleasure in life appears to be derived from vanity gratified by offers of Love and Marriage. Of all the elements of Love—and there are at least eleven—her soul is affected by one alone—the overtone of Pride. The Coquette has already been superficially examined, and distinguished from the Flirt. But this is the place where she must be placed under the microscope and more closely examined. A great many distinguished observers have dissected her, and here are a few of their discoveries.
Congreve lets her off easily—
“’Tis not to wound a wanton boy,
Or amorous youth, that gives the joy;
But ’tis the glory to have pierced the swain
For whom inferior beauties sighed in vain.”
Fielding is less lenient: “The life of a coquette is one constant lie.” “The coquette,” says Mr. T. B. Aldrich—"all’s one to her; above her fan she’d make sweet eyes at Caliban." According to Victor Hugo, “God created the coquette as soon as He had made the fool;” and Byron asks, “What careth she for hearts when once possessed?” When Moore wrote—
“More joy it gives to woman’s breast
To make ten frigid coxcombs vain,
Than one true manly lover blest;”
he had evidently just left the chill atmosphere of a coquette. “A coquette,” says A. Duprey, “is more occupied with the homage we withhold than with that which we bestow upon her.” “Coquettes are the quacks of love,” says Rochefoucauld. “Heartlessness and fascination, in about equal proportions, constitute,” according to Mme. Deluzy, “the receipt for forming the character of a coquette.” And Poincelot caps the climax: “An asp would render its sting more venomous by dipping it into the heart of a coquette.”
There are masculine as well as feminine Coquettes; but there is one striking difference between them. To the female Coquette all is game that gets into her net; she will turn away from a man of genius, an Apollo, already at her feet, to fascinate a rough and freckled country lad at first sight; whereas a male Coquette rarely wastes his powder on a girl who isn’t pretty. And even herein is seen the superiority of man’s Love to woman’s. The male Coquette is actuated by Admiration of Beauty as well as by Pride; the female Coquette by Pride alone.
Cannibals have a quaint old custom of eating certain parts of a formidable enemy’s body, in the belief that they will thus inherit his qualities,—as by eating his tongue, his eloquence; his heart, his courage. What a delicious gastronomic morsel a Coquette’s heart would be to these savages, whose principal amusement is cruelty!
Perhaps the best description ever given of a Coquette is Thackeray’s portraiture of Beatrix—"A woman who has listened to" her admirers, “and played with them and laughed with them,—who, beckoning them with lures and caresses, and with Yes smiling from her eyes, has tricked them on to their knees, and turned her back and left them.”
Love and Rank.—Not so many years ago the newspapers of a certain European country made a great deal of ado about a forthcoming marriage between a blue-blooded youth and a ditto maiden, for the reason that it was “a real Love-match.” Poor princes! so rarely are they allowed to choose their own Juliet, they who are supposed to be the rulers of the land. Until quite recently, it is true, public opinion on the Continent sanctioned a Love-marriage between an aristocrat and a non-aristocrat provided it was unlawful, i.e. morganatic, a special royal euphemy for bigamy; but now even this privilege is abolished, and princes can marry one of equal rank only, in pursuance of a custom more tyrannical, more restrictive than the parental command on which marriage-unions depended in ancient and mediæval times.
German novelists have made considerable progress in their art in recent years, but in one respect it seems to be very difficult for them to substitute realism for romance. In every love story, almost, one of the leading characters must be either a prince or a princess. As if it were not the very essence of a prince and a princess that they shall not be allowed to love and marry for Love—unless they are clever enough to fall in Love with the partner singled out for them, which happens once in a hundred times, perhaps.
But it is not only in the highest circles that aristocratic Pride is opposed to free Sexual Selection. It extends through a hundred scales of the social ladder. Germany presents a remarkable example. The metaphysician Eduard von Hartmann credits the government of that country with great astuteness. Not having much money to pay its officials, it has established a legion of distinctions of rank and titles, for the sake of which the officials are quite willing to forego a larger salary. Of the ludicrous conceit inspired by this distinction of having even the slightest kind of a “handle” to their name, I can give an amusing instance from my own experience. Some years ago, desiring to see the Intendant, or Manager, of the Munich Opera-house, I entered a little room, marked Portier, and found that gentleman comfortably seated, with his cap on. He took my card, on which there was no “handle” of any sort, and replied sternly, “The Intendant is in; I will send up your card;” adding, more severely still, “And, young man, let me tell you, that when you come into the presence of a royal official, it behoves you to remove your hat!”
Harmless as such childish vanity may seem, it is yet one of the reasons why there are fewer good-looking women in Germany than in most European countries—France always excepted. For a girl, whose father wears on his coat the order of the black eagle, to marry a young man whose father only has the order of the green eagle, would be considered an unpardonable mésalliance, and would scandalise the whole neighbourhood. Of course it does not make much difference in a woman’s own looks whether she marries a man she loves or one whom she can barely tolerate, and who is forced on her by parental desire and public opinion, but it does make a difference with her children; and even in her own case, is it not self-evident that the smile of pleasure at being happily married is a better preservative of youthful beauty than the constant frown of disappointment, perhaps of disgust?
The highest treason against Cupid, however, is committed by those American women, who, without the excuse of inherited custom, come to Europe with their money to marry a baron. Fortunately such marriages have almost always ended so wretchedly that the fashion has somewhat lost its popularity. What is a baron? Perhaps a man whose great-great-great-grandfather “lent” some duke or king a few thousand gold pieces, in return for which he was allowed to place “von” or “de” before his name. And on the strength of this little word the family Pride has gone on steadily increasing through various generations—or rather, degenerations.
Physiology is not usually considered an ironic science, but it cannot help writing a satire when it teaches that “blue” blood is venous blood, charged with the waste products of the bodily tissues. How much better than this irony would iron be, i.e. some fresh, red, arterial blood infused in the bodies of the Continental aristocracy. The English aristocracy, on the other hand, presents one of the finest types of manhood and womanhood; and the reason is suggested by Darwin: “Many persons are convinced, as appears to me with justice, that our aristocracy, including under this term all wealthy families in which primogeniture has long prevailed, from having chosen during many generations from all classes the more beautiful women as their wives, have become handsomer, according to the European standard, than the middle classes.”
Vivid as the feeling of pride must be in a man of humble origin who has succeeded in winning the Love of a woman of a higher social grade; and greatly as a Coquette must be tickled in counting off the number of hearts offered to her, on her fingers if she has enough to go round: yet the climax of Lover’s Pride, it seems to me, must be reached by a man of noble birth who, scorning mediæval puerilities, marries the girl who has won his heart, and were she but a plump, rosy-cheeked peasant girl. This vivid feeling was doubtless realised by the Grand Duke of Austria when he married Philippine Welser, by the Duke of Bavaria when he married Maria Pettenbeck.