Comic Aspect of Love
My subject to-night is the comic aspect of love. No doubt most of you have had some little experience, at least in the sentimental and sighing side of the tender passion; and what I propose to do is to give you the humorous or comic side. Perhaps I ought to begin by begging pardon of the ladies for treating so sacred a thing as love in a comic way, or for turning the ludicrous side of so charming a thing as they find love to be, to the gaze of men—but I wish to premise that I shall not so treat sensible or rational love. Of that beautiful feeling, less warm than passion, yet more tender than friendship, I shall not for a moment speak irreverently; of that pure disinterested affection—as charming as it is reasonable, which one sex feels for the other, I cannot speak lightly. But there is a certain romantic senseless kind of love, such as poets sometimes celebrate, and men and women feign, which is a legitimate target for ridicule. This kind of love is fanciful and foolish; it is not the offspring of the heart, but of the imagination. I know that generous deeds and contempt of death have sometimes covered this folly with a veil. The arts have twined for it a fantastic wreath, and the Muses have decked it with the sweetest flowers: but this makes it none the less ridiculous nor dangerous. Love of this romantic sort is an abstraction much too light and subtle to sustain a tangible existence in the midst of the jostling relations of this busy world. It is a mere bubble thrown to the surface by the passions and fancies of men, and soon breaks by contact with the hard facts of daily life. It is a thing which bears but little handling. The German Wieland, who was a great disciple of love, was of opinion that "its metaphysical effects began with the first sigh, and ended with the first kiss!" Plato was not far out of the way when he called it "a great devil"; and the man or woman who is really possessed of it will find it a very hard one to cast out.
Of the refinements of love the great mass of men can know nothing. The truth is that sentimental love is so much a matter of the imagination that the uncultivated have no natural field for its display. In America you can hardly realise the full force of this truth, because the distinctions of class are happily nearly obliterated. Here intellectual culture seems to be about equally divided among all classes. I suppose it is not singular in this country to find the poorest cobbler, whose little shanty is next to the proud mansion of some millionaire, a man of really more mental attainments than his rich and haughty neighbour; in which case the millionaire will do well to look to it that the cobbler does not make love to his wife; and if he does, nobody need care much, for the millionaire will be quite sure to reciprocate.
The great statute, "tit-for-tat," is, I believe, equally the law of all nations; besides, love is a great leveller of distinction, and it is in this levelling mission that it performs some of its most ridiculous antics. When a rich man's daughter runs off with her father's coachman, as occasionally happens, the whole country is in a roar of laughter about it. There is an innate, popular perception of the ridiculous, but everybody sees and feels that in such cases it is misplaced and grotesque. Everyone perceives that the woman's heart has taken the bit in its mouth, and run away with her brains. But, as comedy is often nearly allied to tragedy, so sorrow is sure to come as soon as the little honeymoon is over. This romantic love cannot flourish in the soil of poverty and want. Indeed, all the stimulants which pride and luxury can administer to it can hardly keep it alive. The rich miss who runs away with a man far beneath her in education and refinement must inevitably awake, after a brief dream, to a state of things which have made her unfortunate for life; and he, poor man, will not be less wretched, unless she has brought him sufficient money to give him leisure and opportunity to indulge his fancies with that society which is on a level with his own tastes and education.