The
Romantic Twentieth Century:
A Deduction
The simple story-tellers of old, singing away before History was born, long, long before she became contradictory and disrespectful, chose the past as a setting for certain beatitudes—love, beauty, valor, fidelity and justice. Theirs was not the harsh justice of the common law, for there was no common law, but true, or, as the world terms it, poetic justice. They strengthened the warp of their story with the noblest deeds done, or almost done, around them, for human beings so often fall just short of great things; this it is the gentle and honorable duty of story to remedy, for “What we would be, that we are for one transcendent moment.”
When they only recorded the prowess of the victor, History and Romance were one and at peace, and the glorious days of which together they sung were known as the Golden Age.
Then History began to feel the heroism of the vanquished. To give them their meed she conceived the idea of recording impartially the good and evil around her, whereat childish Romance turned from her in disgust.
But each claimed the Golden Age: Romance declaring that golden tales that live and grow were hers for all time; History declaring that the fact that a great poet imagined an event to have happened counted for more in the human record than any other given occurrence. And History and Romance quarreled on until it seemed as though the Golden Age would be lost to both of them.
Then Romance, always enterprising to the point of flightiness, suggested that, as the Golden Age had no chronology, it might safely be recast in the future, in which period she, at least, was quite as much at home as in the past.
Politic Old Dame History smiled at the idea of her dealing in futures, but she did make herself responsible for the statement that the real present is infinitely more romantic than the real past. Then waxing bold she declared that, with some trifling digression, she had all along been leading men toward a purer justice more mixed with love. Of this sweeping assertion she calmly cast the burden of proof upon “my most persuasive witness, my dear old friend, Romance.” And Romance, who always begs the question, replies with a smile, “Let me tell some stories. No, I will not commence with the Greeks, they are hardly my people. Great poets may find other themes, but as for me, my humble fancy must rest upon a woman and she should be pure, sweet and gentle and brave men should bow before her.
“The Grecian woman was in no way a free agent. To assert herself at all, she was obliged to be either deceitful or defiant; both attitudes are so unbeautiful! I commence with the days of chivalry, for though women were not free then, it was supposed that they ought to be, which is enough for me.”
“To me,” says History, “the love stories of the days of chivalry, told as fact or as old romance, are one of the saddest issues of its universal tyranny—a tyranny of parent over child, of man over woman, of lord over serf, of king over lord, of emperor over king, of pope over emperor—a tyranny of crazy conventions and mistaken ideals over all, with mortifications of spirit a thousand times harsher than those of the flesh, which made life hideous even to its ideals.