“’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.