Love is a tissue of paradoxes. The very ardour of their passion inclines
men of genius to fickleness. “Love me little love me long” is a short
way of saying that whereas a blazing, roaring fire consumes itself in an
hour, the quiet, glowing coals covered with ashes will outlast the
night.
Lamartine’s “heureuse la beauté que le poète adore”—happy the beauty
whom the poet adores—may be endorsed by a maiden who is willing to
become the secondary wife of a poetic polygamist already wedded to a
muse, for the sake of having it said in his biography that she inspired
him with some of his prettiest conceits—
“Cynthia, facundi carmen juvenile Properti,
Accepit famam nec minus ilia dedit,”
as Martial says of a Roman beauty. Others will hesitate on reading the
following, from _London Society_:—
“Lord Byron has said that nothing can inflict greater torture upon a
woman than the mere fact of loving a poet; and though Lamartine calls it
a glory to be the object of immortal songs, we half-suspect that the
English bard is right, and that it would be impossible to describe the
moral sufferings of those frail beings who seem to be the mere toys of
an hour. The world may be indebted to them for some great poem which
their love has had the power to inspire, but they themselves were
probably no more thought of by the poet than the daisy he might tread on
as he passed by.”
Here is a case in point: “Swift,” says Byron, “when neither young nor
handsome, nor rich nor even amiable, inspired two of the most
extraordinary passions on record—Vanessa’s and Stella’s.... He requited
them bitterly, for he seems to have broken the heart of the one and worn
out that of the other; and he had his reward, for he died a solitary
idiot in the hands of servants.”
It would be unjust, however, in all cases to trace poetic fickleness to
heartless or deliberate cruelty. May not the poet and the artist be
regarded as martyrs to art and science—students of beauty, obliged to
take a purely æsthetic, _disinterested interest_ in feminine charms—as
they do in a picture or a landscape—without any desire of exclusive
possession? They flirt, apparently, not to break hearts, but merely to
educate their sense of beauty. For is not a woman’s face the compendium
of all beauty in the world? and a woman’s eyes, expressing incipient
Love, are they not so exquisitely beautiful that an epicure of Love
could for ever be contented with that expression alone, feeling that
marriage, which might alter it, if ever so little, would be a _bétise_?
Perhaps some similar thought was in Heine’s mind when he wrote his
famous
"Du bist wie eine Blume
So hold und schön und rein;
Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmuth
Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.
“Mir ist, als ob ich die Hände
Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt‘,
Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte
So rein und schön und hold.”
In quite a different kind of a poem Heine bluntly announces to his
“Queen Mary IV.” his declaration of independence, and informs her that
not a few who ruled before her have been unceremoniously deposed—
“Manche die vor dir regierte
Wurde schmählich abgesetzt.”
And in his narrative of the sheriff’s daughter he says, “I shall not
describe my love for Josepha in detail. This, however, I will confess,
that it was after all only a prelude to the great tragedies of my riper
years. Thus does Romeo become infatuated with Rosaline before he finds
his Juliet.”
Byron’s confession, in speaking of an early love, that he had been
“attached fifty times since” has been referred to already; and although
Byron loved to exaggerate his foibles, his record in this case does not
belie his words. Of Burns, Principal Shairp writes that “There was not a
comely girl in Tarbolton on whom he did not compose a song, and then he
made one which included them all.” Burns himself confesses, “In my
conscience, I believe that my heart has been so often on fire that it
has been vitrified.” And Washington Irving remarks on Goldsmith’s first
love as “a passion of that transient kind which grows up in idleness and
exhales itself in poetry.”
Of this kind were two passions of Lamb, concerning which a biographer
says, “A youthful passion, which lasted only a few months, and which he
afterwards attempted to regard lightly as a folly past, inspired a few
sonnets of very delicate feeling and exquisite music.” And of his second
flame, “His stay at Pentonville is remarkable for the fugitive passion
conceived by Lamb for a young Quakeress named Hester Savory, which he
has enshrined and immortalised in the little poem of _Hester_.”
Goethe has the reputation of having been of all famous lovers the most
fickle. Like Byron, Goethe appears to have endeavoured to make himself
appear more frivolous than he was. His amorous Roman _Elegies_, which
have given so much offence, were in reality written in Thuringia, after
his return from Italy; and their heroine was no one but the girl who
subsequently became his wife.
It remained for a Scotchman to write the best apology for Goethe’s
love-affairs. “To Goethe,” says Professor Blackie, “the sight of any
beautiful object was like delicate music to the ear of a cunning
musician; he was carried away by it, and floated in its element
joyously, as a swallow in the summer air, or a sea-mew on the buoyant
wave. Hence the rich story of Goethe’s loves, with which scandal, of
course, and prudery have made their market, but which, when looked into
carefully, were just as much part of his genius as _Faust_ or
_Iphigenia_—a part, indeed, without which neither _Faust_ nor
_Iphigenia_ could have been written.... Let no one, therefore, take
offence when I say that Goethe was always falling in love, and that I
consider this a great virtue in his character.”
One more case: “Beethoven constantly had his love-affairs,” says
Wegeler. His first love was a Cologne beauty, who coquetted with him and
another man till both discovered she was engaged to a _third_! Several
times Beethoven made up his mind to marry; he made two definite
proposals, both of which were refused. One fatal objection was his habit
of falling in love with women above him in “rank.” “It is a frightful
thing,” he once wrote, “to make the acquaintance of such a sweet
creature and to lose her immediately; and nothing is more insupportable
than thus to have to confess one’s own foolishness.” One of his flames,
an opera singer, gave as a reason why she refused him that he was “so
ugly and half-cracked!”