Recent excavations outside Pompeii's Stabian gate brought to light the
bodies of a hundred hapless fugitives smothered two thousand years ago
within actual sight of the fleet that came to save them. Necklaces
were still borne on the charred but once beautiful necks of the women,
and bracelets encircled their slender wrists. Thrice around the
skeleton arm of one wound a chain of gold, and priceless stones were
set in rings that still clung to the agony-clinched fingers of those
that there had faced the fatal fumes of Vesuvius.
As one reflects upon these discoveries, he is at first inclined to
philosophize on the slightness wrought by time in woman's nature. For
were not all these blazing gems and precious metals but proof that the
jewel madness that burns in her veins to-day has coursed through
woman's veins throughout the ages?
But such a reflection is only partly correct. Among those bracelets,
chains of gold and sparkling rings were many that proved no love of
luxury, no mere desire for barbaric bedecking. Surely some were tokens
of love, seized at that last moment when a hideous death approached;
seized, too, when the choice lay between objects of far greater
intrinsic value and these precious trinkets--precious because speaking
with silent eloquence of long gone throbs of ecstasy, and of a bliss
such as these women, even had they escaped, could never again have
known. Glance around the room in which you are now seated, and,
whether you are gray haired and dignified, or with youthful happiness
are anticipating to-night's cotillion, dare you deny that the
supposition is probable? Is there not somewhere near you, in sight,
where occasionally your hand may touch it with regretful love, or
hidden in some secret drawer whence you rarely trust yourself to take
it--is there not a jewel, a scented glove, a bit of ribbon, a faded
violet, or a lock of hair? Whatever it is, in time of a
catastrophe--hastened flight--would it not first be seized in
preference to your costliest treasure?
If you have no such possession, doubtless you are more peacefully
content than those of us that have, but you have missed the supreme
and most agonizing happiness with which the race is cursed.
For long before those Pompeiian days, when _Nydia_ would have welcomed
renewed blindness in exchange for one glimpse of _Glaucus_, or of some
token of his care, men and women have cherished the gifts of those
they loved. True, not all have valued them, nor have all had the power
so to do. The beautiful Valois, quivering beneath the brand of the
red-hot iron because of her madness for the cold, white diamond, knew
nothing of the secret bliss in possessing purely as a token of love
either a diamond or a rose. Nor did Maria Louisa, leaving her
Jove-like husband to his fate, and escaping to Vienna with the crown's
most costly jewels. Nor, I am afraid, did the majority of the American
women competing in the attempt to eclipse royalty itself in their
display of gems at the coronation of King Edward.
There have been others, too, that knew nothing of the love
token--others whose ignorance of it was less deserving of censure.
None was exchanged by Dante and Beatrice, even though from their first
meeting, as he has told, "love lorded it over my soul!" Nor do I
recall that any passed between Petrarch and Laura, even though at her
death he wrote that "there is nothing more left me to live for"! But
these were examples of the super-ideal love, such as is seldom known
on earth, and such as, doubtless, would be unsatisfying to you or to
me. We of a generation that demands, above all, the tangible in
everything, whether financial or flirtatious, of the heart or of the
stomach--we must have, must we not, real kisses, warm from the mouth,
and actual love tokens, freely offered by or passionately pleaded from
the hand of her we love?
In this we are far from original--although, as I hope to show, men, at
least, are to-day more influenced by such keepsakes than ever before
in the history of the world. The great majority of the human race,
from peasant girls to empresses, and from shepherd lads to omnipotent
tyrants, have known, to some extent, the sadness and the joy of the
love token. The ballad that the lover-poet addressed to one who was
"just a porcelain trifle, just a thing of puffs and patches," but who
was, just the same, his adored--the ballad love token pleased even
that unemotional doll. "And you kept it and you read it, _belle
Marquise_!" Silly or supreme, all are vulnerable.
Therefore it is with no lack of authority that you learn that the
human race has known it for some centuries--this love token. It took
the form of birds among the ancient Greeks, although as for this
purpose the birds were sold in the Athenian public market, the token
lost its chief charm--secrecy. The Romans had a better--the ring,
which, as the symbol of eternity, like the Egyptian snake touching its
mouth with its tail, was the ideal emblem of love, which, too, should
be, even if it seldom is, eternal.
Of course there were times, ages ago, when the love token had no
place. When man was universally polygamous, and when the form of
marriage was by capture, it can scarcely have existed. Nor could it
have known the days when the _jeunesse doree_ of Babylonia and Assyria
assembled before the temple where twice a year all marriageable girls
were brought together to be sold. Probably, also, the bride of early
Britain never heard of one. As she was not permitted to refuse an
offer of marriage, how could she ever have given a token of love?--at
least to the man that became her husband.
But in time even the British maiden knew the love token. An ancient
manuscript found in the Harleian library says that it was decreed that
when lovers parted their gifts were to be returned intact or in an
equivalent value, "unless the lover should have had a kiss when his
gift was presented, in which case he can only claim half the value of
his gift; the lady, on the contrary, kiss or no kiss, may claim her
gift again!" Surely the first part of this was needless; was a love
token, given in person, ever unaccompanied by a kiss? "However,"
continues this ordinarily quite sensible decree, "this extends only to
gloves, rings, bracelets and such like small wares."
I protest against "wares" in such association. It sounds something too
commercial for so fragile and fleeting a thing as love. And, too, it
is an error to speak of a glove as though it were of less value than
an automobile. In a lover's eyes the merest trifle is the most
cherished token of love. Her _carte des dances_, for instance--for has
not that dainty program and its tiny pencil been suspended by its
silken cord from her soft, white arm? Or--but certainly this is no
trifle--a satin slipper, absurdly small and with adorable curves.
Above all others, however, the miniature is the typical token of love.
There lives no woman whose breath comes more quickly at the sound of
some man's voice, or whose fingers tremble with happiness as they open
his longed-for letters; no man whose hand, at a word lightly spoken of
the one most dear to him, would instantly seek, were it still worn,
the sword at his side; no one even faintly remembering the days of
youth and longing and sweet unrest, whose heart does not respond to
the mere mention of the miniature. The old family portraits, in their
heavy frames of gilt, are very precious; even the hideous crayons must
not be hidden in the garret, although we may wish they never had been
drawn; and in the ancient baronial homes of England are portrait
galleries of which the owners are justly proud.
But these are works treasured largely because of inherited arrogance.
At best they are a part of the furnishing, at times almost a part of
the very architecture. How different the miniature! Whereas the family
portrait is for show, here we have that which proverbially in secret
has been cherished. Quickly it has been thrust next a fair,
lace-covered and fright-panting bosom; it has been the sole souvenir
of a stolen happiness, an almost voice-gifted reminder of dear, dead
days of the long ago; it was the pledge of his return given in the
hasty or hard-fought flight of the daring youth whose image it is; or
perhaps it bears the lady's face, and has been found on the breast of
a warrior slain in battle; or, dearer than holy relic, was still
caressed by the poet troubadour, even though he knew his mistress long
ago proved faithless. More than one queen, for reasons of state,
placed at the side of a mighty king, has gazed each night in hopeless
adoration at the miniature of some one far from the throne, yet who,
supreme and alone, reigned in her heart.
No token of love permitted by Venus has been the recipient of half the
secret kisses the miniature may boast; none has so frequently been
washed in tears. Almost, in fact, the tiny bit of color set in bijou
jewels might be hidden by a single pressure of the lips, and one tear
would be to it a bath of beauty. Indeed, its very name reveals it as
the love token, for it comes to us from a certain word of French
having in English the most velvet sounding and most endearing meaning
in our somewhat limited language of passion.
Miniatures, to be sure, are the love tokens of comparative
maturity--and, unfortunately, of comparative prosperity. Professor
Sanford Bell, fellow in Clark University, who has the somewhat dubious
honor of being the pioneer in the scientific treatment of the emotion
of love between the sexes--I dislike that line intensely, but, really,
I see no way out of it--has discovered that "as early as the sixth and
seventh year presents are taken from their places of safekeeping,
kissed and fondled as expressions of love for the absent giver." This
is very beautiful and, doubtless, very true, but at the presumable age
of the reader--anywhere from eighteen to eighty--one would kiss a
miniature rather than a bird's nest or an apple, however rosy the
latter may have been last winter.
Miniatures, flowers, handkerchiefs, gloves and ribbons, then, ever
have been the favorite love tokens. We in the America of to-day are
inclined to substitute houses and lots or steam yachts. But this is a
temporary error. In time we will return to the glove, which means the
same as the honestly outstretched or lovingly clasping hand; and to
the flowers, the significance of each of which was perfectly
understood by the old time Greek and Roman, himself gathering the
chaplet that was to grace his sweetheart's brow. Better a thousand
times than the wretched watch chains of hair worn by our fathers would
be the embroidered handkerchiefs tucked triumphantly in their hats by
the gallants of Elizabeth's day. That, to be sure, was a bit
flamboyantly boastful; to exhibit a love token is as criminal as to
boast of a kiss. The actor-lover is alone in clamoring for the
calcium.
In this secrecy, so essential to the love token, our writers of
romance have found salvation. Even Fielding, to whom we owe the birth
of the English novel, could not overlook it--although we are almost
asleep when we reach the point where _Billy Booth_, about to depart,
is presented by _Amelia_ with a collection of trinkets packed in a
casket worked by her own fair hands. It wasn't the least bit like it,
was it?
The fact is, we must turn to France for the real thing, and to whom
more satisfyingly than to Dumas and his reckless musketeers, each of
whom, as well as the author, dwelt in "a careless paradise," and
constantly at hand had some reminder of her who, for the moment, was
the one woman on earth. We scarcely have a bowing acquaintance with
these three worthies before the valiant _D'Artagnan_ makes the almost
fatal but well-intentioned mistake of calling the attention of
_Aramis_ to the fact that he has stepped upon a handkerchief--a
handkerchief _Aramis_, in fact, has covered with his foot to conceal
from a crowd of roisterers; a love token from _Mme. de Bois-Tracy_--a
dainty affair, all richly embroidered, and with a coronet in one
corner.
Again, surely you are neither too old nor too young to remember this:
At the moment she spoke these words a rap on the ceiling made
her raise her head, and a voice which reached her through the
ceiling cried:
"Dear Madame Bonacieux, open the little passage door for me, and
I will come down to you."
Melodramatic? Certainly. Cheap? I'm not so sure--in fact, no! not to
any man whose heart is not far grayer than his beard. For then
commenced as pretty a race as ever was--_Athos_, _Porthos_, _Aramis_
and _D'Artagnan_ speeding from Paris to London, _D'Artagnan_ bearing a
letter; each in turn to take it as they are killed by the cardinal's
hirelings--all this to save the honor of _Anne of Austria_ by bringing
back the love token given by her to the _Duke of Buckingham_, who
keeps it in a tiny chapel draped with gold-worked tapestry of Persian
silk, on an altar beneath a portrait of the woman he loves.
_D'Artagnan's_ part in that adventure is the most gallant deed known
in all the literature of love tokens. There have been similar gifts
that were more tragic; what was the famous diamond necklace but a
hopeless, mad love token from the Cardinal de Rohan to Marie
Antoinette? And there have been those that were more sad; recall the
great Mirabeau, dying amid flowers that were themselves death,
drinking the hasheesh that was poison, placing on his forehead the
tiny handkerchief drenched with the tears of the one beautiful woman
that disinterestedly had loved him; the one that, forced from his last
bedside, had refused a casket filled with gold and had left behind
this final, mute and eloquent token of her love.
The poets, of course, ever have had a greater affection for love
tokens than have the novelists. With some this has been real; with
others "copy." Keats, who, through all his brief life, knew the
consummate luxury of sadness, had on his deathbed the melancholy
ecstasy of a letter from his love--and this he lacked the courage to
read, for it would have anguished him with a clearer knowledge of all
the exquisite happiness he was leaving on earth; his love, like his
art, having been beautiful in its immaturity. And so this last token
of love, unread, was placed at his own desire beside him in his
coffin.
Decidedly we are less touched by Tom Moore, who desired that, at his
death, his heart should be presented to his mistress:
Tell her it liv'd upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue while it lingered here.
Which fact must have been a great comfort to the recipient of this
final love token.
But Byron was the man for love tokens. To "Mary" on receiving her
picture, to "a lady" who sent him a lock of her hair braided with his
own, and to scores of others, he wrote still living lines. Several
such verses seem now more ludicrous than lovely. To her who presented
him with the velvet band that had bound her tresses, he vowed:
Oh! I will wear it next my heart;
'Twill bind my soul in bonds to thee;
From me again 'twill ne'er depart,
But mingle in the grave with me.
This was written in 1806. He was then eighteen. Think of the love
tokens "binding his soul," and otherwise encumbering him, during the
eighteen years that followed, and of all those, if he kept his
promises, that now "mingle in the grave" with him! Fortunately,
however, the poet had the happy facility of disencumbering himself.
His love tokens to one unfortunate were a chain and lute. The gifts
were charmed, "her truth in absence to divine." The chain shivered in
the grasp of any other that took it from her neck; the chords of the
lute were mute when another attempted to sing to her of his love. And
how in his element was Byron when he could write to her:
'Tis past--to them and thee adieu--
False heart, frail chain and silent lute.
But, despite Moore's insincerity and Byron's vagaries, the man of
to-day more frequently, and longer than woman, cherishes his tokens of
love.
How often do men bring breach of promise suits? Women--none possibly
that you or I personally know--will calmly enter the courtroom and
brutally exhibit their love letters and love tokens--the most sacred
things on earth, are they not?--to indifferent jurors, gleeful
reporters and the gloating public.
Compare such a courtroom scene with the floral games of the Toulouse
of long ago, and the legendary origin of the golden violet. Imprisoned
by her father because of her love, the girl threw from between the
bars a bouquet to her lover--a bouquet of a violet, an eglantine and a
marigold. In a later siege, the lover saved the father's life, but
lost his own. Dying, he took the flowers from his bosom and implored
that they be returned to his sweetheart. The maiden's death followed
quickly. All she had on earth she left, in memory of her love token,
to the celebration of the floral games, and the golden violet became
the troubadours' most cherished prize.
There are still such girls--but they are not often met with, and, once
met with, are likely to have changed on a second meeting. "Pale ghosts
of a passionate past come thronging," at times, to them perhaps; more
likely they join with their companions in cynically singing:
But now how we smile at the fond love token,
And laugh at the sweet words spoken low.
This phase of woman's character is not particularly novel. Poor Sir
John Suckling, long curled, arrayed in velvets and satins, a princely
host, seemingly the typical gallant, yet secretly devoured by
melancholy, a suicide at the end, doubtless knew whereof he spoke when
he said:
I am confirmed a woman can
Love this, or that, or any man:
This day she's melting hot,
To-morrow swears she knows you not.
The twentieth century girl, of the rare, real sort, cherishes her love
tokens not, perhaps, with the same, but with an equal, affection as
she of troubadour days. Her tokens, to be sure, are different:
Your boxing gloves slyly I've fastened
Out of sight in the corner, right here.
I'd put them up high, but I "dassent,"
You see it _would_ look rather queer!
And that the twentieth century girl of this sort, even if boxing
gloves are love tokens with her, is just the same dear, old-time girl
we all love, she proves by her ultimate confession:
Dear old chap, I'm not given to gushing,
You know, but I'm tired to-night.
. . . . .
I think I am centuries older,
Yet if you were here I dare say,
I should put my head down on your shoulder
And cry--you remember my way!
Despite this up-to-dateness, this true good fellowship, or perhaps
because of it, many women still living there are that have known the
anguish of a love token that should have been destroyed in the long
ago--in the long ago when the heartbreak had come--and gone, as they
thought. There have been women of supreme beauty and of brainy
splendor, dressed to descend where the words were to be spoken, "Until
death do you part"--who at that last moment of freedom have seized
with a curse and angrily torn into shreds the cherished souvenir of a
love of--oh, when was it? Other brides there have been, arranged for
the sacrifice, that have locked the door while there was yet time,
and, kissing the love token of that long ago, have thrust it into
their bosom, that their heart might beat against it even while,
kneeling at the altar, they whispered, "I will."
You don't believe it? Oh, very well; some day this madness, that is
rearoused by a faded violet or a time-stained ribbon, may enter into
even your life. But I hope you may be spared it.
A man? Ah, how often when he has grappled sturdily with duty, with
honor--how often has the love token, with divine promise, stared him
in the face and cried like Clarimonde returned from the grave:
If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God himself
in His paradise; the angels themselves will be jealous of thee.
I am Beauty--I am Youth--I am Life--come to me!--together we
shall be Love. Our lives will flow on like a dream--in one
eternal kiss.
Has enough been said to cause you to wonder why no one has written the
history of the love token? Such a stately and wondrous work it should
make! Why has no one honored it with even the rambling lightness of an
essay? Elia could have done that much--and Leigh Hunt have done it
even better. Lamb, it is true, has talked with quaint airiness of
valentines, which are a sort of love token, and has admitted, poor old
bachelor! that the postman's knock on St. Valentine's Day brings
"visions of love, of Cupids, of Hymens!--delightful, eternal
commonplaces; which, having been, will always be."
But this, while, perhaps, the essence of the love token, is not its
history, and I shall hazard a guess as to why that is not written. The
reason is that it is not only the cherished token of a woman's love,
but is also the irritating reminder of her equality with man. At the
altar she unhesitatingly swears to love eternally--an oath sometimes
beyond her power to keep; but in increasing numbers she refuses to
make the promise of obedience--a promise always possible to fulfill.
With the freedom that in this generation is hers, even before
marriage, has come a fierce desire for monopoly, and to such a one the
token of a single love has lost its tenderness. She keeps such tokens
by the score, with all the pride of a Sioux warrior in his array of
scalps. The man lovingly cherishes a single one. To her he is an
incident in life's story. To him she is its climax.
With this increased freedom permitted in woman's conduct, the love
tokens she gives have become even more treasured, for the liberty she
now possesses has turned her love tokens into fertilizers of a
slumbering jealousy. As they were unknown when woman had no choice,
was bought or captured, so they became again unknown in the one-time
commonplace of domesticity, wherein there was no more room for the
preservation of love tokens than there would be in a seraglio under
lock and key. Non-possession, or, at least, uncertainty, is for the
love token a perfectly safe endowment policy in the insurance company
of passion. Thus it is that the liberty to-day given woman in American
society has made the love token more treasured than ever it has been
in all the history of the world. Yet no one writes its history; not
only because of the angering equality it bespeaks, but also, and
chiefly, because the men that could write it best are those that
mingle something akin to a curse with the kiss they secretly press
upon some trifling souvenir, men to whom it has brought suffering, or
to whom only a hopeless longing after ideal love is represented by the
token--which is rarely the evidence of triumph, but rather of regret,
the reminder of something lost or unattained.
But even those that suffer most at sight of some such trifle, those to
whom it would be anguish to write its history, would not for a throne
part with it. And yet you, perhaps, are one of those that will have no
conception of the meaning of all that I have said. Do you know what it
is never to have felt the supremity of the love token? Are you so
engulfed in the greed for gold that it could not touch you even were
it to be slipped into your grasping fingers--so keen for power or so
lustful for fame? Or you may be of those that believe romantic love to
belong to the abnormal. But, in either case, even to you, like De
Maupassant's horror-stricken youth dragged to the threshold of the
priesthood, the day may come when you will shriek:
To never love--to turn from the sight of all beauty--to put out
one's own eyes--to hide forever crouching in the chill shadows
of some cloister--to visit none but the dying--to watch by
unknown corpses!
For that is what it is to live without touching your lips to a token
of love--even of a love that is lost.