I make no allusion here to the heroine of Mr. Haggard's well-known
romance. What I am thinking of at the moment is not the impossible 'She'
of recent fiction, but the 'not impossible She' of Master Richard
Crashaw--the 'perfect monster,' in female form, who was to 'command his
heart and him,' and whom he was good enough to sketch for us in advance
within the limits of some forty verses--the damsel whose beauty was to
'Owe not all its duty
To gaudy tire or glistering shoe-tye;'
whose face was to be
'Made up
Out of no other shop
Than what Nature's white hand sets ope;'
who was to have 'a well-tamed heart,'
'Sidneian showers
Of sweet discourse,'
and so on, and of whom the poet was so kind as to say that, if Time knew
of anyone who answered the description,
'Her that dares be
What these lines wish to see--
I seek no further--it is She.'
Master Crashaw is not the only man by many who in the past has been
seduced into putting into words and verse the aspirations, on this
subject, which filled his soul. It would probably be found, if anyone
had the requisite patience to go through with it, that there has been
scarcely a poet who has not thus given expression to his conception of
an ideal woman and to his desire for her companionship. Much more
numerous, to be sure, are the rapturous tributes which have been paid to
actual persons of the other sex: the poetry of praise, as written by men
of women, has not yet been exhausted, and probably never will be. But
the ideal description has generally come first, and very notable it has
usually been. Sir Thomas Wyatt declared that
'A face that should content me wondrous well
Should not be fair, but lovely to behold;
Of lively look, all grief for to repel;
With right good grace,'
et caetera. He further asserted that 'her tress also should be of crisped
gold,' and intimated graciously that
'With wit, and these, perchance I might be tied,
And knit again with knot that should not slide.'
His contemporary, Lord Surrey, included among 'the means to attain happy
life,' 'the faithful wife, without debate'--that is, I suppose, a lady
without forty-parson-power of talk--a not impossible, nay, fairly
common, She.
In a lyric by Beaumont and Fletcher, we find the supposed speaker giving
utterance to a series of such wishes. 'May I,' he says, 'find a woman
fair, And her mind as clear as air!'
'May I find a woman rich,
And of not too high a pitch!...
May I find a woman wise,
And her falsehood not disguise!...
May I find a woman kind,
And not wavering like the wind!...'
And, in truth, he talks throughout as if he did not expect to discover
any such rarity. Everyone knows the little poem in which Ben Jonson
details his preferences in women's dress, declaring that 'a sweet
disorder' does more bewitch him 'than when art Is too precise in every
part.' But elsewhere he paints for us, not a perfect feminine attire,
but the faultless maid herself, as he would have her:
'I would have her fair and witty,
Favouring more of Court than City,
A little proud, but full of pity,
Light and humorous in her toying,
Oft building hopes and soon destroying...
Neither too easy nor too hard,
All extremes I would have barr'd.'
That, it would seem, was rare Ben's ideal.
Carew, it is notorious, professed to despise 'lovely cheeks or lips or
eyes,' if they were not combined with 'A smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts, and calm desires.' A rosy cheek, a coral lip, and even
star-like eyes, as he sagely said, would waste away. And in this
somewhat priggish, and perhaps not wholly sincere, vein, he finds a
rival in the anonymous bard who declared that he did not demand
'A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair,'
and so on, but instead,
'A tender heart, a loyal mind,
Which with temptation I would trust,
Yet never link'd with error find--
'One in whose gentle bosom I
Could pour my secret heart of woes,
Like the care-burthen'd honey-fly
That hides his murmurs in the rose.'
So Bedingfield, conceding to friend Damon 'the nymph that sparkles in
her dress,' avows his own fondness for the maid 'whose cheeks the hand
of Nature paints.' Of this young person he says:
'No art she knows or seeks to know;
No charm to wealthy pride will owe;
No gems, no gold she needs to wear;
She shines intrinsically fair.'
Cowley, it will be remembered, in sketching his notion of true
happiness, included in it the picture of
'A mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only beloved and loving me!'
With that 'one dear She'--and a few other things--he thought he could
get on pretty comfortably. But probably at once the most obliging and
most exigent of modern lovers was the sentimental gentleman to whose
feelings Mrs. Bowen-Graves ('Stella') gave appropriate voice in the
over-familiar 'My Queen.'
'I will not dream of her tall and stately--
She that I love may be fairy light;'
nay, more:
'I will not say she should walk sedately--
Whatever she does, it will sure be right.
'And she may be humble or proud, my lady,
Or that sweet calm which is just between'
(as if anyone could be a 'sweet calm'!); moreover:
'Whether her birth be noble or lowly,
I care no more than the spirit above;'
but there is at least one point upon which this gentleman insists:
'She must be courteous, she must be holy,
Pure in her spirit, that maiden I love'--
and, being that, she may depend upon the stars falling, and the angels
weeping, ere he ceases to love her, his Queen, his Queen!
Ah! the poets have much to answer for. Here is Mr. Longfellow assuring
his readers that
'No one is so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own;'
and here is Sir Edwin Arnold declaring, with equal confidence, that
'Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
For one lone soul another lonely soul'--
et caetera, et caetera. Is it any wonder that, in the face of such
encouragement, young men go on dreaming, each of the _dimidium suae
animae_ whom he is to meet by-and-by, and framing to that end all sorts
of beautiful ideals? It may be that the Shes thus dreamed of are 'not
impossible'--they may 'arrive;' but it is as well not to be too
sanguine. And, above all, it is as well not to draw too extravagant a
picture, if only because you may not be worthy of the original when you
see it. Corydon is too disposed to expect in Phyllis charms and virtues
for which he might find it difficult to show counterparts in himself. If
the lady is to be the pattern of beauty and of goodness, ought not the
gentleman to bring an equal amount of capital into the matrimonial firm?