Perhaps the main reason why no one has anticipated me in writing a book showing that Love is an exclusively modern sentiment, and tracing its gradual development, is because no distinction has been commonly made between Romantic Love and Conjugal Affection, though they differ as widely as maternal love and friendship. The occurrence of noble examples of conjugal attachment as far back as Homer has obscured the fact that pre-nuptial or Romantic Love is almost as modern as the telegraph, the railway, and the electric light.

Two thousand and four hundred years ago the Greek philosopher Empedokles taught that there are four elements—fire, air, water, earth—which remain unchanged amid all combinations. Chemistry has long since shown that these supposed elements are compounds, and that the number of real elements is much larger.

In a similar way the tender or family emotions have been gradually distinguished from one another. Among the ancient Greeks f???t?? meant both friendship and sexual love, which, as we have seen, they strangely confounded, both in theory and in practice. To-day we distinguish not only between friendship and sexual love, but between the two phases of sexual love—Romantic and Conjugal Affection—the former of which was unknown to the Greeks. We do this not only because, as in the case of the chemical elements, our knowledge has become more precise and subtle, but because these emotions have been gradually developed, and have assumed different characteristics, so that it would be difficult at present to mistake one for the other.

As regards the difference between Conjugal and Romantic Love, however, the current conceptions are not yet so clear and definite; many good folks being, in fact, inclined to frown upon the suggestion that there is any such difference. Yet it is useless for them to endeavour, with well-meant hypocrisy, to impress upon the young the notion that Love is unchangeable, since no one who keeps his eyes open can help noticing how differently married couples behave from lovers. In marriage the dazzling blue flame of Romantic Love gradually grows smaller and dies away. But the coals may retain their glow and perchance keep the heart warmer than the former flickering flames of Love.

There is, indeed, a great moral advantage to be gained by frankly acknowledging that Love undergoes a metamorphosis in wedlock. It breaks the sting of cynicism. For if we are told that “marriage is the sunset of love,” or that “the only sure cure for love is marriage,” we may calmly retort, “What of it?” When the romantic passion subsides, its place is taken by another group of emotions, equally noble and conducive to the welfare of society. It is not an annihilation of anything, but simply a change: losing some pleasures, but gaining others in their place; getting rid of some pains to be burdened with others. Love’s metamorphosis into conjugal affection is like that of a wild rose into its red berry. Though less fragrant and lovely than the rose, the berry is almost as warm in colour, endures longer, and brings forth fresh plants to adorn future seasons.

Similes, however, are not arguments; and it behoves us therefore, for the benefit of bachelors and old maids, and of married folks who never were in love, to point out definitely wherein conjugal differs from Romantic Love; which at the same time will explain why conjugal affection was able to exist so many centuries before Romantic Love.

In preceding pages a fragmentary attempt has been made to characterise Love, and to show how its growth was impeded through the inferior social and intellectual status of women and the absolute chaperonage of the young. Maidens and youths had no opportunity to meet and become acquainted. Barter, and considerations of rank and expediency, took the place of affection, and parental authority that of individual choice. There was no prolonged courtship, hence no jealousy of rivals, no female coyness and coquetry, no alternating hopes and doubts, no monopoly of mutual admiration, no ecstatic adoration, sympathetic sharing of lovers’ joys and griefs, or pride of conquest and possession.

Conjugal affection, on the other hand, was much less retarded in its growth by such artificial arrangements, the outcome of strong man’s brutal selfishness. Polygamy was the chief impediment; but as soon as woman became sufficiently “emancipated” to claim a husband of her own, the soil was ready for the growth of conjugal affection. In its early stages this form of affection must have been much more crude and simple than it is in modern society. In most instances it was probably little more than a mere superficial attachment, growing out of the habit of living together for some time; the husband being attached to his wife on account of the domestic comforts and ease she provided for him, and the wife to the husband very much as a dog is to his master, who, though cruel, yet takes care of and feeds him.

How crudely utilitarian the conjugal bond is among primitive men may be inferred from Mr. Wallace’s remarks already quoted as to the motives which guide the maidens of certain Amazon-valley tribes in choosing their husbands. There is, he says, “a trial of skill at shooting with the bow and arrow, and if the young man does not show himself a good marksman, the girl refuses him, on the ground that he will not be able to shoot fish and game enough for the family.”

With the ancient “classical” nations there were, unless the poets have strongly idealised their characters, examples of conjugal affection hardly differing from the most refined modern instances. Owing to the then prevalent contempt for the female mind, however, such cases cannot be accepted as fair samples of the “general article”; and they only allow us to infer that, as with Love and with genius, so with conjugal affection, there were some early perfect instances anticipating by many centuries the general course of emotional evolution.

In the dark and warlike mediÆval ages Conjugal Love, on the woman’s side, was apparently little more, as a rule, than a sense of devotion to her husband based on her need of protection against barbarous enemies; and what it was on the husband’s side may be inferred from his stern and often tyrannic rule in his own house, which was calculated to breed in his wife and children fear but neither conjugal nor filial affection.

In modern Conjugal Affection the elements are as diverse and as variously intermingled as in Love, if not more so; and it would be as difficult to find two cases of conjugal love exactly alike as two human faces, or two leaves in a forest. One man cherishes his wife chiefly on account of the home comfort she provides—the neat and tasteful domestic interior, the well-cooked dinners, the economic attention to household affairs, etc. Another man’s pride in his spouse is based on her conversational skill, her diplomatic art of asserting her place among the upper ten in society, and of adorning her drawing-rooms with the presence of prominent people of the day. A third husband loves his wife for her artistic accomplishments or her personal charms. Still another, an author, is devoted to his spouse because she cleverly assists his labours by criticism and suggestion, and still more because she takes such a sympathetic interest in his creations, and really thinks that no one since Shakspere has written like her own dear Adolphus.

These and a thousand like circumstances, with their attendant feelings, enter into the highly complex group of emotions subsumed under the name of Conjugal Love. Yet, since any one of these feelings may be absent without extinguishing Conjugal Affection, they cannot be regarded as its essentials or framework, but only as colouring material.

Nor is that which is commonly regarded as the strongest of all cements between husband and wife—the common love of their children—to be accepted as the essence of conjugal love. For childless couples present many of the most remarkable cases of devotion, while in many other cases the children not only fail to rekindle the torch of love, but even arouse jealousies and ill-feeling between their parents by showing a special preference for one or the other. Nevertheless, though not absolutely essential to conjugal love, the common parental feeling is one of its most important and constant ingredients; and there is none of its tributaries which adds more to the deep current of connubial bliss. It enables the parents to enjoy once more the simple pleasures of life, to which they had grown callous; it brings back the peculiarly delicious memories of their own childhood and youth; enables the father to discover his former sweetheart renewed in his daughter, and the mother her former lover in her son; while their common pride in the beauty or accomplishments of the children supplies them with a never-failing topic of conversation and source of sympathy.

And this suggests what must be regarded as the real kernel of conjugal attachment—a perennial mutual sympathy regarding not only the affairs of their children but every other domestic affair—in other words, a complete and necessary harmony of feelings and interests. The accent rests on the word necessary; for it is this feeling of necessary communion of interests that distinguishes conjugal affection from Love and from friendship, in both of which there is a mutual sympathy, but not so far-reaching and inevitable. A lover’s fame or disgrace may be keenly felt by his sweetheart or his friend, yet society does not associate them with the other’s reputation or disgrace; and if the infamy is too great, they can easily sever their bond, without leaving a spot on their own good name. Not so with husband and wife. His promotion is her honour, and his fall her humiliation; for they are inseparably associated in the public mind, and cannot be parted except through divorce, which is equivalent to social suicide. Therefore theirs is “one glory an’ one shame,” and their destiny to “share each other’s gladness and weep each other’s tears.”

To make this matrimonial harmony complete, it is necessary that there should be a real sense of companionship, i.e. common tastes and topics of conversation. “Unlikeness may attract,” says Mill, “but it is likeness which retains; and in proportion to the likeness is the suitability of the individuals to give each other a happy life.” The opposite qualities by which lovers are often attracted are chiefly of a physical nature. Where the mental differences are great—where he, for instance, is fond of books and music, while she wishes his books and his piano in Siberia; or she fond of parties, pictures, and theatres, and he bored to death by them: in such cases genuine Romantic Love cannot survive a few weeks of constant companionship, and hopes of nuptial bliss must end in disappointment.

ROMANCE IN CONJUGAL LOVE

Horwicz places the essence of Conjugal Love in the feeling of being indissolubly united; and this agrees substantially with our conclusion that it lies in a necessary mutual Sympathy concerning every affair of vital interest. Now if this obligato Sympathy is facilitated by a communion of tastes, as just suggested, there is no reason why conjugal life should not retain some of the other elements which constitute the charm of Romantic Love. Novelists and dramatists will perhaps continue to avoid wedded life as a theme because it lacks the plot-interest, the uncertainty, and the consequent Mixed Moods of pre-nuptial Love. Emotional Hyperbole, too, will rarely survive the honeymoon, for, as Addison remarks, “When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.” Yet a woman, too, is not such a bad thing after all, if you know how to manage her. Jealousy is a trait of Romantic Love that is only too apt to survive in marriage. By a judicious use of its sting a neglected wife can bring her husband back to her feet. But it is a double-edged tool, dangerous to toy with. The Pride of Conquest becomes changed into Pride of Possession or a vain feeling of Proprietorship, which will continue so long as the husband or the wife retains those self-sacrificing qualities which distinguished them during Courtship—which, however, rarely happens. Where possession is assured and sanctioned by law, Coyness is of course out of the question; yet a clever woman can by a judicious adaptation of the arts of Flirtation do much to keep alive the glowing coals of former romantic passion. All she has to do is to devise some novel methods of fascinating the husband, and then keep him at a distance till he resumes the tricks of devoted Gallantry which had once made him such an acceptable lover.

It is the growing indifference to Gallantry, to the Desire to Please, active and passive, that is responsible for the usual absence of romance in conjugal life. And there seems to be a general ungallant consensus among writers, masculine and feminine, that women are more responsible for this state of affairs than men. “The reason,” says Swift, “why so few marriages are happy, is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.” Young ladies have, no doubt, greatly improved since the days of Swift; but in the vast majority of cases their device still is to learn a few superficial tricks of “culture,” and to practise the art of personal adornment, until they have caught a husband, and then to bid good-bye to all music, and art, and study, and improvement of the mind, as well as to the “bother” of attending to Personal Beauty while the husband only is about. As if it were not a thousand times more important to retain the husband’s romantic adoration and Gallantry, originally based on that beauty, than to enjoy the momentary admiration of a third person!

On this topic the German poet Bodenstedt has some remarks which show that, after all, the excessive Oriental Jealousy which forbids women to appear unveiled in public rests on a basis of common sense:—

“Just as it is possible to trace most absurdities to an originally quite reasonable idea, so not a few things may be said in favour of the Oriental custom which allows women to adorn themselves only for their husband, and to unveil their face only before him, while outside of the house it is their duty to appear veiled and in as unattractive a costume as possible. With us, it is well known, the opposite is true: at home the women devote little attention to their toilet, and only adorn themselves when they have company or go out visiting; in one word, they display their charms and their finery more to please others than their own husband,” etc.

Surely no one wishes our women to reserve their charms exclusively for their husbands. On the contrary, such a proceeding would be considered quite as unreasonable and selfish as to lock up a Titian or a Murillo in a room accessible to a single person only; but certainly the husband should not be entirely overlooked in his wife’s Desire to Please by her Personal Beauty. His Pride on seeing others admire her does not alone suffice to prolong his romantic adoration. Don’t be too sure, Amanda, that your husband is yours because you are married. He is yours in Law, but not in Love, unless you preserve your personal charms in his presence.

The fact that, whereas in Romantic Love men are superior to women; in conjugal life, on the other hand, woman’s love is commonly much deeper and more lasting than man’s, indicates in itself that marriages are made or marred by women. (For the sake of the lovely alliteration some writers would have said—against their conscience—that “marriages are made or marred by men;” but alliteration will have to be ignored in this place in favour of facts.) Before marriage, women are more beautiful and fascinating than men, wherefore men love them more ardently than they love the men. After marriage, it is the men who grow more beautiful, more manly, in body as well as in mind; hence it is but natural that their wives should love them more and more. So would wives be loved more and more if they did not so soon after thirty lose their physical charms, without trying, by reading books or at least the newspapers, to make themselves intellectual companions of their husbands, able to converse interestingly on various topics.

The old excuse that motherhood inevitably lessens woman’s charms is all nonsense. Married women at thirty are almost always handsomer than old maids of thirty. Women grow stout and clumsy, or thin and faded so soon, not because they are mothers, but because they are indifferent to the laws of health; because they refuse to go out to get fresh air and exercise, which would preserve the freshness of their complexion, the graceful contours of their bodies, and the elasticity of their gait. The morbid fondness for a hot-house atmosphere, and the horror of fresh air, draughts, and vigorous exercise, have done more to shorten man’s Love and woman’s Beauty than all other causes combined. The road to lasting Love is paved with lasting Beauty.

Inasmuch as Conjugal Affection was not—as might be naturally supposed—historically developed from Romantic Love, since it existed long before Romantic Love, the peculiarities of this later passion are not normally present in Conjugal Love. To what extent, however, they can be smuggled in, has just been shown; and it is one of the great social tasks of the future to make Conjugal and Romantic Love as much alike as possible: not by making the poetry of romance more prosaic, but by making the prose of conjugal life more poetic. But so long as Romantic Love is discouraged, Conjugal Affection, too, will of course be unable to borrow its unique charms. Hence an additional reason for facilitating the opportunities for Courtship and prolonging its duration.

MARRIAGES OF REASON OR LOVE-MATCHES?

The number of parents who believe that their infallible wisdom is a better guide matrimonial than their daughters’ choice inspired by Love, is still so large that it is worth while to add a few words in the hope of removing this obstacle to the universal rule of Cupid. Let Mrs. Lynn-Linton be their spokeswoman. “If it seems a horrible thing,” she says, in The Girl of the Period, “to marry a young girl without her consent, or without any more knowledge of the man with whom she is to pass her life than can be got by seeing him once or twice in formal family conclave, it seems quite as bad to let our women roam about the world at the age when their instincts are strongest and their reason weakest—open to the flatteries of fools and fops—the prey of professed lady-killers—objects of loverlike attentions by men who mean absolutely nothing but the amusement of making love—the subjects for erotic anatomists to study at their pleasure. Who among our girls after twenty carries an absolutely untouched heart to the man she marries?”

No doubt there is force in these remarks: but they do not apply to the Girl of the Period. They apply only to the girl brought up on the old system of being left in complete ignorance regarding man and his wicked ways of heartless and meaningless flattery. But modern girls are not such fools as some people would think them. Tell them that men are only amusing themselves; a hint will suffice: and the man who imagines himself a “lady-killer” will suddenly find himself a victim of counter-flirtation and a butt of feminine sarcasm.

Tell girls, furthermore, not that every man loves his wife, but that many hate and maltreat their unfortunate spouse. This will make them cautious. Tell them that Love is not an absolute but a tentative passion, and that they must not yield to the first apparent symptoms and throw their hearts away frivolously. Tell them, above all, that men who are extremely gallant and complimentary, without being in the least embarrassed, are always insincere and sometimes dangerous: because a man who is truly in Love is always embarrassed. Tell them a few more such pessimistic truths about men, instead of allowing them to perish through optimistic ignorance, and the objections against free choice urged by Mrs. Lynn-Linton will vanish like vapour in sunlight. English and American girls are quite able to take care of themselves, because they are allowed to read all sorts of books, and therefore to know the world as it is. And if any one says that such knowledge has rendered English and American girls less delicate, less sweet and pure, than French and German hothouse buds, he utters an unmitigated falsehood.

Advocates of so-called “wisdom” marriages are fond of pointing out cases of unhappy married life, based originally on free Choice. But free Choice by no means always implies Love. Its motives are often pecuniary, or social; and in these cases the marriage actually comes under the head of “wisdom marriages,” whose champions are thus boxing their own ears. Besides, we must remember Byron’s words, that “many a man thinks he marries by choice who only marries by accident.” If a man marries his Rosaline before he has met his Juliet, he has only himself or his bad luck to blame, not Love.

The frequency with which runaway “love-matches” end unhappily, is adduced as another argument in favour of wisdom marriages. Two things are here forgotten: that in nineteen runaway matches out of twenty, the predominant passion is frivolity, not Love; and that quite a considerable proportion of unions not preceded by an elopement end unhappily; but being less romantic they are not so much talked about.

“Wisdom” marriages based on parental choice are those which have prevailed in the past: and we have seen how beautifully they coincided with woman’s degradation, ignorance, and social debasement.

Wisdom marriages are incompatible with Courtship, which becomes a superfluous preliminary to marriage. Modern methods of Courtship and engagement ordinarily prolong this period to about a year or two. This is the honeymoon, not of marriage, but of life itself, the time when earth is a paradise. During these two years the soul makes more progress in refinement, maturity, and insight than during any other decade of life. Shall all this happiness, all this refining influence, be thrown away with Love?

Compatibility of temper is the most important of all prerequisites to a happy marriage. Should Love be allowed to find out during Courtship if there is such a compatibility, before it is too late, or shall the inadequate judgment of parents unite two souls with as much mutual affinity as oil and water?

Self-sacrifice for their children is considered the noblest of parental traits. Were Schopenhauer right in claiming that in Love-matches the parents sacrifice their individual happiness to the wellbeing of their children—would not this be an additional motive for abhorring wisdom marriages, in which the interests of the parents alone are consulted?

MARRIAGE HINTS

It would be foolish to deny, on the other hand, that Reason should be consulted as much as possible as long as Love allows it to have the floor for a moment. Thus men might, before it is too late, have an eye to Benjamin Franklin’s advice in regard to large families and the age of marriage.

Mr. F. W. Holland of Boston has collected some statistics concerning which Mr. Galton says, “One of his conclusions was that morality is more often found among members of large families than among those of small ones. It is reasonable to expect this would be the case, owing to the internal discipline among members of large families, and to the wholesome sustaining and restraining effects of family pride and family criticism. Members of small families are apt to be selfish, and when the smallness of the family is due to the deaths of many of its members at early ages, it is some evidence either of weakness of the family constitution, or of deficiency of common sense or of affection on the part of the parents in not taking better care of them. Mr. Holland quotes in his letter to me a piece of advice by Franklin to a young man in search of a wife, ‘to take one out of a bunch of sisters,’ and a popular saying that kittens brought up with others make the best pets, because they have learned to play without scratching. Sir W. Gull has remarked that those candidates for the Indian Civil Service who are members of large families are on the whole the strongest.”

A second bit of advice given by Franklin is perhaps less unquestionable: “From the marriages that have fallen under my observation,” he says, "I am rather inclined to think that early ones stand the best chances of happiness. The temper and habits of the young are not become so stiff and uncomplying as when more advanced in life: they form more easily to each other, and hence many occasions of disgust are removed.... ‘Late children,’ says the Spanish proverb, ‘are early orphans.’ With us in America (1768) marriages are generally in the morning of life; our children are therefore educated and settled in the world by noon; and thus, our business being done, we have an afternoon and evening of cheerful leisure to ourselves.... By these early marriages we are blessed with more children; and from the mode among us founded by nature, every mother suckling and nursing her own child [1768], more of them are raised. Thence the swift progress of population among us, unparalleled in Europe."

“Marriages,” says Theodore Parker, “are best of dissimilar materials;” and Coleridge remarks, similarly: “You may depend upon it that a slight contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.” But would it be possible to find two individuals who did not present “a slight contrast of character”? Coleridge apparently did not think much of the average conjugal union of his day: “To the many of both sexes I am well aware,” he says, “this Eden of matrimony is but a kitchen-garden, a thing of profit and convenience, in an even temperature between indifference and liking.” What a married person wants is “a soul-mate as well as a house or yoke-mate.”

Young men are often warned not to marry for beauty, because it is but skin-deep. But surely a millimetre of beauty is worth more than a yard of ugliness, though whitewashed with rank, money, or general utility. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”