Various

By Frank S. Arnett

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 dorÉe 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.