IN THE ROMANTIC AGE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 221, 14 June 1930, Page 29

IN THE ROMANTIC AGE

(1) PAST. There is an irresistible fascination in old love-letters, with their timestained pages and lingering perfume. Some of the most beautiful letters ever written by a lover to Ids lady were those inspired by the passion of the poet Keats for Fanny Brawne, as when he wrote: — Sweetest Fanny,—You fear sometimes I do not love you so much as you wish. My dear girl, I love you ever and ever, and without reserve. The more I have known, the more I have loved. In every way—even my jealousies have been agonies of love—in the hottest fit I ever had I would have died for you. I have vexed you too much. But for Love! Can I help it? You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile, the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. Where, too, will you find the utter selflessness and surrender of true love more beautifully pictured than'in this passage from one of Victor Hugo’s letters to Adele Foucher, giving her his conception of a lover’s duties and privileges:— Only too happy if she deign sometimes to cast a pitying look upon her slave, and to remember him in the hour of danger! Alas llf she only allow me to give my life to anticipate her every desire, all her caprices; if she but permit me to kiss with respect her adored footprints; if she but consent to lean upon me at times amidst the difficulties of life; then I shall have obtained the only happiness to which I have the presumption to aspire.

But even Victor Hugo could not more eloquently express love’s self-sacrifice than Juliette Drouet its powers of idolatry in this passage from one of the twenty thousand letters in which she poured out her soul to the great poet:— For me there is no man on this earih but you. The others I perceive only through your love. I enjoy nothing without you. You are the .prism through which the sunshine, the green landscape and life itself appear to me. I do not know how to employ my body or my soul away ' from you. I only come to life again in your presence. I need your kisses upon my Ups, your love in my soul.’

Love’s gratitude has probably never found a more exalted expression than in one of the letters Balzac, ttie French author, wrote to Mme. Hanska at a time when he was dangerously ill. and feared that death would snatch him from the reward of his long waiting for the woman he loved so dearlyThanks be to you, O dear and tender consoling angel, who alone have poured into mv desolate life some drops of pure happiness. It is a very great and noble mission to console those who have found no consolation upon earth.

WHEN MEN WERE “SLAVES”

Probably in no language will you find love-letters more exquisitely pure, tender, and devoted than those exchanged by the poets, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, as the latter lay racked with suffering in her darkened room.

“As for happiness,” Miss Barrett wrote in one of them, “the words you use so tenderly are in my heart already, making me happy, and I am so happy by you. “Also, I may say solemnly that the greatest proof of love I could give you is to be happy because of you; and even you cannot judge and see how great a proof that is.” To this Browning answered: — My hope and aim are to preserve this love, not to fall from it—for which I trust to God, who procured it for me, and doubtless can preserve it. You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another. I am all gratitude and all pride that my life has been so crowned by you. The ill-starred love of Mary Wollstonecraft, the authoress (whose daughter married Shelley), for Captain Imlay inspired some of the most beautiful and pathetic letters ever penned by woman. “Thy lips,” she writes in one of them, “then feel softer than soft, and I rest my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world. “I have not left the hue of love out of the picture, the rosy glow, and fancy has spread it over my own cheeks, I believe, for I feel them burning, wtiile a delicious tear trembles in my eyes.” The most remarkable love-letters published in recent years are those written by Lord Beaconsfield to Lady Bradford when “Dizzy” was seventy years old. In one of them he wrote:— I am certain there is no greater misfortune than to have a heart that will not grow old. It requires all the sternness of public life to sustain one. AND (2) PRESENT. 1930 LOVE WITHOUT LAVENDER. Bonzo, old dear, Good news, my cherub. Just won a packet on a horse and want to celebrate. All the boys have got dates, so thought of you. What about a spot of dinner to-night, and then a “leg” show? Call for me round about seven. Too fagging to pick you up. You understand. Now, don’t be a vile body. Pull yourself together and ’phone me through that you are coming. Yours at the moment. TARZAN. P.S.—We must get married one day. Or is it too suburban? —“G” in the “Sunday Express.”