Love through history

Well, here we are, the sur­viv­ors of yet anoth­er Valentine’s Day. And Lapham’s Quarterly has decided to bless us with a splen­did essay on the sym­bol­ism of the heart through his­tory, which coin­cid­ent­ally ends up being a his­tory of the gen­es­is of “romantic love”. Per­son­ally, I was struck by how love in Galen­ic the­ory is tied to the liv­er (also the seat of forti­tude) while the rest of the emo­tions gets to occupy the heart: How much cour­age does it take to love?
Anoth­er can of worms, unopened, is the ques­tion of how Love-Then could be under­stood by us (lov­ers all?) now, or if at all.

West­ern wind when wilt thou blow
That small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

 

While these Middle Eng­lish lines may sound com­fort­ably famil­i­ar, I sus­pect it is their short­ness that sug­gests easy com­pat­ib­il­ity to our notions. As soon as poets become more elab­or­ate, “love” emerges as very his­tor­ic­ally spe­cif­ic and idio­syn­crat­ic indeed:

Take me to you, impris­on me, for I,
Except that you enthrall me, nev­er shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you rav­ish me.

 

It might not be quite fair to resort to Donne to dis­pel that com­fort­ably squishy feel­ing of fake under­stand­ing that “West­ern wind” has con­jured up. Then again, who but Donne with his blend of sex, faith, and viol­ence in the Holy Son­nets can make us post­mod­erns under­stand that to the 17th cen­tury love may eas­ily be spir­itu­al & lofty (divine lit­er­ally, in this case, with “you” being God) as well as down­right creepy. No prob­lem there, it seems. And, lest I should be accused of being too hard on Donne, here’s Boswell’s Dr. John­son for you:

In a man whom reli­gious edu­ca­tion has secured from licentious indul­gences, the pas­sion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceed­ingly strong; being unim­paired by dis­sip­a­tion, and totally con­cen­trated in one object. This was exper­i­enced by John­son, when he became the fer­vent admirer of Mrs. Port­er, after her first hus­band’s death. Miss Port­er told me that when he was first intro­duced to her moth­er, his appear­ance was very for­bid­ding: he was then lean and lank, so that his immense struc­ture of bones was hideously strik­ing to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply vis­ible. He also wore his hair [i.e. no wig], which was straight and stiff, and sep­ar­ated behind: and he often had, seem­ingly, con­vuls­ive starts and odd ges­tic­u­la­tions, which ten­ded to excite at once sur­prise and ridicule. Mrs. Port­er was so much engaged by his con­ver­sa­tion that she over­looked all these extern­al dis­ad­vant­ages, and said to her daugh­ter, “This is the most sens­ible man that I ever saw in my life.” […] But though Mr. Topham Beau­c­leark used archly to men­tion John­son’s hav­ing told him, with much grav­ity, “Sir, it was a love mar­riage on both sides,” I have from my illus­trous friend the fol­low­ing curi­ous account of their jour­ney to church upon the nup­tial morn: “Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fant­ast­ic­al notion that a woman of spir­it should use her lov­er like a dog. So, Sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and com­plained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end.”

Of which Romantic error John­son, that “most sens­ible man,” speedily lib­er­ated his love by rid­ing up alone next, leav­ing the future Mrs. John­son to catch up with him if she could, reduced to tears.

Eliza­beth “Tatty” John­son, wid­owed Porter

A slightly cal­lous sens­ib­il­ity goes eas­ily hand in hand with pas­sion­ate devo­tion and fer­vent admir­a­tion, it seems, and surely, the fore­most respons­ib­il­ity of a hus­band is the mor­al edu­ca­tion of his wife: The woman must know her place! “I resolved to begin as I meant to end.”

I have decided to include the full descrip­tion of John­son’s splen­did physique above to give you an idea of who it is who does the snub­bing, erm, edu­ca­tion. Note the wid­ow Port­er­’s not unsub­stan­tial charms, by com­par­is­on. This wed­ding party was not to be the stuff of old romances, indeed, nor, how­ever, of more mod­ern equi­val­ents either.
Love comes in many guises, and some of them are thank­fully his­tor­ic­ally obsolete.

About Therese-Marie Meyer

Welcome, oh curious one! TM teaches literature at the Institute for English and American Studies.
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