The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1869-08-21
The Heaven os sad Levers.

The Heaven os sad Lovers.
One of th6Fgrand nisfossunes OF the,
worlds, thatnen end women cannot be,
brought to pslr-pf ipfoperly. We have
como to setS Ssuoh store upon certain;
graces and virtues, thatsa man is never
satisfied until he discovers some particu-
lar woman possessed Of these. in greater
or less degree, whom he may make his
wife. The sexes are all at SKIES and
sevens. Here q woman he q dozen
lovers, all. anxious. to become her hus.
band; while her sister has none Some
they have at least couple of suitors. It
is clear that the wooed cannot marry both
wooers; nor does she consider it her
business, like Peg Woffington, to choke
of, in the interests of humanity, the as
pirations of that lover whose case must
necessarily be hopeless. She is not re-
sponsible. Nature has given her big
eyes and small fingers; she is not aware
Of having granted any special encourage
ment to the young man; and if he, in
the face of the obvious fact that she has
already lover and q suitor, likes to fol-
low her about-why, it is his affair."
"Who knows" she asks herself, "but
that some men rather like to nurse the
sweet misery of hopeless passion?"
Old women are intensely proud of
rheumatism which they have petted and
paraded Tor twenty years; young women
find delicious satisfaction in exagge-
rating some trifling illness, and feigning
the airs of consumption, in order to in
terest their friends; and very young men
are rather eager to get hold of big mis-
fortune, wrong or misery, in order to
feed misanthrepical bIuster upon it, or
use it as whet.stone for thin Byronic
sarcasm. In short, she is the young
mans sweetheart, not his mother; and
her role is to amuse herself, not to pro-
tect him.
Finally, she marries one of the two
suitors, and the other is turned into the
herd Of disappointed lovers. They are
numerous body: constant secessions
from their ranks occur through some of
them going off in search of new con-
quests, and meeting with greater success
than attended their first effort; but
these vacancies, on the other hand, are
always being filed up by newcomers
Some men remain sad lovers all their
lives; they never get over their first de-
feat; they never cease to dream of that
one woman who alone among all women
they sighed for. No amount of argu-
ment or experience ever dulls the keen
sense of wrong they suffer-wrong which
they never attribute to her, but to the
world in which they live. If she mar
ried some one else, it was evil circum-
stances of some sort that compelled her.
1t was temporary infatuation of her
Ignorant youth; or it was the persistent
Misrepresentation of friends; or it was
the coercive tyranny of family interest.
They rebel against the order of things.
When they meet together, they talk of
our present social conditions as being,
in some incomprehensible way, q villain
GUS power, against which love and honor
and simplicity have to wage an almost
hopeless fight. For sad lovers are gre
garious; they meet together as the expa.
triated Poles do; but instead Of trans
forming dry tobacco into clouds of
smoke, playing chess, and blaspheming
the powers of Schonbrunn, they COM
plain OF the cruel bonds that society has
woven around our emotions. When
they do smoke, they revenge themselves
upon the world by constructing newer
and mure beautiful world out of the
SAouu-"lcouuS, aHu IulS WOrlQ OF 0QtnrO-
pomorphic fancies in time becomes a
sort of reality to them-a solace for pre-
sent evil-something to which they can
always look forward and be comforted.
The heaven of sad lovers has nothing
to do with any religious notion or con-
ception. 1t is held quite distinct from
that Heaven in which there is neither
marrying nor giving in marriage. It is
more like Moliammedan paradise un-
der Christian rule. The heaven of the
sad lovers is the place in which all the
present wrong shall be righted; in which
faithful love shall finally be trium plant;
in which great life-secrets shall be re-
vealed, and people who have loved each
other here under hard conditions shall
be united, and enjoy tho beautiful re-
compense that is supposed, in some
world or other. to be the inevitable re-
ward of constancy. 1t is curious to no
tice how people confuse this lovers hea-
ven with the religious Heaven; the two
are totally distinct Poets, for example,
almost invariably talk of the former;
and yet they are always supposed to be
talking of the latter.
Arthur cannot touch Guineverc, soilcd
with the love of Lancelot in this world.