THE MODERN SPECTATOR No. XXV

1813-04 :Pages 207-212

The passions lead us into error, among other obvious causes, because they fix our attention to that particular part of the object which they present to us, blinding our eyes, as it were, to every other side of it. A sovereign, passionately ambitious of the name of conqueror, forgets not only the miseries that follow his car, but the inconstancy of Fortune. He does not reflect, that the real welfare and happiness of his subjects are no more than a pretence for his marital frenzy; that pride alone forges his arms, and displays his ensigns; while his whole attention is engrossed by the expected pomp of future triumphs. Fear, equally powerful with pride, will produce the same effect: it will raise ghosts and phantoms; people tombs with the shades of those who repose beneath them; and, in the obscurity of the forest, conjure up airy forms to affright the traveller; it will sometimes seize on all the faculties of the soul, without leaving one of them at liberty to reflect on the absurdity of such ridiculous terror. But the passions not only fix the attention on particular sides of the objects which they present to us, but they also deceive us, by the fanciful appearance of objects which do not exist. It is not uncommon for us to believe, that we see in things what we are desirous of finding there. Illusion is the necessary effect of the passions, the strength or force of which is generally measured by the degree of obscurity into which they lead us. There is no age which has not, by some ridiculous effects of belief or incredulity, afforded matter of laughter and mockery to those which succeeded it.

But of all the passions to which humanity is liable, none has given rise to so many superstitions as that of love: so that the wit seems to be almost justified in the opinion which he has left upon record, that “to act the part of a lover and to play the fool, were one and the same thing.” The other passions of the mid, like serpents lodged within, poison, it is true, our best satisfactions; but this, like Aaron’s rod, devours them all, and turns them to its own purpose.

All ages appear to have resembled each other in the conduct and symbols of this passion. The Greeks and Romans made a discovery of their love, by writing upon trees, walls, doors, &c. the name of the beloved object: they had no glass windows, or they would probably have made them subservient to the display of their amorous sentiments. They frequently decked the doors of the houses where their Daphnes and Amaryllises resided, with flowers and garlands, sprinkled the door-post with wine, and made libations of it on the spot, as the sacrifice of love to beauty; while the garland being untied by the fair one to whom it was offered, or the return of a similar present, were considered as a certain proof of female acquiescence. They had also several methods of discovering whether their passions would prove successful, which answer to the application of cards, and other inventions of modern times, employed by the young people of our own enlightened age. When their love (I am still speaking of the ancient inamoratas) failed of success, they had various arts to excite a return of affection in the lovely objects of their passion. They had recourse to enchantresses and magical incantations: but the most common means employed on these important occasions were, philters and love potions, the operation of which was sometimes, not only violent and attended with danger to their lives, but, which is worse, was frequently known to deprive such as drank them of their reason. The account of the ingredients of which some of them were composed, as mentioned by the writers of those times, are so various and extraordinary, that, had I space to recount them, they would be found to rival the mixture of Hecate’s cauldron, in the tragedy of Macbeth.

But besides these philters, various other arts were employed to excite love, in which the application of certain substances was to have a magical influence on the person against whom they levelled their skill. A hyaena’s udder, worn under the left arm, was supposed to draw the affections of whatever woman they fixed their eyes upon. Burning laurel and melting wax were supposed to be capable of exciting the flame of love. When one heart was to be hardened, and another to be mollified, clay and wax were exposed to the same fire together. Love-knots were supposed to have singular power; and the number three was particularly observed in all they said and did. These arts branched out into innumerable forms of attraction and inspiration; but no good effect was ever expected to result from them, if they were not attended with magical verses, and certain formularies of words and actions.

Thus it appears that superstition in affairs of love is of very ancient origin; and the love-sick girl who goes to the cunning man, or crosses the gipsy’s hand with her last sixpence, to know when she shall be married, or the number of children she is doomed to have; or, by consulting the cards, discovers her lover in the knave of hearts, will find an example in Dido, queen of Carthage, whom Virgil represents as going to consult the priest, to have her fortune told respecting the passion she entertained for AEneas.

I have rather extended my thoughts further than may have been thought necessary for my purpose; but the number of Valentines which I received, suggested them to me, and as introduction to some very curious information which I at the same time received on the amorous sorceries practised by young men and maidens respecting the success and failure of their views in the grand object of matrimonial establishment. I can only select a few of the very numerous attempts to ascertain the future fate of lovers.

A young woman, who signs herself Mary Hopeful, tells me, that, on the eve of last Valentine’s-day, she procured five bay leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of her pillow, and the fifth to the middle, having been informed, by a very sensible old lady, that if she dreamed of her sweetheart, they should be married before the year was out. But to make sure, she boiled an egg hard, and having taken out the yolk, filled it up with salt; she then went to bed, and eat it shell and all, without speaking a word, or drinking after it. She adds, that as she dreamed of Mr. Lump, the grocer, she has no doubt but she shall have the honour to address me, within the year, under that title.

Deborah Doubtnot informs me, that having slept in a strange bed the other night, she tied her garter nine times round the bed-post, and knit nine knots in it, and the repeated to herself,

This knot I knit, this knot I tie,

To see my love as he goes by,

In his apparel and array

As he walks in every day.

She accordingly saw Mr. Trusty pass by the house as she was dressing herself at the window the next morning. She at the same time requests me to tell her, as this gentleman was going to the drill, he being one of the volunteer association, whether his regimentals may be considered as every day clothes.

Miss Wishful, however, desires to abuse all these foolish notions, as she is sure that they are all absolute nonsense. She was told, it seems, when she was in a more credulous temper than she is at present, that if she walked backwards without speaking a word into the garden on midsummer eve, and gathered a rose, and then kept it in a clean sheet of paper without looking at it, till Christmas-day, it would be as fresh as in June; when, if she had stuck it in her bosom, her future husband would come and take it. This ceremony she performed with a most rigid adherence to every part of it. However, when Christmas-day arrived, and with a palpitating heart she opened the paper, nothing appeared but a withered flower. She acknowledges that she was so mortified on the occasion, that she should not have been able to hold up her head the whole day, if Mr. Twogood, the mercer, who dined with her papa, had not told her, she was like a mince-pie, as it contains the sweets of the four quarters of the globe.

With another very interesting question I shall conclude my selection from the heap of materials which are now before me.

Miss Nancy Sharpset desires to know, whether she has a right to lie in bed with her eyes shut, on St. Valentine’s morning, till Betty comes and tells her that her father’s book-keeper, a very handsome young man, has taken his seat in the counting-house.

It would puzzle, I believe, the whole Antiquarian Society to trace these strange whims and fancies to their proper origin; though they seem to me, in one way or other, to be of the most remote antiquity.

I shall now proceed to a fair correspondent, of a very different character.

Whether my fair correspondent is serious or jocose; whether she is quizzing me, or flattering me, or is seriously disposed to form an acquaintance with me, from any favourable impressions which my writings may have been so fortunate as to make on her mind, I really cannot determine. Her letter is certainly written with spirit and elegance; and the seal of it, if it is her own, tells me, that Fanny Waver is of a family and connection that might command any society in the kingdom, without having recourse to an anonymous application. I must beg leave to inform Miss Fanny Waver, be she who she may, that I should be very ill qualified for the task of instructing others, if I were to be a dupe myself. This is not the first time I have had flattering offers made to me; nay, I once received a letter, written in a very fair hand, on paper perfumed with musk, and whose cypher had a very amorous motto, which desired me to shew myself on the south side of Gosvenorsquare, precisely at one o’clock on the following day, with a white handkerchief in my hand; when I was assured, that, if my person proved as charming as my writings, a lady of beauty and fortune would make herself known to me, as preparatory to an hymeneal union. But I did not expose myself to this inviting chance; and continue contented in my snug little apartment next the sky, satisfied with contemplating moral beauty, as it appears in the dignified qualities of which our nature is susceptible, and deriving my principal happiness from the endeavour to make others happy, by persuading them to be good,.

Miss Fanny Waver will excuse me, if I delay any further attention to her proposal, till she condescends to make me better acquainted with the real writer of the letter which contains it.

I cannot, however, conclude without a few lines to Mrs. Deborah Worry, of Worry Hall, in the country of Rutland. This good lady complains most bitterly of Valentine’s-day, which she says, for two or three days before, and as many after it, turns all the people’s heads in her family. On the morning of this anniversary, she can find no one to answer her bell; the servants’ hall, the kitchen, and the stable, are always so many different scenes of confusion; either from the emotions of triumph, or the feelings of disappointment, the whole house is in an uproar. On the last Valentine’s-day, she says, she had scarce set down to breakfast, when the cook entered, and begged leave to change the rolls, as those on the table had been brought in by mistake, having been intended for Thomas the gardener, and William the butler, Valentines having been put in them when they were dough, and had been baked in the oven. The old lady seems to be quite in a fuss about it, and thinks she has narrowly escaped being choaked by a Valentine. She accordingly requests me, with great earnestness, to employ all the powers of my pen to put an end to an abominable custom, which drives every thing out of the heads of the young people at this time of the year, but lovers and sweethearting. But with all my disposition to attend to the wishes of my correspondents, I cannot bring myself to comply with her’s. On the contrary, I think that Valentine’s-day is attended with many advantages. We are all of us indebted for every thing we have in this world, to love-making, and therefore we should be very ungrateful if we did not employ all honest means to promote it. Valentine’s-day, besides, calls forth, in one way or other, the exertion of intellectual powers, in every various rank of life; and I once heard a gentleman say, wo was considered as an elegant poet, that he probably might never have known his talent for versification, if certain impulses of the tender passion had not, at a very early period of his life, inspired him to write a Valentine. It also encourages the arts, by rewarding the invention of devices for the occasion. It likewise promotes certain branches of trade, by the great consumption it occasions of paper, pens, ink, wafers, and sealing-wax. And both as a patriot and a man of letters, I cannot but look with complacency on a day, which adds, while it lasts, so considerably to the revenues of the Post Office. I think, therefore, that Mrs. Deborah Worry should content herself with taking care that Valentines do not choke her in the parlour, and leave them to their natural operations in every other part of the house.