It is a phase, and
will melt into other phases; but it tends to the increase of
artificiality, and exists not only in art but in everything. It is
no new thing for jaded sentiment to crave the spur of the
unnatural, to prefer the clever imitation, to live in a Devachan
where the surroundings appear that which we would have them to be;
but it is an interesting record of the pulse of the present day
that 'An Englishwoman's Love Letters' should have taken society by
storm in the way it certainly has.
It is a delightful book to leave about, with its vellum binding,
dainty ribbons, and the hallmark of a great publisher's name. But
when we seek within we find love with its thousand voices and
wayward moods, its shy graces and seemly reticences, love which has
its throne and robe of state as well as the garment of the beggar
maid, love which is before time was, which knew the world when the
stars took up their courses, presented to us in gushing
outpourings, the appropriate language of a woman's heart to the
boor she delights to honour.
"It is woman who is the glory of man," says the author of 'The
House of Wisdom and Love,' "Regina mundi, greater, because so far
the less; and man is her head, but only as he serves his queen."
Set this sober aphorism against the school girl love-making which
kisses a man's feet and gaily refuses him the barren honour of
having loved her first.
There is scant need for the apologia which precedes the letters; a
few pages dispels the fear that we are prying into another's soul.
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