Chapter 14
the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it holy writ it does not take much to make two hearts beat faster than one the heart can deceive itself when it cannot deceive another which will be cold comfort to some lovers though it may console others to admit a sacred visitant into the inner recesses of the human heart those recesses must be neat indeed remember too that you can never expect an angel to act as a charwoman the sweeping must be done by the owner lastly unless each heart is permitted access to the other their union is fictitious perhaps perilous explain these tropes who can no man can tell to whom a woman's heart belongs not even the man who calls the woman his and let no man imagine that when he has won him a woman he has won him a woman's heart since sometimes a woman will give her heart to one man and her troth to another besides many a heart is hard to read especially if it is a palimpsest indeed many are illegible to their owners nevertheless that the woman should not know her own heart as so often happens terrifies the woman as much as it exasperates the man
yet that must be a curious love that causes the heart to hesitate and yet many a man has debated for months whether to propose or not and sometimes a woman will accept on a friday the man that she refused point blank of a tuesday but perhaps where the heart hesitates it is not so much a case of love as a case of convenience for an overwhelming love leaves the heart of either doubt or debate but alas the human heart seems to be an anatomical engine of such intricate and delicate mechanism that its workings are uncontrollable even by its owner is a constant heart as hard a thing to manufacture in the world of life as is an immobile thing in the world of matter and matter so they say is immobile only at absolute zero when bereft of even molecular motion a thing impossible to produce and which to produce would require incalculable pressure and almost incalculable cold is there no chemical formula for fixing the impression of the heart
who really held burns his heart in thrall nellie fitzpatrick or mary campbell or eliasin begbie or margaret chalmers or charlotte hamilton or jenny cruxshank or ann park or jean armore or mrs whelpdale or mrs agnes mclejos and who the heart of gutta gretchen or kitty schoenckoff or frederica bryan or charlotte buff or lily schoenemann or the countess augusta or charlotte van steen or bettina brentano or marianna von willemere or his wife christina vulpius however whether it is a provision of nature or whether it is due to the perversity of man probably the feminine heart is far more constant than the masculine and perhaps any one of goethe's or of burns his innamorata's would have clung to him had he been faithful to her and yet would you have had shelley stick to harriet westbrook and how shall one interpret his feelings for amelia viviani what would have happened if keats had lived and married fanny braun she who flirted with somebody else while he was sick and did not even know that he was a poet
yet she was an inspiration to keats as mary goodwin and emilia viviani were to shelley footnote one see the dedication of the revolt of islam and see the epicycidian and footnote ought byron to have said no to clare or lady caroline lamb or the countess guccioli or any one of the many maids and matrons that besieged his heart could anything have kept rosina wheeler and bulwer lighton side by side rosina wheeler to whom before marriage lighton could find right o my dear rose where shall i find words to express my love for you and to whom after marriage he wrote madam the more i consider your conduct and your letter the more unwarrantable they appear god in heaven what a pitiful game it all is and alas as george sand says all this you see is a game that we are playing but our heart and life are the stakes and that has an aspect which is not always pleasing footnote two
letter to alfred de musset many a man's heart has been treated as a football yes but many a woman's heart has been treated as a shuttlecock human beings there are both men and women out of whom at a mere touch virtue seems to go converse with them is stimulating contact enthralling and yet powerful as physical or as mental attraction may be permanently to retain the attracted object requires a profounder force perhaps though beauty and grace and brilliancy may attract it is only something far more deep-seated that retains in other words charm of body and mind may appeal to body and mind only the heart appeals to the heart those who know not this and they are many permit the heart to leak through the senses with the result that when demands are made upon the heart that cistern is found to have run dry so to philanderers and to flirts when a great and true love comes they do not comprehend it and they cannot appreciate it wherefore would-be lover keep thy heart intact until it be required of thee
you need not imagine that because you have once been permitted to see some way down into a human heart that you will necessarily ever again be so permitted hard words break no bones but they often break hearts drink is too often the refuge of the masculine and a rich husband the refuge of the feminine broken heart extreme youth thinks the world is a toy-shop where anything may be had for the asking old age regards it as a museum where nothing may be touched no heart under repeated temperings can remain for ever keen and as a little body sometimes has a very big pain so an aching heart wonders that it can bear so much and what takes place in the quiet deeps of a troubled heart who shall know the way to the heart is not through the head between heart and heart there are many channels but three are in universal use the eyes the lips and the finger-tips now the greatest of these is the eyes the masculine heart will never wholly understand the feminine nor the feminine the masculine oh the pity of it and yet after all the human heart is much more the same whether it beats under a cuirass or under a corset
between the masculine heart and the feminine perfect frankness is perhaps of questionable import but why it is difficult to say perhaps because the aspirations and desires of the human heart are infinite and unappeasable to attempt to formulate them is to frustrate them for it is as impossible for any two human hearts as it is impossible for any two material things to occupy the same space especially when we remember that between the masculine heart and the feminine is a great gulf fixed nay rather from youth to age each human heart seems unwittingly to build about itself a high and ever higher growing wall impenetrable indilapidable not to be scaled by the look or speech or gesture never can heart coalesce with heart and yet the absolute and intimate coalescence of heart with heart is not this after all the consummation that every lover seeks to attempt that consummation by mere speech it is this that is of questionable import since between heart and heart speech is the paltriest of channels
what a thin yet what an invisible and impenetrable film separates those two worlds the one that of the visible audible and tangible the world of chatter and laughter of convention often of make-believe and the other the world of deep and voiceless emotions of the feelings which know not how to give themselves utterance of affections which crave so much and are so impotent to say or to seek what they crave it is like a layer of ice separating the hidden and soundless deeps from the aerial world of noise and motion what would not one heart give to break the icy crust and see and know what was really passing in another and how often we drown if we do break through the isolation of the individual human heart is complete it is the most pathetic past in the universe and it is that against which the individual human heart rebels most there must be some profound and cosmic problem underlying this fact which no philosophy and no religion can solve that it is pathetic seems to prove it temporary earthly a matter of time and space but when will the individual human heart coalesce with the heart of the universe which perhaps is the goal of all life
for it may be that these little terrestrial human individuals which we call men and women are after all only tiny and temporary centres of conscious activity in an ocean of infinite consciousness as atoms are but tiny and temporary centres of energy in an ocean of infinite ether could we see the sum total of supreme and infinite consciousness at a glance perhaps individual men and women would dissolve into a mighty unity could see and comprehend the whole of a while perhaps love is the only known means by which the individual heart can make any expansion whatsoever beyond its own bounds yet alas nothing seems to break down the barriers of sense the human heart beats its ineffectual wings in vain against the walls of its fleshly tabernacle will nothing unite the boy and the girl will nothing bring the man and the woman really together yet the boy thinks that were the girl wholly his he and she would be happy and the man thinks that were the woman and he to share every thought and every emotion he and she would want nought else is the amalgamation impossible is the coalescence of thought and feeling outside the bounds of human possibility what then impels mankind to crave it to attempt it to sacrifice so much for it
there is a cosmic puzzle here with which nor philosophy nor psychology nor religion has yet attempted to grapple after all pitiful as it may be lamentable as it may be it is true and it must be said that this human heart of ours goes through life hungry very hungry and unappeased for what it hungers what it has missed whereto it looks for sustenance it itself does not know thus this feminine heart sighs without ceasing for because that other masculine heart upon which it staked all its all and an all that meant so much proved callous and indifferent that masculine heart ceases not to curse itself for resorting to such hasty and violent methods by which to obtain for itself an ephemeral and passing pleasure this feminine heart eats out its life with remorse for because it gave itself so unthinkingly when asked though of a survey it thought that asking was a thing prompted by impulses as noble as they seemed divine and that masculine heart when the tidal wave of heated passion has subsided wonders how it was led captive by lures so deceptive and untried
m regrets and regrets in vain that he did not await a purer and more permanent passion and n chews for a lifetime the cud of persistent remorse for an hour's poignant pleasure this human heart knows nothing of itself nor anything of its fellow-beating hearts if it follows its bent it is cracked if it holds itself in leash it aches if it calls reason to aid its soaring hopes are dashed its romance spoiled and it itself reduced to the level of a machine that calculates if it acts on impulse and meeting a heart that beats so it thinks in unison unites itself with it often enough that others soon palpitates to a different rhythm or itself cannot keep time and all things go awry poor aching beating human heart it cannot reason it cannot count the cost to it seems that impulse divine and mighty impulse is the sole law of the earth in time it learns that impulse the mightiest the divinest though it may be the law in heaven is sometimes a veritable nemesis on earth it gives freely gladly without compunction it finds the gift rewarded by consequences too pitiful for tears
alas this human heart can no one advise it is there no advice will help it must it always go wrong and always suffer well if one loves one dare not reason if one reasons it is difficult to love there seems to be something cosmic something transcending the bounds of the visible and tangible universe in the desires and cravings of this same human heart this little human heart beating blindly beneath a waistcoat or a blouse its owner is little bigger than a beetle or an ant and the habitat of that owner is a speck in space a pygmy in comparison with sirius or arcturus and invisible from the ultra telescopic confines of vision what it makes the desires and cravings of this human heart more important more importunate to its owner than the measuring of the vastest space why is it that the longings the hopes the disappointments the desperate aspirations and the passionate loves of little human hearts should cause to their possessors such prepotent commotions such poignant qualms rigel and betelgeuse and algol brush through space and about them probably circle numerous planets inhabited by countless and curious beings
each and all perhaps possessing hearts as perturbable as our own and yet if our own little earthly jack cannot get our own little earthly jill what cares jack what happens to vega or capella or to the great nebula in orion jack wants jill and that want is to jack the only thing in the sidereal heavens that matters the curious and perhaps semi-comical but wholly pathetic thing about the whole matter is this that though undoubtedly our little planet is part of and has a place in this great zyedreal universe and consequently all our jacks and jills are related to all the jacks and jills everywhere else yet each little human heart behaves as it were the only heart in the sum total of created things if it enjoys it calls upon all that is to congratulate it if it suffers it cries aloud to high heaven to avenge its wrongs it comports itself as if it and it alone were the only sensitive things in existence that is curious that its wrongs may have been wrought by itself that its fate may have been determined in the reign of chaos and old night or ere even cosmic nebul were born it does not dream
if jill is indifferent or jack morose either is enough to cause jack or jill to curse god and die is there some archetypal and arcanal secret in this the extreme the supernal egoism of the human heart of all of which what is the moral humph frankly i do not know what is the moral only this i see that each little heart creates its own little universe the bees the that of its hive and the fields man's that of his earth and the stars what may be above or beyond the stars man no more knows than the bee knows what is beyond the fields the heart be it man's or bee's is the centre of its self-made sphere some day perhaps man's sphere will extend as far beyond the stars as to-day it extends beyond the fields then who knows perhaps unlimited senses and an uncircumcised intellect may find themselves commensurate with this high aspiring heart and an emancipated and ecstatic jack unite with a congenial
that there is a universe is apparent that it is one and complete we suppose that there are in it jacks and jills is indubitable that these jacks and jills crave mutual support sympathy love friendship wifehood sistership companionship brotherhood is also indubitable if therefore the whole scheme of the universe is not a farce what does this craving of love for lover mean and yet it is quite impossible to conceive of a universe of love in which all the claims of heart and soul and senses shall be eternally and infinitely satisfied is it quite impossible to conceive of a universe of love in which all the claims of heart and soul and senses shall be eternally and infinitely satisfied nevertheless on this little earth perhaps ill betides the heart that leans overmuch on another for alas not even the entire immolation of one heart for another will satisfy that other
indeed indeed in this life would one seek comfort and solace one must seek it in one's own self or in one's god for only one of two things can comfort to put the world under one's feet or to keep a god over one's head only he who is captain of his soul or he who commits his soul to god can rise above fate there is a vacuum in every human heart and the human heart abhors it as much as nature what will fill this cardiac void no mortal to this moment has found out art cries beauty and tries to depict it philosophy cries truth and strives to define it religion cries good and does its best to embody it and numberless lesser voices in the wilderness cry power or gold or work which is a narcotic or excitement which is an intoxicant and a many-toned changeful siren with sweetly saddening music cries love
and one pursues a phantom and another clasps a shadow and a third cloaks his eyes with a transparent veil or steeps his senses in floods that will not drown no what the human heart wants it does not know and what is more pathetic problem amongst problems pathetic often it puzzles this human heart to distinguish between the things which it is right and proper to seek wherewith to fill that void and the things which are wrong and improper furthermore how apt is the heart to seek in the illegitimate for the satisfaction which the legitimate fails to give problems ancient as eden what does it want this human heart what does it so earnestly desire so strenuously seek all about it and about are beauty friendship mirth and gladness the sea and the earth and the sky color and music and song and to each if he wills it wife or husband and children and home wanting is what ah one lesson this human heart has to learn so easy to put into words so difficult to carry out by deed is this to get the human heart must give
the heart eats out itself causes its own emptiness creates its own void the selfish and egotistical life breeds always the vapid and vacuous heart would you appease your own hunger feed the hungry hearts around you do you crave fulness of joy give joy to the joyless would you fill your own cavity satisfy your craving attain your desire find what you seek give give give the more the better for the greater the donation the greater the repletion nature gives gives lavishly wantingly unquestioningly every atom of soil every drop of sap goes to produce flowers and fruit and seed root and branch and leaf are but carefully constructed means by which to transmute sunshine and soil and flower and fruit and seed no tree lives for itself shall then this human heart live for itself gather and store up for its own delectation for its own good there is no such thing as one's own good goodness is mutual is communal is only guided by giving and receiving
wherefore o frail weak human heart seek thou out carefully constructed means by which to transmute sunshine and soil and showers into flowers and fruit chapter fourteen and of theodora arnold halton
