LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA M THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE BY EDGAR SALTUS Halt HailTheClub's All Here Permetl Club Book PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE PENNELL CLUB PHILADELPHIA 1920 AMS PRESS NEW YORK LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Reprinted from the edition of 1920 First AMS EDITION published 1968 Manufactured in the United States of America AMS PR ESS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003 AT the conclusion of a war long since forgotten, Horace wreathed him self with roses, helped himself to falernian, raised the cup to Venus and sang, "Nunc est bibendum" which he had cribbed from Alcaeus. That night Cleopatra's diadem had fallen and with it her realm. The fine clatter of both time has hushed. Of it all one negligently remembers that the lady was a very pretty woman. There was a fairer one yet. There was Venus. Descended in flame from the depth of the archaic skies, adding perfumes and riddles to her incan descent robe, trailing it from hill to sea, enveloping cities and kingdoms in her fervent embrace, burning them with the fever of her kisses, burning them to such ashes that to day barely the memory of their names endures, yet evolving mean- 4 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE while in successive but always trans parent avatars, she passed to her high place in Paphos, where, from her throne of love, she ruled the world. She rules it still. Paphos has crumbled. The crystal parapets from which she leaned and laughed are gone. Her temples the ages have eaten, her altars are dust. But though her liturgy has ceased, though her rites are no more, though her worship has altered and the sky itself has changed, her spirit abides with us tonight as potently as when Horace raised that cup. When Rome fell, humanity be came divided into beasts of burden and beasts of prey. From that fate the fall of Hunland preserved us. Yet, already at the time, the temples of Venus were razed, her rites had grown ribald. But only a little be fore, when her shrines foamed with the faithful, Augustin, a young man about town, who afterward became a saint, turned his back on them. THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 5 "Give me chastity," he prayed and, with true fervour, immediately added: "But not yet!" In Luxuriopolis, the prayer was discordant ; it was not phenomenal. Chastity, the ideal condition of the ideal gods, was the cardinal virtue of the Pythagoreans. Moreover, though Vesta had faltered there were vestals in Rome. There were there priests of Osiris, priestesses of Mithra, hierophants of Pallas, on all of whom chastity was imposed. It was therefore a recognised aberra tion. The prayer consequently was familiar. But not its supplement. That "Not yet!" followed monks in their cloisters and nuns in their cells. In the bastilles of purity the petals of the silver lilies shook. Augustin has been blamed for that. It seems very pompous to blame anybody for anything. Au gustin was not then a saint. He was merely a novice, tolerably rakish and considerably farceur. "To the devil with thin women 6 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE and the communion of souls!" Gautier, another young pietist, long later exclaimed. From behind the centuries Augustin was perhaps but preluding him. The words differ, but the prayer is the same. The prayer then was in the air, yet with it were gusts of hysteria. In pre cincts narrow and dark the end of the world was so confidently awaited that chastity was regarded as a prep aration for the judgment day. It was in these circumstances that Au gustin, his tongue in his cheek, de manded it. But not yet ! Subsequently he became a saint. Perhaps now he is an angel. Mean while his "Not yet" was repeated and continues to be, not because his Confessions are currently meditated, but because Venus sees that it is. That is not the business, it is the sovereign pleasure of the goddess of whom it has been idly said that she incites men to their best manners and worst passions. But why worst? Consider Othello. His passions THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 7 were pleasant, it was his manners that were detestable. With these Venus had nothing whatever to do. Love transfigures. Any other emo tion is very unbecoming. It is with love alone that Venus deals. When first she appeared among the daz zled immortals, she had the graces for handmaids and joy for page. Jealousy was absent from her glow ing cortege. It always' has been. The art of loving people as though you hated them is one of which she is unaware. Consider Helen. As in an al legory of beauty which is for all and yet for none, Venus guided her from hand to hand. Helen's little affairs began before she was out of the nur sery. The war that was afterward fought for her was the struggle of the householder and the burglar. Pending it and during her earlier and subsequent adventures, not once did jealousy show its head. The fact is perhaps not very poignant. Helen's lovers lived a long time ago 8 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE and probably never lived at all. But if vulgarity may be properly defined as the behaviour of other people, it becomes curious that gentlefolk to day should be more vulgar than legendary scamps. Besides, even though the latter are mythical their common sense is not. La Roche foucauld very temperately remarked that lovers commonly cease to be sensible when they cease to be loved. The remark was made at a later and a viler day. It would have had no meaning in these serener years. In what the fates and the fathers have left us of antiquity there are rivalries and plenty of them; there is blood, all you like, seas of it, oceans ! There is a ribbon of crime so long, so varied and so delectable that it makes your hair curl. But of jealousy, not a trace. The monstrous birth of wedded shame and spite had no place then in the gardens of Aphro dite. Nor has it today. In any real love there is room for other loves. It is the heart of them all. Every THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 9 true lover has the attitude however much he may lack the wit of Verlaine. Mets ton front sur mon front et ta main dans ma main, Et fais-moi des serments que tu rompras demain. The attitude may seem cynical. It is the serenity of a sage preaching gaiety and indulgence for the acci dents which we cannot avoid. Si Ton vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe, c'est le par don. . . . Mais si la trahison n'a pas accrue la simplicite, la confiance plus haute, Tetendue de Tamour, on vous a trahi bien inutilement, et vous pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien arrive. Another view and perhaps supe rior. It is Maeterlinck's. But poets are rarely in unison. It is one of their charms. On the subject of love their dissonances are notable. They are various and tortured as the lays in which they float. For after all, to say, as Chamfort did, that love is the contact of two epiderms sounds 10 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE austere. To call it, as Balzac did, the poetry of the senses, sounds prosy. To say that it is to be two and yet but one seems calculating. To describe it as a privilege mutu ally bestowed by two people for their common discomfort sounds better. To declare that it consists in not being bored by the party of the sec ond part sounds best. But not exact. None of these definitions is exact, yet all have their value. With en tire clarity they tell what love is not. That is very helpful. The moment we know what a thing is not, we can begin to conjecture what it may be. That process has enabled practi tioners to diagnose love as a patho logical condition superinduced by a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. Less technically, love is a state of febrility. It is a fever that ends with a yawn. In support of the diagnosis, cita tions follow; primarily one from Schopenhauer, whom it is always a pleasure to quote, particularly be- THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 11 cause, by his last will and testament, he gave, devised and bequeathed to Germany all the contempt of what ever kind, nature or description, and wheresoever situated, of which he died seized and possessed. Freely rendered, this is what the nobleman said : Love is the Great Mother planning the creation of another being, and the precise instant in which that being's future ex istence becomes possible is the very moment when two young people begin to fancy each other. The seriousness with which they consider one another is due to their unconscious meditation concerning the child which they may create. For in its essence, love is always and everywhere the same a reverie on the next genera tion. To induce the meditation, Nature fevers the individual with an insane idea of hap piness, and with the illusion that union with some one person will procure it. Yet when her object is achieved, disenchant ment ensues. The illusion that gulled you has vanished. But, meanwhile, such may be the potency of it, such too its witchery and 12 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE enthralment that, if need be, all the bar riers of the world are burned away. Once Venus has her prey by the throat, laws, obstacles, conventions exist no longer. Precepts and homilies are as incense poured on flames. There is only madness until the great alienist Time appears, until the insanity abates, until the fever passes, and the individual re-becomes normal. In that condition a philosopher may re main, but not the ordinary mortal. Fever returns to the flesh as the leaf returns to the tree. Thereat the Carnival begins da capo. Your conscience may rebel. But what are your interests to Nature's? Hers alone are supreme. She snuffs yours out like a candle. Schopenhauer expressed himself admirably, which no other German has, except Heine, who was French. But Muhammad knew also how to express himself. So, too, did Con fucius. Both went straight to the point. Confucius said that a gentleman's home should be well supplied with females. Muhammad added that a gentleman could not have too many THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 13 either here or hereafter. In the lat ter resort he promised the faithful a fresh houri every day. Whatever a houri may be, a fresh one every day seems either excessive or else suitable only to the Hercules' of love. But no doubt the faithful could diet if they liked. In any event, Schopenhauer, Confucius and Muhammad agreed that it is not natural for man to cleave to one dish. If I interpret them correctly, they saw that when the fever abates, yawns will supervene unless the menu is varied. Nowadays most men feel that way about it, even though they omit to say so. Whatever women may think, usually they profess the opposite. But then a man means the things he does not say and a woman says the things she does not* mean. That is only right. The world could hardly be madder than it is and yet if every body told the truth it would be. But the problem presents another angle. Whatever a woman may be 14 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE at twenty, at any age any man, who is a man, is a potential scoundrel. The eyes of the world, official duties, business interests, other deterrents equally noble may restrain, but at heart every man is Don Juan. Don Juan fathered the Wander ing Jew. He assisted at the birth of Faust. He antedates Mammon. Protean, indefinite, eternal, he is the oldest and the youngest being on earth. Born in the Garden of Kama, his avatars are as many as Vishnu's, his masks as multiple as his amours. Tirso de Molina, a Spanish writer, gave him his present style and title, but not his charm. Mozart supplied that. In Spain he was merely the hidalgo, though with an attitude that faintly mimicked the Cid. Invited to sup with the dead, he outfaced the damned. Otherwise, that is in pursuit of his vocation, he was still very primitive. The art of gallantry, its lures, beguilements, temptations, he was as yet too un schooled to observe. His method THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 15 was the frank simplicity of the faun. Subsequently, when Moliere took him in hand, he became a bandit of love, not a bandit after the manner of the Cid, who was the emperor of bandits, but a parlour highwayman in dirty white gloves. Mozart, in his opera of operas, presented him properly. From that bath of champagne and what champagne ! the champagne of music that not only bubbles but laughs! the legendary type emerged, not purified heaven for bid! but delightful. Here enters Casanova. Up stage, saluting him, is Don Juan's parody, Corneille's Matamore. Mille mouraient par jour a force de nVaimer! J'avais des rendezvous de toutes les prin cesses. Les reines a 1'envi mendiaient mes car esses. Celle d'Ethopie et celle de Japon Dans leurs soupirs d'amour ne melaient que mon nom. 16 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE De passion pour moi deux sultanes tremblerent; Deux autres pour me voir du serail s'echapperent. J'en fus mal quelque temps avec le Grand Seigneur. In the ballroom of Europe that Venice was, Casanova, at the age of fifteen the age of Cherubino ef fected his debut with a scandal. To scandalise Venice was enormous. Orientally corrupt, byzantinely fair, in her porphyry palaces and liquid streets masterpieces and license were at home. The impossible achieved, he multiplied it. Throughout the eighteenth-century metropoles of pleasure, in the lovely days when love was life, his existence became a spangle of continuous caresses. No man perhaps has dreamed as that man lived. From palace to hovel he passed, from inns to convents, from highways to gardens, from prison to court, charming and winning three thousand women, abbesses and bal let girls, princesses and demoiselles, THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 17 the married, the single, the high and the low, alluring every one of them through the exercise of his secret the secret of not having any which is the greatest of all covered mean while not only with the heady per fumes of his myriad amours, but with honours from pope and kings, and, quite lavishly, concluding his unex ampled career as librarian to a princelet who had no library. Moralists have declaimed against him and, I am sure, very justly. Casanova was not a moral person. He was merely delightful. Nowadays men have no time to be delightful. Formerly they had time for nothing else. Richelieu made up to three generations of women and affiche'd his last mistress at eighty-five. Men like he and Casanova were the giants of gallan try. Today the race is extinct. To day gallantry is encounterable only in old books that nobody reads any more. That is quite as it should be. Besides, the pomps of matrimony re- 18 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE main. Concerning them it may be profitable to consult Rabelais and meditate Panurge. P a n u r g e contemplated mat rimony, but, uncertain of its charms that might be perils, he sought ad vice. He sought it from the wise, from the learned, from the mad, from witches, soothsayers, cards and dice. It was a belfry that instructed him, or no, it was the bottle. But meanwhile in staggering, blinded and dizzy, from the orgie of oracles and saloperie which his questions had provoked, he heard the chimes of fatidic bells. Marie-toy, marie-toy, marie, marie ! Si tu te maries, marie, marie, tres bien t'en trouveras, veras, veras, marie, marie! There were the bells urging, in citing him to marry. The next mo ment they changed their tune. Marie point, marie point, point, point, point! Si tu te maries, marie, marie, tu t'en repentiras, tiras, tiras! Confused by the conflicting ex- THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 19 hortations, Panurge behaved very sensibly. He got drunk. There are topics about which words hover like enchanted bees. They smell good. Getting drunk is not one of them, or getting married either, but love is. It is lilian. Un fortunately, lilies that fester smell worse than weeds. Apart from mythology and even there apart from the Apuleian account of Cupid and Psyche, the history of love does not contain a single story in which melancholy does not sit and brood. It does not contain one story that can make you much in love with love. As pages turn and faces emerge, always when they do not drip with tears they reek with blood. Always you catch an echo of the re frain; Sono TAmore, difida di me. In another tongue, Sappho heard it. She drowned herself. Hero heard it. She also drowned herself. Then upward on the winding stair of dream it passed from realm to realm. As it sounded at Lesbos and 20 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE. the Hellespont, so did it sound at Joyeuse Garde, at Tintagel and Astolat. There was Guinevere, daughter of Leodigrance, wife of Arthur Pendragon. There, too, was Sir Launcelot du Lake whom she had in favour. "And of a truth/' the old tale tells, "he loved the queen above all other dames and damsels all his life." Yes, and with a love that killed her, killed the king, killed Elaine, killed Sir Launcelot du Lake. There was Yseult to whom Tris tram harped The Lay of Love that dieth not so tellingly that when for love of her he died, she sobbed her self to sleep. "Neither did they dis turb more/' the old tale tells, "for they knew her slumber was death- fast/' There was Etzel's wife, Kriem- held of Burgundy who loved the faultless Siegfried and when he was slain died also. "Then," says the historian, "alone THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 21 at the board King Etzel sat and wept. He touched not of the mead- horn, sorrow was his meat, tears had he or drink. So Pain dogs Pleas ure's steps. Ended was the feast." There were Francesca and Paolo, who read together of Launcelot and Guinevere. "Several times during the reading," the girl confided to Dante, "our eyes met and we blushed. Yet when we learned how that tender lover kissed the mouth he loved, he who never more shall be separated from me tremblingly kissed my own. Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante we read no more that day." No, nor on any other. The slaughter that followed then is choked with mystery, with rime sparse and the dust of years. There were Canace and Macare, whom Lydgate in the Temple of Glass praised as foremost among the lovers of the world. Their story had preceded them. It had been told in Rome, told in Athens, told in Babylon long before. The story 22 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE and the horror of it has been retold since time began. There was the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet which Luigi da Porto got at the baths of Caldiero from a Ver onese gossip. There is the deeper tragedy of Desdemona which Cinthio revealed. Gounod embroid ered for the one and Verdi for the other the echo of that refrain, the echo of its menace, its haunting threat of mud, of blood and tears. Sono PAmore, difida di me! In the lovely land of love there are fresher measures, other songs, songs strung with caresses, hymns per fumed with kisses, pure as prayer. But always the refrain follows after. It does not make you much in love with love. Nothing can except the absence of it. It is only in fairyland and the first fevers that love is a lovely thing. There is a reason for all things, there is one for that. The reason is an illusion with which ignorance has enveloped us. The majority of THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 23 us believe that we are free to do as we wish and, subject to the limita tions of place and circumstance, so we are, apparently that is, and in the appearance is the illusion. The de lusion comes from the pulp behind the forehead in which there are num berless little cells which, through as many currents, create our wants and with them our tastes, good or bad, our temptations, our humours and even the lack of them. Most of us know what we want. What most of us do not know is why we want what we do want. It is the cells and currents that prompt us. It is they who force their will upon us, not we who force our will on them. The source of any action is not men tal, it is temperamental. Most of us think otherwise and there is the illu sion. There, too, is the explanation of every affaire du coeur. The cells impress the individual with the conviction that that man, or that girl, is the one man or the one girl for him, or for her. When sim- 24 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE ilar cells similarly actuate the other party, you get cards for the wedding. Later you may get curious about the divorce. For the cells that cause two hearts to beat as one, do not guar antee a continuous performance. Besides, a continuous performance may be very fatiguing. The impolite yawn at it and the well-bred swear. In home circles, the latter pro ceeding is much the nicer. Swear ing, cursing and stamping about is always genteel and sometimes ir resistible. Sardou with what for him was decent psychology, made Theodora cry at her young man: "You insult me ! You love me still." If the jeune premier, instead of giving the lady a piece of such mind as he possessed, had yawned at her, never in the world could she have deduced the rosy belief that she was still the one and only. Unassisted by any psychology however am ateur, she would have known that the brute was sick of her. But, in the boudoir, harsh words are so THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 25 aphrodisaic that after a lady and her gentleman have fought like the very devil, as often as not they fall on each other's neck. For true it is, has been and probably ever will be, that it is only when lovers cease to quarrel that they are ceasing to love. The more they fight the livelier it gets, and the more they yawn the peacefuller it becomes. That is quite as it should be, were it not that lovers weary even of themselves, even of the best, even of squabbling and making up, even of the peace- table and its relaxing joys. With all of which Venus has noth ing whatever to do. Her sovereign pleasure consists in stirring the brain-cells, in fermenting the mol ecules of the imagination, in creat ing the delicate fever of love. As the patient's temperature rises, she laughs: in his delirium she rejoices. But, before it can pass, she has gone. The stricken and the bereft accuse and upbraid her. These she does not hear. The grotesque or merely ter- 26 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE rific passions which she has un leashed cannot mount to where she is. It has been a common mistake of astronomers to picture her incit ing the tragedies of love, gloating over those she has caused. The de ceptive hallucinations of the de lirium hallucinations so deceptive that they dupe the patient into mis taking for his own happiness that which solely concerns the next gen eration these vagaries are born of her spells. In them she rejoices. But what may ensue when the crisis is passed, concerns her not at all. Indifferently she turns her sphere of stars. What the original sin may have been I do not know, but I fancy that it consisted in making unoriginal remarks. To say that it is a fine day when the fact is patent, constitutes one of those crimes which, to my deep regret, the law cannot reach. To tell of the gulleries of the goddess is another. To denounce her as the perturber of the world, the flesh and THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE 27 the devil is a banality that has been running about the bookshelves ever since books were shelved and long before. That Venus is subtle and cruel is obvious. In spite of which and more, too, at the possibility of any possible febrifuge for the fever which she induces, down at us, through the centuries comes the caveat, "Not yet." The spells she throws summon shame in every shape. They turn lovers into skeletons at the feast, and more horribly still into detectives in the cupboard. There is no form of felony that they omit to fashion. We all know it. But though it were in the power of man to abolish her spells as thoroughly as the barba rians demolished her shrines, still we would cry "Not yet!" Life is packed with delights which the majority of us never en joy. The world is full of charming people whom few of us ever meet. There are amusements for the simple, austerities for the sage. But 28 THE GARDENS OF APHRODITE of all the gifts the gods can give or take, the loveliness of love is still so lovely that until the bubble blown by Brahm shall break, until the heavens shall fold and the universe collapse, still will ascend that cry "Not yet!" THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW RENEWED BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE RECALL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS Book Slip-50*n-8,'69(N831s8)458-A-31/5 N9 664458 PS2752 Saltus, E.E. G3 Gardens of Aphrodite. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS