Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 108, 28 July 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

Her Little Roman Guinea Pig!

I often wonder —don’t you?—about the sincerity of the views expressed by authors who write for the daily papers. There is always someone writing to say how unromantic is romance today. “What about it, old bean?” this author tells us, is the classical proposal. Well, I mean to say, has she never—if a female—been proposed to? Has he never—if a male—proposed? Because no one ever asked a woman to marry him in those words, I dare swear. The tale that modern lovers converse in these terms is a journalistic cliche. For the girl who says “old bean” to her brother, ocusin, man or girl friend (even uncle, and quite possibly grandfather!) will still say “darling” to her lover. And that’s that. Still, there is a language of love, a special language, and one which somehow bears no resemblance to the one we set down in books, I take up a ♦•ray novel by an author singularly eloquent, and what terms of endearment do I see in current use? “Heart’s blood,” he muttered, folding her in his arms. “Heart of my life,” she whispered. And so forth. Well, I know one man’s meat is another man’s poison, but tell me honestly, have you ever yourself been called Heart’s Blood, and do you believe any other human woman has either? Though, of course, as the old lady said when watching the Charleston, it must be very nice for those that like it. But that is not what real women are called by their lovers. Real women are called the most ridiculous things »by the men who love them, but not pretentiously ridiculous things. Rather are they given little pet names, absurd but very pleasant. You see them sometimes quoted in court when some romance, gone wrong—for even the most sordid divorce case is only that is being put under the magnifying glass and examined by a solemn judge and a pie-faced jury. “This letter,” says defending counsel, dramatically, “begins: ‘My adored Tootles,” and finishes, ‘your little Snuggly.’ (Bursts of ribald laughter and the judge threatens to clear the court.) “Do you mean to tell me, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that these words were used by a wife who was even at that moment planning basely to betray her husband?” We do not know what the jury think about that, but personally it has always given me a pang to hear this sort of thing. It is so ridiculous, contemptible, and touching. Why did she call him Tootles? Can one have the slightest sympathy even for the most basely betrayed husband whose personality suggested the appellation of Tootles? He must, we feel, have been a mug. And we can all imagine the sort of common little wretch who could sign herself “Snuggly.” Isn’t that what you’ve sometimes felt when you’ve read that sort Of thing in newspapers ? But it is easy—and rather graceless —to sneer; it is kinder and more human, sometimes, to drop a tear on the grave of dead romance. Think that, when those words were written. Tootles and Snuggly were to each other what you and Jack are, and what, a little farther back, Leander was to Hero, and Tristan to Iseult! Only they did not call each other “Heart’s Blood” and “Little White Flower,” because—because they were, if fools, at least the human kind, and not the sort that only breathes and moves in the pages of a novel. And anyway, if you are still sneering, go and hunt up your old love letters. If you cannot find dozens of phrases in which you were not called something as silly as “Snuggly,” and if your memory honestly assures you that you never called Jack anything as inane as “Tootles,” then you have my congratulations. But I don’t want to know you. There is no end to the absurdities of being in love, and the beginning must have been when Eve called Adam—whatever she did call him! I suppose you think Cleopatra called Antony her conqueror of the Nile? That, in my opinion, is where Shakespeare slipped. I think it much more likely that she addressed him as her little Roman guinea-pig.