Court of Love

“ The woman who, being adored with love, would cause the death of a man by her refusal, must be condemned as a homicide. The Court of Love has under my presidency, issued that memorable decree at its last session under the young elm. The said decree was rendered at the instance of the Conservator of the High Privileges of Love, who made the application before the Chamber of Sweet Pledges. The applicant, if I remember rightly, was a lover residing in the purlieus of the 'Delightful Passion,' 'Perseverence Street,' 'Hotel Despair,' where the unhappy fellow was dying of his flame's inhumanity. ”

“ Men and women must know conjugal, before they can know true parental, love; each must see in the child the features of the beloved ere the perfect circle of love can be complete. Husband and wife bound in closest, most durable and yet most eager union, children springing as flowers from the dual stem of love, home where the creators train the lives they have given—such will be the marriage of the future. The loathsome details of the Divorce Court will no longer pollute our papers; the public will no longer be called in to gloat over the ruins of desecrated love ”

“ This singular mode of courtship between two lovers who are so passionately devoted to one another that we might call them the Hebrew Romeo and Juliet, is not without significance. Its recurrence, now on the lips of the bride, helps to sharpen still more the contrast between what passes for love in the royal harem, and the true emotion experienced by a pair of innocent young people, unsullied by the corruptions of the court—illustrating, as it does at once, its sweet intimacy and its perfect purity. ”

“ A court-lady, seen by chance one day as he raised his head from the flowers, inspires a passion which he feels to be beyond hope or cure. He confides his unhappiness to one of the courtiers, who counsels him to carry a burden round and round the garden many times, until, haply, the lady “seeing, may relent.” This he does. At first the burden seems light as air, being buoyantly borne, but gradually it grows heavier and heavier, until at last he staggers to the ground, crushed to death by unavailing love. ”

“ If her husband was the sorriest lover who ever poured thick-voiced flatteries into a girl-wife's ears, there were others, plenty of them, who were eager to pay more acceptable homage to her; and these men—poets, courtiers, great men in art and letters—flocked to her salon to bask in her beauty and to be charmed by her wit.
After all, she was a Queen, although she wore no crown. She had a Court, although no Royalties graced it. From the Pope to the King of France, no monarch in Europe would recognise her husband's kingship. ”

“ Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that I am glad to see thee when thou comest.
The most ardent lover holds yet a private court, and his love can never be so strong and ethereal that there will not be danger that judgment be rendered against the beloved. ”

“ If the slight formalities that are the bulwarks of love as well as friendship, many forbearances, and more of the small, sweet courtesies of life, were but permitted to blossom forth like unexpected flowers beneath the family rooftree, fewer unhappy marriages would catalogue their miseries in the divorce court. ”

“ To such a youth, feverishly seeking distraction from his own black moods, the demure, devout Princess, ignorant of the caresses and coquetry of her sex, moving like a spectre among the brilliant, light-hearted ladies of his Court, was the most unsuitable, the most impossible of brides. ”

“ Eleanor and her daughter Mary and her granddaughter Blanche knew as well as Saint Bernard did, or Saint Francis, what a brute the emancipated man could be; and as though they foresaw the society of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they used every terror they could invent, as well as every tenderness they could invoke, to tame the beasts around them. Their charge was of manners, and, to teach manners, they made a school which they called their Court of Love, with a code of law to which they gave the name of "courteous love." ”

“ Your own good sense will dictate to you that you ought not to be surprised if the King resents the conduct of your brother and husband, and as he knows the love and friendship that exist between you three, should suppose that you were privy to their design of leaving the Court. He has, for this reason, resolved to detain you in it, as a hostage for them. He is sensible how much you are beloved by your husband, and thinks he can hold no pledge that is more dear to him. ”

“ Therefore the course of conduct that I wish my Court Lady to pursue in love talk, will be to refuse always to believe that whoever pays court to her for that reason loves her: and if the gentleman shall be as pert as many are, and speak to her with small respect, she will give him such answer that he may clearly understand he is causing her annoyance. ”

“ For Love will reyve your colour, lust, and hele:
Eke ye must bait on many an hevy mele:
No force, y-wis, I stired you long agoon 195
To draw to court,' quod litell Philobon.
'Ye shall well see how rough and angry face
The King of Love will shew, when ye him see;
By myn advyse kneel down and ask him grace,
Eschewing perell and adversitee; 200
For well I wot it wol non other be,
Comfort is non, ne counsel to your ese;
Why will ye than the King of Love displese?'
'O mercy, god,' quod ich, 'I me repent,
Caitif and wrecche in hert, in wille, and thought! ”

“ That, whan her like, she may it rede and loke.
When I was yong, at eighteen yere of age,
Lusty and light, desirous of pleasaunce,
Approching on full sadde and ripe corage, 45
Love arted me to do myn observaunce
To his astate, and doon him obeysaunce,
Commaunding me the Court of Love to see,
A lite beside the mount of Citharee,
There Citherea goddesse was and quene 50
Honoured highly for her majestee;
And eke her sone, the mighty god, I wene,
Cupid the blind, that for his dignitee
A thousand lovers worship on their knee ”

“ We must be prepared to meet the villain in court to-morrow. We must prove the arrest of the marriage ceremony at All Faith Church, three years ago, by the appearance of the would-be bridegroom’s wife. Fortunately we have ‘a cloud of witnesses’ to that fact. Besides ourselves, all the young people who are our guests were present at the church on that occasion. Cheer up, my love!” he said, going over to the other side of Odalite’s chair, and bending over her. “Your perfect freedom and happiness is but a question of time. And meanwhile you will remain under my protection.”
“Dear papa! ”

“ It is very common in a court, for a man not to be permitted to love whom he likes, to do what he should, nor to speak what he thinks. It is necessary to keep silence, in order to conceal your sentiments, and it is also necessary, to acquire a facility at changing them. You must applaud, abuse, [Pg 121] love, abhor, speak, and live, not according to your own liking or inclination, but in conformity to the arbitrary will and caprice of other people. ”

“ Then there are certain other men who deign to love only those women who in face and speech and every movement carry 228all elegance, all gentle manners, all knowledge, and all the graces heaped together,—like a single flower composed of all the excellences in the world. Thus if my Court Lady have a dearth of those loves that spring from evil hope, she will not on that account be left without a lover ”

“ The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, in their judgment, could set off the authority, elegance, and refinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting are there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen Beatitudes; and, indeed, though men are plenty and some of them are handsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly the intelligence. The Court of Mary is feminine, and its charms are Grace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a social sense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes. ”

“ So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune; ”

“ The quick noise and movement of the court's emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Lucie stood stretching out her arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face but love and consolation. ”

“ But these Courts of Love went further. They laid down rules for love; they allowed married women to receive the homage of lovers, and even nicely directed all the symptoms they were to exhibit of reciprocation. ”

“ In their own fashion the reputed Courts of Love upheld a very high ideal. They insisted upon the absolute sacredness of a promise and of the word of honour, which a knight or a lady must keep to the death. They demanded fidelity between lovers, for that was considered "to be the essence of high-toned gallantry." ”

“ If a lady treated her troubadour lover unfairly, or if a lover were guilty of any dereliction or crime in love, or if, for the guidance of future generations of lovers, a decision on a mere point of gallantry were sought, all such cases came before the Courts of Love, which had a regular code of laws, thirty-one in number, upon which decisions were based. ”

“ There were several of these courts, the most famous being those of Queen Eleanor of England, of her daughter, Marie de Champagne, of the Viscountess of Narbonne, and of the Countess of Flanders. The code under which these fantastic tribunals are said to have given their judgment is a very curious document. The statutes of love are hardly so rigorous as might be expected; some of them are merely proverbial bits of wisdom, with here and there a hint very far from romantic:
IV. Love never stands still; it always increases--or diminishes. ”

“ Punch. "They are allowed to marry; but only the wisest and noblest men may approach them. On earth their will is free, and sometimes, alas, they fall away from righteousness, and pass through bitter tribulation."
"Yes," said the Fleet Street Sage, "We call it the Divorce Court—your Majesty will pardon the rough speech of an old man—and, somehow, we don't seem able to get on without it. But here, of course, you have no such institution?" ”

“ It is doubtful whether any one unacquainted with the teaching of the Courts of Love, such as they were in the twelfth century, would have made the compulsory quest of love the keynote of a story, as, for instance, Marie does in the "Lay of Guigemar." These Courts of Love, though not so elaborate, yet seemingly as imperious, as those of the fourteenth century, formed one of the semi-serious pastimes of the Middle Ages, and although it may be that they were often mere forms of entertainment, no self-respecting person could afford to disregard their rules or decisions. ”

“ We think, without fear of being deceived, that married people who have lived twenty years together may sleep in peace without fear of having their love trespassed upon or of incurring the scandal of a lawsuit for criminal conversation. ”

“ Improper Liberties During Courtship Kill Love.—Any improper liberties which are permitted by young ladies, whether engaged or not, will change love into sensuality, and her affections will become obnoxious, if not repellent. ”

“ Men and women whose kindness of heart is unbounded, and whose intellectual attainments soar far above the average.
Every girl who goes upon the stage need not enjoy the privilege of marrying titled imbecility, nor obtain the notoriety of the Divorce Court, neither being creditable nor essential to her calling, although both are chronicled with unfailing regularity by the press.
The Divorce Court is a sad theatre where terrible tragedies of human misery are acted out to the bitter end. ”

“ If your majesty requires me to speak candidly, I do not believe in Mademoiselle de la Valliere’s affection; the delight at being at court, the honor of being in the service of Madame, counteract in her head whatever affection she may happen to have in her heart; it is a marriage similar to many others which already exist at court ”

“ But marriage, with all its accompanying conventions and indissoluble bonds—indissoluble, except through the loathsome medium of the divorce court—was a condition of life that his whole nature shrank from. ”

“ He visited all the courts, where he found the ladies insincere, fond of admirers, and so enamoured with their own persons, that their hearts were not capable of entertaining any true love for a husband. ”

“ Under such circumstances it is difficult to understand how a marriage could exist at all. However, such marriages do exist in great numbers, and by far the majority of them do not end up in the divorce courts, as one might expect. Despite the bitter complainings, the struggle for power, the fear of love, and the dread of sex on the wife’s part, I have found that there is usually a well-hidden but genuine bond of love between the couple. ”

“ The free companionship of man and woman had begun. Then and forever ended the old system of courtship, which seems so laughable and even incredible today. One was no longer expected to pay court to one's beloved, sitting stiffly on straight-backed chairs in a chill drawing-room in the non-conducting, or non-conducive, presence of still chillier maiden aunts. ”

“ But how was he to marry her if he could not court her? And how was he to court her if he was never permitted to associate with her? He was forbidden to approach her, while "that cur of a weaver boy" was freely admitted to her society! ”

“ We, fortified with a singular infatuation in our ideas, our habits, and our personal associations, venture to settle by our sovereign decrees the loftiest questions of sentiment. The rules to be observed by the perfect lover in the courtship and treatment of his lady-love, have been settled at tournaments, by the Courts of Love of Isaure, and by the College of the Gay Science. ”

“ I cannot bear to think of dear Court Royal passing into other hands. Now, if you marry, you must marry so as to recover the property from its embarrassments. Such an opportunity presents itself. I will speak to you more fully on this when we meet. ”