The Not Impossible She

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Title:     The Not Impossible She
Author: William Davenport Adams [More Titles by Adams]

I make no allusion here to the heroine of Mr. Haggard's well-known romance. What I am thinking of at the moment is not the impossible 'She' of recent fiction, but the 'not impossible She' of Master Richard Crashaw--the 'perfect monster,' in female form, who was to 'command his heart and him,' and whom he was good enough to sketch for us in advance within the limits of some forty verses--the damsel whose beauty was to

'Owe not all its duty
To gaudy tire or glistering shoe-tye;'

whose face was to be

'Made up
Out of no other shop
Than what Nature's white hand sets ope;'

who was to have 'a well-tamed heart,'

'Sidneian showers
Of sweet discourse,'

and so on, and of whom the poet was so kind as to say that, if Time knew of anyone who answered the description,

'Her that dares be
What these lines wish to see--
I seek no further--it is She.'

Master Crashaw is not the only man by many who in the past has been seduced into putting into words and verse the aspirations, on this subject, which filled his soul. It would probably be found, if anyone had the requisite patience to go through with it, that there has been scarcely a poet who has not thus given expression to his conception of an ideal woman and to his desire for her companionship. Much more numerous, to be sure, are the rapturous tributes which have been paid to actual persons of the other sex: the poetry of praise, as written by men of women, has not yet been exhausted, and probably never will be. But the ideal description has generally come first, and very notable it has usually been. Sir Thomas Wyatt declared that

'A face that should content me wondrous well
Should not be fair, but lovely to behold;
Of lively look, all grief for to repel;
With right good grace,'

et caetera. He further asserted that 'her tress also should be of crisped gold,' and intimated graciously that

'With wit, and these, perchance I might be tied,
And knit again with knot that should not slide.'

His contemporary, Lord Surrey, included among 'the means to attain happy life,' 'the faithful wife, without debate'--that is, I suppose, a lady without forty-parson-power of talk--a not impossible, nay, fairly common, She.

In a lyric by Beaumont and Fletcher, we find the supposed speaker giving utterance to a series of such wishes. 'May I,' he says, 'find a woman fair, And her mind as clear as air!'

'May I find a woman rich,
And of not too high a pitch!...
May I find a woman wise,
And her falsehood not disguise!...
May I find a woman kind,
And not wavering like the wind!...'

And, in truth, he talks throughout as if he did not expect to discover any such rarity. Everyone knows the little poem in which Ben Jonson details his preferences in women's dress, declaring that 'a sweet disorder' does more bewitch him 'than when art Is too precise in every part.' But elsewhere he paints for us, not a perfect feminine attire, but the faultless maid herself, as he would have her:

'I would have her fair and witty,
Favouring more of Court than City,
A little proud, but full of pity,
Light and humorous in her toying,
Oft building hopes and soon destroying...
Neither too easy nor too hard,
All extremes I would have barr'd.'

That, it would seem, was rare Ben's ideal.

Carew, it is notorious, professed to despise 'lovely cheeks or lips or eyes,' if they were not combined with 'A smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts, and calm desires.' A rosy cheek, a coral lip, and even star-like eyes, as he sagely said, would waste away. And in this somewhat priggish, and perhaps not wholly sincere, vein, he finds a rival in the anonymous bard who declared that he did not demand

'A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair,'

and so on, but instead,

'A tender heart, a loyal mind,
Which with temptation I would trust,
Yet never link'd with error find--

'One in whose gentle bosom I
Could pour my secret heart of woes,
Like the care-burthen'd honey-fly
That hides his murmurs in the rose.'

So Bedingfield, conceding to friend Damon 'the nymph that sparkles in her dress,' avows his own fondness for the maid 'whose cheeks the hand of Nature paints.' Of this young person he says:

'No art she knows or seeks to know;
No charm to wealthy pride will owe;
No gems, no gold she needs to wear;
She shines intrinsically fair.'

Cowley, it will be remembered, in sketching his notion of true happiness, included in it the picture of

'A mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only beloved and loving me!'

With that 'one dear She'--and a few other things--he thought he could get on pretty comfortably. But probably at once the most obliging and most exigent of modern lovers was the sentimental gentleman to whose feelings Mrs. Bowen-Graves ('Stella') gave appropriate voice in the over-familiar 'My Queen.'

'I will not dream of her tall and stately--
She that I love may be fairy light;'

nay, more:

'I will not say she should walk sedately--
Whatever she does, it will sure be right.

'And she may be humble or proud, my lady,
Or that sweet calm which is just between'

(as if anyone could be a 'sweet calm'!); moreover:

'Whether her birth be noble or lowly,
I care no more than the spirit above;'

but there is at least one point upon which this gentleman insists:

'She must be courteous, she must be holy,
Pure in her spirit, that maiden I love'--

and, being that, she may depend upon the stars falling, and the angels weeping, ere he ceases to love her, his Queen, his Queen!

Ah! the poets have much to answer for. Here is Mr. Longfellow assuring his readers that

'No one is so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own;'

and here is Sir Edwin Arnold declaring, with equal confidence, that

'Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
For one lone soul another lonely soul'--

et caetera, et caetera. Is it any wonder that, in the face of such encouragement, young men go on dreaming, each of the dimidium suae animae whom he is to meet by-and-by, and framing to that end all sorts of beautiful ideals? It may be that the Shes thus dreamed of are 'not impossible'--they may 'arrive;' but it is as well not to be too sanguine. And, above all, it is as well not to draw too extravagant a picture, if only because you may not be worthy of the original when you see it. Corydon is too disposed to expect in Phyllis charms and virtues for which he might find it difficult to show counterparts in himself. If the lady is to be the pattern of beauty and of goodness, ought not the gentleman to bring an equal amount of capital into the matrimonial firm?

[The end]
William Davenport Adams's essay: Not Impossible She

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