H.L. Mencken

Lancaster New Era/February 23, 1928

Dr. Durant’s observation that no rational man ever falls in love after thirty is surely not new. I printed it in a book called “In Defense of Women” ten or twelve years ago. Nor was it new when I printed it. You will find it, if you search hard enough, in Shakespeare, and Shakespeare, I have no doubt, borrowed it from an Italian who had cabbaged It from the Greeks. By reiterating it in various forms, some of them voluptuous and others indignant, George Bernard Shaw has earned at least $35,000 by my estimate, since the year 1886. And it is still good for an occasional outfit of lecturer’s gauds for Durant, and a case of Asemannahauser Hinterkirch Auslese 1921 for me.

But, like all other truths, it is not to be taken too literally. I have seen men of thirty-five magnificently in love, and full of a fine, fierce pride in the fact, But these same men also wrote poetry, and believed that a couple of quinine pills, taken before going to bed, would cure a cold. In other words, they were excessively romantic, which is to say, balmy. Durant, I suppose, referred to more rational fellows, as I did in my book, and the Greeks long before either of us. Such rational fellows can no more fall in love, in the full romantic sense, than a dry Congressman can resist a drink. Their very incapacity for it, indeed, is one of the chief proofs of their rationality.

Says Romantic Love Nonsense

For this romantic love, when all is said and done, is simply nonsense, and hence not worth much mourning. Its cause, I am informed by agents in the medical colleges, is an ebullition of the hormones; its effects are indistinguishable from those of a somewhat prolonged and injudicious jag. The victim, looking at black, sees white. The lady who has knocked him off, seen through his glazed eyes, becomes an amalgam of Florence Nightingale, Marie Antoinette, Lola Montez, Edith Cavell, Grace Darling and the tenth and best wife of Belshazzer, king of Babylon. His view of her, in the sight of all other persons, is apt to seem comical. And when he marries her, he commonly finds that it is painfully erroneous. Very few early marriages are genuinely happy. They may last, but so do gallstones last. I add politely that what is pain for the gander is probably agony for the goose.

But though the romantic love described in the works of the standard poets is thus mainly a function of youth, and cannot survive into actual maturity, I see no reason why a man sliding into the forties should not marry satisfactorily, and make a good husband. His Illusions may be gone, but if the lady he claps his eye on is really charming there may be a great many very soothing realities. The plain fact is that many females of the human species are lovely, and that their loveliness survive even the harshest of spotlights. They make pretty pictures, especially when competently made up. They have nimble wits and are amusing. They know how to be agreeable. They are tolerantly cynical, and do not expect too much, either of God or of man. I can easily imagine even the most hard-boiled of men falling for such a lass. In fact, I have seen them fall and observed them happy afterward.

Idealistic Love Lasting.

This, to be sure, is not romantic love. It is not idealistic. It sees nothing that is not actually there. But, as I say, what is there may be very charming. If it is, then it is apt to last. For charm is almost as durable as gallstones. It is no more a function of mere youth than it is a figment of illusion. The genuinely charming woman remains charming at sixty. She can no more fade, in any real sense, than a diamond can fade. It is not necessary to fall in love with such a woman in order to appreciate her. Appreciating her is a function, not of the hormones, but of the higher cerebral centers. In other words, it is a function of men beyond thirty-five.

As for women, I don’t believe that they ever fall in love at all. They are far too intelligent to do it. When one hears of a woman falling wildly in love with a movie actor, or a gypsy violinist, or the curate of the parish, one simply hears of a woman who is trying to bring the darling of her heart to terms. Let him show the proper signs of disturbance, and she will promptly forget poor Jack Gilbert. No woman above the intellectual grade of a cavalryman nor a cockroach ever yields herself completely to romantic illusion. In even the prettiest fellow, when she has looked at him seriously, she sees a good husband.