FURTHERMORE
The importance of being angry
PETRONELLA WYATT
nlike Dietrich, I have decided not to fall in love again. Most of you, understand- ably, will think this unrealistic. One of the by-products of Freudian psychiatry is the belief that falling in love is involuntary and inevitable — that the subject can no more avoid it than he or she can avoid blinking an eye when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind them. Think of love as a compulsion neurosis and you think of it in the manner of Miss Susie Orbach and all the other practitioners of modern quackery. Nonetheless, one is able to take steps against love — just as it is possible to steel oneself against an attack of vertigo or to take preventative action against catching the flu. And I intend to do everything possi- ble to nip love in the bud before its enfee- bling roots can entwine themselves around me.
At this point you will ask, what's eating her this time? What has she got against love? Or, more likely, what has love got against her? No, I am not a lesbian. No, I have not been badly treated. Images of tumult, betrayal and heartless cavaliers might flash before your eyes, but you would be wrong. Most of my romantic entangle- ments have been less demi-mondaine than mundane. The greatest misery I can boast of was having to eat over-spiced Thai food for three months because my friend liked it.
That, you see, is the trouble with love. It makes one quiescent. I was once asked by the editor of a well-known tabloid whether I was angry. Angry? About what? Was he referring to anything specific or did he just mean in general? In general, came the answer. To be angry in general, he contin- ued, was the very essence of worldly suc- cess. At the time I thought this approach eccentric, not to say excessive. But I have come to regard it as rather sound advice.
This year is the anniversary of the birth of one of our most underrated women writ- ers. Her name is Elizabeth von Arnim. Elizabeth von Arnim was born in Sydney in 1886, and brought up in England. Her first husband was a man called Count Henning August von Arnim, who died in 1910. In 1916 Elizabeth made a disastrous marriage to Francis, 2nd Earl Russell. After just a year she ran away to America and in 1919 the couple separated.
One of the few virtues of the Virago Press is that it has recently reprinted von Arnim's best novels. Despite her unhappy experience with Russell, most of these are about love: married love, unmarried love, sexual love, unrequited love — in other words, love in all its variety. One book, The Enchanted April, tells the story of two women who fall in love again with their husbands whilst staying in a rented Tuscan castle.
Von Arnim's argument, or moral, is that from love derives all good things: kindness, tolerance, patience, peace of mind. Love is a complete communion of thoughts, com- plete immersion in the interests of another. Imperfections, ergo, do not matter. You do not mind things in Heaven. One of the characters says to an acquaintance, 'I sup- pose you think Rose's husband is just an ordinary, middle-aged man — a red, stout, round man. He isn't. Rose sees through all that. She sees what we can't see because she loves him.'
Von Arnim, however, might as well have written, 'She sees what we can't see because it isn't there.' This is what love is actually about: mammoth deception. For one thing, physical beauty, whether male or female, is chiefly imaginary. The loveliness of the human frame is at best feeble. Most of us are involved in a constant effort to disguise and conceal our own bodies. Love demands an emotional suggestibility, a her- culean capacity for illusion.
Once one has succumbed to the meretri- cious charms of a favoured man or woman, one defends one's choice with all the heat and steadfastness appertaining to the defence of a point of. honour. To tell a woman that her lover or husband is not attractive is so harsh and intolerable an insult that even an enemy seldom ventures Rut how are you supposed to make concrete without the use of a banned hosepipe?' upon it. The ego of either sex is simply unable to stomach such an affront. It is a weapon as discreditable as the poison of the Borgias.
Thus a conspiracy of silence surrounds the delusions of love. As Thackeray said, 'It is strange what a man may do and a woman yet think him an angel.' But stranger still is how love affects the victim's attitude towards the world. One wants to love everybody, to be friends with everybody. The critical faculties completely disappear. One is fixed in blandness, like some poor object encased forever in aspic. The lover's most common mood is one of moronic serenity, of complacency. We may be inspired to dream of composing a sympho- ny or climbing a mountain, but love pre- vents us from carrying out our ambitions.
This is why the editor of the well-known tabloid was right. The total absence of anger can prove catastrophic. This is partic- ularly true in the case of someone who makes a living out of holding journalistic `opinions'. This, of course, is a euphemism for finding something — or someone — to become very cross about. Normally, it is easy enough. The Princess of Wales, the European Commission, not to mention a large proportion of the Tory Party, will do very well for starters.
But love is toothless, it does not bite. It fills one with benevolence and understand- ing. When I am in love I will not hate. I begin to think perhaps we are unfair to the Princess. What business is it of ours if she goes to operations wearing dangly ear- rings? Let her go to human sacrifices if it makes her feel better. You see what I mean? One is even incapable of indigna- tion with the EU. What does beef matter, after all? What does anything matter? Who cares if it rains and thunders? Who cares if a million firms go under?
But it does matter, and we should care. We should care deeply. Love is dangerous because it is an escape from reality, a refuge from the problems of life, but these things have to be faced eventually. I once had a woman friend who went from lover to lover because she said it blotted out everything else. Love, then, is intellectual and emotional paralysis — pleasant in the short term, perhaps, but disastrous in large doses. Some narcotics are less trouble and produce a similar effect. So does alcohol. And, as Churchill observed, you'll be sober in the morning.
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