The development of romantic, as distinguished from conjugal love, depends on the existence of a more or less prolonged period of courtship. Where this is absent Love is absent, as among the ancient nations and those of the moderns who lock up their women until they are ready to be sold to a husband, at sight.
Among animals the young females are not locked up or chaperoned. They are free to meet the young males and fall in love with the one that pleases them most.
As a rule the preliminaries to animal marriages are doubtless brief. If a healthy, vigorous male comes across a mature, healthy female, it is usually a case of mutual veni, vidi, vici.
In other cases, however, courtship is a more prolonged affair, owing partly to the coyness of the female, partly to the rivalries among the male suitors.
Animal courtship is carried on either by single pairs in the romantic shades of the forests, or else at special nuptial mass meetings, resembling those held by some primitive tribes whose unmarried young people assemble on certain days in the year to select partners. Of the common magpie, for instance, Darwin relates that “Some years ago these birds abounded in extraordinary numbers, so that a gamekeeper killed in one morning nineteen males, and another killed by a single shot seven birds roosting together. They then had the habit of assembling very early in the spring at particular spots, where they could be seen in flocks, chattering, sometimes fighting, bustling, and flying about the trees. The whole affair was evidently considered by the birds as one of the highest importance. Shortly after the meeting they all separated, and were then observed by Mr. Fox and others to be paired for the season.”
This was known as the “great magpie marriage.” In Germany and Scandinavia similar assemblages of black game are so common that special names have been given to them. “The bowers of the bower-birds are the resort of both sexes during the breeding season; and here the males meet and contend with each other for the favours of the females, and here the latter assemble and coquet with the males.”
Two more cases may be cited: “With one of the vultures (Cathartes aura) of the United States parties of eight, ten, or more males and females assemble on fallen logs, ‘exhibiting the strongest desire to please mutually,’ and after many caresses each male leads off his partner on the wing. Audubon likewise carefully observed the wild flocks of Canada geese, and gives a graphic description of their love-antics; he says that the birds which had been previously mated ‘renewed their courtship as early as the month of January, while the others would be contending or coquetting for hours every day, until all seemed satisfied with the choice they had made, after which, although they remained together, any person could easily perceive that they were careful to keep in pairs. I have observed also that the older the birds the shorter were the preliminaries of their courtship. The bachelors and old maids, whether in regret or not caring to be disturbed by the bustle, quietly moved aside and lay down at some distance from the rest.’ ”
Separate courtship may be illustrated by the following cases, the first of which is also interesting as showing that it is not among men alone that the female occasionally becomes the wooer; and the second as showing how early in the scale of animal life a primitive sort of courtship may be found. Concerning a wild duck brought up in captivity Mr. Hewitt says that “After breeding a couple of seasons with her own mallard, it at once shook him off on my placing a male pintail on the water. It was evidently a case of love at first sight, for she swam about the newcomer caressingly, though he appeared evidently alarmed and averse to her overtures of affection. From that hour she forgot her old partner. Winter passed by, and the next spring the pintail seemed to have become a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and produced seven or eight young ones.”
The second case relates to the landsnail, concerning which Agassiz says: “Quiconque a eu l’occasion d’observer les amours des limaçons ne saurait mettre en doute la séduction déployée dans les mouvements et les allures qui préparent et accomplissent le double embrassement de ces hermaphrodites.”
The opportunities for prolonged Courtship being thus given, the question arises, “Do animals, while a-wooing, experience the same feelings as a human lover?” In other words, Are any of the overtones of Romantic Love present in the amorous passion of animals?
Several of them no doubt are habitually absent. Animals have not sufficient imagination to meditate consciously on their probable success or failure in Courtship; and this lack of imaginative power excludes those “overtones” which are chiefly dependent on that faculty; notably Sympathy with the beloved’s feelings, Pride of Conquest and Possession, Hyperbolic Adoration, Voluntary Self-Sacrifice for the other, and the Woful Ecstasy of Mixed Moods. That Gallantry, or the Desire to Please, may be present is shown by the words I have italicised in the quotation just made regarding the courtship of vultures, and is further shown by the display of their ornamental plumage by male birds to excite the attention of the female. Exclusiveness of affection is indicated by the occasional indifference of the wooer to every rival; and when we read of the German blackcock’s love-dances, during which, “the more ardent he grows the more lively he becomes, until at last the bird appears like a frantic creature”; and that “at such times the blackcocks are so absorbed that they become almost blind and deaf, but less so than the capercailzie,” so that “bird after bird may be shot on the spot, or even caught by the hand”—when we read this, we feel tempted to credit these birds even with those highest and most specialised forms of lover’s madness which lead to oblivion—Self-Sacrifice and Ecstatic Adoration.
The four traits of Romantic Love which are doubtless present in the passion of animals are Jealousy, Coyness, Individual Preference, and Admiration of Personal Beauty.
(a) Jealousy.—Volumes might be filled with accounts of the tragedies brought about through animal rivalry and jealousy during the season of love. “The courage and the desperate conflicts of stags have often been described,” says Darwin; “their skeletons have been found in various parts of the world, with the horns inextricably locked together, showing how miserably the victor and vanquished had perished.” “Male sperm-whales are very jealous” at the season of love; “and in their battles ‘they often lock their jaws together, and turn on their sides and twist about’; so that their lower jaws often become distorted.”
When birds gaze at themselves in a looking-glass, as they often do, the same authority inclines to the belief that they do it from jealousy of a supposed rival; and Mr. Jenner Weir, he states, “is convinced that birds pay particular attention to the colours of other birds, sometimes out of jealousy, and sometimes as a sign of kinship;” while “many naturalists believe that the singing of birds is almost exclusively ‘the effect of rivalry and emulation,’ and not for the sake of charming their mates.”
Animal Jealousy is apparently dependent on the immediate presence of the rival and the female; while the Jealousy of a human lover is also a matter of the imagination, and smarts even more intensely during Her absence; for his morbid fancy then loves to picture Her in the arms of his victorious rival. He does not, however, except in some southern countries, emulate the jealous lion by seeking to devour his rival, but is contented if he can ward him off by stratagem, or make him appear in a disadvantageous light in Her eyes.
(b) Coyness.—Just as the Jealousy displayed by two animals fighting for a female is a gross, primitive emotion, so the Coyness of female animals is crude and clumsy compared with the delicious subtlety with which a human maiden veils a Yes under an apparent No. Yet it plays a prominent rôle in the courtship of animals.
A human lover would often consider it a special privilege to be eaten up, skin, bones, and all, by his mistress; but it is doubtful whether spiders are ever madly enough in love to relish the conduct of their females, as described by Darwin: “The male is generally much smaller than the female, sometimes to an extraordinary degree, and he is forced to be extremely cautious in making his advances, as the female often carries her coyness to a dangerous pitch. De Geer saw a male that ‘in the midst of his preparatory caresses was seized by the object of his attentions, enveloped by her in a web, and then devoured’; a sight which, as he adds, filled him