“In an essay, Thomas de Quincey (1785¬1859). sketched out a fascinating theory of what constitutes a good lover. He began by reflecting on William Wordsworth (whom he knew well) – the greatest poet of the age, the author of much heartfelt love poetry, a confident, vigorous man who had had much success with women in his youth and was now happily married to a woman devoted to him and his talent.
“Given the evidence, Wordsworth stood to be described as a great lover. But De Quincey disagreed, and the reason lay in Wordsworth’s very confidence and reasonableness. The man was simply incapable of being pathetic and ridiculous when in love. He could never break down in front of a woman or think he couldn’t live without her or listen to a boring story she was telling with attention because he was so besotted. “Wordsworth had not the [things] in him that make total devotion to a woman possible,” argued De Quincey; he couldn’t see why people should lose their tongues when seducing their lovers, or why they should sit for hours thinking about them (doodling, writing their name down 300 times) when there were so many better things to be doing (like going for a walk up a mountain and staring at a lake). “There never lived a woman whom he would have conversed with without wearing an air of mild condescension to her understanding. To lie at her feet, to make her his idol, to worship her very caprices, and to adore the most unreasonableness of her frowns – these things were impossible to Wordsworth, and being so, he could never have been, in any emphatic sense, a lover.”
“Wordsworth might have been an able seducer, but his sense of propriety and his confidence in himself stopped him from experiencing the powerful emotions of the true lover. By contrast, De Quincey – though much less good as a poet and far more troubled in his relations with women – could claim superiority. He tells us that he used to retire to bed during difficult moments of courtship and dream of the beloved, with his head “wrapped in the bed clothes” – hardly respectable behaviour but perhaps the best sign of true love.
“If we follow De Quincey, we should perhaps beware of those who always know what to say, never bump into doors and rarely look ridiculous. They’re not the ones with the deepest hearts. The clumsiest seducers are perhaps always the most genuine.
[Alain de Botton]