Around a century ago, Bates Professor of Philosophy Halbert Britan’s titillating take on falling in love, delivered with a lingering Edwardian gentility, rocketed around the country.
Britan gave his 22-page love talk, “On Falling in Love,” in Chase Hall on Feb. 11, 1921, at a meeting of the Bates Roundtable, a group of faculty and staff who gathered monthly for the “cultivation of the social and literary talents of its members.”
News stories about the lecture soon went viral, 1920s style.
First reported by the Lewiston Evening Journal on Feb. 19, 1921, the talk was reprinted in its entirety a month later in The Boston Sunday Globe.
That did it: Over the next year, stories about Britan’s findings and advice for the lovelorn, some hopeful, some quite deflating, appeared in newspapers around the country.
So, how do his insights hold up, at least from the disparate perspectives of two Bates students, one a first-year student from California and the other a junior from Texas?
Back in Britan’s day, the factors that might “form a nucleus around which the emotions may be segregated and organized” included feats of strength. Yes, say Hannah Kothari ’26 and Ramona McNish ‘28, that might still hold true. But also consider this factor: “Having a cool and mysterious Instagram.”
Here, then, are a few quotes from Britan’s 1921 lecture, and rejoinders from the team of Kothari and McNish — self-described as “two hopeless romantics, or skeptics, depending on the day.”
Love Potion No. 9
This is Britan’s heartwarming analogy for love as a highly unstable chemical explosion waiting for a spark:
“High explosives require the most refined, the most exact application of chemical law for their successful preparation. The union, however, is a fragile one. Apply the proper stimulus, insignificant though it be, and a tremendous energy is instantaneously set free. And so it is with the instinct of love.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “As humanities majors who shudder at the idea of three-hour labs in Bonney, we’re not in love with Dr. Love’s idea of romance as explosive chemistry. But we get it: A lab partner mixing potent potions in protection goggles might be more alluring than a Peer Learning Commons editor who doesn’t agree with you about the Oxford comma.“
I Really Like You
In this quote, Britan says that if you fall in love too easily, you’re probably not great at staying in love:
“There are…individuals whose instinctive reactions are of a hair-trigger delicacy, so that a gentle glance, an eye of blue or brown, an accent or a smile unlocks — or we would better say unlatches — the door of their emotional consciousness [and] submerges the judicial faculties so that for time the poor victim is hopelessly swept away. This acute sensitivity…may secure a pronounced response to some element of sexual attraction [but] is obviously an enemy to constancy.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “During these cold, dark winter months, there’s no harm in being swept away by hair-trigger delicacies. But, a little delicacy goes a long way. Does Dr. Love know what it’s like when the Deansmen belt out a Valentine-gram — a 1990s pop love song, always — in Commons while you’re trying to dig into your General Tso’s chicken?“
All You Need Is Love
Britan says there’s no right way to fall in love:
“There are widely different ways in which individuals succumb to Cupid’s darts. Some fall suddenly, as tho a trap had been sprung beneath their feet; some stumble and stagger, recover their balance, but finally go down ingloriously to their glorious doom. Some seem immune to all charms.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “Ah, The Notebook. Classic. Heart-wrenching. Tear jerking (at least for Hannah). A million stolen letters, an engagement to another man, unsupportive parents: Love conquers all! And for the rest of us? Whether you bond over a flunked exam, a difficult lab, or a dropped dish in Commons, one message is clear: There’s no right way to fall in love.“
Check Yes Or No
Britan gets personal, offering his backstory of childhood infatuation, based on an offhand compliment:
“My first experience of falling in love I can remember clearly and can identify the excitant or stimulus that roused my tender heart of 11 years. My sister chanced to tell me one day of a remark made by a girl, to the effect that she thought that I was the prettiest boy in school.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “Well done, Dr. Love! First- or second-hand, compliments are still alive and well, even past grade school. Can you remember a time where someone complimented you in class? How about in Commons? All it sometimes takes is one offhand compliment to spark a first love. (Who knew that Hannah’s strawberry hat would make people so nice?)”
Rock with You
Britan makes anyone over 30 feel like an ancient rock formation:
“After 30, the sediment of a prolonged experience has settled over the instinct and often so solidified that toy tools will seldom suffice to break through to the emotion-bearing Paleozoic stratum of human nature.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “We’d like Dr. Love to binge on The Golden Bachelor in which women of a certain age enter the cutthroat reality TV scene to compete for an eligible widower’s love. While he might have seen this show as an archeological dig, we think it shows that there’s still some molten lava beneath that Paleozoic stratum — even after 30.”
Love Is a Battlefield
Human emotions, love, fear, and rage, all follow the same general process:
“There is not one single formula for awakening love. Just as anger or fear, for example, may be excited by a wide variety of circumstances and conditions, so love is capable of being awakened by stimuli equally diverse.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “The anger-fear-love intersection, seen in enemies-to-lovers tropes, existed long before Britan’s time. That said, we’d be interested to see his take on the romance book recs on Tiktok now, and how far they take it. It’s fun to think that during his day Dr. Love might’ve been a fan of Pride and Prejudice; Ramona only wishes he was around long enough to see the 2005 adaptation with Keira Knightley.“
How Deep Is Your Love?
Britan says that the immediate and intense response to stimuli — call it the Commons Crush phenomenon — has an age limit:
“What is an adequate stimulus at one age is [not] necessarily so at another. In the tender years of youth, when all the experiences of life have the impressiveness of novelty, that may well seem portentous and epoch-making when later will hardly start a ripple upon the emotional calm of the years.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “Last year, Nate Shore ’27 of Kennebunkport, Maine, released ‘Commons Crush’, with lyrics like ‘It’s still only September / But I’ll be thinking of her until my thesis is bound.’ We wonder: How does Shore feel toward the girl now? Was his song a result of so-called ‘tender years of youth,’ or something more lasting?“
I Knew I Loved You
Some folks are more susceptible to big feelings than others, like Donkey compared to Shrek.
“There are persons of an impressionable type…individuals whose instinctive reactions are of a hair-trigger delicacy, hypersensitive to emotional stimuli, so that a gentle glance, an eye of blue or brown, an accent or a smile unlatches the door of their emotional consciousness.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “Dr. Love nails it. Fleeting eye contact across the lecture hall. A stolen glance in the clandestine, quiet floor of Ladd Library. We all have that friend who comes to us at dinner and says, ‘I’ve met the person I’m going to marry.’ And that they are destined to become a Bates statistic of married alumni. We wish them luck. Always.”
We’ve Only Just Begun
Is that intense feeling true love or just infatuation, like a summer fling? It’s what Sandy Olsson and Danny Zuko dealt with in Grease:
“In its origin, there is little essential difference between love that is to prove permanent and a summer experience at the seashore. The first step toward a life-long sentiment of love is easily taken because it is instinctive; but to nurture and develop this germ to full maturity depends upon a maturity of thought and feeling not found in childhood, upon a mental capital and breadth of experience that only time gives.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “We’ve all been there: trekking through the Maine wilderness or surfing in the coastal waves during AESOP, when bouts of sleep talking, a lack of showers, and pre-packed meals somehow spark up a connection. But will it last through the frigid Maine winter, and warm up again during a floral Short Term?”
You Make Loving Fun
Physical beauty can spark attraction, but it’s just one factor of many, and is subordinate to those:
“Beauty is almost wholly subordinate to other attractions. [It is] a kind of first aid to love, but after that its presence or its absence makes little difference. Other qualities of body or mind [such as sympathy] may serve to attract favorable attention and so form a nucleus around which the emotions may be segregated and organized. The modern profession of nursing, as the facts go to show, has proved an open road to the heart of man.”
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “It’s awesome that Dr. Love reminds us that love doesn’t need physical beauty to get going. Which takes Ramona back to Pride and Prejudice: ‘There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart’ — like being willing to trek to The Ronj for a coffee date, even after a very cold February snowstorm.”
Holding Out for a Hero
Britan listed these qualities that can arouse “the tender passion”:
- Musical ability
- Vivacity
- Displays of physical or moral strength
- Acts of heroism, such as saving a person’s life
- Manifestation of sympathy
- Brilliant conversational power
- Acts of courtesy
- A smile
Plus these lesser qualities:
- The accident of social position
- Beautiful or stylish clothes (“the two are not always synonymous,” Britan quipped)
- Personal idiosyncrasies and mannerisms
Hannah & Ramona’s take: “We propose a few additions of what might create ‘a nucleus’ of love:
- Social media cool: Like a mysterious Instagram
- Dorm room design sense: Eclectic posters in a dorm, as opposed to a lone state flag (or a monogrammed Lone Star state flag)
- Wheels: A car on campus and an open offer to bring you along on Target runs. Be still our hearts!
- A good Spotify Wrapped: A curated (but not too curated) list of artists and tunes to impress your crush, or a playlist made especially for them
- Engaging in witty text conversation: Phone games, Snapchat messages, and sending Instagram Reels back and forth
- Outdoor adventures: Yes, many of us embrace the ‘crunch.’ Are your hiking boots or skis ready to be used on a whim?”
Did You Catch That?
The subheads in this story are all the titles of pop love songs, from the 1950s to now, conjured by the team of Hannah & Ramona, plus Editorial Director Jay Burns.
Here are details on this curated, but not too curated, playlist, made just for our fellow Bobcats this Valentine’s Day:
Love Potion No. 9
- Artist: The Clovers
- Composer: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
- Release Date: 1959
I Really Like You
- Artist: Carly Rae Jepsen
- Composer: Carly Rae Jepsen, Peter Svensson, Jacob Kasher
- Release Date: March 2, 2015
All You Need Is Love
- Artist: The Beatles
- Composer: John Lennon and Paul McCartney
- Release Date: July 7, 1967
Check Yes or No
- Artist: George Strait
- Composer: Danny Wells, Dana Hunt
- Release Date: Sept. 18, 1995
Rock with You
- Artist: Micheal Jackson
- Composer: Rod Temperton
- Release Date: Nov. 3, 1979
Love Is a Battlefield
- Artist: Pat Benatar
- Composer: Mike Chapman, Holly Knight
- Release Date: Sept. 12, 1983
How Deep Is Your Love
- Artist: Bee Gees
- Composer: Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb, Maurice Gibb
- Release Date: Sept. 12, 1977 (UK), Sept. 24, 1977 (US)
I Knew I Loved You
- Artist: Savage Garden
- Composer: Darren Hayes, Daniel Jones
- Release Date: Sept. 28, 1999
We’ve Only Just Begun
- Artist: The Carpenters
- Composer: Roger Nichols, Paul Williams
- Release Date: Aug. 21, 1970
You Make Loving Fun
- Artist: Fleetwood Mac
- Composer: Christine McVie
- Release Date: September 1977
Holding Out for a Hero
- Artist: Bonnie Tyler
- Composer: Jim Steinman, Dean Pitchford
- Release Date: April 13, 1984
