presents," said old John Fuller, "let them be of such things as will
last long; to the end that they may be in some sort immortal, and
may frequently refresh the memory of the receiver." But this
excellent advice--excellent for the simple and spacious age in which
it was written--presupposes the "immortal" presents to wear well.
Theologians teach us that immortality is not necessarily a blessing.
A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the
undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden
life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example. The
civilized world so teems with elaborate and unlovely inutilities,
with things which seem foreign to any reasonable conditions of
existence, that we are sometimes disposed to envy the savage who
wears all his simple wardrobe without being covered, and who sees
all his simple possessions in a corner of his empty hut. What pleasant
spaces meet the savage eye! What admirable vacancies soothe the
savage soul! No embroidered bag is needed to hold his sponge or his
slippers. No painted box is destined for his postal cards. No
decorated tablet waits for his laundry list. No ornate wall-pocket
yawns for his unpaid bills. He smokes without cigarette-cases. He
dances without cotillion favours. He enjoys all rational diversions,
unfretted by the superfluities with which we have weighted them. Life,
notwithstanding its pleasures, remains endurable to him.
Above all, he does not undermine his own moral integrity by vicarious
benevolence, by helping the needy at his friend's expense. The great
principle of giving away what one does not want to keep is probably
as familiar to the savage as to his civilized, or semi-civilized
brother. That vivacious traveller, Pere Huc, tells us he has seen
a Tartar chief at dinner gravely hand over to an underling a piece
of gristle he found himself unable to masticate, and that the gift
was received with every semblance of gratitude and delight. But there
is a simple straightforwardness about an act like this which commends
it to our understanding. The Tartar did not assume the gristle to
be palatable. He did not veil his motives for parting with it. He
did not expand with the emotions of a philanthropist. And he did not
expect the Heavens to smile upon his deed.
One word must be said in behalf of the punctilious giver, of the man
who repays a gift as scrupulously as he returns a blow. He wants to
please, but he is baffled by not knowing, and by not being sympathetic
enough to divine, what his inarticulate friend desires. And if he
does know, he may still vacillate between his friend's sense of the
becoming and his own. The "Spectator," in a mood of unwonted subtlety,
tells us that there is a "mild treachery" in giving what we feel to
be bad, because we are aware that the recipient will think it very
good. If, for example, we hold garnets to be ugly and vulgar, we must
not send them to a friend who considers them rich and splendid. "A
gift should represent common ground."
This is so well said that it sounds like the easy thing it isn't.
Which of us has not nobly striven, and ignobly failed, to preserve
our honest purpose without challenging the taste of our friends? It
is hard to tell what people really prize. Heine begged for a button
from George Sand's trousers, and who shall say whether enthusiasm
or malice prompted the request? Mr. Oscar Browning, who as Master
at Eton must have known whereof he spoke, insisted that it was a
mistake to give a boy a well-bound book if you expected him to read
it. Yet binding plays a conspicuous part in the selection of
Christmas and birthday presents. Dr. Johnson went a step farther,
and said that nobody wanted to read _any_ book which was given to
him;--the mere fact that it was given, instead of being bought,
borrowed, or ravished from a friend's shelves, militated against its
readable qualities. Perhaps the Doctor was thinking of authors'
copies. Otherwise the remark is the most discouraging one on record.
Yet when all the ungracious things have been said and forgotten, when
the hard old proverbs have exhausted their unwelcome wisdom, and we
have smiled wearily over the deeper cynicisms of Richelieu and
Talleyrand, where shall we turn for relief but to Emerson, who has
atoned in his own fashion for the harshness of his own words. It is
not only that he recognizes the goodness of the man who receives a
gift well; but he sees, and sees clearly, that there can be no
question between friends of giving or receiving, no possible room
for generosity or gratitude. "The gift to be true must be the flowing
of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the
waters are at a level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All
his are mine, all mine, his."
Critics have been disposed to think that this is an elevation too
lofty for plain human beings to climb, an air too rarified for them
to breathe; and that it ill befitted a man who churlishly resented
the simple, stupid kindnesses of life, to take so sublime a tone,
to claim so fine a virtue. We cannot hope to scale great moral heights
by ignoring petty obligations.
Yet Emerson does not go a step beyond Plato in his conception of the
"level waters" of friendship. He states his position lucidly, and
with a rational understanding of all that it involves. His vision
is wide enough to embrace its everlasting truth. Plato says the same
thing in simpler language. He offers his truth as self-evident, and
in no need of demonstration. When Lysis and Menexenus greet Socrates
at the gymnasia, the philosopher asks which of the two youths is the
elder.
"'That,' said Menexenus, 'is a matter of dispute between us.'
"'And which is the nobler? Is that also a matter of dispute?'
"'Yes, certainly.'
"'And another disputed point is which is the fairer?'
"The two boys laughed.
"'I shall not ask which is the richer, for you are friends, are you
not?'
"'We are friends.'
"'And friends have all things in common, so that one of you can be
no richer than the other, if you say truly that you are friends.'
"They assented, and at that moment Menexenus was called away by some
one who came and said that the master of the gymnasia wanted him."[1]
[Footnote 1: Lysis. Translated by Jowett.]
This is all. To Plato's way of thinking, the situation explained
itself. The two boys could not share their beauty nor their strength,
but money was a thing to pass from hand to hand. It was not, and it
never could be, a matter for competition. The last lesson taught an
Athenian youth was the duty of outstripping his neighbour in the hard
race for wealth.
And where shall we turn for a practical illustration of friendship,
as conceived by Emerson and Plato? Where shall we see the level waters,
the "mine is thine" which we think too exalted for plain living? No
need to search far, and no need to search amid the good and great.
It is a pleasure to find what we seek in the annals of the flagrantly
sinful, of that notorious Duke of Queensberry, "Old Q," who has been
so liberally and justly censured by Wordsworth and Burns, by Leigh
Hunt and Sir George Trevelyan, and who was, in truth, gamester,
roue,--and friend. In the last capacity he was called upon to listen
to the woes of George Selwyn, who, having lost at Newmarket more money
than he could possibly hope to pay, saw ruin staring him in the face.
There is in Selwyn's letter a note of eloquent misery. He was, save
when lulled to sleep in Parliament, a man of many words. There is
in the letter of Lord March (he had not yet succeeded to the
Queensberry title and estates) nothing but a quiet exposition of
Plato's theory of friendship. Selwyn's debts and his friend's money
are intercommunicable. The amount required has been placed that
morning at the banker's. "I depend more," writes Lord March, "upon
the continuance of our friendship than upon anything else in the
world, because I have so many reasons to know you, and I am sure I
know myself. _There will be no bankruptcy without we are bankrupt
together._"
Here are the waters flowing on a level, flowing between two men of
the world; one of them great enough to give, without deeming himself
a benefactor, and the other good enough to receive a gift well.
The Condescension of Borrowers
"Il n'est si riche qui quelquefois ne doibve. Il n'est si pauvre de
qui quelquefois on ne puisse emprunter."--_Pantagruel_.
"I lent my umbrella," said my friend, "to my cousin, Maria. I was
compelled to lend it to her because she could not, or would not, leave
my house in the rain without it. I had need of that umbrella, and
I tried to make it as plain as the amenities of language permitted
that I expected to have it returned. Maria said superciliously that
she hated to see other people's umbrellas littering the house, which
gave me a gleam of hope. Two months later I found my property in the
hands of her ten-year-old son, who was being marshalled with his
brothers and sisters to dancing-school. In the first joyful flash
of recognition I cried, 'Oswald, that is my umbrella you are
carrying!' whereupon Maria said still more superciliously than
before, 'Oh, yes, don't you remember?' (as if reproaching me for my
forgetfulness)--'you gave it to me that Saturday I lunched with you,
and it rained so heavily. The boys carry it to school. Where there
are children, you can't have too many old umbrellas at hand. They
lose them so fast.' She spoke," continued my friend impressively,
"as if she were harbouring my umbrella from pure kindness, and
because she did not like to wound my feelings by sending it back to
me. She made a virtue of giving it shelter."
This is the arrogance which places the borrower, as Charles Lamb
discovered long ago, among the great ones of the earth, among those
whom their brethren serve. Lamb loved to contrast the "instinctive
sovereignty," the frank and open bearing of the man who borrows with
the "lean and suspicious" aspect of the man who lends. He stood lost
in admiration before the great borrowers of the world,--Alcibiades,
Falstaff, Steele, and Sheridan; an incomparable quartette, to which
might be added the shining names of William Godwin and Leigh Hunt.
All the characteristic qualities of the class were united, indeed,
in Leigh Hunt, as in no other single representative. Sheridan was
an unrivalled companion,--could talk seven hours without making even
Byron yawn. Steele was the most lovable of spendthrifts. Lending to
these men was but a form of investment. They paid in a coinage of
their own. But Leigh Hunt combined in the happiest manner a readiness
to extract favours with a confirmed habit of never acknowledging the
smallest obligation for them. He is a perfect example of the
condescending borrower, of the man who permits his friends, as a
pleasure to themselves, to relieve his necessities, and who knows
nothing of gratitude or loyalty.
It would be interesting to calculate the amount of money which Hunt's
friends and acquaintances contributed to his support in life.
Shelley gave him at one time fourteen hundred pounds, an amount which
the poet could ill spare; and, when he had no more to give, wrote
in misery of spirit to Byron, begging a loan for his friend, and
promising to repay it, as he feels tolerably sure that Hunt never
will. Byron, generous at first, wearied after a time of his position
in Hunt's commissariat (it was like pulling a man out of a river,
he wrote to Moore, only to see him jump in again), and coldly withdrew.
His withdrawal occasioned inconvenience, and has been sharply
criticised. Hunt, says Sir Leslie Stephen, loved a cheerful giver,
and Byron's obvious reluctance struck him as being in bad taste. His
biographers, one and all, have sympathized with this point of view.
Even Mr. Frederick Locker, from whom one would have expected a
different verdict, has recorded his conviction that Hunt had
probably been "sorely tried" by Byron.
It is characteristic of the preordained borrower, of the man who
simply fulfils his destiny in life, that not his obligations only,
but his anxieties and mortifications are shouldered by other men.
Hunt was care-free and light-hearted; but there is a note akin to
anguish in Shelley's petition to Byron, and in his shamefaced
admission that he is himself too poor to relieve his friend's
necessities. The correspondence of William Godwin's eminent
contemporaries teem with projects to alleviate Godwin's needs. His
debts were everybody's affair but his own. Sir James Mackintosh wrote
to Rogers in the autumn of 1815, suggesting that Byron might be the
proper person to pay them. Rogers, enchanted with the idea, wrote
to Byron, proposing that the purchase money of "The Siege of Corinth"
be devoted to this good purpose. Byron, with less enthusiasm, but
resigned, wrote to Murray, directing him to forward the six hundred
pounds to Godwin; and Murray, having always the courage of his
convictions, wrote back, flatly refusing to do anything of the kind.
In the end, Byron used the money to pay his own debts, thereby
disgusting everybody but his creditors.
Six years later, however, we find him contributing to a fund which
tireless philanthropists were raising for Godwin's relief. On this
occasion all men of letters, poor as well as rich, were pressed into
active service. Even Lamb, who had nothing of his own, wrote to the
painter, Haydon, who had not a penny in the world, and begged him
to beg Mrs. Coutts to pay Godwin's rent. He also confessed that he
had sent "a very respectful letter"--on behalf of the rent--to Sir
Walter Scott; and he explained naively that Godwin did not concern
himself personally in the matter, because he "left all to his
Committee,"--a peaceful thing to do.
But how did Godwin come to have a "committee" to raise money for him,
when other poor devils had to raise it for themselves, or do without?
He was not well-beloved. On the contrary, he bored all whom he did
not affront. He was not grateful. On the contrary, he held gratitude
to be a vice, as tending to make men "grossly partial" to those who
have befriended them. His condescension kept pace with his demands.
After his daughter's flight with Shelley, he expressed his just
resentment by refusing to accept Shelley's cheque for a thousand
pounds unless it were made payable to a third party, unless he could
have the money without the formality of an acceptance. Like the great
lords of Picardy, who had the "right of credit" from their loyal
subjects, Godwin claimed his dues from every chance acquaintance.
Crabb Robinson introduced him one evening to a gentleman named Rough.
The next day both Godwin and Rough called upon their host, each man
expressing his regard for the other, and each asking Robinson if he
thought the other would be a likely person to lend him fifty pounds.
There are critics who hold that Haydon excelled all other borrowers
known to fame; but his is not a career upon which an admirer of the
art can look with pleasure. Haydon's debts hunted him like hounds,
and if he pursued borrowing as a means of livelihood,--more lucrative
than painting pictures which nobody would buy,--it was only because
no third avocation presented itself as a possibility. He is not to
be compared for a moment with a true expert like Sheridan, who
borrowed for borrowing's sake, and without any sordid motive
connected with rents or butchers' bills. Haydon would, indeed, part
with his money as readily as if it belonged to him. He would hear
an "inward voice" in church, urging him to give his last sovereign;
and, having obeyed this voice "with as pure a feeling as ever animated
a human heart," he had no resource but immediately to borrow another.
It would have been well for him if he could have followed on such
occasions the memorable example of Lady Cook, who was so impressed
by a begging sermon that she borrowed a sovereign from Sydney Smith
to put into the offertory; and--the gold once between her
fingers--found herself equally unable to give it or to return it,
so went home, a pound richer for her charitable impulse.
Haydon, too, would rob Peter to pay Paul, and rob Paul without paying
Peter; but it was all after an intricate and troubled fashion of his
own. On one occasion he borrowed ten pounds from Webb. Seven pounds
he used to satisfy another creditor, from whom, on the strength of
this payment, he borrowed ten pounds more to meet an impending bill.
It sounds like a particularly confusing game; but it was a game played
in dead earnest, and without the humorous touch which makes the charm
of Lady Cook's, or of Sheridan's methods. Haydon would have been
deeply grateful to his benefactors, had he not always stood in need
of favours to come. Sheridan might perchance have been grateful,
could he have remembered who his benefactors were. He laid the world
under tribute; and because he had an aversion to opening his
mail,--an aversion with which it is impossible not to
sympathize,--he frequently made no use of the tribute when it was
paid. Moore tells us that James Wesley once saw among a pile of papers
on Sheridan's desk an unopened letter of his own, containing a
ten-pound note, which he had lent Sheridan some weeks before. Wesley
quietly took possession of the letter and the money, thereby raising
a delicate, and as yet unsettled, question of morality. Had he a right
to those ten pounds because they had once been his, or were they not
rather Sheridan's property, destined in the natural and proper order
of things never to be returned.
Yet men, even men of letters, have been known to pay their debts,
and to restore borrowed property. Moore paid Lord Lansdowne every
penny of the generous sum advanced by that nobleman after the
defalcation of Moore's deputy in Bermuda. Dr. Johnson paid back ten
pounds after a lapse of twenty years,--a pleasant shock to the
lender,--and on his death-bed (having fewer sins than most of us to
recall) begged Sir Joshua Reynolds to forgive him a trifling loan.
It was the too honest return of a pair of borrowed sheets (unwashed)
which first chilled Pope's friendship for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
That excellent gossip, Miss Letitia Matilda Hawkins, who stands
responsible for this anecdote, lamented all her life that her father,
Sir John Hawkins, could never remember which of the friends borrowed
and which lent the offending sheets; but it is a point easily settled
in our minds. Pope was probably the last man in Christendom to have
been guilty of such a misdemeanour, and Lady Mary was certainly the
last woman in Christendom to have been affronted by it. Like Dr.
Johnson, she had "no passion for clean linen."
Coleridge, though he went through life leaning his inert weight on
other men's shoulders, did remember in some mysterious fashion to
return the books he borrowed, enriched often, as Lamb proudly records,
with marginal notes which tripled their value. His conduct in this
regard was all the more praiseworthy inasmuch as the cobweb statutes
which define books as personal property have never met with literal
acceptance. Lamb's theory that books belong with the highest
propriety to those who understand them best (a theory often advanced
in defence of depredations which Lamb would have scorned to commit),
was popular before the lamentable invention of printing. The library
of Lucullus was, we are told, "open to all," and it would be
interesting to know how many precious manuscripts remained
ultimately in the great patrician's villa.
Richard Heber, that most princely of collectors, so well understood
the perils of his position that he met them bravely by buying three
copies of every book,--one for show, one for use, and one for the
service of his friends. The position of the show-book seems rather
melancholy, but perhaps, in time, it replaced the borrowed volume.
Heber's generosity has been nobly praised by Scott, who contrasts
the hard-heartedness of other bibliophiles, those "gripple
niggards" who preferred holding on to their treasures, with his
friend's careless liberality.
"Thy volumes, open as thy heart,
Delight, amusement, science, art,
To every ear and eye impart.
Yet who, of all who thus employ them,
Can, like the owner's self, enjoy them?"
The "gripple niggards" might have pleaded feebly in their own behalf
that they could not all afford to spend, like Heber, a hundred
thousand pounds in the purchase of books; and that an occasional
reluctance to part with some hard-earned, hard-won volume might be
pardonable in one who could not hope to replace it. Lamb's books were
the shabbiest in Christendom; yet how keen was his pang when Charles
Kemble carried off the letters of "that princely woman, the thrice
noble Margaret Newcastle," an "illustrious folio" which he well knew
Kemble would never read. How bitterly he bewailed his rashness in
extolling the beauties of Sir Thomas Browne's "Urn Burial" to a guest
who was so moved by this eloquence that he promptly borrowed the
volume. "But so," sighed Lamb, "have I known a foolish lover to praise
his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her
off than himself."
Johnson cherished a dim conviction that because he read, and Garrick
did not, the proper place for Garrick's books was on
his--Johnson's--bookshelves; a point which could never be settled
between the two friends, and which came near to wrecking their
friendship. Garrick loved books with the chilly yet imperative love
of the collector. Johnson loved them as he loved his soul. Garrick
took pride in their sumptuousness, in their immaculate, virginal
splendour. Johnson gathered them to his heart with scant regard for
outward magnificence, for the glories of calf and vellum. Garrick
bought books. Johnson borrowed them. Each considered that he had a
prior right to the objects of his legitimate affection. We, looking
back with softened hearts, are fain to think that we should have held
our volumes doubly dear if they had lain for a time by Johnson's
humble hearth, if he had pored over them at three o'clock in the
morning, and had left sundry tokens--grease-spots and spatterings
of snuff--upon many a spotless page. But it is hardly fair to censure
Garrick for not dilating with these emotions.
Johnson's habit of flinging the volumes which displeased him into
remote and dusty corners of the room was ill calculated to inspire
confidence, and his powers of procrastination were never more marked
than in the matter of restoring borrowed books. We know from
Cradock's "Memoirs" how that gentleman, having induced Lord
Harborough to lend him a superb volume of manuscripts, containing
the poems of James the First, proceeded to re-lend this priceless
treasure to Johnson. When it was not returned--as of course it was
not--he wrote an urgent letter, and heard to his dismay that Johnson
was not only unable to find the book, but that he could not remember
having ever received it. The despairing Cradock applied to all his
friends for help; and George Steevens, who had a useful habit of
looking about him, suggested that a sealed packet, which he had
several times observed lying under Johnson's ponderous inkstand,
might possibly contain the lost manuscript. Even with this ray of
hope for guidance, it never seemed to occur to any one to storm
Johnson's fortress, and rescue the imprisoned volume; but after the
Doctor's death, two years later, Cradock made a formal application
to the executors; and Lord Harborough's property was discovered
under the inkstand, unopened, unread, and consequently, as by a happy
miracle, uninjured.
Such an incident must needs win pardon for Garrick's churlishness
in defending his possessions. "The history of book-collecting," says
a caustic critic, "is a history relieved but rarely by acts of pure
and undiluted unselfishness." This is true, but are there not virtues
so heroic that plain human nature can ill aspire to compass them?