friendships, let me for ever feel, rather than speak (for 'tis too deep
and wide for words) befitting gratitude to old ones. For there is always
something puzzling in the present; unrestful and disquieting in all
novelty; and we require, poor harassed mortals, the past and lots of it;
the safe, the done-for past, a heap of last year's leaves or of dry,
scented hay (which is mere dead grass and dead meadow-flowers) to take
our rest upon. There is a virtue ineffable in things known, tried,
understood; a comfort and a peacefulness, often truly Elysian, in
finding one's self again in this quiet, crepuscular, downy world of old
friendships--a world, as I have remarked, largely peopled with ghosts,
our own and other folks'; but ghosts whose footsteps never creak, whose
touch can never startle, or whose voice stab us, and who smile a smile
which has the wide, hazy warmth of setting suns or veiled October skies.
Yes, whatever they may lack (through our own fault and folly), old
friendships are made up of what, when all is said and done, we need
above every other thing, poor faulty, uncertain creatures that we are--I
mean kindness and certain indulgence. There is more understanding in new
friendships, and a closer contact of soul with soul; but that contact
may mean a jar, a bruise, or, worst of all, a sudden sense of icy chill;
and the penetrating comprehension may entail, at any moment, pained
surprise and disappointment. Making new friends is not merely
exploration, but conquest; and what cruel checks to our wishes and
ambitions!
Instead of which, all vanity long since put to sleep, curiosity extinct
for years, insidious pleasures of self-explanation quite forgotten,
there remains this massive comfort of well-known faithful and trusting
kindness; a feeling of absolute reassurance almost transcending the
human, such as we get from, let us say, an excellent climate.
There remain, also, joys quite especial to old friendship, or the
possibility thereof, for the reality, alas! is rare enough. The sudden
discovery, for instance, after a period of separation or a gap in
intercourse, of qualities and ways not previously seen (perhaps not
previously wanted) in the well-known soul: new notes, but with the added
charm of likeness to already loved ones, deeper, more resonant, or
perhaps of unsuspected high unearthly purity, in the dear voice. Absence
may do it, or change of occupation; or sudden vicissitude of fortune; or
merely the reading of a certain book (how many friends may not Tolstoi's
"Resurrection" have thus revealed to one another!), or the passing of
some public crisis like the Dreyfus business. What! after these years of
familiarity, we did not know each other fully? You thought, you felt,
like that on such or such a subject, dear old friend, and I never
suspected it! Nay, never knew, perhaps, that _I_ must feel and think
like that, and in no other way! To find more in what one already has;
the truest adding to all wealth, the most fruitful act of
production;--that is one of the privileges of old friendships.
OTHER FRIENDSHIPS
It came home to me, during that week of grim and sordid business in the
old house, feeling so solitary among the ghosts of unkind passions which
seemed, like the Wardour Street ancestors, to fill the place--it came
home to me what consolation there can be in the friendship of one small
corner of grace or beauty. During those dreary days in Scotland, the
friendliness and consolation were given me by the old kitchen garden,
with its autumn flower borders, half hiding apple trees and big cabbages
and rhubarbs, and the sheep-dotted hill, and the beeches sloping above
its red fruit walls. I slipped away morning and evening to it as to a
friend. Not as to an old one; that would give a different aspect to the
matter; nor yet exactly a new friend, conquering or being conquered; but
rather as one turns one's thoughts, if not one's words, to some
nameless stranger, casually met, in whom one recognizes, among the
general wilderness of alien creatures, a quality, a character for which
one cares.
Travelling a good deal, and nearly always alone, one has occasion to
gauge the deep dreariness of human beings pure and simple, when, so to
speak, the small, learnt-by-rote lessons of civilization, of kindness,
graciousness, or intelligence, are not being called into play by common
business or acquaintanceship. There, in the train, they sit in the
elemental, native dreariness of their more practical, ungracious demand
on life; not bad in any way, oh no; nor actively repulsive, but trite,
empty, _everyday_, in the sense of what _everyday_ often, alas! really
is, but certainly no day or hour or minute, in a decent universe, should
ever be. And suddenly a new traveller gets in; and, turning round, you
realize that things are changed, that something from another planet, and
yet something quite right and so familiar, has entered. A young man
shabbily dressed in mourning, who got in at a junction in Northern
France with a small girl, like him in mourning, and like him pale, a
little washed-out ashy blond, and with the inexpressible moral grace
which French folk sometimes have, will always remain in my memory; while
all those fellow-travellers and all the others--hundreds of them since
that day--have faded from my memory, their images collapsing into each
other, a grey monotony as of the rows of little houses which unfurl and
furl up, and vanish, thank the Lord, into nothingness, while the express
swishes past some dreadful manufacturing town. Another time, some years
ago, the unknown friend was a small boy, a baby almost, jumping and
rolling (a practice intolerable in any child but him) on the seat of a
second-class carriage. We did not speak; in fact my friend had barely
acquired the necessary art. But I felt companioned, befriended,
delivered of the world's crowded solitude.
Apart from railway trains, a similar thing may sometimes happen. And
there are few of us, surely, who do not possess, somewhere in their
life, friends of the highest value whom they have barely known--met with
once or twice perhaps, talked with, and for some reason not met again;
but never lost sight of by heart and fancy--indeed, more often turned
to, and perhaps more deeply trusted (as devout persons trust St. Joseph
and St. Anthony of Padua, whom, after all, they scarcely know more than
their own close kindred) than so many of, ostensibly, our nearest and
dearest. Indeed, this is the meaning of that curious little poem of
Whitman's--"Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to
me"--with its Emersonian readiness to part, "now we have met, we are
safe;" a very wise view of things, if our poor human weakness really
wanted safety, and did not merely want "more"--indeed, like that human
little boy, want "too much."
But to return to the friendships, consoling, comforting intimacies,
which we can have not merely with strangers never met again, or never,
meeting, spoken with; but even more satisfactorily with those beloved
ones whom, from our own lack of soul, of _anima_ drawing forth _anima_,
we dully call inanimates. I am not speaking, of course, of the real
passions with which exceptionally lovely or wonderful spots or
monuments, views of distant Alps, or certain rocky southern coasts, or
St. Mark's or Amiens Cathedral, great sirens among voiceless things,
subjugate and draw our souls. The friendships in question are sober and
deliberate, founded on reasonable recognition of some trait of dignity
or grace; and matured by conscious courtship on our part, retracing of
steps day by day, and watching the friend's varying moods at noon or
under low lights. During that week in the grim Scottish ancestral house,
it was the kitchen-garden, as I began by saying, which comforted me. In
another place, where I was ill and sorely anxious, a group of slender,
whispering poplars by a mill; and under different, but equally
harassing, circumstances, the dear little Gothic church of a tiny town
of Western France.
The Gothic church on its rising ground above the high-pitched roofs,
and, in a measure, the church's white tame goat, which I found there one
morning under a lime tree. I had been overtaken by a sudden storm, the
rain-floods dashing from the gargoyles on to the rough ground of the
solitary, wooded mound. In the faint light the little church, with
sparse oak leaves and dock delicately carved on the granite capitals,
was wonderfully grave and gentle in its utter emptiness; and I did it
all possible honour. There is a low granite bench or sill round the
base of the beautiful sheaved columns; a broken, disused organ-loft of
coloured mediæval thorn carving; and under two shapely little arches lie
a knight, unknown, and lady in high coif.... I knew it all by heart,
coming like that every day and sometimes twice a day; by heart, and, so
to speak, _with_ my heart. The sound of the spouting gargoyles ceased;
cocks began to crow; I went out, for the rain must have left off.... Not
yet; the skies were still dripping, and the plain below full of vapours.
And the tame white goat, the only living creature about the church, had
taken refuge under a cart stranded by a large lime tree.
I mention this particular visit to my friend the church of L----, in
order to explain the precise nature of our friendship; and to show, as I
think it does, that through that law of economy which should preside
over our pleasures and interests, such intimacy with a single object,
simple and unobtrusive, is worth the acquaintance with a hundred and one
magnificent and perfect things, if superficially seen and without loving
care.
A HOTEL SITTING-ROOM
I am calling this paper after a hotel sitting-room because some of one's
most recurrent and definite trains of thought are most hopelessly
obstinate about getting an intelligible name, so that I take advantage
of this one having been brought to a head in a real room of the kind.
The room was on a top floor in Florence; the Cupola and Campanile and
other towers in front of it above the plum-coloured roofs; and beyond,
the bluish mountains of Fiesole. Trams were puffing about in the square
below, and the church bells ringing, and the crowd streaming to the
promenade; but only the unchanging and significant life of the town
seemed to matter up here. I was struck with the charm of such a hotel
room--the very few ornaments, greatly cherished since they were carried
about; the books for reading, not for furniture; the bought flowers in
common glasses; and the consequent sense of selection, deliberateness,
and personality. Good heavens, I reflected, are we mortals so
cross-grained that we can thoroughly enjoy things only by contrast, and
that a sort of mild starvation is needed to whet our æsthetic appetite?
By no means. Contrast for contrast's sake is a very coarse stimulant,
and required only by very joyless natures. The real explanation of the
charm of the hotel room and its sparse properties and flowers must be
sought, I believe, in the fact that the charm of things depends upon our
power of extracting it; and that our power in this matter, as in every
other, nay, our leisure to exert it, is necessarily limited. Things, as
I before remarked, do not give themselves without some wooing; and
courtship is the secret of true possession. The world outside us, as
philosophers tell us, is not what our eyes, ears, and touch and taste
make it appear; nay, for aught we know, 'tis a mere chaos; and if, out
of the endless impressions with which outer objects keep pelting us, we
manage to pick up and appropriate a few, setting them in a pattern of
meaning and beauty, it is thanks to the activity of our own special
little self. That is the gist of Kant's philosophy; and, apart from
Kant, it is the vague practical knowledge which experience teaches us.
Hence the disappointment of all such persons as think that the beautiful
and significant things of the world ought to give them delight without
any trouble on their part: they think that it is the fault of a Swiss
mountain, or a Titian Madonna, or a poem by Browning if it does not at
once ravish their inert souls into a seventh heaven. Yet these are
people who occasionally ride, or play at golf or whist, and who never
expect the cards and the golf clubs to play the game by themselves, nor
the very best horse to carry them to some destination without riding.
Now, beautiful and interesting things also require a deal of riding, of
playing with; let us put it more courteously--of wooing.
The hotel room I have spoken of reveals the fact that we usually have
far too many pleasant things about us, to be able to extract much
pleasure from any of them; while, of course, somebody else, at the other
end of the world let us say, or merely in the mews to the back, has so
very much too little as to have none at all, which is another way of
diminishing possible enjoyment. There seems, moreover, to be a certain
queer virtue in mere emptiness, in mere negation. We require a _margin_ of
_nothing_ round everything that is to charm us; round our impressions as
well as round the material objects which can supply them; for without it
we lose all outline, and begin to feel vaguely choked.
Compare the pleasure of a picture tucked away in a chapel or sacristy
with the plethoric weariness of a whole Louvre or National Gallery. Nay,
remember the vivid delight of some fine bit of tracery round a single
door or window, as in the cathedral of Dol or the house of Tristan
l'Hermite at Tours; or of one of those Ionic capitals which you
sometimes find built into quite an uninteresting house in Rome (there is
one almost opposite St. Angelo, and another near Tor dei Specchi, Tower
of the Mirrors, delightful name!).
That question of going to see the thing, instead of seeing it drearily
among ten thousand other things equally lovely--O weariness
unparalleled of South Kensington or Cluny!--that question of the
agreeable little sense of deliberate pilgrimage (pilgrimage to a small
shrine perhaps in one's memory), leads me to another explanation of
what I must call the "hotel room phenomenon."
I maintain that there is a zest added to one's pleasure in beautiful
things by the effort and ingenuity (unless too exhausting) expended in
eliminating the impressions which might detract from them. One likes the
hotel room just because some of the furniture has been sent away into
the passage or wheeled into corners; one enjoys pleasant things
additionally for having arranged them to advantage in one's mind. It is
just the reverse with the rooms in a certain palace I sometimes have the
privilege of entering, where every detail is worked--furniture,
tapestries, embroideries, majolica, and flowers--into an overwhelming
Wagner symphony of loveliness. There is a genuine Leonardo in one of
those rooms, and truly I almost wish it were in a whitewashed lobby. And
in coming out of all that perfection I sometimes feel a kind of relief
on getting into the empty, uninteresting street. My thoughts, somehow,
fetch a long breath....
These are not the sentiments of the superfine. But then I venture to
think that the dose of fineness which is, so to speak, _super_ or _too
much_, just turns these folks' refinement into something its reverse.
People who cannot sleep because of the roseleaf in the sheets, or the
pea (like the little precious princess) under the mattress, are bad
sleepers, and had better do charing or climbing, or get pummelled by a
masseur till they grow healthier. And if ever I had the advising of
young folk with ambition to be æsthetic, I should conjure them to
cultivate their sensitiveness only to good things, and atrophy it
towards the inevitable bad; or rather I should teach them to push into
corners (or altogether get rid of) the irrelevant and trivial
impressions which so often are bound to accompany the most delightful
ones; very much as those occupants of the hotel room had done with
some of its furniture. What if an electric tram starts from the foot
of Giotto's tower, or if four-and-twenty Cook's tourists invade the
inn and streets of Verona? If you cannot extract some satisfaction
from the thought that there may be intelligent people even in a Cook's
party, and that the ugly tram takes hundreds of people up Fiesole
hill without martyrizing cab-horses--if you cannot do this (which
still is worth doing), overlook the Cook's tourists and the tram, blot
them out of your thoughts and feelings.
This question of _superfineness_ versus _refinement_ (which ought to
mean the power of refining things through our feeling) has carried me
away from the original theme of my discourse, which, under the symbol of
the hotel room, was merely that we should _perhaps appreciate more if we
were offered less to appreciate_. Apropos of this, I have long been
struck by the case of a dear Italian friend of mine, whose keenness of
perception and grip of judgment and unexpectedness of fancy is almost in
inverse proportion to her knowledge of books or opportunity of travel.
An invalid, cut off from much reading, and limited to monotonous
to-and-fro between a town which is not a great town and a hillside
village which is not a--not a great village; she is quite marvellously
delightful by her power of assimilating the little she can read and
observe, not merely of transmuting _it_ into something personal and
racy, but (what is much more surprising) of being modified harmoniously
by its assimilation; her rich and unexpected mind putting forth even
richer and more unexpected details. Whereas think of Tom, Dick, or
Harry, their natural good parts watered down with other folks' notions,
their imagination worn threadbare by the friction of experience; men who
ought to be so amusing, and alas!...
And now, having fulfilled my programme, as was my duty, let me return to
my pleasure, which, at this moment (and whenever the opportunity
presents itself) consists in falling foul of the superfine. The
superfine are those who deserve (and frequently attain) the condition of
that Renaissance tyrant who lived exclusively on hard-boiled eggs
(without salt) for fear of poison. The superfine are those who will not
eat walnuts because of the shell, and are pained that Nature should have
been so coarse as to propagate oranges through pips. The superfine
are.... But no. Let us be true to our principle of not neglecting the
delightful things of this world by fixing our too easily hypnotized gaze
on the things which are not delightful--disagreeable things which
should be examined only with a view to their removal; or if they prove
obstinate fixtures in our reality, be all the more resolutely turned out
of the sparsely-furnished, delectable chambers of our fancy.
IN PRAISE OF COURTSHIP
There is too little courtship in the world. I do not mean there is not
enough marrying and giving in marriage, or that the preliminaries
thereunto are otherwise than they should be. Quite the reverse. As long
as there is love and youth, there is sure in the literal sense to be
courtship. But what I ask is that there be courtship besides that
literal courtship between the Perditas and Florizels; that there be
"being in love" with a great many things, even stocks and stones,
besides youth and maiden; which would result, on the whole, in all of us
being young in feeling even when we had grown old in years.
For courtship means a wish to stand well in the other person's eyes,
and, what is more, a readiness to be pleased with the other's ways; a
sense on each side of having had the better of the bargain; an
undercurrent of surprise and thankfulness at one's good luck.
There is not enough courtship in the world. This thought has been
growing in my mind ever since the silver wedding of two dear friends:
that quarter of a century has been but a prolonged courtship.
Why is it not oftener so? One sees among married folk a good deal of
affection, of kindliness, even of politeness; a great deal too much
mutual dependence, degenerating, of course, into habitual boredom. But
none of this can be called courtship. Perhaps this was the meaning, less
cynical than supposed, but quite as sad, of La Rochefoucauld when he
noted down, "Il y a de bons mariages, mais point de délicieux;" since,
in the delicate French sense of the word, implying some analogy of
subdued yet penetrating pleasantness, as of fresh, bright weather or
fine light wine, courtship is essentially _délicieux_.
This is, of course, initiating a question of manner. Modern psychology
is discovering scientific reasons for the fact that if you wag a dog's
tail he feels pleased; or, at all events, that the human being would
feel pleased if it had a tail and could wag it. Confessors and nurses
knew it long ago, curbing bad temper by restraining its outer
manifestations; and are not dinners and plays, flags and illuminations,
birthdays and jubilees--nay, art itself, devices for suggestions to
mankind that it feels pleased?
Married people, as a rule, wish not to be pleased, or at least not to
show it. They may be heartbroken at each other's death, and unable to
endure a temporary separation; but the outsider may wonder why, seeing
how little they seem to care for being together. It is the same, after
all, with other relations; and it is only because brothers and sisters,
fathers and children have not taken visible steps to select one another
that their bored indifference is less conspicuous. You will say it is a
question of mere manner. But, as remarked, manner not merely results
from feeling, but largely reacts on feeling, and makes it different.
People who live together have the appearance, often, of taking each
other, if not as a convenience, at all events as a _fait accompli_, and,
so far as possible, as if not there at all. Near relations try to
realize the paradox of companionable solitude; and intimacy seems to
imply the right to behave as if the intimate other one were not there.
Now, _being by one's self_ is a fine thing, convenient and salutary
(indeed, like courtship, there is not enough of it); but being by one's
self is not to be confounded with _not being in company_. I have
selected that expression advisedly, in order to give a shock to the
reader. _In company?_ Good heavens! is being with one's wife, one's
brothers or sisters, one's children, one's bosom friends _being in
company_? And why not? Should company necessarily mean the company of
strangers? And is the presence of one's nearest and dearest to be
accounted as nothing--as nothing demanding some change in ourselves, and
worthy of being paid some price for?
This goes against our notion of intimacy; but then our notion is wrong,
as is shown daily by the quarrels and recriminations of intimate
friends. One can be natural, _with a difference_, which difference means
a thought for the other. There is a selection possible in one's words
and actions before another--nay, there is a manner of doing and feeling
which almost forestalls the necessity of a selection at all. I like the
expression employed by a certain sister after nursing her small brother
through a difficult illness, "We were always Castilian," she said. Why,
as we all try to be honest, and hard-working, and clever, and more or
less illustrious, should we not sometimes try to be a little Castilian?
Similarly, my friend of the silver wedding once pointed out to me that
marriage, with its enforced and often excessive intimacies, was a
wonderful school of consideration, of mutual respect, of fine courtesy.
This had been no paradox in her case; but then, as I said, her
twenty-five years of wedlock had been years of courtship.
Courtship, however, should not be confined to marriage, nor even to such
relations as imply close quarters and worries in common; nay, it should
exist towards all things, a constant attitude in life--at least, an
attitude constantly tended towards.