"Love is the life of friendship; letters are
The life of love, the loadstones that by rare
Attractions make souls meet and melt, and mix,
As when by fire exalted gold we fix."
But for letters the best of our life would hardly survive the mood
and the moment. Prompted by so lively a sentiment as friendship, we
commit to our leaves what we should not have spoken. To begin with
"Dear Friend" is in itself an address which clothes our epistle in
a rhetoric the most select and choice. We cannot write it without
considering its fitness and taxing our conscience in the matter. 'Tis
coming to the confessional, leaving nothing in reserve that falls
gracefully into words. A life-long correspondence were a biography of
the correspondents. Preserve your letters till time define their value.
Some secret charm forbids committing them to the flames; the dews of
the morning may sparkle there still, and remind one of his earlier Eden.
"Deeds are masculine, words feminine; letters are neither," wrote
Howel. Rather say, letters are both, and better represent life than
any form in literature. Women have added the better part, the most
celebrated letters having been written by women. If your morning's
letter is not answered and dispatched forthwith, 'tis doubtful if it
will ever be written. Then there are those to whom one never writes,
much as he may wish to cultivate correspondence. He reserves them for
personal intercourse.
I hardly know which I most enjoy, the letter I send after my visitor,
or the visit itself: the presence, the conversation, the recollection.
Memory idealizes anticipation; our visit is made before we make
it, made afterwards, as if love were a reminiscence of pleasures
once partaken in overflowing fulness. The visit that is not all we
anticipated is not made; we meet as idealists, if we meet at all.
My moments are not mine, thou art in sight
By days' engagements and the dreams of night,
Nor dost one instant leave me free
Forgetful of thy world and thee.
The popular superstition favors long visits. I confess my experience
has not borne out the current creed. Compliment, of course, is of the
other opinion, if we must take her fine accents of "stay, stay longer."
But a week's stay with an angel would hardly bear the epithet angelic
after it was over. Fewer and farther between. Good things are good
to keep long by temperate use. 'Tis true a visitor who comes seldom
should not fly away forthwith. And 'tis a comfort in these fast times
to catch one who has a little leisure on hand, deaf the while to the
engine's whistle. _Stay_ is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.
But if one does not stay while staying, better let him go where he
is gone the while. One enjoys a visitor who has much leisure in him,
in her especially,--likes to take his friends by sips sweetly, not at
hasty draughts, as they were froth and would effervesce forthwith and
subside. Who has not come from an interview as from a marriage feast,
feeling "the good wine had been kept for him till _now_"?
* * * * *
Does it imply a refinement in delicacy that nuptial verses have no
place with us in marriage ceremonies; that the service has lost the
mystic associations wont to be thrown around it by our ancestors
down almost to our time? Once epithalamium verses were esteemed the
fairest flowers, the ornament of the occasion. If the poet sometimes
overstepped modern notions of reserve, the sentiments expressed were
not the less natural if more freely dealt with. Spenser, for instance,
suggests the loveliest images, and with all his wealth of fancy
ventures never a glimpse that a bride can blame; while Donne delights
in every posture of fancy, as if he were love's attorney putting in
his plea for all delights,--yet delicately, oftentimes, and on other
occasions, as in these lines entitled "Love Tokens":--
"Send me some token that my hope may live,
Or that my ceaseless thoughts may sleep and rest;
Send me some honey to make sweet my hive,
That in my passions I may hope the best.
I beg no ribbon wrought with thine own hands
To knit our loves in the fantastic strain
Of new-touched youth; nor ring to show the stands
Of our affection:--that as that's round and plain,
So should our loves meet in simplicity,--
No, nor the corals which thy wrist infold
Laced up together in congruity
To show our thoughts should rest in the same hold:
No, nor thy picture, though most gracious,
And most desired since 'tis like the best,
Nor witty lines which are most copious
Within the writings which thou hast addressed:
Send me not this, nor that, to increase my store,
But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more."