This subject was forcibly presented to my mind by a conversation I
recently heard in a party of young ladies, and which I take as a pattern
and semblance of twenty other conversations I have heard in twenty
similar parties. Friendship was (as it very often is) the subject of the
discussion; and, though the words have escaped my memory, I can well
recall the substance of the remarks. One lady boldly asserted that there
was no such thing as friendship in the world, where all was insincerity
and selfishness. I looked, but saw not in her youthful eye and
unfurrowed cheeks any traces of the sorrow and ill-usage that I thought
should alone have wrung from gentle lips so harsh a sentence, and I
wondered where in twenty brief years she could have learned so hard a
lesson. Have known it, she could not! therefore I concluded she had
taken it upon trust from the poets, who are fain to tell all the ill
they can of human nature, because it makes better poetry than good.
The remark was taken up, as might have been expected, by a young
champion, who thought, or said without thinking, that friendship was--I
really cannot undertake to say what, but all the things that young
ladies usually put into their themes at school: something interminable,
illimitable, and immutable. From this the discussion grew; and how it
was, and what it was, went on to be discussed. I cannot pursue the
thread of the discourse; but the amount of it was this:--One thought
friendship was the summer portion only of the blessed; a flower for the
brow of the prosperous, that the child of misfortune must never gather.
Another thought that all interest being destructive to its very essence,
it could not be trusted, unless there was an utter destitution of every
thing that might recommend us to favor, or requite affection. This lady
must have been brought to the depth of wretchedness ere she ever could
be sure she had a friend. Some, I found, thought it was made up of a
great deal of sensibility, vulgarly called jealousy; that was, to take
umbrage at every seeming slight, to the indescribable torment of either
party. Some betrayed, if they did not exactly say it, that they thought
friendship such an absolute unity, that it would be a less crime to
worship two gods than to love two friends! Therefore, to bring it to its
perfection, it was necessary that all beside should be despised and
disregarded.
Others, very young, and of course soon to grow wiser, thought it
consisted in the exact disclosure of your own concerns and those of
every body else with which you might chance to become acquainted;
others, that it required such exact conformity in opinion, thought, and
feeling, as should make it impossible to differ; and others, that it
implied such generous interference, even with the feelings as well as
affairs of its object, that it should spend itself in disinterested
reproaches and unasked advice. But, however differing else, all were
sure that friendship but usurped the name, unless it were purely
disinterested, endlessly durable, and beyond the reach of time and
circumstances to change it; and all were going forth in the full
certainty of finding friends, each one after the pattern of her own
imagination, the first speaker only excepted, who was fully determined
never to find any, or never to trust them, if she did.
I marked, with pained attention, the warm glow of expectation so soon to
be blighted; and, reflected deeply on the many heart-aches with which
they must unlearn their errors. I saw that each one was likely to pass
over and reject the richest blessing of earth, even in the very pursuing
of it, from having merely sketched, in imagination, an unresembling
portrait of the object of pursuit. "When friendship meets them," I said,
"they will not know her. Can no one draw for them a better likeness?"
It is the language of books, and the language of society, that friends
are inconstant, and friendship but little to be depended on; and the
belief, where it is really received, goes far to make a truth of that
which else were false, by creating what it suspects. Few of us but have
lived already long enough to know the bitterness of being disappointed
in our affections, and deceived in our calculations by those with whom,
in the various relationships of life, we are brought in contact. Perhaps
the aggregate of pain from this cause is greater than from any other
cause whatever. And yet, it is much to be doubted whether nearly the
whole of this suffering does not arise from our own unreasonable and
mistaken expectations. There are none so unfortunate but they meet with
some kindness in the world; and none, I believe, so fortunate but that
they meet with much less than they might do, were it not their own
fault.
In the first place, we are mistaken in our expectations that friendship
should be disinterested. It neither is, nor can be. It may be so in
action, but never in the sentiment; there is always an equivalent to be
returned. And if we examine the movements of our own hearts, we must be
sure this is the case; and yet, we are so unreasonable as to expect our
friends should be purely disinterested; and, after having secured their
affections, we neglect to pay the price, and expect they should be
continued to us for nothing. We grow careless of pleasing them;
inconsiderate of their feelings, and heedless of the government of our
own temper towards them; and then we complain of inconstancy, if they
like us not so well as when dressed out in our best for the reception of
their favor. Yet it is, in fact, we that are changed, not they.
Another fruitful source of disappointment in our attachments is, that
while we are much more quick in detecting the faults of others than our
own, we absurdly require that every one should be faultless but
ourselves. We do not say that we expect this in our friends; but we do
expect it, and our conduct proves that we expect it. We begin also with
believing it. The obscurities of distance; the vail that the proprieties
of society casts over nature's deformities; the dazzling glitter of
exterior qualities baffle, for a time, our most penetrating glances, and
the imperfect vision seems all that we should have it. Our inexperienced
hearts, and some indeed that should be better taught, fondly believe it
to be all it seems, and begin their attachment in full hope to find it
so. What wonder then that the bitterest disappointment should ensue,
when, on more close acquaintance, we find them full of imperfections,
perhaps of most glaring faults; and we begin to express disgust,
sometimes even resentment, that they are not what we took them for.
But was this their fault, or ours? Did they not present themselves to us
in the garb of mortal flesh?--and do we not know that mortals are
imperfect?--that, however the outside be fair, the interior is corrupt,
and sometimes vile? He who knows all, alone knows how corrupt it is! the
heart itself, enlightened by His grace, is more deeply in the secret
than any without can be; but if the thing we love be mortal, something
of it we must perceive; and more and more of it we must perceive as we
look closer. If this is to disappoint and revolt us, and draw harsh
reproaches and bitter recriminations from our lips, there is but One on
whom we can fix our hearts with safety; and He is one, alas! we show so
little disposition to love, as proves that, with all our complainings
and bewailings of each others' faultiness, our friends are as good as
will, at present, suit us.
But are we, therefore, to say there is no such thing as friendship, or
that it is not worth seeking? morosely repel it, or suspiciously
distrust it? If we do, we shall pay our folly's price in the forfeiture
of that, without which, however we may pretend, we never are or can be
happy; preferring to go without the very greatest of all earthly good,
because it is not what, perhaps, it may be in heaven. Rather than this,
it would be wise so to moderate our expectation, and adapt our conduct,
as to gain of it a greater measure, or, as far as may be possible, to
gather of its flowers without exposing ourselves to be wounded by the
thorns it bears. This is only to be done by setting out in life with
juster feelings and fairer expectations.
It is not true, that friends are few and kindness rare. No one ever
needed friends, and deserved them, and found them not; but we do not
know them when we see them, or deal with them justly when we have them.
We must allow others to be as variable, and imperfect, and faulty, as
ourselves. We do not wish our readers to love their friends less, but to
love them as what they are, rather than as what they wish them to be;
and instead of the jealous pertinacity that is wounded by every
appearance of change, and disgusted by every detection of a fault, and
ready to distrust and cast away the kindest friends on every trifling
difference of behavior and feeling, to cultivate a moderation in their
demands; a patient allowance for the effect of time and circumstance; an
indulgence towards peculiarities of temper and character; and, above
all, such a close examination of what passes in their own hearts, as
will teach them better to understand and excuse what they detect in the
hearts of others; ever remembering that all things on earth are earthly;
and therefore changeful, perishable, and uncertain.