Friendship - As an Old Story

— “ Just read me again that epigram on the New Broom.”

“ With pleasure. As Touchstone says, ‘ It’s a poor thing, but my own,’ based on keen experience.”

“You have the inheritance of the irritabile genus.

Is that it ? But let’s have the verses.”

“ Well, here they are. Deal gently.

THE NEW BROOM.

“Yes, that ‘sweeps clean.’ There is, undoubtedly, an extensive Gallic territory in the Land of Friendship, where the inhabitants, like our old acquaintances in Cæsar’s Commentaries, are always ‘desirous of new things.’ ”

“ ‘ Stranger is a holy name ’ very particularly applies to their eager, welcoming attitude. It should be the motto of a lady I know. All her friends are strangers ; all her strangers are swans. If there is an ellipsis in the statement, I leave you to supply what is lacking. At any rate, they prove birds of passage. I hear their praises from her lips no more. Meantime, a new set provide a theme ; for, to do her justice, she is very enthusiastic in the manner in which she speaks of her friends, or rather, her strangers. To grow old, as a friend, is as grievous to her and as insupportable as to others of her sex is the waxing old of the fashion in garments. But in either case change remedies all. Yes; old friends are like relations: the best there is of them, for us, is already won. They have reached that perilous point where they know enough of our failings to temper their generosity with a mild measure of justice! The newfound friend is full of delightful possibilities. So much of the pleasure of friendship with new people consists of getting acquainted, of surveying unknown territory, of colonizing yet undiscovered countries with one’s own views and prejudices, that, like an ardent speculator, one scarce knows where to leave off this reckless investment! ”

“ You are severe. Let me tell you what happened to me at the outset of my acquaintance with an excellent Scotch family. (Ah, there’s the stuff for lasting friendships !) I was young, ardent, and, being impulsive in speech, I expressed strongly my strong liking for these good people ; to which one of the family replied, ‘You’re pleased with us because we ’re newins to you.’ I have often had occasion to remember the phrase when observing the avidity with which new friendships are struck up between eager strangers. They taste their ‘newins,’ and the gusto is great while it lasts. But, do you know, I think there are two sides to this subject, Friendship — as an Old Story. I’m not quite prepared to say, in what might he termed the language of the Hebrew vender, that ‘old friends are like old clo’s; ’ they’ lack style, and have no quality but the one of hanging easy on you; or, to put it briefly, they are easy, and nothing else ! But it would be well, I think, to remember that the advantage of age is liable to be overrated both as regards friendship and wine. A celebrated gourmet has remarked that wine has its dotage. Now, I fail to see why the qualities of friendship should be considered immortal, when, usually, there is nothing else about the friend but what is commonplace. Even criminals boast of enduring friendship,— friendship founded upon so slight a moral basis as the habits of their class offer; but the records of the station-house present a solid wall of negation to all this glowing pretension. But to return. I think that friendship, in a certain sense, should always be new; the older it grows, the newer it ought to be.”

“ Would you mind explaining that little paradox ?”

“ Certainly not. You know I don’t object to being didactic — on occasion. I mean just this (and here we come back to your New Broom). With many people friendship is like a tontine policy; after a given number of years it matures, and is then called ‘ paid up.’ There is such a position as emeritus professor in friendship. The period of contribution having passed, the incumbent settles into calm possessorship of rights already earned. It ’s not a gracious rôle to play. I don’t see why we should be so zealous to keep‘abreast of the times’ in every other matter, while in friendship alone we allow ourselves to rest complacently on the oar. Every art, every industry, every project in which we engage, looks forward. There must be some lure, some novelty, to draw us on. You don’t grind with the water that has passed, and just as little do you grind the grist that is already ground. I think of a good illustration from the sciences. To a well-equipped and earnest naturalist there need be no higher recommendation to secure his interest than that the animal under consideration be but little known. Some beast of the Dismal Swamp, some Mexican or Guatemalan toad whose horned and grotesque body suggests to the philosopher that the Almighty has a sense of humor,— all this is food for the naturalist’s loving thought, and an incentive to curious investigation. There is no serpent too slimy or too venomous to engage his intensest interest, provided such serpent possesses one rattle more to his tail or one fang less to his buckle armory than is the wont of his kind in general. I think of a more agreeable illustration. When a child, I brought to an old musician with a passionate love of flowers a specimen unknown to us children, and called by some fanciful childish name of our own invention. At sight of this unaccustomed blossom, the old flower-worshiper dropped his eyes in unspeakable disappointment. ‘ Why, it’s only a cowslip,’ he said. In so doing he but betrayed that universal lack of interest in the familiar which is so sad to contemplate, even when that familiar is taken from the subject of our deepest joy.”

“Omne ignotum holds good among the every-day things of this life ; undoubtedly, the element of strangeness goes far to enhance romantic interest wherever it is encountered.”

“Yes. Even the crystalline Emerson, talking as the gods upon Olympus talk from peak to peak, says that lovers must guard their strangeness.”

“And what wise Corydon was it who, on being questioned, gave this recipe for keeping his sweetheart aglow with perennial enthusiasm ? 1 Don’t never marry her. Court all the time, like two pretty people in a picture.’ ”

“ Yes. Among the expedients granted to poor human nature, in order that it may keep alive the freshness and glow of the heart, there is nothing more useful than the resourceful temperament which, like the moon in Browning’s poem, turns always a new side to her mortal.

Yet I’m not so sure as to that last specification. If you will reach me that volume of Keats, I think I can And a wise word on this very subject, as on many another, though his lovers will never allow the possibility of his moralizing upon any theme. Here it is, — the sonnet To J. H. Reynolds.¹ He wishes that

And here, again, he is still more strenuous to endow friendship with all the fullness of life : —

I won’t say familiarity breeds contempt, but it does breed a too easy-going certainty and a slackness of endeavor in friendship, which assuredly deserves our best efforts.”

“ It might be useful for friends to adapt for their purpose the refrain of an old sentimental ditty, Strangers Yet.”

“ Yes, they might do worse. The joy of mutual discovery would then never fail them.”

“ And, on the other hand, they might sometimes be spared a world of pain ? ”

“Certainly. It’s a grave question just how far the idealization that seems to be necessary to friendship will bear the strain of an intimate, minute, and humorous knowledge of defects. Perhaps, for our friend’s sake, we ought to see that he does n’t discover too many of our little faults.”

“ My Machiavellian prince of friends speaks there ! ”