In Cambridge backs : being the vacation thoughts of a schoolmistress

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I In Cambridge Backs 1

II Friendship ....... 6

II Friendsdhip

This is an age in which women, especially intellectual women, are given to forming strong friendships. There are women who find their comfort, their strength, their inspiration in one friend who is all in all to them ; — others, perhaps of a more expansive nature, have several friends each one of whom is in her way supreme. And yet many women question the wisdom of these friendships ; some even who indulge in them are just a little ashamed of them; the world is inclined to look askance at them, to regard them as abnormal feminine weaknesses, and there are those who are heard to say that God never meant it to be so, this dependence upon each other, this almost passionate devotion between persons of the same sex. Perhaps we do not remember that these strong friendships originated not with women, but with men, and if we are disposed to condemn them wholesale it is certainly because we do not realize how much we owe to them. For I think we rarely if ever come close to a man who has contributed greatly to the order, the justice, the beauty, the thought of the world without finding that there was a friend who was his inspiration, his very soul. Occasionally the wife has been this friend, but previous to the nineteenth century this was rare, it was generally some other man. Sometimes both friends became famous, sometimes only one, but the other was always there. The time would fail us to tell of David and Jonathan, of Achilles and Patroclus, of Damon and Pythias, of Orestes and Pylades, of Socrates and Plato, of Paul and Timothy, who through friendship overcame mountains of difficulty, intellectual, moral and physical, and of whom the world is slowly beginning to be worthy, since it holds them in grateful remembrance. Nay, is it not almost blasphemous to ask whether God approves of such a relationship, when we remember that our Lord Himself sanctified it, for among the twelve who "continued with Him in His temptations," there was one who will be known to all time as "the disciple whom Jesus loved?"

Strong friendship is the supreme characteristic of that wonderful period of intellectual and spiritual awakening which embraces the Renascence and Reformation. These movements differed in different countries, but everywhere there was the same passionate sense of the value of friendship and of fellow-work, of what Ruskin calls "co-working and army fellowship." I like to think of Rufus Mutianus, that typical son of the Renascence, whose real name was Conrad Muth, but whose friends called him Rufus because of his red hair, while after the fashion of the time they latinized his last name ; a man who was the very incarnation

8 IN CAMBRroGE BACKS

of friendship, a man who, like Jesus and Socrates, wrote nothing, but who gathered about him a band of friends whom he inspired to think and write great things. Then from Italy we find Michael Angelo writing, "I cannot enjoy life without the soul," and by the soul he means his friend Tommaso Cavalieri. Again in Germany we rejoice in Luther and Melancthon, Luther with his clear head and vigorous, sometimes harsh will, Melancthon with what might be called his almost artistic love of learning, his gentleness and sweetness, combined with a certain indecision and weakness of practical judgment, which sometimes accompanies breadth of view. I like even better to remember Staupitz, that earlier friend of Luther, the father-confessor who was the first to understand the young monk, so oppressed with the burden of evil, and to teach him the meaning of the words, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." When the pupil became the master, Staupitz rejoiced in the inversion of position which he had foreseen from the beginning. He did not follow Luther out of the Church of Rome, the historic church dear to him because of so many associations, but it is good to remember that a difference of opinion on even so vital a matter could not break the friendship. In the last year of his life, 1524, we find him writing a letter in which he thanks his "beloved Martin" for having led him away "to the living pastures from the husks for the pigs," and speaks of his love for him as "passing the love of women." As for Luther he always retained for Staupitz the warm affection that it is natural to feel for the first person who has understood and been able to help. Throughout his life he speaks of him as his spiritual father, toward its close he thanks God that he had been "helped out of his temptations by Dr. Staupitz, without whom he would have been swallowed up in them and perished." Surely here was a love stronger than death, since in that bitter age it was stronger than creeds.

I myself have found an especial delight in three-cornered friendships. There is a fullness and completeness about three which two cannot quite have ; moreover when full and free fellowship among three is possible, it has none of the morbidness which is sometimes an element in the dual friendship. For there is certainly a mystic perfection in the number three which man did not invent; every material object has three dimensions, every polygon must have at least three sides, the human mind has three elements, intellect, sensibility and will ; at least three are necessary to make a family, father, mother and child; even the Godhead, we are taught, and reasoning from analogy I find it easy to believe, fulfills itself in three Persons. So I have sometimes thought that it takes three to make an absolutely complete and perfect friendship, although that is a matter of temperament, and generally, perhaps always, two of the three are a little closer to each other than the third can be to either of them.

The Renascence period furnishes a beautiful and well-nigh perfect example of a triangular friendship in that which united Colet, Erasmus and More. Colet, a man of twenty-six, "fell in love," Mr. Seebohm tells us, with More, a lad of fourteen. More whose wit, wisdom and sweetness no man of culture could resist. The friendship thus begun lasted until death, Colet's death, parted them, strengthened not weakened by the fact that some years later More formed another friendship which partook even more than his affection for Colet of the nature of love. For we all know the story of how Erasmus and More met at a dinner table, and neither knowing who the other was, an argument arose, in which each admired the knowledge and skill of his antagonist to such an extent that Erasmus cried out, "Aut tu es Morus, aut mullus" to which More replied, "Aut tu es Erasmus, aut diabolus." The friendship formed that day became famous throughout Christendom, but while posterity applauds there were contemporaries who, like some of our contemporaries under similar circumstances, sneered. Thus Tyndale in an attack upon More, sarcastically speaks of Erasmus as "INIore's darling," but More did not flinch ; he accepted the term. "Erasmus, my darling," he says in the reply written for all the world to read, "shall be my dear darling still." We find him at one time writing to his friend that if there was one thought of ambition in his mind, it was the pleasure that he felt in knowing that his name would always be associated with that of Erasmus, while Erasmus declares that More's presence is "more sweet to him than anything in life," and adds "In More mihi videor extincttus, adeo uia (puxij juxta Pythagoram duobus erat." Nor was Colet crowded out ; as long as he lived he was loved and revered by both friends, his holiness, Mr. Hutton tells us, an inspiration to Erasmus, while his perfect sanity of judgment was a wise restraint upon More. "For centuries," says More writing after his death, for he was the first of the three to die, "we have not had among us any man more learned or more holy." The two who were left were drawn closer to each other by the memory of him whom they had both loved.

Nor was even this three-cornered friendship exclusive, there was plenty of room for other affections. More's family relations, his beautiful home life are too well known to need comment here, but there were other friends too. Thus we find him writing to Cuthbert Tunstall: "Although every letter I receive from you, dearest friend, is very pleasant to me, yet that which you wrote last is most welcome, for besides the praise which the rest of your letters deserve for their eloquence, the last yields a peculiar gi'ace, for that it contains your own opinion (I would that it were as true as it is favorable) of my Utopia. I almost persuade myself that all those things which you spoke of it are true, knowing you to be far from all dissimulation, and myself too humble to need flattery and too dear to you to be mocked. Wherefore, whether you have seen the truth unfeignedly, I rejoice in your judgment, or whether your affection to me hath bhndcd your judgment, I am no less delighted by your love." Again to the same friend, "The amber which j^ou sent me, a precious sepulchre of flies was in many respects most welcome to me; for the matter thereof may bear comparison in color and brightness with any precious stone, and the form is more excellent because it represents the figure of a heart, as it were the emblem of our love ; from which I take your meaning to be that between us it will never fly away, and yet be always without corruption; because I see the fly which hath wings like Cupid, and is as fickle, so shut up and enclosed in the amber that it cannot fly away, and embalmed and preserved that it cannot perish. I am not so much troubled" (a sure proof of friendship) "that I cannot send you a like gift, for I know you do not expect an interchange of tokens."

It was the period of the Renascence which, as we have seen, was richest in these romantic masculine friendships. We are li%T[ng now in an age which for women is a Renascence ; we are being re-born, finding our own minds, finding our own souls, and in the spiritual and intellectual awakening which has come to us, it is natural that we should repeat the story of the Renascence ; that friendship should play the part with us now that it played with men then. For friendship is the most intellectual and spiritual of all relationships ; it is not in any degree founded upon physical desire, nor upon the protective instinct, nor as some marriages are upon the hope of gain, material, social or political,

" With gold so much, birth, power, repute so much, Or beauty, youth so much in lack of these!"

Friends are friends simply because they like to be together; to share each other's thoughts, to live in a greater or less degree their intellectual, spiritual and emotional lives in common, but with thinking persons the emotional is largely the result of the intellectual and spiritual.

Hence I am inclined to think that people who do not have fairly strong intellectual and spiritual natures, those whose lives are practical but not intellectual, moral perhaps but not spiritual, cannot, strictly speaking, have friends. Such persons often do have beautiful family relationships ; the emotional nature is satisfied in the family, in the marriage which may have been founded upon passion, or may even have been entered upon in a very prosaic and businesslike way, but which has become a matter of mutual esteem, of being used to each other, dependent upon each other, the married pair having so long shared all the detail of life that they have become so adapted to each other, that it is difficult to adapt themselves to any one else, even in such small matters as the hours of meals or the way in which coffee should be served. Between parents and children there is the physical tie, the sense of gratitude and duty on both sides, the protective instinct at first of the older for the younger, later perhaps of the younger for the older ; between brothers and sisters the feeling that blood is thicker than water, the similarities founded on common antecedents, common and limited environment; and in all the family relationships a strong sense of belonging to each other, coupled in these simple families with the fact that no one else belongs to them, since they have no real friendships. They have neighbors to whom they are neighborly, for human nature, especially simple human nature, is kind, but they can hardly be called friends ; they are people with whom they gratify the natural social instincts, talk over the every-day of life, help in trouble or are helped by, but one neighbor does almost as well as another, provided he be kind and sociable, the family is all in all.

These natural and physical relationships are probably even in the cultured family stronger than the intellectual and spiritual, for even when the members of such a family are so unfortunate as to be lacking in congeniality there is generally a great deal of affection ; at very bottom even the uncongenial sister is commonly more, though less consciously loved, than the congenial friend.

But friendship is fellowship, it is founded upon vital congeniality of spirit, and where this does not exist, there can be no friendship. For this reason the Greeks, whose tendency was perhaps to over-estimate the intellectual and spiritual, thought friendship the holiest of all relationships, far holier than marriage. And I am not sure that a perfect friendship, a friendship free from the flaws of which I shall presently speak, is not holier than a fairly comfortable marriage which does not include friendship. If the highest marriages are higher than the highest friendships, it is because they have in them every element of friendship and much more besides.

The strongest friendships are ordinarily based not upon character, but upon spiritual affinity ; that is, there is more of loving than of liking in them. For loving is not deeper, stronger liking, it is an altogether different thing. We like a person because of his qualities ; if we find that we have been mistaken in these qualities we cease to like him. But we go on loving no matter what discoveries we may make ; for although the character may be in some respects objectionable, we feel that we are not mistaken in the spirit that lies beneath the character, and we love not because of the character, but because of the spirit that answers to our spirit. So when friendship is absolutely ideal and equal, there is no shame in the presence of one's friend. I may sorrow deeply over my fault, but I am not ashamed to have my friend know about it, for she, like God, understands fully, and so while she sorrows with me over my sin, her love is strengthened, not weakened by it. In literature I know of no more beautiful friendship than that between Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways," and Lady Emma Dunstane, and the best part of it is that when Diana has sinned, she goes to Lady Emma with her story, fully expecting the sympathy that she receives ; she is ashamed of her sin, but she is not ashamed that Lady Emma should know it. And in this affair Diana is greater than Lady Emma, for it takes more love and trust to be sure of receiving sympathy in such a case than it takes to give it.

" I bow before the noble mind That freely some great wrong forgives, Yet nobler is the one forgiven, Who bears that burden well and lives."

I like to remember too that St. John was the only other apostle present when St. Peter denied his Lord, and from that time we find St. Peter and St. John inseparable.

When we define taste in the largest and deepest sense, I suppose we love our friends more because their taste is in harmony with ours than because their characters are in such harmony, for taste is really a deeper and truer manifestation of spirit than is character. What a man is depends not so much upon what he does as upon what he likes, though of course doing sometimes begets liking.'^

1 " I want you to think a little of the deep significance of the word taste, for no statement of mine has been more

A distinction, however, must be made between taste and tastes ; it is only the former that is essential. It is not necessary that my friend and I should always care for the same people, the same books, the same pictures, the same music ; but underneath the tastes we must feel that the taste is essentially the same, though some of its manifestations may differ or even be antagonistic.

While there can be liking without loving, there probably cannot be loving such as friends have for each other without some liking. For while when we once begin to love, we continue to do so no matter what discoveries we may make, we probably do not begin to love where the faults most obnoxious to us are present, for these we are quick to detect, and they are an effectual bar to love. Sometimes we begin with loving and proceed to liking, sometimes we begin with liking and proceed to loving. In the former case the friendship is formed rapidly, for the friends do not have to

earnestly or oftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moral quality. . . . Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first and last and closest trial question to any living creature is, What do you like? Tell me what you like, and I will tell you what you are. Go out into the street and ask the first man or woman that you meet what their taste is, and if they answer candidly, you know them body and soul. And the object of the true education is to make people not only do the right things, but enjoy the right things, not merely industrious but to love industry, not merely learned but to love knowledge, not merely pure but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice." — Ruskin "Crown of Wild Olive."

learn to know each other, they know and love perhaps at first sight. In a highly sensitive mood two spirits come into contact, and each recognizes in the other the counterpart of itself. Sometimes this is a delusion, when the moment of exaltation is over they find they they have been mistaken, that they have been in love with love, not with each other, but sometimes it is the beginning of a real and powerful friendship. There is generally great spiritual excitement at first, but as the friends come to know each other practically as they have from the beginning known each other spiritually this calms down, only to re-appear when there is something special, some great joy or siorrow to call it forth.

The friendships that begin with liking are slower and more commonplace. People are thrown together, work together, think together, approve of each other's principles and opinions, share each other's joys and sorrows, trials and temptations, until by degrees they recognize that they are necessary to each other, that so far as trust, admiration, tenderness and mutual service constitute love, they love each other.

This is the safer and surer friendship; sometimes I think that it is the better, but then I remember that when Socrates had come to this conclusion, he though that he heard a voice saying in his ear that he had been guilty of impiety, and because he was afraid of the God-Love, he made a solemn recantation. This quiet and comparatively unemotional friendship is certainly the safer ; we run no risk of being mistaken in ourselves or in the other ; nor is there the excitement at the beginning which for some natures takes so much strength ; it is "for help and comfort in all the passages of life and death" ; perhaps for those of us who are only average beings, it may be just as helpful, help us to live our average lives as well as that other friendship, but after all it is not the highest, for as Socrates points out, great things are not bom of it, it is not by it that creative souls are stimulated to create. And perhaps it is well that creative aspirations should sometimes be aroused even in those of us who are not capable of creating much, that the spiritual nature (and what is spiritual is always creative, it is the spirit that giveth life) should be consciously stirred, if only that we may thereby appreciate the creations of others. For whatever is spiritual uplifts us to Him who is Spirit. "Love is of God, and he that loveth" (not loveth God, but loveth any one) "is born of God, and knoweth God." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," and nothing purifies the heart as love does, for where love is there is no room for vulgarity. Moreover when the mind is in this exalted state, it is too uplifted to feel petty annoyances, and it is not unusual for the body to be insensible to pain because of love.

Then since friendship is such a high and holy thing, since men have always had extreme friendships with profit not only to themselves but to the world, why should such friendships between women be looked upon askance? In order to be happy and useful, woman must have her emotional nature satisfied, and must have work to do which will give her a place in the world, make her feel that she is worth while. The married woman finds both her work and the satisfaction of her emotional nature in marriage. The old maid of a by-gone generation was unhappy and disagreeable, when she was unhappy and disagreeable, because there was no person and no definite work which she could call her own. The unmarried woman now tends to find her work in some business or profession ; why should not her emotional nature be satisfied in friendship, as the married woman's is in marriage.?

I suppose that the answer of the objectors would be that these friendships take too much strength with too little results. To most people emotional situations are a strain, the first ecstasy of a sudden friendship, like the first ecstasy of love between the sexes, takes strength. Nor is it anything against either relationship that it takes strength at first, — all great things take strength, the thorough enjoyment of great music, great pictures, great books, how much more a great love.? The question is not does it take strength, but does it give as much as it takes? Are the joy and pain with which love begins travail throes from which something will be born? or is the so-called

FRIENDSHIP ai

love merely what Mazzini has described as "I'egoisme a deux personnes, a jealous and convulsive passion, half pride, half thirst of enjoyment which narrows the sphere of our activity, and causes us to forget our duties both towai'd our country and toward humanity?"

Now however emotional and absorbed lovers may be at first, there is little danger that love will take their strength or narrow them for any length of time. For marriage means new work whether the married wish it or not, and in the multiplicity of duties the conscious emotionalism dies out; only a blessed sense of companionship is left. I know a woman who is a very emotional friend ; she once told me that it was well that she had never married, for she would have been a more emotional wife than any man could stand. But darning stockings and calculating expenses would probably have cured her of over-emotionalism ; she would have been a less emotional wife than she was a friend.

And of course the work that marriage brings with it is a blessing in itself, apart from the quieting of the emotional nature. Society knows that it will almost always gain by marriage, not only in the perpetuation of the race, but also in the greater attention to business on the part of the man, the broadening of social interests on the part of the woman, and in the development of character and deeper sympathies which come to both from the constant sacrifices which they have to make for each other and for their children, the problems which they have to solve together, the sufferings, the anxieties and the joys which come to a family, and which cannot come to isolated individuals.

JBut society is not so sure that it will gain by friendship, for generally no new duties are absolutely forced upon us with it; there is the opportunity, and to certain temperaments there is a strong temptation to make enjoying each other the main thing in life. If this temptation is yielded to the emotionalism continues and becomes morbid, and there is not the development that marriage brings. For women the danger is greater than for men, partly because we have not naturally so many interests, partly because we are not so strong physically, and possibly in some cases because we are more demonstrative, and demonstrations of emotionalism tend to increase the emotionalism. It may be that it would be better that women should live in this respect more as men do, with less physical expression of affection. Friendship is a spiritual relationship ; why should it need physical expression?

Perhaps friendship is almost too blissful to be as developing in some respects as is marriage ; there is too little friction in it, for the circumstances of friendship do not bring out, as the circumstances of marriage do, those little commonplace differences which must exist even between those who in all important matters are well adapted to each other. And in the other family relations those between parents and children, brothers and sisters, there is often a real uncongeniality ; there are in almost every family certain members who, if it were not for the tie of blood could not be friends, and in the adapting themselves to each other, there is a discipline which means breadth and self-control. Mr. Chesterton is right when he maintains that the family is a good institution quite as much because it is uncongenial as because it is congenial. Friendship is narrower than the family relation just because it is more congenial.

The great safeguard against both the over-emotionalism and the narrowness of friendship is in work. It is only when emotionalism is followed by nothing else that it defeats its own end and uses up strength instead of creating it. For passion is energy, but energy must find an outlet in work, physical or mental, else it feeds upon itself. Since friendship does not necessarily bring new work with it as marriage does let the friends either find some new work to do, or make the old work better because of their friendship. Let the new emotionalism mean new life, let the new life go into the work, make the friendship in some sense creative. Then the friends will not only be saved from a dangerous emotional strain, but they will accomplish something that will be useful to themselves and to others, and the friendship will be made more secure, since growth is an essential to permanent friendship. Furthermore there will be little danger of exclusiveness or jealousy. It makes very little difference what my exact place is with my friend; probably she does not know. It is enough that we love each other, and that we help each other to live our lives and to do our work.

I had a teacher who used to say, "Love is the white heat fusion of the intellect, sensibility and will." The difficulty with many friendships is that it is the sensibility, the emotional nature alone, which is at a white heat. Let the intellect and will do their part, and there will be little danger. The salvation of friendship as of everything else lies in symmetry; — the height, the breadth and the depth of it should be equal.

It is Plato who has best summed up the whole matter. And I think he knew of what he wrote, for had not Socrates been the lover and he himself the beloved.'' and have not Europe and America been the better for more than two thousand years because these two men loved each other.? Listen then to what the wise woman of Mantincia said to Socrates :

"Men whose bodies only are creative betake themselves to women and beget children, — this is the character of their love. But creative souls, for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies, conceive that which is proper for the soul to receive or retain. And what are these conceptions .?* wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of these planted in him, and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. He wanders about s-eeking beauty that he may beget offspring, for in deformity he will beget nothing, and naturally embraces the beautiful rather than the deformed body ; above all when he finds a fair and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to such an one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits of a good man ; and he tries to educate him, and at the touch of the beautiful which is ever-present to his memory, even when absent, he brings forth that which he had conceived long before, and in company with him tends that which he brings forth ; and they are married by a far nearer tie, and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, for the children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal. Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would not rather have their children than the ordinary human ones ? Who would not emulate them in the creation of children such as theirs, which have preserved their memory and given them everlasting glory.? Or who would not have such children as Lycurgus left behind him to be the saviours not only of