Chapter VII (2)

On the continent there are men with whom you feast on friendship, crowds of comrades, day and night, never too numerous for a hearty fellow who is hungry for the presence of other hearty fellows like yourself. There are those who call you by your first name as you pass or with whom you walk with your arm about their shoulders; they are as thick as the trees along the rivers and the Great Lakes. They are the mass to which you give of yourself with immense confidence, well knowing what will be the return from this investment. Here reigns the “beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh” that absorbs the radiance of your own strong, sensual, loving masculinity and sends it back to you in the flash of the eyes that turn towards you. Where can one find such delights, richer food for the soul? What should I do in your blessed retreat, where the golden days pass with one companion? I should be devoured by homesickness in a moment--for the streets and faces of Manhattan, their sounds and their vibrating movement.

Frown as much as you like at these delights, little man on your island who hold men and women at a distance as if you were afraid of touching pitch. You, brother of the live-oak that joyously spreads its branches, alone in the fields, with no companion near it. You to whom the company of your own dear thoughts suffices. You who crouch in the midst of your own distrust, with your fists clenched, bitter, satisfied, sarcastic, devoid of magnetism, without any indulgence for your neighbour. You whom no one would ever think of calling by a nickname. You who have no more friendship for your own body than for those of others. You for whom no woman waits.

Make your wry face, Henry, but throw out your narrow chest, just the same! For you have no particular reason to feel humiliated. The contrast with that great animal may overwhelm your puny frame. Your head barely reaches to his shoulder, but in that head, little Henry, burns the flame of a spirit that assures you at least this superiority: you have felt his grandeur, while he has not been able to see anything in you. He is not very discerning, the great animal. Go back to Concord with your head high.

They parted indeed after two hours of conversation, with a promise to see each other again the next morning. Matters could not rest there. Walt was going to return the visit of the two Yankees at their hotel. But at the appointed hour, the loafer, the dawdler, had either forgotten the meeting or thought it best to be somewhere else: there was no big ruddy fellow to be seen. They could not resume the conversation.

And on November 24th, Amos and Henry returned to the fold, the one to Concord, the other to northern Connecticut where he was living at the moment, full of memories of their call in Brooklyn--still under the charm of a presence that was vastly more impressive even than the voice of Beecher at Plymouth Church.

* * * * *

Friendship! This had been the torment of Henry’s life also, a torment revealed to one confidant alone, the Journal, as the great lover confided it to his Leaves to be spread abroad.... Always with this vast difference between their two aches: Walt was tormented because he could never be sufficiently intoxicated with it, while Henry suffered from a virtual powerlessness to express it at all.

A sad, sad story and so secret. To whom could this shy soul confide what was concealed behind the mask of his fierce reserve? The trees could not understand it, and they were his closest friends. So there remained only a white page that would receive the confession without blanching.

That the mean interests and commonplace cares of ordinary people should disgust and bore him was natural enough. Should he fall on his knees, beat his breast and bewail the demands of a stomach that cannot endure smugness and vulgarity? He is a mighty walker, he can roll off an infinite number of miles, splash about in a swamp or shovel snow for hours, weed in the blazing sun for a whole morning, split stumps as hard as iron: but your accursed society is utterly beyond him. Protest as you like. He is a lucky chap when he can afford to digest anything or anybody.

But with the few who are dear to him why is there so little real intimacy? As a rule, he finds nothing but disappointment in their company. He does not get into touch with them. He feels this too keenly not to suffer from it. Complete friendship, the only sort worthy of the name, is not the commonplace gossip of good neighbours; it asks to be able to go freely at all hours into your friend’s house, without even the need of knocking. Give me the freedom of your friendship if you do not wish to make me unhappy.

With those whom, in spite of all, he calls his friends, Henry always has this feeling of painful dissatisfaction. His constraint paralyses him. He leaves their company still hungry for what he came to seek; so great is his discomfiture that he carries home with their strings untied the packages he had meant to open before them. They were things before which it would have been such a pleasure to marvel together. Is there any disenchantment equal to this? Instead of communing together and admiring one another, it is as if they had put each other out or wounded each other. It is a collision where it ought to have been a jubilee.

So he cares more for his friends at a distance where their image recovers its shape and petty things are forgotten. He is an over-exacting man: he refuses to have the most beautiful thing in the world profaned by being decked out in false ornaments. He insists that it must be absolutely naked, and thus he has only fleeting glimpses of it.

Why is this? Why this lack of sympathetic understanding between true friends? Is it their fault? Do they lack naturalness or sincerity? Do they encumber friendship with compliments, manners or shallow words? Or is it his fault, this fault he imputes to others? Would his friends, by any chance, like him to be a little different?

They have often complained that he is stiff, abrupt, that he remains silent when they expect him to say something. They are not over-fond of his rather crabbed way of speaking the truth and demanding it in return. Perhaps they are not entirely in the wrong. But does all the trouble, all his pain, come from these differences? They have known him for a long time, they know what a firm friend he is, and they are as willing to pardon his singularities as he is to forgive their habit of excessive sociability. Is he asking too much of them--a nobility that is impossible to human clay? Possibly; but even so there must be something else that he has forgotten in scrutinizing his conscience.

Come, my friend, what is it you complain of to your confidant in the evening? That your friends are this or that instead of being their own natural selves, that they answer so incompletely to what you expect of them? You are wounded, you are hurt because they seem to turn up their noses at the good things you were bringing them, and it is not a wound to your pride, it is not just a question of wretched vanity. It is much more serious than that--you are wounded in your affections, poor Henry....

Well, but how about yourself? Are you so sure that you respond to their expectations? Suppose, instead of withdrawing into your shell, at the least discord, you were simply to accept what they have to offer you? Suppose you were to show them a little indulgence? Instead, you roughly pull away. Must it always necessarily be they who take the first step? You insist that they should come and seek you out in the depths of your den, after opening as many locks as if it were an enchanted palace. And suppose they haven’t the key, suppose they don’t know the open sesame? You expect your friends to be magicians, seers who can divine the warmth hidden far down beneath that icy exterior. All very well, no doubt; but tell us, you who left the door of your cabin at Walden open to all comers, why you lock yourself up in this fashion. What robbers do you fear? You can see for yourself that this is no philistine who stands before you, that his face is the face of a friend. You can be frank, you can speak out that desire you have in you--which is going to cause you pain later just because you have obliged it to remain silent and it has its own way of protesting. To no indifferent person, rest assured, will you be showing your gifts.

There you are, so unhappy, with your affectionate impulses shattered, leaving your friend with the feeling that you have been simply an intruder. Are you so sure he would have disappointed you so if you had taken out your specimens, mystery-maker--if you had merely offered him what you brought, offered it simply, directly? You refuse to explain yourself because it is humiliating. Friends don’t explain, they understand. No doubt; but suppose your attitude took the place of an explanation, made it unnecessary, dissipated the cloud? Instead of looking for reasons and fining them down like a casuist, suppose you tried to give a little of yourself? Just a little, why not?

You stand there, frozen, waiting--waiting for what?--with that bashfulness, that infernal bashfulness that makes you shrink back from your chin to your fingers instead of making the gesture the other may be waiting for--whatever it may be, a touch on the shoulder, a glance from those eyes that you keep lowered as if you were planning some dreadful deed, a handclasp long enough to establish the contact, long enough for the current to begin to flow.... Don’t you realize, subtle as you are, fool that you have suddenly become, the importance of a little familiar gesture that will set you both free? Come, you who are so brave, so resolute in attack, you who profess to be liberating men who are prisoners of their own sordid existence, confess that you lack the courage....

You should live your friendship a little, you should put into practice the principles of that exalted affection which you say cannot be satisfied among men, live it instead of singing its praises, you infernal New England prude! Your hands are skilful enough for anything, except when it comes to friendship--hands that are so delicate when they pick a frail little flower and so clumsy when they lift this plant that thrusts its pale roots into you. You can’t stick this in the lining of your hat where you carry your most fragile discoveries....

Yes, they may have their faults, your friends. They may be too intelligent to understand. They have a gift for whetting your spirit of contradiction, which is so destructive of friendship. But don’t you see that you, with your antagonism, are most to blame? You who do not lay aside at the outset, like an objectless accessory in a friendly house, the mask of that provoking, that insupportable chilliness? If you are not “incapable of expansion and generosity,” why do you keep all these treasures hidden for your own morose delectation, why are you so absurdly timorous, so savagely bashful? When you have given your hand, why do you withdraw it so quickly, as if your precious ego were in danger of dissolving in the warmth of another palm? Suspicious! Distrustful! Infernal idiot! Barbarian, barbarian, barbarian, who suffer and triumph in being what you are!... Don’t accuse others till you have accused yourself.

Whether the fault is his or theirs, it is very sad in any case. At times this man who is so rich feels very poor indeed, and all the joy of the river, all the friendship of the woods does not suffice to fill the void in this imploring heart.

What a tragedy, for instance, in his relations with his oldest, his greatest friend, lies behind the appearance of the most harmonious understanding.... The one man in all the world to whom he is bound by the brightest hours of his life ... the light of his youth ... not to be able to love him as he would like to love him, completely, because ... because.... Waldo and Henry cannot quite mingle, as the names of Eden and Waldo mingle in Walden.

Because Waldo--the flower of a long line of ministers, so rich a flower in the garland which the established order wears on its brow--is offended by inelegances that clash with his philosophical decorum, a decorum full of grace and suave respect for the venerable conventions. Because a dry, unalterable “no,” rebellion carried even into the smallest details, the frank assumption of the character of a bad citizen, revolutionary language ruffle his serenity. And because Henry, on his side, is irritated, cannot approve of that timidity, that spirit of compromise, and will never believe that instead of showing your disgust for what is disgusting you should cover it up with cream sauce and ask people to taste it.

Because, as an illustrious Sage, the elder, with his delightful smile, slightly--oh! so slightly--patronizes his junior, this dear, crabbed, odd, aggressive Henry, this cool iconoclast in whom he recognizes a force superior to his own that he would like to mollify, bring into line, civilize. This dear Henry who does not want to have the smile that would comfort his friend Waldo and, like the latter’s, electrify an audience instead of petrifying it. This dear Henry who is galled by any touch of protectiveness, faint as it may be, and conceives of friendship as the region of equals. This dear Henry who had not waited till a great Sage came to illuminate Concord in order to exist himself, who is not the sort to allow himself to be worked up like all those visionaries whom the dazzling star attracts. Make no mistake, dear Waldo. Yet there is nothing to prevent us from being very fond of each other, even if we do wound each other.

Because almost insensibly Henry feels each day a little further from Waldo, further from his tastes, his habits and the people who surround him, the more pronounced his own personality becomes, the more it reacts and frees itself from the influences of his twentieth year ... till he refuses to write an article on his great friend which Greeley has been asking him to write for years and has accepted in advance ... till he at last realizes the uselessness of those conversations from which each comes away disappointed with the other ... till there are longer and longer intervals between those visits to the little white house that merely waste his time and cause him pain ... till the day comes when the distance is so great that Henry confesses it is dead, the beautiful friendship, that it lies there, motionless as a corpse, on a bed of twenty years....

For years he had seen this moment coming, but when it was there, in all the harshness of the confession, what a rent it made! The face of the dead on that couch spoke of happy hours passed by the fireside, of those trees and that garden he had cared for ... spoke of those walks together, that confidence, that life side by side. Henry felt an intense pain in his head, in his chest, which prevented him from working and grew worse towards evening. In the confusion, the infinite desolation of that black hour, all the friendship of all men seemed to crumble. And yet at the very moment when this affection was vanishing and he was bidding it farewell, why did he feel so strangely _near_ the dead friend, yes, in spite of everything, so near, with that pain in his chest, that it was as if the friendship contained a touch of the love that eludes death?

But all should not be lost for a man disappointed in relations that intellectual tastes shared in common cannot save from ruin. There remain his friends the simple folk, whom he relishes with a natural sympathy, without any philosophical seasoning. With them, at least, Henry feels at ease. No more than himself do they enjoy the consideration of the world. They are untainted by manners. With them he can visit freely back and forth. Here he can go straight ahead. And look at him.... He watches them, in silent satisfaction--from a distance. What a good sort that fellow is, how close akin to him you feel.... At a distance Henry admires them, they go straight to his heart; but does he take a step towards them? Never. And why? What is it that restrains him from following his inclination and seeing whither it leads? Among these people are familiar and friendly faces to whom he has never addressed a word in his whole life, whose very names are unknown to him. The rover who respects neither wall nor hedge but walks directly to his goal remains obstinately on the borders of a land--beautiful, as it seems to him--where he does not dare to venture.

Strange reserve! Why deprive yourself of the offered feast, epicure of huckleberries, epicure of a humanity that you are content to eat with your eyes? One might think you were afraid of all contact, afraid that everything would be spoiled if you rubbed shoulders with anyone else. Where are those senses of yours that are so fine, so alert, so eager to possess things? Do they hold prisoner among them the sense of attachment? Well, there are so many beautiful things that your intellect grasps but that you do not know how to untie, strange man who watch men and women whom you would like go by, and remain apart, with your tenderness under lock and key.

Strange or not, it is so, and when you are a Stoic, you stifle your secret and your grief and go on your way as if everything in the world were just right. If there are no friends to visit, give them up. You can visit them in thought, and they will come in the same way and join you in your walks: only so can you feel really close to them. If they do not understand that for some people friendship is as serious a passion as love, if they find you cold, nature at least will welcome you without vain words. With her you do not feel an intruder; you and she do not irritate each other; she never disappoints you or provokes a “no”; she never sends you away with your enthusiasms crushed. And so you exaggerate your stiffness, you swagger, you carry your head high, even when you are alone with yourself. You are a happy mortal who has rid yourself of men; you feast on solitude; it has a taste of nuts and sour apples; you laud it to the skies. It is a heroic remedy. You may not always succeed in deceiving yourself. You are not always the dupe of these pathetic boasts. But this makes no difference. You are a savage who leaves these idiots of civilized people to eat the dust of the highway. It is beautiful, this wild life, and you are proud of it, even if it sometimes makes a shy, silent fellow suffer. You are that happy man, made in the image of Walden Pond, self-sufficient, having no communication with the impure waters about it, smooth and serene--yet dreaming perhaps, now and again in the evening, dreaming in its depths of the running, singing waters with which it would be so good to run and sing, thinking how sad it is to be unable to mingle its life with that of the neighbouring ponds, its brothers. You are as rigid and as pure as the ice that encloses it in winter.

And so, because of that impotence from which you suffer, you are regarded as a misanthrope--just as a deaf man is thought to be unsociable. Hear that without laughing, enemy of the human race, you who can laugh, at your own times, so heartily.

To carry every day, over all the paths of the waste lands, like a burden you could not do without, your anxious care for men. To return from your ramble, with the thought sticking to you like a bur. To cherish Nature in your heart and consecrate to her your best hours because there is no friend in the world who, like this companion, gives you the savour of your own humanity, yours and that of all your kind. Not to despair of others or of this world, even in the moments when you are bitterest in your scorn--though it would be so easy to send it to the devil and go your way whistling, with your hands in your pockets. To feel yourself strong enough to build a tower on a little fragment of love, ever so precarious and disillusioned but so hardy. To carry with you that longing for a land where these people who irritate you would have become a society after your own heart. (Does not a mere bonfire of dead leaves in the country bring you the news from that land?) To try your very best to find new words to make your neighbour understand that he should open his window and let in a breath of the out-of-doors while he is working. To have planned for the title-page of your book a cock waking up the neighbours before dawn and dragging them out of the slumber they call their existence. Yes, and then to find yourself described as a cynical egoist, to figure among your kind as the perfect skulker.... Henry, the echo of your laugh sounds at last on the shore of the encircled pond--sounds and salutes this disguise in which you see yourself decked!

And this is your portrait. What can you expect? So it is, so you have willed it. It is a beautiful portrait. The only objection is that it is so unlike you. Perhaps they are going to use it as the frontispiece of your book. You are the enemy of men when you have much to give and do not know how to give it--when you seek your brothers and do not find them, or find them so rarely, on such false terms. The enemy of men, with these yearnings repressed (oh, so stoically repressed!), this secret hunger which you would not confess for the whole empire of the Indies--with that need of love crowded into your meagre chest, and finding vent at times in spite of you.