Chapter V: Preface (4)

The father expressed a desire of some kind, mildly and kindly perhaps, yet with the full expectation that it should be attended to; but the desire was of an exorbitant nature, in this sense, that it involved something that would affect the whole course of the young man's future life in a manner contrary to his natural instincts. The father was then grievously hurt and offended because the son did not see his way to the fulfilment of the paternal desire.

The strongest cases of this kind were in relation to profession and marriage. The father wished his son to enter into some trade or profession for which he was completely unsuited, or he desired him to marry some young lady for whom he had not the slightest natural affinity. The son felt the inherent difficulties and refused. Then the father thought, "I only ask of my son _this one simple thing_, and he denies me."

In these cases the father was _not_ asking for one thing, but for thousands of things. He was asking his son to undertake many thousands of separate obligations, succeeding each other till the far-distant date of his retirement from the distasteful profession, or his release, by his own death or hers, from the tedious companionship of the unloved wife. Sometimes the concession would have involved a long series of hypocrisies, as for example when a son was asked to take holy orders, though with little faith and no vocation.

Peter the Great is the most conspicuous example in history of a father whose idiosyncrasy was not continued in his son, and who could not understand or tolerate the separateness of his son's personality. They were not only of independent, but even of opposite natures. "Peter was active, curious, and energetic. Alexis was contemplative and reflective. He was not without intellectual ability, but he liked a quiet life. He preferred reading and thinking. At the age when Peter was making fireworks, building boats, and exercising his comrades in mimic war, Alexis was pondering over the 'Divine Manna,' reading the 'Wonders of God,' reflecting on Thomas à Kempis's 'Imitation of Christ,' and making excerpts from Baronius. While it sometimes seemed as if Peter was born too soon for the age, Alexis was born too late. He belonged to the past generation. Not only did he take no interest in the work and plans of his father, but he gradually came to dislike and hate them.... He would sometimes even take medicine to make himself ill, so that he might not be called upon to perform duties or to attend to business. Once, when he was obliged to go to the launch of a ship, he said to a friend, 'I would rather be a galley-slave, or have a burning fever, than be obliged to go there.'"[6]

In this case one is sorry for both father and son. Peter was a great intelligent barbarian of immense muscular strength and rude cerebral energy. Alexis was of the material from which civilization makes priests and students, or quiet conventional kings, but he was even more unlike Peter than gentle Richard Cromwell was unlike authoritative Oliver. The disappointment to Peter, firmly convinced, as all rude natures are, of the perfection of his own personality, and probably quite unable to appreciate a personality of another type, must have been the more bitter that his great plans for the future required a vigorous, practically minded innovator like himself. At length the difference of nature so exasperated the Autocrat that he had his son three times tortured, the third time in his own presence and with a fatal result. This terrible incident is the strongest expression known to us of a father's vexation because his son was not of his own kind.

Another painful case that will be long remembered, though the character of the father is less known to us, is that of the poet Shelley and Sir Timothy. The little that we do know amounts to this, that there was a total absence of sympathy. Sir Timothy committed the very greatest of paternal mistakes in depriving himself of the means of direct influence over his son by excluding him from his own home. Considering that the supreme grief of unhappy fathers is the feebleness of their influence over their sons, they can but confirm and complete their sorrow by annihilating that influence utterly and depriving themselves of all chance of recovering and increasing it in the future. This Sir Timothy did after the expulsion from Oxford. In his position, a father possessing some skill and tact in the management of young men at the most difficult and wayward period of their lives would have determined above all things to keep his son as much as possible within the range of his own control. Although Shelley afterwards returned to Field Place for a short time, the scission had been made; there was an end of real intercourse between father and son; the poet went his own way, married Harriett Westbrook, and lived through the rest of his short, unsatisfactory existence as a homeless, wandering _déclassé_.

This Essay has hitherto run upon the discouraging side of the subject, so that it ought not to end without the happier and more hopeful considerations.

Every personality is separate from others, and expects its separateness to be acknowledged. When a son avoids his father it is because he fears that the rights of his own personality will be disregarded. There are fathers who habitually treat their sons with sneering contempt. I have myself seen a young man of fair common abilities treated with constant and undisguised contempt by a clever, sardonic father who went so far as to make brutal allusions to the shape of the young man's skull! He bore this treatment with admirable patience and unfailing gentleness, but suffered from it silently. Another used to laugh at his son, and called him "Don Quixote" whenever the lad gave expression to some sentiment above the low Philistine level. A third, whom I knew well, had a disagreeable way of putting down his son because he was young, telling him that up to the age of forty a man "might have impressions, but could not possibly have opinions." "My father," said a kind-hearted English gentleman to me, "was the most thoroughly unbearable person I ever met with in my life."

The frank recognition of separate personality, with all its rights, would stop this brutality at once. There still remains the legitimate power of the father, which he ought not to abdicate, and which is of itself enough to prevent the freedom and equality necessary to perfect friendship. This reason, and the difference of age and habits, make it impossible that young men and their fathers should be comrades; but a relation may be established between them which, if rightly understood, is one of the most agreeable in human existence.

To be satisfactory it must be founded, on the father's side, on the idea that he is repaying to posterity what he has received from his own parents, and not on any selfish hope that the descending stream of benefit will flow upwards again to him. Then he must not count upon affection, nor lay himself out to win it, nor be timidly afraid of losing it, but found his influence upon the firmer ground of respect, and be determined to deserve and have _that_, along with as much unforced affection as the son is able naturally and easily to give. It is not desirable that the affection between father and son should be so tender, on either side, as to make separation a constant pain, for such is human destiny that the two are generally fated to see but little of each other.

The best satisfaction for a father is to deserve and receive loyal and unfailing respect from his son.

No, this is not quite the best, not quite the supreme satisfaction of paternity. Shall I reveal the secret that lies in silence at the very bottom of the hearts of all worthy and honorable fathers? Their profoundest happiness is to be able themselves to respect their sons.

ESSAY VII.

THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST.

If hospitality were always perfectly practised it would be the strongest of all influences in favor of rational liberty, because the host would learn to respect it in the persons of his guests, and thence, by extension of habit, amongst others who could never be his guests.

Hospitality educates us in respect for the rights of others. This is the substantial benefit that the host ought to derive from his trouble and his outlay, but the instincts of uncivilized human nature are so powerful that this education has usually been partial and incomplete. The best part of it has been systematically evaded, in this way. People were aware that tolerance and forbearance ought to be exercised towards guests, and so, to avoid the hard necessity of exercising these qualities when they were really difficult virtues, they practised what is called exclusiveness. In other words, they accepted as guests only those who agreed with their own opinions and belonged to their own class. By this arrangement they could be both hospitable and intolerant at the same time.

If, in our day, the barrier of exclusiveness has been in many places broken down, there is all the greater need for us to remember the true principle of hospitality. It might be forgotten with little inconvenience in a very exclusive society, but if it were forgotten in a society that is not exclusive the consequences would be exactly the opposite of what every friend of civilization most earnestly desires. Social intercourse, in that case, so far from being an education in respect for the rights of others, would be an opportunity for violating them. The violation might become habitual; and if it were so this strange result would follow, that society would not be a softening and civilizing influence, but the contrary. It would accustom people to treat each other with disregard, so that men would be hardened and brutalized by it as schoolboys are made ruder by the rough habits of the playground, and urbanity would not be cultivated in cities, but preserved, if at all, in solitude.

The two views concerning the rights of the guest may be stated briefly as follows:--

1. The guest is bound to conform in all things to the tastes and customs of his host. He ought to find or feign enjoyment in everything that his host imposes upon him; and if he is unwilling to do this in every particular it is a breach of good manners on his part, and he must be made to suffer for it.

2. The guest should be left to be happy in his own way, and the business of the host is to arrange things in such a manner that each guest may enjoy as much as possible his own peculiar kind of happiness.

When the first principle was applied in all its rigor, as it often used to be applied, and as I have myself seen it applied, the sensation experienced by the guest on going to stay in certain houses was that of entirely losing the direction of himself. He was not even allowed, in the middle classes, to have any control over his own inside, but had to eat what his host ordered him to eat, and to drink the quantity of wine and spirits that his host had decided to be good for him. Resistance to these dictates was taken as an offence, as a crime against good fellowship, or as a reflection on the quality of the good things provided; and conversation paused whilst the attention of the whole company was attracted to the recalcitrant guest, who was intentionally placed in a situation of extreme annoyance and discomfort in order to compel him to obedience. The victim was perhaps half an invalid, or at least a man who could only keep well and happy on condition of observing a certain strictness of regimen. He was then laughed at for idle fears about his health, told that he was a hypochondriac, and recommended to drink a bottle of port every day to get rid of such idle nonsense. If he declined to eat twice or three times as much as he desired, the hostess expressed her bitter regret that she had not been able to provide food and cookery to his taste, thus placing him in such a position that he must either eat more or seem to condemn her arrangements. It was very common amongst old-fashioned French _bourgeois_ in the last generation for the hostess herself to heap things on the guest's plate, and to prevent this her poor persecuted neighbor had to remove the plate or turn it upside down. The whole habit of pressing was dictated by selfish feeling in the hosts. They desired to see their guests devour voraciously, in order that their own vanity might be gratified by the seeming appreciation of their things. Temperate men were disliked by a generation of topers because their temperance had the appearance of a silent protest or censure. The discomfort inflicted by these odious usages was so great that many people either injured their health in society or kept out of it in self-defence, though they were not sulky and unsociable by nature, but would have been hearty lovers of human intercourse if they could have enjoyed it on less unacceptable terms.

The wholesome modern reaction against these dreadful old customs has led some hosts into another error. They sometimes fail to understand the great principle that it is the guest alone who ought to be the judge of the quantity that he shall eat and drink. The old pressing hospitality assumed that the guest was a child, too shame-faced to take what it longed for unless it was vigorously encouraged; but the new hospitality, if indeed it still in every case deserves that honored name, does really sometimes appear to assume (I do not say always, or often, but in extreme cases) that the guest is a fool, who would eat and drink more than is good for him if he were not carefully rationed. Such hosts forget that excess is quite a relative term, that each constitution has its own needs. Beyond this, it is well known that the exhilaration of social intercourse enables people who meet convivially to digest and assimilate, without fatigue, a larger amount of nutriment than they could in dull and perhaps dejected solitude. Hence it is a natural and long-established habit to eat and drink more when in company than alone, and the guest should have the possibility of conforming to this not irrational old custom until, in Homer's phrase, he has "put from him the desire of meat and drink."

Guests have no right whatever to require that the host should himself eat and drink to keep them in countenance. There used to be a belief (it lingers still in the middle classes and in country places) that the laws of hospitality required the host to set what was considered "a good example," or, in other words, to commit excesses himself that his friends might not be too much ashamed of theirs. It is said that the Emperor William of Germany never eats in public at all, but sits out every banquet before an empty plate. This, though quite excusable in an old gentleman, obliged to live by rule, must have rather a chilling effect; and yet I like it as a declaration of the one great principle that no person at table, be he host or guest, ought to be compelled to inflict the very slightest injury upon his own health, or even comfort. The rational and civilized idea is that food and wines are simply placed at the disposal of the people present to be used, or abstained from, as they please.

It is clear that every invited guest has a right to expect some slight appearance of festivity in his honor. In coarse and barbarous times the idea of festivity is invariably expressed by abundance, especially by vast quantities of butcher's meat and wine, as we always find it in Homer, where princes and gentlemen stuff themselves like savages; but in refined times the notion of quantity has lost its attraction, and that of elegance takes its place. In a highly civilized society nothing conveys so much the idea of festivity as plenty of light and flowers, with beautiful table-linen and plate and glass. These, with some extra delicacy in cookery and wines, are our modern way of expressing welcome.

There is a certain kind of hospitality in which the host visibly declines to make any effort either of trouble or expense, but plainly shows by his negligence that he only tolerates the guest. All that can be said of such hospitality as this is that a guest who respects himself may endure it silently for once, but would not be likely to expose himself to it a second time.

There is even a kind of hospitality which seems to find a satisfaction in letting the guest perceive that the best in the house is not offered to him. He is lodged in a poor little room, when there are noble bedchambers, unused, in the same house; or he is allowed to hire a vehicle in the village, to make some excursion, when there are horses in the stables plethoric from want of exercise. In cases of this kind it is not the privation of luxury that is hard to bear, but the indisposition to give honor. The guest feels and knows that if a person of very high rank came to the house everything would be put at his disposal, and he resents the slight put upon his own condition. A rich English lady, long since dead, had a large mansion in the country with fine bedrooms; so she found a pleasure in keeping those rooms empty and sending guests to sleep at the top of the house in little bare and comfortless chambers that the architect had intended for servants. I have heard of a French house where there are fine state apartments, and where all ordinary guests are poorly lodged, and fed in a miserable _salle à manger_. An aggravation is when the host treats himself better than his guest. Lady B. invited some friends to a country-house; and they drove to another country-house in the neighborhood in two carriages, one containing Lady B. and one friend, the other the remaining guests. Her ladyship was timid and rather selfish, as timid people often are; so when they reached the avenue she began to fancy that both carriages could not safely turn in the garden, and she despatched her footman to the second carriage, with orders that her guests (amongst whom was a lady very near her confinement) were to get out and walk to the house, whilst she drove up to the door in state.

A guest has an absolute right to have his religious and political opinions respected in his presence, and this is not invariably done. The rule more generally followed seems to be that class opinions only deserve respect and not individual opinions. The question is too large to be treated in a paragraph, but I should say that it is a clear breach of hospitality to utter anything in disparagement of any opinion whatever that is known to be held by any one guest present, however humble may be his rank. I have sometimes seen the known opinions of a guest attacked rudely and directly, but the more civilized method is to do it more artfully through some other person who is not present. For example, a guest is known to think, on important subjects, very much as Mr. Herbert Spencer does; then the host will contrive to talk at him in talking about Spencer. A guest ought not to bear this ungenerous kind of attack. If such an occasion arises he should declare his opinions plainly and with firmness, and show his determination to have them respected whilst he is there, whatever may be said against them in his absence. If he cannot obtain this degree of courtesy, which is his right, let him quit the house and satisfy his hunger at some inn. The innkeeper will ask for a little money, but he demands no mental submission.

It sometimes happens that the nationality of a foreign guest is not respected as it ought to be. I remember an example of this which is moderate enough to serve as a kind of type, some attacks upon nationality being much more direct and outrageous. An English lady said at her own table that she would not allow her daughter to be partially educated in a French school, "because she would have to associate with French girls, which, you know, is undesirable." Amongst the guests was a French lady, and the observation was loud enough for everybody to hear it. I say nothing of the injustice of the imputation. It was, indeed, most unjust, but that is not the point. The point is that a foreigner ought not to hear attacks upon his native land even when they are perfectly well founded.

The host has a sort of judicial function in this way. The guest has a right to look to him for protection on certain occasions, and he is likely to be profoundly grateful when it is given with tact and skill, because the host can say things for him that he cannot even hint at for himself. Suppose the case of a young man who is treated with easy and rather contemptuous familiarity by another guest, simply on account of his youth. He is nettled by the offence, but as it is more in manner than in words he cannot fix upon anything to answer. The host perceives his annoyance, and kindly gives him some degree of importance by alluding to some superiority of his, and by treating him in a manner very different from that which had vexed him.

A witty host is the most powerful ally against an aggressor. I remember dining in a very well-known house in Paris where a celebrated Frenchman repeated the absurd old French calumny against English ladies,--that they all drink. I was going to resent this seriously when a clever Frenchwoman (who knew England well) perceived the danger, and answered the man herself with great decision and ability. I then watched for the first opportunity of making him ridiculous, and seized upon a very delightful one that he unwittingly offered. Our host at once understood that my attack was in revenge for an aggression that had been in bad taste, and he supported me with a wit and pertinacity that produced general merriment at the enemy's expense. Now in that case I should say that the host was filling one of the most important and most difficult functions of a host.

This Essay has hitherto been written almost entirely on the guest's side of the question, so that we have still briefly to consider the limitations to his rights.

He has no right to impose any serious inconvenience upon his host. He has no right to disturb the ordinary arrangements of the house, or to inflict any serious pecuniary cost, or to occupy the host's time to the prejudice of his usual pursuits. He has no right to intrude upon the privacy of his host.

A guest has no right to place the host in such a dilemma that he must either commit a rudeness or put up with an imposition. The very courtesy of an entertainer places him at the mercy of a pushing and unscrupulous guest, and it is only when the provocation has reached such a point as to have become perfectly intolerable that a host will do anything so painful to himself as to abandon his hospitable character and make the guest understand that he must go.

It may be said that difficulties of this kind never occur in civilized society. No doubt they are rare, but they happen just sufficiently often to make it necessary to be prepared for them. Suppose the case of a guest who exceeds his invitation. He has been invited for two nights, plainly and definitely; but he stays a third, fourth, fifth, and seems as if he would stay forever. There are men of that kind in the world, and it is one of their arts to disarm their victims by pleasantness, so that it is not easy to be firm with them. The lady of the house gives a gentle hint, the master follows with broader hints, but the intruder is quite impervious to any but the very plainest language. At last the host has to say, "Your train leaves at such an hour, and the carriage will be ready to take you to the station half an hour earlier." This, at any rate, is intelligible; and yet I have known one of those clinging limpets whom even this proceeding failed to dislodge. At the approach of the appointed hour he was nowhere to be found! He had gone to hide himself in a wood with no companion but his watch, and by its help he took care to return when it was too late. That is sometimes one of the great uses of a watch.

ESSAY VIII.

THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP.

A sad subject, but worth analysis; for if friendship is of any value to us whilst it is alive, is it not worth while to inquire if there are any means of keeping it alive?

The word "death" is correctly employed here, for nobody has discovered the means by which a dead friendship can be resuscitated. To hope for that would be vain indeed, and idle the waste of thought in such a bootless quest.

Shall we mourn over this death without hope, this blank annihilation, this finis of intercourse once so sweet, this dreary and ultimate conclusion?

The death of a friendship is not the death of a person; we do not mourn for the absence of some beloved person from the world. It is simply the termination of a certain degree and kind of intercourse, not of necessity the termination of all intercourse. We may be grieved that the change has come; we may be remorseful if it has come through a fault of our own; but if it is due simply to natural causes there is small place for any reasonable sorrow.

Friendship is a certain _rapport_ between two minds during one or more phases of their existence, and the perfection of it is quite as dependent upon what is not in the two minds as upon their positive acquirements and possessions. Hence the extreme facility with which schoolboys form friendships which, for the time, are real, true, and delightful. School friendships are formed so easily because boys in the same class know the same things; and it rarely happens that in addition to what they have in common either one party or the other has any knowledge of importance that is not in common.

Later in life the pair of friends who were once comrades go into different professions that fill the mind with special professional ideas and induce different habits of thought. Each will be conscious, when they meet, that there is a great range of ideas in the other's mind from which he is excluded, and each will have a difficulty in keeping within the smaller range of ideas that they have now in common; so that they will no longer be able to let their _whole_ minds play together as they used to do, and they will probably feel more at ease with mere acquaintances who have what is _now_ their knowledge, what are now their mental habits, than with the friend of their boyhood who is without them.

This is strongly felt by men who go through a large experience at a distance from their early home and then return for a while to the old place and old associates, and find that it is only a part of themselves that is acceptable. New growths of self have taken place in distant regions, by travel, by study, by intercourse with mankind; and these new growths, though they may be more valuable than any others, are of no practical use, of no social availableness, in the little circle that has remained in the old ways.

Then there are changes of temper that result from the fixing of the character by time. We think we remain the same, but that is one of our many illusions. We change, and we do not always change in the same way. One man becomes mellowed by advancing years, but another is hardened by them; one man's temper gains in sweetness and serenity as his intellect gains in light, another becomes dogmatic, peremptory, and bitter. Even when the change is the same for both, it may be unfavorable to their intercourse. Two merry young hearts may enjoy each other's company, when they would find each other dull and flat if the sparkle of the early effervescence were all spent.

I have not yet touched upon change of opinion as a cause of the death of friendship, but it is one of the most common causes. It would be a calumny on the intelligence of the better part of mankind to say that they always desire to hear repeated exactly what they say themselves, though that is really the desire of the unintelligent; but the cleverest people like to hear new and additional reasons in support of the opinions they hold already; and they do not like to hear reasons, hitherto unsuspected, that go to the support of opinions different from their own. Therefore a slow divergence of opinion may carry two friends farther and farther apart by narrowing the subjects of their intercourse, or a sudden intellectual revolution in one of them may effect an immediate and irreparable breach.

"If the character is formed," says Stuart Mill, "and the mind made up on the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these has been felt at all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the name of friendship in a really earnest mind." I do not quote this in the belief that it is absolutely true, but it expresses a general sentiment. We can only be guided by our own experience in these matters. Mine has been that friendship is possible with those whom I respect, however widely they differ from me, and not possible with those whom I am unable to respect, even when on the great matters of opinion their views are identical with my own.

It is certain, however, that the change of opinion itself has a tendency to separate men, even though the difference would not have made friendship impossible if it had existed from the first. Instances of this are often found in biographies, especially in religious biographies, because religious people are more "pained" and "wounded" by difference of opinion than others. We read in such books of the profound distress with which the hero found himself separated from his early friends by his new conviction on this or that point of theology. Political divergence produces the same effect in a minor degree, and with more of irritation than distress. Even divergence of opinion on artistic subjects is enough to produce coolness. Artists and men of letters become estranged from each other by modifications of their critical doctrines.

Differences of prosperity do not prevent the formation of friendship if they have existed previously, and can be taken as established facts; but if they widen afterwards they have a tendency to diminish it. They do so by altering the views of one of the parties about ways of living and about the multitude of things involving questions of expense. If the enriched man lives on a scale corresponding to his newly acquired wealth, he may be regarded by the other as pretentious beyond his station, whilst if he keeps to his old style he may be thought parsimonious. From delicacy he will cease to talk to the other about his money matters, which he spoke of with frankness when he was not so rich. If he has social ambition he will form new alliances with richer men, and the old friend may regard these with a little unconscious jealousy.

It has been observed that young artists often have a great esteem for the work of one of their number so long as its qualities are not recognized and rewarded by the public, but that so soon as the clever young man wins the natural meed of industry and ability his early friendships die. They were often the result of a generous indignation against public injustice, so when that injustice came to an end the kindness that was a protest against it ceased at the same time. In jealous natures it would no doubt be replaced by the conviction that public favor had rewarded merit far beyond its deserts.

In the political life of democracies we see men enthusiastically supported and really admired with sincerity so long as they remain in opposition, and their friends indulge the most favorable anticipations about what they would do if they came to power; but when they accept office they soon lose many of these friends, who are quite sure to be disappointed with the small degree in which their excessive hopes have been realized. There is no country where this is seen more frequently than in France, where Ministers are often criticised with the most unrelenting and uncharitable acerbity by the men and newspapers that helped to raise them.

Changes of physical constitution may be the death of friendship in this way. A friendship may be founded upon some sport that one of the parties becomes unable to follow. After that the two men cease to meet on the particularly pleasant occasions that every sport affords for its real votaries, and they only meet on common occasions, which are not the same because there is not the same jovial and hearty temper. In like manner a friendship may be weakened if one of the parties gives up some indulgence that both used to enjoy together. Many a friendship has been cemented by the habit of smoking, and weakened afterwards when one friend gave up the habit, declined the cigars that the other offered, and either did not accompany him to the smoking-room or sat there in open and vexatious nonconformity.

It is well known, so well known indeed as scarcely to require mention here, that one of the most frequent and powerful causes of the death of bachelor friendships is marriage. One of the two friends takes a wife, and the friendship is at once in peril. The maintenance of it depends upon the lady's taste and temper. If not quite approved by her, it will languish for a little while and then die, in spite of all painful and visible efforts on the husband's part to compensate, by extra attention, for the coolness of his wife. I have visited a Continental city where it is always understood that all bachelor friendships are broken off by marriage. This rule has at least the advantage of settling the question unequivocally.

Simple neglect is probably the most common of all causes deadly to friendship,--neglect arising either from real indifference, from constitutional indolence, or from excessive devotion to business. Friendly feelings must be either of extraordinary sincerity, or else strengthened by some extraneous motive of self-interest, to surmount petty inconveniences. The very slightest difficulty in maintaining intercourse is sufficient in most cases to insure its total cessation in a short time. Your house is somewhat difficult of access,--it is on a hill-side or at a little distance from a railway station: only the most sincere friends will be at the trouble to find you unless your rank is so high that it is a glory to visit you.

Poor friends often keep up intercourse with rich ones by sheer force of determination long after it ought to have been allowed to die its own natural death. When they do this without having the courage to require some approach to reciprocity they sink into the condition of mere clients, whom the patron may indeed treat with apparent kindness, but whom he regards with real indifference, taking no trouble whatever to maintain the old connection between them.

Equality of rank and fortune is not at all necessary to friendship, but a certain other kind of equality is. A real friendship can never be maintained unless there is an equal readiness on both sides to be at some pains and trouble for its maintenance; so if you perceive that a person whom you once supposed to be your friend will not put himself to any trouble on your account, the only course consistent with your dignity is to take exactly the same amount of pains to make yourself agreeable to him. After you have done this for a little time you will soon know if the friendship is really dead; for he is sure to perceive your neglect if he does not perceive his own, and he will either renew the intercourse with some _empressement_ or else cease from it altogether.

In early life the right rule is to accept kindness gratefully from one's elders and not to be sensitive about omissions, because such omissions are then often consistent with the most real and affectionate regard; but as a man advances towards middle-age it is right for him to be somewhat careful of his dignity and to require from friends, whatever may be their station, a certain general reciprocity. This should always be understood in rather a large sense, and not exacted in trifles. If he perceives that there is no reciprocity he cannot do better than drop an acquaintance that is but the phantom and simulacrum of Friendship's living reality.

It is as natural that many friendships should die and be replaced by others as that our old selves should be replaced by our present selves. The fact seems melancholy when first perceived, but is afterwards accepted as inevitable. There is, however, a death of friendship which is so truly sad and sorrowful as to cast its gloomy shadow on all the years that remain to us. It is when we ourselves, by some unhappy fault of temper that might have been easily avoided, have wounded the kind breast of our friend, and killed the gentle sentiment that was dwelling happily within. The only way to be quite sure of avoiding this great and irretrievable calamity is to remember how very delicate friendly sentiments are and how easy it is to destroy them by an inconsiderate or an ungentle word.

ESSAY IX.

THE FLUX OF WEALTH.

We become richer or poorer; we seldom remain exactly as we were. If we have property, it increases or diminishes in value; if our income is fixed, the value of money alters; and if it increased proportionally to the depreciation of money, our position would still be relatively altered by changes in the fortunes of others. We marry and have children; then our wealth becomes less our own after every birth. We win some honor or professional advancement that seems a gain; but increased expenditure is the consequence, and we are poorer than we were before. Amidst all these fluctuations of wealth human intercourse either continues under altered conditions or else it is broken off because they are no longer favorable to its maintenance. I propose to consider, very briefly, how these altered conditions operate.

We have to separate, in the first place, intercourse between individuals from intercourse between families. The distinction is of the utmost importance, because the two are not under the same law.

Two men, of whom one is extremely rich and the other almost penniless, have no difficulty in associating together on terms agreeable to both when they possess intellectual interests in common, or even when there is nothing more than an attraction of idiosyncrasy; but these conditions only subsist between one individual and another; they are not likely to subsist between two families. Intercourse between individuals depends on something in intellect and culture that enables them to understand each other, and upon something in character that makes them love or respect each other. Intercourse between families depends chiefly on neighborhood and similarity in style of living.

This is the reason why bachelors have so much easier access to society than men with wives and families. The bachelor is received for himself, for his genius, information, manners; but if he is married the question is, "What sort of people are _they_?" This, being interpreted, means, "What style do they live in?" "How many servants do they keep?"

Whatever may be the variety of opinions concerning the doctrines of the Church of Rome, there is but one concerning her astuteness. There can be no doubt that she is the most influential association of men that has ever existed; and she has decided for celibacy, that the priest might stand on his merits and on the power of the Church, and be respected and admitted everywhere in spite of notorious poverty.

Mignet, the historian, was a most intimate and constant friend of Thiers. Mignet, though rich in reality, as he knew how to live contentedly on moderate means, was poor in comparison with his friend. This inequality did not affect their friendship in the least; for both were great workers, well qualified to understand each other, though Thiers lived in a grand house, and Mignet in a barely furnished lodging high up in a house that did not belong to him.

Mignet was a bachelor, and they were both childless men; but imagine them with large families. One family would have been bred in the greatest luxury, the other in austere simplicity. Children are keenly alive to these distinctions; and even if there had been neither pride in the rich house nor envy in the poorer one the contrast would have been constantly felt. The historical studies that the fathers had in common would probably not have interested their descendants, and unless there had been some other powerful bond of sympathy the two families would have lived in different worlds. The rich family would have had rich friends, the poorer family would have attached itself to other families with whom it could have exchanged hospitality on more equal terms. This would have happened even in Paris, a city where there is a remarkable absence of contempt for poverty; a city where the slightest reason for distinction will admit any well-bred man into society in spite of narrow means and insure him immunity from disdain. All the more certainly would it happen in places where money is the only regulator of rank, the only acknowledged claim to consideration.

I once knew an English merchant who was reputed to be wealthy, and who, like a true Englishman as he was, inhabited one of those great houses that are so elaborately contrived for the exercise of hospitality. He had a kind and friendly heart, and lived surrounded by people who often did him the favor to drink his excellent wines and sleep in his roomy bedchambers. On his death it turned out that he had never been quite so rich as he appeared and that during his last decade his fortune had rapidly dwindled. Being much interested in everything that may confirm or invalidate those views of human nature that are current in ancient and modern literature, I asked his son how those who were formerly such frequent guests at the great house had behaved to the impoverished family. "They simply avoided us," he said; "and some of them, when they met me, would cut me openly in the street."

It may be said with perfect truth that this was a good riddance. It is certain that it was so; it is undeniable that the deliverance from a horde of false friends is worth a considerable sum per head of them; and that in itself was only a subject of congratulation, but their behavior was hard to bear because it was the evidence of a fall. We like deference as a proof that we have what others respect, quite independently of any real affection on their part; nay, we even enjoy the forced deference of those who hate us, well knowing that they would behave very differently if they dared. Besides this, it is not certain that an impoverished family will find truer friends amongst the poor than it did formerly amongst the rich. The relation may be the same as it was before, and only the incomes of the parties altered.

What concerns our present subject is simply that changes of pecuniary situation have always a strong tendency to throw people amongst other associates; and as these changes are continually occurring, the result is that families very rarely preserve the same acquaintances for more than a single generation. And now comes the momentous issue. The influence of our associates is so difficult to resist, in fact so completely irresistible in the long run, that people belong far less to the class they are descended from than to the class in which they live. The younger son of some perfectly aristocratic family marries rather imprudently and is impoverished by family expenses. His son marries imprudently again and goes into another class. The children of that second marriage will probably not have a trace of the peculiarly aristocratic civilization. They will have neither the manners, nor the ideas, nor the unexpressed instincts of the real aristocracy from which they sprang. In place of them they will have the ideas of the lower middle class, and be in habits and manners just as completely of that class as if their forefathers had always belonged to it.

I have in view two instances of this which are especially interesting to me because they exemplify it in opposite ways. In one of these cases the man was virtuous and religious, but though his ancestry was aristocratic his virtues and his religion were exactly those of the English middle class. He was a good Bible-reading, Sabbath-observing, theatre-avoiding Evangelical, inclined to think that dancing was rather sinful, and in all those subtle points of difference that distinguish the middle-class Englishman from the aristocratic Englishman he followed the middle class, not seeming to have any unconscious reminiscence in his blood of an ancestry with a freer and lordlier life. He cared neither for the sports, nor the studies, nor the social intercourse of the aristocracy. His time was divided, as that of the typical good middle-class Englishman generally is, between business and religion, except when he read his newspaper. By a combination of industry and good-fortune he recovered wealth, and might have rejoined the aristocracy to which he belonged by right of descent; but middle-class habits were too strong, and he remained contentedly to the close of life both in that class and of it.

The other example I am thinking of is that of a man still better descended, who followed a profession which, though it offers a good field for energy and talent, is seldom pursued by gentlemen. He acquired the habits and ideas of an intelligent but dissipated working-man, his vices were exactly those of such a man, and so was his particular kind of religious scepticism. I need not go further into detail. Suppose the character of a very clever but vicious and irreligious workman, such as may be found in great numbers in the large English towns, and you have the accurate portrait of this particular _déclassé_.

In mentioning these two cases I am anxious to avoid misinterpretation. I have no particular respect for one class more than another, and am especially disposed to indulgence for the faults of those who bear the stress of the labor of the world; but I see that there _are_ classes, and that the fluctuations of fortune, more than any other cause, bring people within the range of influence exercised by the habits of classes, and form them in the mould, so that their virtues and vices afterwards, besides their smaller qualities and defects, belong to the class they live in and not to the class they may be descended from. In other words, men are more strongly influenced by human intercourse than by heredity.

The most remarkable effect of the fluctuation of wealth is the extreme rapidity with which the prosperous family gains refinement of manners, whilst the impoverished family loses it. This change seems to be more rapid in our own age and country than it has ever been before. Nothing is more interesting than to watch this double process; and nothing in social studies is more curious than the multiplicity of the minute causes that bring it about. Every abridgment of ceremony has a tendency to lower refinement by introducing that _sans-gêne_ which is fatal to good manners. Ceremony is only compatible with leisure. It is abridged by haste; haste is the result of poverty; and so it comes to pass that the loss of fortune induces people to give up one little observance after another, for economy of time, till at last there are none remaining. There is the excellent habit of dressing for the evening meal. The mere cost of it is almost imperceptible, except that it causes a small additional expenditure in clean linen; but, although the pecuniary tax is slight, there is a tax on time which is not compatible with hurry and irregularity, so it is only people of some leisure who maintain it. Now consider the subtle influence, on manners, of the maintenance or abandonment of this custom. Where it is kept up, gentlemen and ladies meet in a drawing-room before dinner prepared by their toilet for the disciplined intercourse of well-regulated social life. They are like officers in uniform, or clergymen in canonicals: they wear a dress that is not without its obligations. It is not the luxury of it that does this, for the dress is always plain for men and often simple for ladies, but the mere fact of taking the trouble to dress is an act of deference to civilization and disposes the mind to other observances. It has the further advantage of separating us from the occupations of the day and marking a new point of departure for the gentler life of the evening. As people become poorer they give up dressing except when they have a party, and then they feel ill at ease from the consciousness of a white tie. You have only to go a little further in this direction to arrive at the people who do not feel any inclination to wash their hands before dinner, even when they visibly need it. Finally there are houses where the master will sit down to table in his shirt-sleeves and without anything round his neck. People who live in this way have no social intercourse whatever of a slightly ceremonious kind, and therefore miss all the discipline in manners that rich people go through every day. The higher society is a school of manners that the poor have not leisure to attend.

The downward course of an impoverished family is strongly aided by an element in many natures that the discipline of high life either subdues or eliminates. There are always people, especially in the male sex, who feel ill at ease under ceremonial restraints of any kind, and who find the release from them an ineffably delightful emancipation. Such people hate dressing for dinner, hate the forms of politeness, hate gloves and visiting-cards, and all that such things remind them of. To be rid of these things once for all, to be able to sit and smoke a pipe in an old gray coat, seems to them far greater and more substantial happiness than to drink claret in a dining-room, napkin on knee. Once out of society, such men have no desire to enter it again, and after a very short exclusion from it they belong to a lower class from taste quite as much as from circumstances. All those who have a tendency towards the philosophy of Diogenes (and they are more numerous than we suppose) are of this manner of thinking. Sometimes they have a taste for serious intellectual pursuits which makes the nothings of society seem frivolous, and also consoles their pride for an apparent _déchéance_.