Chapter IV: Preface: To First Edition (4)

“Oh! when I die, would I might fade away
Like the pale stars, swiftly and silently,
Would that death’s messenger might come to me,
As once it came to Pindar—so they say.
Not that I would in Life, or in my Verse,
With him, the great Incomparable, compare;
Only his Death, my friend, I ask to share:
But let me now the gracious tale rehearse.

Long at the play, hearing sweet Harmony,
He sat; and wearied out at last, had lain
His cheek upon his dear one’s comely knee;
Then when it died away—the choral strain—
He who thus cushioned him said: Wake and come!
But to the Gods above he had gone home.”

[Sidenote: _Wagner and Ludwig II._]

The correspondence of Richard Wagner discloses the existence of a very warm friendship between him and Ludwig II., the young king of Bavaria. Ludwig as a young man appears to have been a very charming personality, good looking, engaging and sympathetic; everyone was fond of him. Yet his tastes led him away from “society,” into retirement, and the companionship of Nature and a few chosen friends—often of humble birth. Already at the age of fifteen he had heard Lohengrin, and silently vowed to know the composer. One of his first acts when he came to the throne was to send for Wagner; and from the moment of their meeting a personal intimacy sprang up between them, which in due course led to the establishment of the theatre at Bayreuth, and to the liberation of Wagner’s genius to the world. Though the young king at a later time lost his reason—probably owing to his over-sensitive emotional nature—this does not detract from the service that he rendered to Music by his generous attachment. How Wagner viewed the matter may be gathered from Wagner’s letters.

“He, the king, loves me, and with the deep feeling and glow
of a first love; he perceives and knows everything about me,
and understands me as my own soul. He wants me to stay with
him always.... I am to be free and my own master, not his
music-conductor—only my very self and his friend.” _Letters to
Mme. Eliza Wille_, 4th May, 1864.

“It is true that I have my young king who genuinely adores me.
You cannot form an idea of our relations. I recall one of the
dreams of my youth. I once dreamed that Shakespeare was alive:
that I really saw and spoke to him: I can never forget the
impression that dream made on me. Then I would have wished to see
Beethoven, though he was already dead. Something of the same kind
must pass in the mind of this lovable man when with me. He says
he can hardly believe that he really possesses me. None can read
without astonishment, without enchantment, the letters he writes
to me.” _Ibid_, 9th Sept., 1864.

“I hope now for a long period to gain strength again by quiet
work. This is made possible for me by the love of an unimaginably
beautiful and thoughtful being: it seems that it _had_ to
be even so greatly gifted a man and one so destined for me,
as this young King of Bavaria. What he is to me no one can
imagine. My guardian! In his love I completely rest and fortify
myself towards the completion of my task.” _Letter to his
brother-in-law_, 10th Sept., 1865.

[For letters from Ludwig to Wagner see Additions, infra p. 183.]

[Sidenote: _Wagner on Greek Comradeship_]

In these letters we see chiefly of course the passionate sentiments of which Ludwig was capable; but that Wagner fully understood the feeling and appreciated it may be gathered from various passages in his published writings—such as the following, in which he seeks to show how the devotion of comradeship became the chief formative influence of the Spartan State:—

“This beauteous naked man is the kernel of all Spartanhood; from
genuine delight in the beauty of the most perfect human body—that
of the male—arose that spirit of comradeship which pervades and
shapes the whole economy of the Spartan State. This love of man
to man, in its primitive purity, proclaims itself as the noblest
and least selfish utterance of man’s sense of beauty, for it
teaches man to sink and merge his entire self in the object of
his affection;” and again:—“The higher element of that love of
man to man consisted even in this: that it excluded the motive of
egoistic physicalism. Nevertheless it not only included a purely
spiritual bond of friendship, but this spiritual friendship
was the blossom and the crown of the physical friendship. The
latter sprang directly from delight in the beauty, aye in the
material bodily beauty of the beloved comrade; yet this delight
was no egoistic yearning, but a thorough stepping out of self
into unreserved sympathy with the comrade’s joy in himself;
involuntarily betrayed by his life-glad beauty-prompted bearing.
This love, which had its basis in the noblest pleasures of
both eye and soul—not like our modern postal correspondence of
sober friendship, half business-like, half sentimental—was the
Spartan’s only tutoress of youth, the never-ageing instructress
alike of boy and man, the ordainer of common feasts and valiant
enterprises; nay the inspiring helpmeet on the battlefield. For
this it was that knit the fellowship of love into battalions
of war, and fore-wrote the tactics of death-daring, in rescue
of the imperilled or vengeance for the slaughtered comrade, by
the infrangible law of the soul’s most natural necessity.” _The
Art-work of the Future_, _trans. by W. A. Ellis_.

[Sidenote: _K. H. Ulrichs_]

We may close this record of celebrated Germans with the name of K. H. Ulrichs, a Hanoverian by birth who occupied for a long time an official position in the revenue department at Vienna, and who became well known about 1866 through his writings on the subject of friendship. He gives, in his pamphlet _Memnon_, an account of the “story of his heart” in early years. In an apparently quite natural way, and independently of outer influences, his thoughts had from the very first been of friends of his own sex. At the age of 14, the picture of a Greek hero or god, a statue, seen in a book, woke in him the tenderest longings.

“This picture (he says), put away from me, as it was, a hundred
times, came again a hundred times before the eyes of my soul.
But of course for the origin of my special temperament it is in
no way responsible. It only woke up what was already slumbering
there—a thing which might have been done equally well by
something else.”

From that time forward the boy worshipped with a kind of romantic devotion elder friends, young men in the prime of early manhood; and later still his writings threw a flood of light on the “urning” temperament—as he called it—of which he was himself so marked an example.

[Sidenote: _Ulrichs’ Verses_]

Some of Ulrichs’ verses are scattered among his prose writings:—

_To his friend Eberhard._

“And so farewell! perchance on Earth
God’s finger—as ’twixt thee and me—
Will never make that wonder clear
Why thus It drew me unto thee.”

_Memnon_, _Leipzig_, 1898, p. 104.

And this:—

“It was the day of our first meeting—
That happy day, in Davern’s grove—
I felt the Spring wind’s tender greeting,
And April touched my heart to love.
Thy hand in mine lay kindly mated;
Thy gaze held mine quite fascinated—
So gracious wast, and fair!
Thy glance my life-thread almost severed;
My heart for joy and gladness quivered,
Nigh more than it could bear.

There in the grove at evening’s hour
The breeze thro’ budding twigs hath ranged,
And lips have learned to meet each other,
And kisses mute exchanged.”

_Memnon_, p. 23.

[Sidenote: _Byron’s Letters_]

To return to England. With the beginning of the 19th century we find two great poets, Byron and Shelley, both interested in and even writing in a romantic strain on the subject in question.

Byron’s attachment, when at Cambridge, to Eddleston the chorister, a youth two years younger than himself, is well known. In a youthful letter to Miss Pigot he, Byron, speaks of it in enthusiastic terms:

“Trin. Coll., Camb., _July_ 5th, 1807.

“I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protégé; he has
been my _almost constant_ associate since October, 1805, when
I entered Trinity College. His _voice_ first attracted my
attention, his _countenance_ fixed it, and his _manners_ attached
me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in town in
October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my
minority, when I shall leave to his decision either entering as
a partner through my interest or residing with me altogether. Of
course he would in his present frame of mind prefer the latter,
but he may alter his opinion previous to that period; however he
shall have his choice. I certainly love him more than any human
being, and neither time nor distance have had the least effect
on my (in general) changeable disposition. In short we shall
put Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby to the blush, Pylades and
Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a catastrophe
like Nisus and Euryalus to give Jonathan and David the ‘go by.’
He certainly is more attached to _me_ than even I am in return.
During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every day,
summer and winter, without passing _one_ tiresome moment, and
separated each time with increasing reluctance.”

[Sidenote: _The Adieu_]

Eddleston gave Byron a cornelian (brooch-pin) which Byron prized much, and is said to have kept all his life. He probably refers to it, and to the inequality of condition between him and Eddleston, in the following stanza from his poem, _The Adieu_, written about this time:—

“And thou, my friend, whose gentle love
Yet thrills my bosom’s chords,
How much thy friendship was above
Description’s power of words!
Still near my breast thy gift I wear
Which sparkled once with Feeling’s tear,
Of Love, the pure, the sacred gem;
Our souls were equal, and our lot
In that dear moment quite forgot;
Let pride alone condemn.”

The Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby mentioned in the above letter were at that time living at Llangollen, in Wales, and were known as the “Ladies of Llangollen,” their romantic attachment to each other having already become proverbial. When Miss Ponsonby was seventeen, and Lady E. Butler some twenty years older, they had run away from their respective and respectable homes in Ireland, and taking a cottage at Llangollen lived there, inseparable companions, for the rest of their lives. Letters and diaries of contemporary celebrities mention their romantic devotion. (The Duke of Wellington was among their visitors.) Lady Eleanor died in 1829, at the age of ninety; and Miss Ponsonby only survived her “beloved one” (as she always called her) by two years.

[Sidenote: _Byron’s Nisus and Euryalus_]

As to the allusion to Nisus and Euryalus, Byron’s paraphrase of the episode (from the 9th book of Virgil’s Æneid) serves to show his interest in it:—

“Nisus, the guardian of the portal, stood,
Eager to gild his arms with hostile blood;
Well-skilled in fight the quivering lance to wield,
Or pour his arrows thro’ the embattled field:
From Ida torn, he left his Sylvan cave,
And sought a foreign home, a distant grave.
To watch the movements of the Daunian host,
With him Euryalus sustains the post;
No lovelier mien adorn’d the ranks of Troy,
And beardless bloom yet graced the gallant boy;
Tho’ few the seasons of his youthful life,
As yet a novice in the martial strife,
’Twas his, with beauty, valour’s gifts to share—
A soul heroic, as his form was fair.
These burn with one pure flame of generous love;
In peace, in war, united still they move;
Friendship and glory form their joint reward;
And now combined they hold their nightly guard.”

[The two then carry out a daring raid on the enemy, in which
Euryalus is slain. Nisus, coming to his rescue is—after
performing prodigies of valor—slain too.]

“Thus Nisus all his fond affection proved—
Dying, revenged the fate of him he loved;
Then on his bosom sought his wonted place,
And death was heavenly in his friend’s embrace!
Celestial pair! if aught my verse can claim,
Wafted on Time’s broad pinion, yours is fame!
Ages on ages shall your fate admire,
No future day shall see your names expire,
While stands the Capitol, immortal dome!
And vanquished millions hail their empress, Rome!”

[Sidenote: _T. Moore on Byron_]

Byron’s friendships, in fact, with young men were so marked that Moore in his _Life and Letters of Lord Byron_ seems to have felt it necessary to mention and, to some extent, to explain them:—

“During his stay in Greece (in 1810) we find him forming one
of those extraordinary friendships—if attachment to persons so
inferior to himself can be called by that name—of which I have
already mentioned two or three instances in his younger days,
and in which the pride of being a protector and the pleasure
of exciting gratitude seem to have contributed to his mind the
chief, pervading charm. The person whom he now adopted in this
manner, and from similar feelings to those which had inspired his
early attachments to the cottage boy near Newstead and the young
chorister at Cambridge, was a Greek youth, named Nicolo Giraud,
the son, I believe, of a widow lady in whose house the artist
Lusieri lodged. In this young man he seems to have taken the most
lively and even brotherly interest.”

[Sidenote: _Shelley on Friendship_]

Shelley, in his fragmentary _Essay on Friendship_—stated by his friend Hogg to have been written “not long before his death”—says:—

“I remember forming an attachment of this kind at school. I
cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this took
place; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or
twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own
age, of a character eminently generous, brave and gentle, and
the elements of human feeling seemed to have been, from his
birth, genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy
and a simplicity in his manners, inexpressibly attractive. It
has never been my fortune to meet with him since my schoolboy
days; but either I confound my present recollections with the
delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and
utility to everyone around him. The tones of his voice were so
soft and winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and
their pathos was so deep that in listening to him the tears have
involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I
first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship.”

It may be noted that Hogg takes the reference as to himself!

[Sidenote: _Leigh Hunt on School-life_]

With this passage we may compare the following from Leigh Hunt:—

“If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ Hospital, the
school would be ever dear to me from the recollection of the
friendships I formed in it, and of the first heavenly taste it
gave me of that most spiritual of the affections.... If ever
I tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in those
friendships which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of
any maturer feeling. I shall never forget the impression it made
on me. I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candour, his
truth, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier
manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not any
particular talent that attracted me to him, or anything striking
whatsoever. I should say, in one word, it was his goodness. I
doubt whether he ever had a conception of a tithe of the regard
and respect I entertained for him; and I smile to think of the
perplexity (though he never showed it) which he probably felt
sometimes at my enthusiastic expressions; for I thought him a
kind of angel. It is no exaggeration to say, that, take away the
unspiritual part of it—the genius and the knowledge—and there is
no height of conceit indulged in by the most romantic character
in Shakespeare, which surpassed what I felt towards the merits
I ascribed to him, and the delight which I took in his society.
With the other boys I played antics, and rioted in fantastic
jests; but in his society, or whenever I thought of him, I fell
into a kind of Sabbath state of bliss; and I am sure I could have
died for him.

“I experienced this delightful affection towards three successive
schoolfellows, till two of them had for some time gone out into
the world and forgotten me; but it grew less with each, and in
more than one instance became rivalled by a new set of emotions,
especially in regard to the last, for I fell in love with his
sister—at least, I thought so. But on the occurrence of her
death, not long after, I was startled at finding myself assume
an air of greater sorrow than I felt, and at being willing to
be relieved by the sight of the first pretty face that turned
towards me.... My friend, who died himself not long after his
quitting the University, was of a German family in the service of
the court, very refined and musical.” _Autobiography of Leigh
Hunt_, _Smith and Elder_, 1870, p. 75.

[Sidenote: _Lord Beaconsfield’s “Coningsby”_]

On this subject of boy-friendships and their intensity Lord Beaconsfield has, in _Coningsby_, a quite romantic passage, which notwithstanding its sentimental setting may be worth quoting; because, after all, it signalises an often-forgotten or unconsidered aspect of school-life:—

“At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being;
it tears the soul. All loves of after-life can never bring its
rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of
jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! What tenderness and
what devotion; what illimitable confidence, infinite revelations
of inmost thoughts; what ecstatic present and romantic future;
what bitter estrangements and what melting reconciliations;
what scenes of wild recrimination, agitating explanations,
passionate correspondence; what insane sensitiveness, and what
frantic sensibility; what earthquakes of the heart and whirlwinds
of the soul are confined in that simple phrase, a schoolboy’s
friendship!”

[Sidenote: _Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”_]

Alfred Tennyson, in his great poem _In Memoriam_, published about the middle of the 19th century, gives superb expression to his love for his lost friend, Arthur Hallam. Reserved, dignified, in sustained meditation and tender sentiment, yet half revealing here and there a more passionate feeling; expressing in simplest words the most difficult and elusive thoughts (_e.g._, Cantos 128 and 129), as well as the most intimate and sacred moods of the soul; it is indeed a great work of art. Naturally, being such, it was roundly abused by the critics on its first appearance. The _Times_ solemnly rebuked its language as unfitted for any but amatory tenderness, and because young Hallam was a barrister spent much wit upon the poet’s “Amaryllis of the Chancery bar.” Tennyson himself, speaking of _In Memoriam_, mentioned (see _Memoir_ by his son, p. 800) “the number of shameful letters of abuse he had received about it!”