Letters
Thursday, 3.
“Love is the life of friendship; letters are
The life of love, the loadstones that by rare
Attractions make souls meet and melt, and mix,
As when by fire exalted gold we fix.”
But for letters the best of our life would hardly survive the mood and the moment. Prompted by so lively a sentiment as friendship, we commit to our leaves what we should not have spoken. To begin with “Dear Friend” is in itself an address which clothes our epistle in a rhetoric the most select and choice. We cannot write it without considering its fitness and taxing our conscience in the matter. ’Tis coming to the confessional, leaving nothing in reserve that falls gracefully into words. A life-long correspondence were a biography of the correspondents. Preserve your letters till time define their value. Some secret charm forbids committing them to the flames; the dews of the morning may sparkle there still, and remind one of his earlier Eden.
“Deeds are masculine, words feminine; letters are neither,” wrote Howel. Rather say, letters are both, and better represent life than any form in literature. Women have added the better part, the most celebrated letters having been written by women. If your morning’s letter is not answered and dispatched forthwith, ’tis doubtful if it will ever be written. Then there are those to whom one never writes, much as he may wish to cultivate correspondence. He reserves them for personal intercourse.
I hardly know which I most enjoy, the letter I send after my visitor, or the visit itself: the presence, the conversation, the recollection. Memory idealizes anticipation; our visit is made before we make it, made afterwards, as if love were a reminiscence of pleasures once partaken in overflowing fulness. The visit that is not all we anticipated is not made; we meet as idealists, if we meet at all.
My moments are not mine, thou art in sight
By days’ engagements and the dreams of night,
Nor dost one instant leave me free
Forgetful of thy world and thee.
The popular superstition favors long visits. I confess my experience has not borne out the current creed. Compliment, of course, is of the other opinion, if we must take her fine accents of “stay, stay longer.” But a week’s stay with an angel would hardly bear the epithet angelic after it was over. Fewer and farther between. Good things are good to keep long by temperate use. ’Tis true a visitor who comes seldom should not fly away forthwith. And ’tis a comfort in these fast times to catch one who has a little leisure on hand, deaf the while to the engine’s whistle. Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary. But if one does not stay while staying, better let him go where he is gone the while. One enjoys a visitor who has much leisure in him, in her especially,—likes to take his friends by sips sweetly, not at hasty draughts, as they were froth and would effervesce forthwith and subside. Who has not come from an interview as from a marriage feast, feeling “the good wine had been kept for him till now”?
Does it imply a refinement in delicacy that nuptial verses have no place with us in marriage ceremonies; that the service has lost the mystic associations wont to be thrown around it by our ancestors down almost to our time? Once epithalamium verses were esteemed the fairest flowers, the ornament of the occasion. If the poet sometimes overstepped modern notions of reserve, the sentiments expressed were not the less natural if more freely dealt with. Spenser, for instance, suggests the loveliest images, and with all his wealth of fancy ventures never a glimpse that a bride can blame; while Donne delights in every posture of fancy, as if he were love’s attorney putting in his plea for all delights,—yet delicately, oftentimes, and on other occasions, as in these lines entitled “Love Tokens”:—
“Send me some token that my hope may live,
Or that my ceaseless thoughts may sleep and rest;
Send me some honey to make sweet my hive,
That in my passions I may hope the best.
I beg no ribbon wrought with thine own hands
To knit our loves in the fantastic strain
Of new-touched youth; nor ring to show the stands
Of our affection:—that as that’s round and plain,
So should our loves meet in simplicity,—
No, nor the corals which thy wrist infold
Laced up together in congruity
To show our thoughts should rest in the same hold:
No, nor thy picture, though most gracious,
And most desired since ’tis like the best,
Nor witty lines which are most copious
Within the writings which thou hast addressed:
Send me not this, nor that, to increase my store,
But swear thou think’st I love thee, and no more.”
To the Lady Goodyeare he writes:—
“Madam:—I am not come out of England if I remain in the noblest part of it, your mind. Yet I confess it is too much diminution to call your mind any part of England, or this world, since every part of even your body deserves titles to a higher dignity. No Prince would be loath to die that were assured of so fair a tomb to preserve his memory. But I have a greater advantage than this, for since there is a religion in friendship, and death in absence, to make up an entire friend there must needs be a heaven too; and there can be no heaven so proportional to that religion and that death, as your favor. And I am the gladder that it is a heaven, than it were a court, or any other high place of this world, because I am likelier to have a room there, and better, cheap. Madam, my best treasure is time, and my best employment of that (next my thoughts of thankfulness to my Redeemer) is to study good wishes for you, in which I am, by continual meditation, so learned that any creature except your own good angel, when it does you most good, might be content to come and take instruction from
Your humble and affectionate servant,
J. D.
Amyens, the 7th of February, year 1611.”
What delicacy of compliment, coupled with nobility of sentiment, the fresh color of flattery not less, the rhetoric so graceful. One asks if our New-England reserve has added any graces to the Elizabethan courtliness, and if any feel quite at home in its tight costumes. Is it a want of taste if one is taken with such courtly compliments, lofty appreciation of character, such stately idealism, extravagant as it may appear, and bordering on insincerity? I wish my behavior, my letters, my address, may blush becomingly, court my friends’ eyes as well as affections, by coy diffidences, win by lively phrase, telling how lovely presence is. Friendship is a plant that loves the sun,—thrives ill under clouds. I know temperaments have their zones, and can excuse the frigid manner of some in whose breasts there burns a hidden flame. There is a reserve that seems to fear the affections will be frosted by exposure, if not protected from any wind of acknowledgment. If “your humble servant” is written seldomer at the end of the letter, and “Sir” and “Madam” have dropped the once “Dear” and “My Dear”—used these adjectively for ceremony’s sake,—the address has lost so much warmth and all the abandon the words once implied. Must I withhold expressing all I would, lest I should seem to imply more than I meant? And has one nothing personal and private to communicate? It were not unbecoming to inquire if our Puritan culture still held us in check, life and literature were under eclipse, and the shadow threatening to become central and total.
Of celebrated letters, Pliny’s are among the most delightful. A perusal of them refreshes and restores the old faith in persons and the possibilities of friendship. Alas for an age, if indifferent to this antique of virtue, the fair fellowships it celebrates, in the noble names of which he gives so many illustrious examples in his charming pages. Virtue seems something to be sought, to live and die for, every accomplishment a part of it, and a possession. I confess to a feeling, as I read, so modern and consonant to ideas and designs dear to me, that for the time I seem to recover brothers and friends—if it were not egotism to say it—in the aims and ends which I have so long loved and still cherish as life’s pursuit and problem. A vein of noble morality pervades these letters which renders them admirable reading for all times and ages. And his allusions to his own life and pursuits, the glimpses he gives of his friends, commend his pages to all who seek virtue and wisdom at their sources. To his friend Paternus he writes with a tenderness and humanity to which the epithet Christian would add little.
“The sickness which has lately run through my family, and carried off several of my domestics, some of them, too, in the prime of their years, has deeply afflicted me. I have two consolations, however; while though they are not adequate to so considerable a loss, still they are consolations. One is, that as I have always very readily manumized my slaves, their death does not seem altogether immature, if they lived long enough to receive their freedom; the other, that I have allowed them to make a kind of will, which I observe as religiously as if they were legally entitled to that privilege. I receive and obey their last requests as so many absolute commands, suffering them to dispose of their effects to whom they please; with this single restriction, that they leave them to some of the family, which to persons in their station is to be considered as a sort of commonwealth. But though I endeavor to acquiesce under these reflections, yet the same tenderness which led me to show them these indulgences, still breaks out and renders me too sensitively affected by their deaths. However, I would not wish to be incapable of these tender impressions of humanity, though the generality of the world, I know, look upon losses of this kind in no other view than as a diminution of their property, and fancy, by cherishing such an unfeeling temper, they discover superior fortitude and philosophy. Their fortitude and philosophy I will not dispute; but humane, I am sure they are not; for it is the very criterion of true manhood to feel those impressions of sorrow which it endeavors to resist, and to admit not to be above the want of consolation. But perhaps I have detained you too long upon this subject, though not so long as I would. There is a certain pleasure in giving vent to one’s grief, especially when we pour out our sorrow in the bosom of a friend, who will approve, or, at least, pardon our tears. Farewell.”
Again to Geminitus:—
“Have you never observed a sort of people who, though they are themselves the abject slaves of every vice, show a kind of malicious indignation against the immoral conduct of others, and are the most severe to those whom they most resemble? Yet surely a beauty of disposition, even in persons who have least occasion for clemency themselves, is of all virtues the most becoming. The highest of character in my estimation, is His, who is as ready to pardon the moral errors of mankind as if he were every day guilty of some himself, and at the same time as cautious of committing a fault as if he never forgave one. It is a rule, then, which we should upon all occasions, both private and public, most religiously observe, to be inexorable to our own failings, while we treat those of the rest of the world with tenderness, not excepting even those who forgive none but themselves, remembering always that the humane, and, therefore, as well as upon other accounts, the great Thrasea, used frequently to say, ‘He who hates vice hates mankind.’ You will ask me, perhaps, who it is that has given occasion to these reflections. You must know a certain person lately,—but of that when we meet,—though, upon second thoughts, not even then, lest while I condemn and expose his conduct, I should act counter to that maxim I particularly recommend. Whoever, therefore, and whatever he is, shall remain in silence; for though there may be some use, perhaps, in setting a mark upon the man, for the sake of example, there will be more, however, in sparing him, for the sake of humanity.”
Again:—
“There are, it seems,” he writes to his friend Septitius, “certain persons who in your company have blamed me, as being upon all occasions too lavish in commendation of my friends. I not only acknowledge the charge, but glory in it; for, can there be a nobler error than an overflowing benevolence? But still, who are these, let me ask, that are better acquainted with my friends than I am myself? Yet, grant there are such, why will they deny me the satisfaction of so pleasing an error? For, supposing my friends deserve not the high encomiums I give them, certainly I am happy in believing they do. Let them recommend, then, this ungenerous discernment to those who imagine (and their number is not inconsiderable) that they show their judgment when they indulge their censure. As for myself, they will never persuade me that I can love my friends too well.”
How amiable and just are sentiments like these rendering odious the carping censure and ill-natured criticism which finds free currency between those who, while meeting as acquaintances, perhaps affecting friendship for each other, yet speak disparagingly, and are loath to acknowledge the merit which they see in each other’s character and acquirements. It is safer, and certainly more becoming, to overpraise than to undervalue and dispraise another. Faults are apparent enough, and, for the most part, superficial; in the atmosphere of affection and respect they fall away presently and disappear altogether, while virtues may be too deep sometimes and delicate in expression to be recognized readily by those who seek for blemishes rather. Modest praise is the freshest and purest atmosphere for modest virtue to thrive in and come to maturity. And the most exalted qualities of character admiration alone brings into the relief that discloses their proportions and reveals their lustre. A certain sentiment of worship insinuates itself into our affections for a near and dear friend; and while endearing us the more, yet holds us at the distance of reverence and of self-respect that belongs to the noblest friendships. ’Tis the poverty of life that renders friendship poor and cold. I am drawn to one who, while I approach yet seems distant still; whose personality has a quality so commanding as to forbid a familiarity not justified by affection and reason alike, and whom I never quite come up to, but yet is akin to me in the attributes that win my regard and insure my affection. A good man is a bashful man; he affects all who come within his influence with that grace. Do not the gods blush in descending to meet alike our affections and our eyes?
“The eldest god is still a child.”