But Friendship cannot be cultivated and tended by a third party—that is an axiom. It either springs to life inevitably or, metaphorically speaking, it doesn't turn a hair. The well-meaning person who introduces one friend to another with the supreme assurance that they will both get on splendidly together, usually begins by making two people enemies. The friends of friends are very rarely friends with one another. And jealousy is not entirely the cause of this immediate estrangement. One friend appeals to one side of your nature and another friend appeals to a different side, but very, very rarely do you find two people who make the same appeal—since Heaven only knows how great is the physical attraction in Friendship as well as in Love! On the whole, then, the wise man and woman keep their friends apart. And this for the very good reason, that, either the two friends will become friends with each other, leaving you out of their soul-communion altogether, or else they will wonder in a loud voice what on earth you can find in your other friend to make him seem so attractive to you! In any case, a tiny thread or malignity is woven into that fabric of an inner life in which there should be nothing whatever malign.
Friendship resembles Love in the fact that there are usually three stages. The first stage seems thrilling—but how thankful you are, when you look back upon it, that it is over! The second stage is full of disappointment—how different the friendship realised is from the friendship anticipated! The third stage is philosophical, peaceful, and so happy!—since the worst is known and the best is known, but how immeasurably the best outweighs the worst! and how deliciously restful it is to realise that you, too, are loved, as it were, in spite of yourself and for those qualities in you which are the real you, although you need must hide them under so much dross. Thus you both find happiness and peace. And surely friendship—true friendship—is the happiest and most peaceful state in life? It is the happiest and most peaceful part of Love: it is the one thing which, if you really find it, makes the Everyday of life seem worth the while; seem worth the laughter and the tears, the failures and the victories, the dull beginnings, and the even more tedious beginnings-over-again, which are, alas! inevitable, except in the Human Turnip, who, in parenthesis, is too pompously inert ever to make a start.
A very well-known actress once confessed to me that, no matter how warm had been her welcome, she invariably felt a feeling of hostility between the audience and herself when she first walked on the stage. But I rather think that everyone, except the Human Turnip, who feels nothing except thirst and hunger and cold, has that feeling at the beginning. No matter if your advent has been heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, you invariably feel within yourself that your début has been accompanied by the unuttered exclamation: "Oh, my dear! Is that all?" It wears off in time, of course; but it only bears out my theory that beginnings are always difficult—when they are not merely dull. I can quite imagine that the first day in Heaven will be extremely uncomfortable. I know there is no day so long as the first day of a holiday—or any day which seems so short as the last one. For one thing, at the beginning of anything you are never your true, natural self. The "pose," which you carry about with you amid strange surroundings, hangs like a pall upon your spirits, to bore you as much as it bores those on whom you wish to make the most endearing impression. Later on, it wears off—and what you are—you are! and for what you are—you are either disliked intensely or adored. But you are never completely happy until you are completely natural, and you are never natural at the beginning. That is why you should forgive beginnings, as you, yourself, hope to be forgiven when you, yourself, begin.
Unlucky in Little Things
They say it is better to be born lucky than beautiful. Which contains, by the way, only small consolation for those of us who have been born both lucky and ugly. For, after all, to have been born beautiful is a nice "chunk" of good luck to build upon, and anyway, if you are a woman, constitutes a fine capital for the increase of future business. But to have been born lucky is much more exciting than to have been born beautiful; moreover the capital reserve does not diminish with time. All the same, I don't want to write about either lucky people or beautiful ones. There are already too many people writing about them as it is. I want to write about the unlucky ones—because I consider myself one of them. I do so in the hope that my tears will find their tears, and, it we must drown, metaphorically speaking, it is a crumb of comfort to drown in company.
Most unlucky people when they speak about their ill-luck always refer to such incidents as when they backed the Derby "favourite" and it fell down within a yard of the winning post. True, that is ill-luck amounting almost to tragedy. But there is another kind of unlucky person—and about him I can write from experience, because it is my special brand of misfortune. He is the unlucky person who is unlucky in little things. After all, not many of us back horses, and presently fewer of us than ever will be able to do more in the gambling line than play Beg-o'-my-Neighbour with somebody's old aunt for a thr'penny-bit stake. Let me give a few instances of this ill-luck, in the hope that my plaint will strike a responsive chord in the hearts of those who read this page.
(a) If I am sitting on the top of a 'bus and a fat man gets on that 'bus, that fat man will sit down beside me as sure as houses! (b) If I am sitting in a railway carriage hugging to my heart the hope that I may have the compartment to myself throughout the long non-stop run, for a surety, at the very last moment, the Woman-with-the-squalling-brat will rush on the platform and head straight for me! Or, I have only to see the Remarkably Plain Person hesitating between two tables in a restaurant to know that she will invariably choose mine! (c) If there is a bad oyster—I get it! If a wasp flies into the garden seeking repose—I always look to it like a Chesterfield couch! If one day I have not shaved—my latest "pash" is sure to call! Should I invest my hard-earned savings in Government Stock it is a sign for an immediate spread of Bolshevism, and consequent depreciation in all Government securities. If one day I plan to make a voyage to Cythere—I will surely catch a cold in my head the night before and, instead of quoting Swinburne, shall only sneeze and say, "Dearest, I do hope I didn't splash you!" I fully expect to wake up and find myself rich and famous—the day I "wake up" to find myself dead! And of course, like everybody with a grievance, I could go on talking about it for ever. Still, I have given a sufficient number of instances of my ill-luck for ninety per cent. of people to respond in sympathy. The "big things" so seldom happen that one can live quite comfortably without them.
But the "Little Things" are like the poor—they are always with us; or like relations—perpetually on the doorstep on washing day. Perhaps one ought to live as if one were not aware of them. To have your eyes fixed steadfastly on some "star" makes you oblivious, as it were, to the creepy-crawly things which are creepy-crawling up your leg. The unfortunate thing, however, is, that there seem so few stars on which to fix your gaze. If you are born beautiful, or born lucky—you have no use for "stars." To a certain extent you are a "star" in yourself. But for nous autres there only remains the exasperation of Little Things which perpetually "go wrong." The only hope, then, for us is to cultivate that state of despair which can view a whole accumulation of minor disasters with indifference. When you are indifferent to "luck" it is quite astonishing what good fortune comes your way. Luck is rather like a woman—it is, as it were, only utterly abject before a "shrugged shoulder."
Wallpapers
Life is full of minor mysteries—conundrums of the everyday which usually centre round the problem: "Why on earth people do certain things and what on earth makes them do them?" And one of these mysteries is that of their choice in wallpapers. Of course some wallpapers are so pretty that it is not at all difficult to realise why people chose them. On the other hand, some are so extraordinarily hideous that one would really like to see, for curiosity's sake, the artist who designed them and the purchaser whose artistic needs they satisfied. Those bunches of impossible flowers linked together by ribbons, the whole painted in horrible combinations of colour—how we all know them, and how we marvel at their creation! One imagines the mental difficulty of the purchaser as to which among the many designs most appealed to her artistic "eye." Then one pictures how her choice wavered among several. One figures to oneself how she sat in consultation with that friend whom most people take with them when they go out to choose wallpapers, asking her opinion concerning the design which showed nightmare birds swarming about among terrible trees, and the one which illustrated brown roses with blue buds growing in regulated bunches on trellis-work of a most bilious green. One can almost hear the arguments for and against, and at last, the definite conclusion that the one with the brown roses and blue buds was the more uncommon—therefore the better of the two. And one day fate leads your steps towards the bedroom wherein that wallpaper hangs. As you throw yourself into the one easy chair you take out your cigarette case to enjoy that "just one more" which is the more enjoyable because it symbolises that feeling of being "enfin seul" which always follows conversations with landladies or several hours making yourselves agreeable to hostesses.