336 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



Some people are born without what Mr. George 

 Meredith so well describes as ' the gift of intimacy.' They 

 would be reserved, even in love, the only key that ever 

 unlocks such hearts. Friendships they have none, either 

 with their own sex or vnth the other. No doubt hfe is 

 simpler to such people ; to others it would be unbearably 

 lonely. There are a few women who would have been 

 very glad of friends, but whose loyalty to the disloyal 

 around them forces them into loneliness and silence, for 

 there is no friendship in the world without confidence. 



Friendships are safety-valves, and the wisdom of 

 safety-valves is easy to appreciate. All the same, these 

 intimacies must be regulated and conducted upon the 

 rules of civilised society. I love the young who wish to 

 fight conventionalities and turn and boldly face Mrs. 

 Grundy ; but I despise the old who do not help the young 

 to see that they are only making useless martyrs of them- 

 selves in a cause which is, at the bottom, not noble and 

 not great, but only a method of giving vent to their own 

 selfishness and self-indulgence. Before you fight con- 

 ventionahty you must prove that conventionality is 

 wrong, and this can never be done by the young. To 

 deny friendships to natures that require them is to force 

 on them what Mr. Morley calls ' the awful loneliness of 

 life — a life full of acquaintances as a cake is full of 

 currants, no two ever touching each other.' It is one of 

 the great sorrows of a high position that people cannot 

 have intimates. Froude says somewhere : ' The great are 

 expected to be universally gracious, and universal 

 graciousness is perhaps only possible to the insincere 

 or the commonplace, or to the supremely great and 

 fortunate.' 



We cannot give anyone our experience. This is a 

 common saying, and quite true from the point of view of 

 the old. Nevertheless, if the young determine, through 



