A CLOSE BOND

Evening Star, Issue 22963, 21 May 1938, Page 3

A CLOSE BOND

[Written by Mary Scott, for the - Evening Star.’} Friendship’s like musick; two strings tuned alike, Will both stirre; though only one you strike. Very true, but what are the strings that “stirre” you? What must be tuned alike between you and an acquaintance to cause those mysterious vibrations that we call friendship? It is a hard question to answer, for possibly few of us consciously shut ourselves behind locked doors, waiting patiently till the sound of a voice comes calling “ open sesame.” As a rule we like our friends for a multiplicity of reasons —this for his kindness and tolerant humanity, this for his wit and humour, that for his culture and understanding, another for old acquaintance sake.

For the majority, it is hard to cherish or maintain a friendship in which one party is without a sense of humour. Nothing is more damping to affection than to have your best jokes received with simple earnestness. An inability to see the funny side, even of disasters, is a sore handicap to friendship. It makes such a sad affair of to-day; even worse, it takes so much of the joy out of yesterday. No memories knit people more closely than those of old, familiar jests. Sorrow shared is a deep and lasting bond between any two fellow creatures, but mirth halved and; thereby doubled is no less so; indeed, while we most of us shy away from the memory of old griefs, we cherish dearly that of vanished laughter. Therefore a friend with a sense of humour not too much at variance with one’s own can look back with us very pleasantly across the years. Mutual prejudices are curiously helpful to friendship; I have known some people whose likes seemed paradoxically to depend upon their dislikes. They could not endure bridge; they were bored hy so-and-so; they excessively disliked certain types of people —that seemed to draw them together. It is not, perhaps, a particularly amiable foundation for affection, but it seems to endure surprisingly, at least so long as the prejudices endure; and that, with a certain type, is for ever. More substantial ground may be found in a love of the same books. Do you know the thrill of discovering from a chance word that a new acquaintance is a de Morganite too? Has a barren afternoon turned into a golden memory because the woman who sat beside you felt as you did over Winifred Holtby’s death? To love the same games, the same sports, the same animals is a wonderful bond; one such touch of nature will make you kin with the most unlikely people. One of my dearest friends dates from my schoolgirl days, and the link was—we both liked to eat mustard with the “ wrong ” things. Nowadays, it would probably bo a mutual passion for Joan Crawford or Tyrone Power; small matter the beginning—if the structure is worth building, we shall find it worth while to strengthen foundations that seemed frail enough. But I have lately discovered a new mutual passion that binds people together far more securely than merely loving Bach or detesting permanent waves; it is the link forged hy a common love of food. Not any food. I do not refer to anything so gross as a society of epicures; I mean that the modern craze—to diet, or not to diet—is dividing the social world into two opposing camps. The, Hay system of diet has made more friendships than a worship of Shakespeare. A sublime disregard of all such ideas, a teiKleucy to dismiss modern diets as “ all fads, has united a sturdy little party or “die-hards,” whose ranks are daily closing more stubbornly as one or another falls by the way, cither from what they call “ natural causes ;j and their enemies “wrong feeding, or from conversion to the enemy. ■ . Such, partisanship would not, i think, have been possible 30 years ago. Wo are more food-conscious to-day than we lin.v6 ever been. Not that food did not rank enormously high with a certain class of Englishman even a century ago and more; the class that “ lived well, developed gout, and contributed such characters to literature as Galsworthy’s “ Old English.” The “ upper class ’ probably thought a great deal about food, but they did not talk about it; they simply took it sublimely _ for granted. The discussion of food is a modern outcrop, partly due to our interest in diet and partly to the difficulties of our domestic arrangements. Comparatively few of ns are above “ exchanging recipes,” particularly u they be for those easy dishes so acceptable to the unfortunate housewife who is “ without.” Therefore food has come out into the open and taken its place as a subject of discussion'on ordinary social occasions* particularly in our smaller towns. Shades of the grandmothers who taught us that “ we Don’t discuss religion, money, politics, or food with mere acquaintances, my dear!” I thought of that grandmother the other day when I was present—l cannot imagine quite why or how—at a “ party ”in our local township. It was rather a dull party; we were all looking doubtfully at each other and wondering what to try next when, afternoon tea was announced. Everybody brightened up immediately. It was not merely our natural human greed, the feeling that here at last was the raison d’etre for the party, that melted, the social ice. It was that the conversation slipped gently and happily on to the subject of food. The woman next to me was the old-fashioned, jolly type, obviously putting on too much weight and not caring in the least. She hailed cream cake with frank enthusiasm, and told me in a confidential aside that she was not one of those who cared about all these new-fangled fads. “ Eat whit you like when you like and you’ll live happily,” she said easily. “ And die prematurely,” said a sepulchral voice on my loft. 1 started violently and nearly dropped my cup of tea. When I managed to look round I discovered that this neighbour was sternly sipping weak tea and eating nothing. _ “ This habit of eating when you drink is suicidal,” she told me. _ I glanced nervously round ; my jolly neighbour was busy exchanging recipes and ecstasies; treacherously I murmured that perhaps it was the modern way to eat too mucn._“ And the wrong things,” said the virtuous mentor as she ostentatiously refused cake (“ but it’s made with wholemeal,” pleaded her hostess tmavailingly) : “ it is time someone made a stand.” I lacked the moral courage to suggest that an afternoon party was not the opportunity to take—and was punished for my insincerity by having to listen to food lectures and diet statistics for the rest of the afternoon. But if the tea table may be divided by a sharp line into the dieters and the non-dieters, what shall we say of the breakfast table ? _ That is the real breeding ground of lifelong friendships and enduring enmities. At camp this year wo were thus divided. The “ enlightened ” ( I quote their own expression} among ns ate a modern breakfast of raw fruit with perhaps a generous handful of dates and raisins : the “ sensible ” (once more their definition, not necessarily mine), ate a bountiful old-

fashioned meal of bacon and eggs—even porridge, if they could secure any cream from the farm near by—toast and marmalade, The other people were very nasty about it._ I used to wonder whether the appetising smell had anything to do with their bitterness, or whether it was the acidity of the fruit that the local orchardists palmed off on ns. In any case, breakfast was the time for quarrels between the two factions. To which did I belong? Well, being a moral coward and knowing myself never of the type of the apostle, I had breakfast unostentatiously in bed.