OUR CANDID FRIENDS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue VII, 18 August 1894, Page 159

OUR CANDID FRIENDS.

BY

MRS LYNN LINTON.

HEY are so loyal to the truth, dear things ! — /Xal so earneBt to sa y which is, and to shame rr him who shall be nameless by their absolute ijjjjjgj devotion to sincerity ! It is quite touching, 'Uli when you come to think of it, that they can so nobly sacrifice all their tender prepossessions in favour of the person they love, when they make the exact appraisement of his merits—the careful measurement of her virtues. They do not allow themselves to be blinded by their affection—no, not so much as by the slightest, flimsiest little veil. Lynxes themselves do not come near their perspicacity of vision when the thing to be discerned is the fault, the blemish, the wrong doing of their friend. And then their candour in confessing what they see ! Really it is all a beautiful sacrifice of self to the Higher Law, and as such to be commended with shawms and trumpets and loud-voiced anthems of praise. Human nature being a poor fallible kind of thing at the best—a statue of clay set about with precious perns— OUR CANDID FRIENDS HAVE THEIR HANDS FULL AND THEIR COURSE CLEAR. It is so easy to ignore those sparsely-set gems and fasten only on the gross crude clay. It is so easy to find faults in excess of virtues, and to go behind crooked motives even when the act rules straight. As every length of velvet has its coarser side, and every royal garment has its inner seams, so have men and women their defects when closely examined ; and not all characters can bear the test of a probe. Beautiful on the surface, they are less lovely in the depths ; and the candid friend acknowledges this, with pain and sorrow—oh ! always with much pain and great sorrow, but with brave acknowledgment notwithstanding.

Far from him that base trafficking with truth and excellence which takes what is good and rubs a little softening wax over that which is evil. Far from him the Laodicean lukewarmness which makes excuses for the overpowering domination of temperament; which gives a kindly explanation to a doubtful appearance ; which does not believe in that unproved damaging report; which calls attention to the humble little floral flowers, and passes over in silence those lurking weeds. Our candid friends understand nothing of all this charitable temporizing ; but, holding the standard of perfecticn heaven-high and flinging abroad the flag of moral supremacy for all the world to see, they pronounce on the faults and pass over the virtues—more in

sorrow than in anger registering the shortcomings which yet do not prevent that comprehensive * All the same, I love him or her, all the same.’

On whatever lines our character may be built, our candid friends find the flaw in the founda'ion and the failure in the superstructure. Say we are one of those entirely human and affectionate creatures who love onr kind and aie sympathetic with all we know ; our candid friends lament the insincerity which must of necessity underlie our expansive impulses. For bow is it possible for anyone to be as genial as we seem to be ? Just as no one was ever so wise as Thurlow looked, so no one could be as generally sympathetic as we appear. We must therefore be hypocritical and insincere to the last point. Or if not this, then are we by necessity shallow and transient. To give us credit for a development of the social instinct in excess of their own would be impossible for our candid friends, to whom an inscrutable Providence has confided the measuring-tape of a virtuous humanity; so that what stretches beyond their allowance of inches is excessive and what falls short is too little. For if, in contrast to ourselves, they speak of one who boasts of being eclectic, difficult to please, exceeding choice in selection, and is all this beyond the proportions deemed just by these candid friends, then is he or she openly chidden and publicly blamed for a poverty of soul, an aridity of affection, which is positively inhuman. Yet they love that be or she. Certainly they love him or her—only, being candid, being lovers of truth more than of men, being faithful witnesses in a naughty world, they are compelled to strike the blot and put their accusing fingers on the sore place. GOD DEFEND US FROM OUR CANDID FRIENDS WHEN SEATED IN THE EDITORIAL CHAIR OF POWER. and armed with the flail of literary criticism ! With the pain and toil that accompanies all creative work, with conscientious diligence and careful concentration we have accomplished our task. It has taken us many months of hard labour, and we know that we have not made a fiasco. It falls into the hands of our candid friend, chief reviewer on the Daily Slasher or the Weekly Pepperpot; and he, with his impartial flail, comes down on the heap of what we fondly thought was good grain lying on the granary floor, but what he pronounces to be worthless chaff all through. He is sorry to have it to say. Of course he is sorry ; a candid friend always is, when truth compels him to sharpen his knife and justice guides his hand for the blow ; but we have really put forth such a miserable scantling as a full-grown well conditioned harvest, he is quite unable to find words of praise. To be sure, in his haste to show his absolute impartiality—being known as our personal friend as well as a writer on the press—he muddles up the characters and confuses the incidents, giving to one the circumstances assigned to the other—as when he makes the blameless prig of the story commit the murder done by the ruffian, and credits the saintly ingenue with the indiscretions of the high-flying wife fin de siecle. This, however, is only a detail. The main thing to be noted is our candid friend’s devotion to the truth, which compels him to strip us of our false pretensions, leaving us not one poor little rag of intellectual merit wherewith to cover our literary nakedness. Nothing is more depressing than to note

THE NUMBER AND BLACKNESS OF OUR FAULTS AND MISTAKES when we see ourselves in the mirror held up by our candid friends. We are never by any chance in the right. When we come to those cross roads where understanding judgment is at fault, and the issue alone determines which was the best way, our candid friends are sure to say we have taken the wrong path while that issue is uncertain, ascribing to themselves the wirdom of our decision—which they influenced—if it turn out well, but ‘slating’ us with Catolike severity if it turn ill. No mortal with only an ordinary pair of eyes could see the result of that investment. It looked fair ; it had influential backers ; it was popular in

the City ;it promised well all round. That it would be mismanaged, and by mismanagement brought to ruin, was out of the prophetic picture altogether. And our candid friends saw no more of that skinny hand of Disaster than did we or the rest. But Lord ! when the crash came how they went for us I XV hat a roll-call of vices and weaknesses we suddenly found ourselves possessed of, and what a queer amount of responsibility was strapped on to our aching shoulders ! Had we, poor little insignificant investor, following the crowd and hanging on with the multitude—had we been the Great Dalai Lama of the Hous», holding the financial credit of empires like a ripe fruit in our loss, we could not have been made more guiltily responsible by our candid friends when discussing, as they did at all street corners, the sad news of our loss. They told us so—they always have told us so when we have fallen into a bog or stumbled over the tent pegs ; —but we are so obstinate, so rash, so unwise, and ever and ever, and again and again, so pig headed, that we will not be advised by wiser heads and cooler judgments. ’ h WE ARE THE DEAREST DARLINGS IN THE WORLD — the best fellows and the nicest women—but we are the most unwise and exasperating ; and good and nice as we may be, and love us as they may, our candid friends are really heartsick when they think of us, and feel inclined to give us up to the destruction we ourselves court by our folly. VVe are so ungrateful too ! Our candid friends hold forth on the need of reciprocity in love—on the gratitude in obedience due from one as much loved and as loyally protected, they say, as we are and have been by them. And we are so selfwilled and so selfish I We take all and give back nothing, neither to, them nor to others. In that quarrel between us and the Smiths we were undoubtedly to blame and the Smiths were in the right. When our daughter ran away with the clerk we were also to blame, though how we could have seen what was going on in the dark behind our back, and how we could have coped with a deep laid plot arranged with Machiavellian craft and carried out with such consummate skill, would puzzle a wiser than ourselves to determine. But our candid friends say it was our fault ; and it is to be supposed they know what they talk about. So it goes on through the whole catalogue of the day’s doings. Mingled with sweet professions of tender love come these bitter accusations of misdeeds and mistakes. Painted by our candid friends we have not a moral beauty left. Yet they always end their indictment with that hateful apologia ‘ All the same.’ ‘ln spite of all his faults he is a good fellow on the whole.’ •In spite of her desperately bad qualities, we love her all the same.’