'In Constant Repair'

“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it was plain. They came forward with a little run and LEAPED at each other’s hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both had. It put one in a good humour to see it.”

Yet again I’ve heard the small-minded slur that people whose contact is strictly digital cannot be considered genuine friends. If that were the case, woe is me, I’m a miserably friendless hermit. Those who say such things underestimate the human capacity for intimacy and trust. I think of Helene Hanff, Frank Doel and their epistolary friendship as documented in the former’s 84, Charing Cross Road (1970) – and the 1987 film version with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. They never met yet it’s fair to call their friendship a love story.

Friendships begin and evolve though natural selection, regardless of environmental conditions. I prefer the company of people who are smart, not infatuated with themselves, at least a tad bookish and reliably able to make me laugh. Those friendships tend to survive and even reproduce. Whether the friend lives in Houston or Burkina Faso makes no difference. Think of Robert Louis Stevenson’s unlikely but enduring friendship with Henry James.

The passage at the top is from a letter Stevenson wrote to his friend Fanny Sitwell on October 4, 1873. Stevenson was young, not quite twenty-three, and a little infatuated with Sitwell, married and eleven years his senior. Unlike many of us, Stevenson had a positive gift for friendship. To some degree I think we choose as friends people who can entertain us. Who wants the company of dullards? Friendship is not a form of charity, nor is it passive. It requires maintenance. I don’t always follow Dr. Johnson’s advice to Boswell: “If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.” Every time I read that sentence, I tell myself: “I really should call So-and So.”

In Chapter 4 of Lay Morals (1889), Stevenson tells us “. . . no man is useless while he has a friend,” even if that friend is a scattering of electrons on a screen.