FROM AN AUTUMN JOURNAL
37
December 6
J.
B. here to tea this afternoon, one of those quiet hours of
friendship of which there have been so few this fall. We talk of
many things, institutions and people, the stupidities and slacknesses
and deteriorations of standard which seem daily and everywhere
more apparent in our society, feeding our mutual dismays and
alarms. Then he asks me soberly, "What are you going to do about
all this?" I laugh. "Nothing, I suppose." This is not satisfactory
-he wants me to write about it, he wants to write about it him–
self.
But how? I tell him of this journal: there could be no better
medium. But what am I free to discuss in entire truth even in
this journal without risking more than an entire truth is worth?
He agrees that this is the problem, particularly in our present age of
piety; yet there must be a way. Perhaps the solution is to drop all
thought of other people's feelings. Since anyone we meet knows the
nature of our judgments even if we never speak them, and is armed
against our word before it is ever uttered, why not at least have the
pleasure of speaking out?
We talk of Shaw, who was never afraid to say what he thought
and name names and yet was never accused of malice, perhaps for
the very reason that his forays were so open and bold, and who was
even the more respected because he put himself above the usual com–
pulsions of propriety. "He was respected, yes," I agree. "But respect
is
not what the people we know either want to give or receive
from us. All they are interested in is love." I cite my experience
trying to keep friends from phoning during my two or three pre–
cious working hours in the morning. They know my domestic sit–
uation, they lament the pressures on my time. Yet each feels that
he or she must be the exception to my rule of non-communica–
tion, each must be the best-loved child who has the right to com–
mand me. And although each time the phone rings and I am in–
terrupted at work, I spend five minutes apologizing for my inabil–
ity to spend a half-hour in chatter, for my pains I dispense neither
courtesy nor solace but mortal insult. I could not fare worse if I
simply raised the phone, shouted "Not taking any calls," and slammed
it down again. We return to Shaw; is this nQt precisely the point
about Shaw, that he was a generous man, a man you could turn
