The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 71. Who built a wall of imaginary law around these needs – excerpts from " Joseph"

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Who built a wall of imaginary law around these needs –

excerpts from the beginning of Bayard Taylor’s Joseph and his Friend

from the Dedication to the Reader:

[They] who believe in the truth and tenderness of man’s love for man, as of man’s love for woman; who recognize the trouble which confused ideas of life and the lack of high and intelligent culture bring upon a great portion of our country population – to all such, no explanation of this volume is necessary. Others will not read it. [i]

from Chapter I – Joseph

“All right; but you must wake up. You’re spruce [as in, spruced up] enough to make a figure tonight.”

“O, no doubt!” Joseph gravely answered, “but what kind of a figure?”

“Some people, I’ve heard say,” said Elwood, “may look into their looking-glass every day, and never know how they look. If you appeared to yourself as you appear to me, you wouldn’t ask such a question as that.”

“If I could only not think of myself at all, Elwood – if I could be as unconcerned as you are—”

“But I’m not, Joseph, my boy!” Elwood interrupted, riding nearer and laying a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I tell you, it weakens my very marrow to walk into a room full o’ girls, even though I know every one of ‘em. They know it too, and, shy and quiet as they seem, they’re unmerciful. There they sit, all looking so different, somehow – even a fellow’s own sisters and cousins – filling up all sides of the room, rustling a little and whispering a little, but you feel that every one of ‘em has her eyes on you, and would be so glad to see you flustered. There’s no help for it though; we’ve got to grow case-hardened to that much, or how could a man get married?”

“Elwood,” Joseph asked, after a moment’s silence, “were you ever in love?”

“Well”—and Elwood pulled up his horse in surprise—“well, you do come out plump. You take the breath out of my body. Have I been in love? Have I committed murder? One’s about as deadly a secret as the other!”

The two looked each other in the face. Elwood’s eyes answered the question, but Joseph’s – large, shy and utterly innocent – could not read the answer. [ii]

from Chapter III – The Place and People

Joseph Asten’s nature was shy and sensitive, but not merely from a habit of introversion. He saw no deeper into himself, in fact, than his moods and sensations, and thus quite failed to recognize what it was that kept him apart from the society in which he should have freely moved. He felt the difference of others, and consequently probed the pain and embarrassments it gave him, but the sources wherefrom it grew were the last which he would have guessed.

A boy’s life may be weakened for growth, in all its fibers, by the watchfulness of a too anxious love, and the guidance of a too exquisitely nurtured conscience. He may be so trained in the habits of goodness, and purity, and duty, that every contact with the world is like an abrasion upon the delicate surface of his soul. Every wind visits him too roughly, and he shrinks form the encounters which brace true manliness, and sharpen it for the exercise of good. [iii]

from Chapter V – Elwood’s Evening, and Joseph’s

[As he rode, the] great joy of human life filled and thrilled him; all possibilities of action and pleasure and emotion swam before his sight […] – dazzling pictures of the myriad-sided earth, to be won by whosoever dared arbitrarily to seize the freedom waiting for his grasp – floated through his brain.

Hitherto a conscience not born of his own nature – a very fair and saintly-visaged jailer of thought, but a jailer none the less – had kept strict guard over every outward movement of his mind, gently touching hope and desire and conjecture when they reached a certain line, and saying, “No; no farther; it is prohibited.” But now, with one strong, involuntary throb, he found himself beyond the line, with all the ranges ever trodden by man stretching forward to a limitless horizon. He rose in his stirrups, threw out his arms, lifted his face towards the sky, and cried, “God! I see what I am!”

It was only a glimpse – like that of a landscape struck in golden fire by lightning, from the darkness. “What is it,” he mused, “that stands between me and this vision of life? Who built a wall of imaginary law around these needs, which are in themselves inexorable laws? The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, they say in warning. Bright, boundless world, my home, my playground, my battlefield, my kingdom to be conquered! And this body they tell me to despise – this perishing house of clay, which is so intimately myself that its comfort and delight cheer me to the inmost soul: it is a dwelling for an angel to inhabit! Shall not its hungering senses all be fed? Who shall decide for me – if not myself – on their claims? – who can judge for me what strength requires to be exercised, what pleasure to be enjoyed, what growth to be forwarded? All around me, everywhere, are the means of gratification – I have but to reach forth my hand and grasp; but a narrow cell, built ages ago enclosed me wherever I go!” […]

As he came back to his usual self, refreshed by this temporary escape, Joseph wondered whether other men shared the same longing and impatience; and this turned his musings into another channel. “Why do men so carefully conceal what is deepest and strongest in their natures? Why is so little of spiritual struggle and experience ever imparted? [By contrast,] the convert publicly admits his sinful experience and tries to explain the entrance of grace into his regenerated nature; the reformed drunkard seems to take a positive delight in making his former condition degraded and loathsome; but the opening of the individual life to the knowledge of power and passion and all the possibilities of the world is kept more secret than sin. Love is hidden as if it were a reproach; friendship watched, lest it express its warmth too frankly; joy and grief and doubt and anxiety repressed as much as possible. A great lid is shut down upon the human race. They must painfully stoop and creep, instead of standing erect with only God’s heaven over their heads. I am lonely, but I know not how to cry for companionship; my words would not be understood, or, if they were, would not be answered.

Only one gate is free . . . to me . . . that leading to the love . . . of woman . . . . [iv]

from Chapter IX – Joseph and his Friend

The train moved slowly along through the straggling and shabby suburbs, increasing its speed as the city melted gradually into the country; […] Joseph leaned back in his seat and took note of his fellow-travelers. […]

The faces of the younger men, however, were not so easy to decipher. On them was only beginning its plastic task, and it required an older eye to detect the delicate touches of awakening passions and hopes. But Joseph consoled himself with the thought that his own secret was as little to be discovered as any they might have. […]

All at once his eye was attracted by a new face, three or four seats from his own. The stranger had shifted his position so that he was no longer seen in profile. He was apparently a few years older than Joseph, but still bright with all the charm of early manhood. His fair complexion was bronzed from exposure, and his hands, graceful without being effeminate, were not those of the idle gentleman. His hair, golden in tint, thrust its short locks as it pleased about a smooth, frank forehead; the eyes were dark gray, and the mouth, partly hidden by a moustache, at once firm and full. He was moderately handsome, yet it was not of that which Joseph thought; he felt that there was more of developed character and a richer past history expressed in those features than in any other face there. He felt sure – and smiled at himself, notwithstanding, for the impression – that at least some of his own doubts and difficulties had found their solution in the stranger’s nature. The more he more he studied the face, the more he was conscious of its attraction, and his instinct of reliance, though utterly without grounds, justified itself to his mind in some mysterious way.

It was not long before the unknown felt his gaze, and, turning slowly in his seat, answered it. Joseph dropped his eyes in some confusion, but not until he had caught the full, warm, intense expression of those that met them. He fancied that he read in them, in that momentary flash, what he had never before found in the eyes of strangers – a simple, human interest, above curiosity and above mistrust. The usual reply to such a gaze is an unconscious defiance: the unknown nature is on its guard: but the look which seems to answer “We are men; let us know each other!” is, alas, too rare in this world.

While Joseph was fighting the irresistible temptation to look again, there was a sudden thud of the car-wheels. Many of the passengers started from their seats, only to be thrown into them again by a quick succession of violent jolts. Joseph saw the stranger springing towards the bell-rope; then he and all others seemed to be whirling over each other; there was a crash, a horrible grinding and splintering sound, and the end of all was a shock, in which his consciousness left him before he could guess its violence.

After a while, out of some blank, haunted by a single lost, wandering sense of existence, he began to awaken slowly to life. Flames were still dancing in his eyeballs, and waters and whirlwinds roaring in his ears; but it was only a passive sensation, without the will to know more. Then he felt himself partly lifted and his head supported, and presently a soft warmth fell upon the region of his heart. There were noises all about him, but he did not listen to them; his efforts to regain his consciousness fixed itself on that point alone, and grew stronger as the warmth calmed the confusion of his nerves. […]

Joseph opened his eyes, knew the face that bent over his, and then closed them again. Gentle and strong hands raised him; a flask was set to his lips, and he drank mechanically, but a fuller sense of life followed the draught. […]

“How did it happen?” asked Joseph. “Where was I? How did you find me?”

“The usual story – a broken rail,” said the stranger. “I had just caught the rope when the car went over, and was swung off my feet so luckily that I somehow escaped the hardest shock. I don’t think I lost my senses for a moment. When we came to the bottom [of the gully], you were lying just before me; I thought you were dead until I felt your heart.” […]

By the time the other injured passengers had been conveyed to the train; the whistle sounded a warning of departure. […] When they were seated side by side, Joseph felt that a new power, a new support, had come into his life. The face upon which he looked was no longer strange; the hand which had rested on his heart was warm with kindred blood. Involuntarily he extended his own; it was taken and held, and the dark-gray, courageous eyes turned to him with a silent assurance which he felt needed no words. […]

He suffered his head to be drawn upon Philip Held’s shoulder . . . and slept. [v]

—Bayard Taylor,

1870