[Affection], as I have said, is the humblest love.
It gives itself no airs. People can be proud of being ‘in love’, or of friendship. Affection is modest—even furtive and shame-faced.
Once when I had remarked /on the affection /quite often found between my cat and my dog, my friend replied, ‘Yes.
But I bet no dog would even confess it to the other dogs.’
That is at least a good caricature of much human Affection.
‘Let [homely faces] [stay at home]’, says Comus.
Now Affection has a very homely face.
So have [many of those //for whom we feel it].
It is no proof of our refinement or perceptiveness [that we love them; nor that they love us].
[What I have called Appreciative Love] is no basic element in Affection.
It usually needs absence or bereavement to set us praising those //to whom only Affection binds us.
We take them for granted;
and [this taking for granted], which is an outrage in erotic love, is here /right and proper to a point.
It fits the comfortable, quiet nature of the feeling.
Affection would not be affection /if it was loudly and frequently expressed;
to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move.
It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.
Affection almost sinks or slips /through our lives.
It lives with humble, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes,
the thump of a sleepy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine, a gollywog left on the lawn.
From The Four Loves