There is a tendency, I am sure, in books, to shirk the whole subject of fear, as though it were a thing disgraceful, shameful, almost unmentionable. The coward, the timid person, receives very little sympathy; he is rather like one tainted with a shocking disease, of which the less said the better. He is not viewed with any sympathy or commiseration, but as something almost lower in the scale of humanity.
Take the literature that deals with school life, for instance. I do not think that there is any province of our literature so inept, so conventional, so entirely lacking in reality, as the books which deal with the life of schools. The difficulty of writing them is very great, because they can only be reconstructed by an effort of memory. The boy himself is quite unable to give expression to his thoughts and feelings; school life is a time of sharp, eager, often rather savage emotions, lived by beings who have no sense of proportion, no knowledge of life, no idea of what is really going on in the world. The actual incidents which occur are very trivial, and yet to the fresh minds and spirits of boyhood they seem all charged with an intense significance.
Then again the talk of schoolboys is wholly immature and shapeless.
They cannot express themselves, and moreover there is a very strict and peremptory convention which dictates what may be talked about and what may not. No society in the world is under so oppressive a taboo. They must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at the cost of being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games, they gossip about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation is nasty and b.e.s.t.i.a.l. But it conceals very real if very fitful emotions; yet it is impossible to recall or to reconstruct; and when older people attempt to reconstruct it, they remember the emotions which underlay it, and the eager interests out of which it all sprang; and they make it something picturesque, epigrammatic, and vernacular which is wholly untrue to life. The fact is that the talk of schoolboys is very trivial and almost wholly symbolical; emotion reveals itself in glance and gesture, not in word at all. I suppose that most of us remember our boyish friendships, ardent and eager personal admirations, extraordinary deifications of quite commonplace boys, emotions none of which were ever put into words at all, hardly even into coherent thought, and were yet a swift and vital current of the soul.
Now the most unreal part of the reconstructions of school life is the insistence on the boyish code of honour. Neither as a boy nor as a schoolmaster did I ever have much evidence of this. There were certain hard and fast rules of conduct, like the rule which prevented any boy from giving information to a master against another boy. But this was not a conscientious thing. It was part of the tradition, and the social ostracism which was the penalty of its infraction was too severe to risk incurring. But the boys who cut a schoolfellow for telling tales, did not do it from any high-minded sense of violated honour. It was simply a piece of self-defence, and the basis of the convention was merely this, that, if the rule were broken, it would produce an impossible sense of insecurity and peril. However much boys might on the whole approve of, respect, and even like their masters, still they could not make common cause with them. The school was a perfectly definite community, inside of which it was often convenient and pleasant to do things which would be penalised if discovered; and thus the whole stability of that society depended upon a certain secrecy.
The masters were not disliked for finding out the infractions of rules, if only such infractions were patent and obvious. A master who looked too closely into things, who practised any sort of espionage, who tried to extort confession, was disapproved of as a menace, and it was convenient to label him a sneak and a spy, and to say that he did not play the game fair. But all this was a mere tradition. Boys do not reflect much, or look into the reasons of things. It does not occur to them to credit masters with the motive of wishing to protect them against themselves, to minimise temptation, to shelter them from undesirable influences; that perhaps dawns on the minds of sensible and high-minded prefects, but the ordinary boy just regards the master as an opposing power, whom he hoodwinks if he can.
And then the boyish ideal of courage is a very incomplete one. He does not recognise it as courage if a sensitive, conscientious, and right-minded boy risks unpopularity by telling a master of some evil practice which is spreading in a school. He simply regards it as a desire to meddle, a priggish and pragmatical act, and even as a sneaking desire to inflict punishment by proxy.
Courage, for the schoolboy, is merely physical courage, aplomb, boldness, recklessness, high-handedness. The hero of school life is one like Odysseus, who is strong, inventive, daring, full of resource. The point is to come out on the top. Odysseus yields to sensual delight, he is cruel, vindictive, and incredibly deceitful. It is evident that successful beguiling, the power of telling an elaborate, plausible, and imperturbable lie on occasions, is an heroic quality in the Odyssey.
Odysseus is not a man who scorns to deceive, or who would rather take the consequences than utter a falsehood. His strength rather lies in his power, when at bay, of flashing into some monstrous fiction, dramatising the situation, playing an adopted part, with confidence and a.s.surance. One sees traces of the same thing in the Bible. The story of Jacob deceiving Isaac, and pretending to be Esau in order to secure a blessing is not related with disapprobation. Jacob does not forfeit his blessing when his deceit is discovered. The whole incident is regarded rather as a master-stroke of cunning and inventiveness. Esau is angry not because Jacob has employed such trickery, but because he has succeeded in supplanting him.
I remember, as a boy at Eton, seeing a scene which left a deep impression on me. There was a big unpleasant unscrupulous boy of great physical strength, who was a noted football player. He was extremely unpopular in the school, because he was rude, sulky, and overbearing, and still more because he took unfair advantages in games. There was a hotly contested house-match, in which he tried again and again to evade rules, while he was for ever appealing to the umpires against violations of rule by the opposite side. His own house was ultimately victorious, but feeling ran very high indeed, because it was thought that the victory was unfairly won. The crowd of boys who had been watching the match drifted away in a state of great exasperation, and finally collected in front of the house of the unpopular player, hissed and hooted him. He took very little notice of the demonstration and walked in, when there arose a babel of howls. He turned round and came out again, facing the crowd. I can see him now, all splashed and muddy, with his shirt open at the neck. He was pale, ugly, and sinister; but he surveyed us all with entire effrontery, drew out a pince-nez, being very short-sighted, and then looked calmly round as if surprised. I have certainly never seen such an exhibition of courage in my life. He knew that he had not a single friend present, and he did not know that he would not be maltreated--there were indications of a rush being made. He did not look in the least picturesque; he was ugly, scowling, offensive. But he did not care a rap, and if he had been attacked, he would have defended himself with a will. It did not occur to me then, nor did it, I think, occur to anyone else, what an amazing bit of physical and moral courage it was. No one, then or after, had the slightest feeling of admiration for his pluck. "Did you ever see such a brute as P-- looked?" was the only sort of comment made.
This just serves to ill.u.s.trate my point, that boys have no real discernment for what is courageous. What they admire is a certain grace and spirit, and the hero is not one who constrains himself to do an unpopular thing from a sense of duty, not even the boy who, being unpopular like P--, does a satanically brave thing. Boys have no admiration for the boy who defies them; what they like to see is the defiance of a common foe. They admire gallant, modest, spirited, picturesque behaviour, not the dull and faithful obedience to the sense of right.
Of course things have altered for the better. Masters are no longer stern, severe, abrupt, formidable, unreasonable. They know that many a boy, who would be inclined on the whole to tell the truth, can easily be frightened into telling a lie; but they have not yet contrived to put the sense of honour among boys in the right proportion. Such stories as that of George Washington--when the children were asked who had cut down the apple-tree, and he rose and said, "Sir, I cannot tell a lie; it was I who did it with my little hatchet"--do not really take the imagination of boys captive. How constantly did worthy preachers at Eton tell the story of how Bishop Selwyn, as a boy, rose and left the room at a boat-supper because an improper song was sung! That anecdote was regarded with undisguised amus.e.m.e.nt, and it was simply thought to be a piece of priggishness. I cannot imagine that any boy ever heard the story and went away with a glowing desire to do likewise. The incident really belongs to the domain of manners rather than to that of morals.
The truth is really that boys at school have a code which resembles that of the old chivalry. The hero may be sensual, unscrupulous, cruel, selfish, indifferent to the welfare of others. But if he bears himself gallantly, if he has a charm of look and manner, if he is a deft performer in the prescribed athletics, he is the object of profound and devoted admiration. It is really physical courage, skill, prowess, personal attractiveness which is envied and praised. A dull, heavy, painstaking, conscientious boy with a st.u.r.dy sense of duty may be respected, but he is not followed; while the imaginative, sensitive, nervous, highly-strung boy, who may have the finest qualities of all within him, is apt to be the most despised. Such a boy is often no good at games, because public performance disconcerts him; he cannot make a ready answer, he has no aplomb, no cheek, no smartness; and he is consequently thought very little of.
To what extent this sort of instinctive preference can be altered, I do not know; it certainly cannot be altered by sermons, and still less by edicts. Old Dr. Keate said, when he was addressing the school on the subject of fighting, "I must say that I like to see a boy return a blow!" It seems, if one considers it, to be a curious ideal to start life with, considering how little opportunity civilisation now gives for returning blows! Boys in fact are still educated under a system which seems to antic.i.p.ate a combative and disturbed sort of life to follow, in which strength and agility, violence and physical activity, will have a value. Yet, as a matter of fact, such things have very little substantial value in an ordinary citizen"s life at all, except in so far as they play their part in the elaborate cult of athletic exercises, with which we beguile the instinct which craves for manual toil. All the races, and games, and athletics cultivated so a.s.siduously at school seem now to have very little aim in view. It is not important for ordinary life to be able to run a hundred yards, or even three miles, faster than another man; the judgment, the quickness of eye, the strength and swiftness of muscle needed to make a man a good batsman were all well enough in days when a man"s life might afterwards depend on his use of sword and battle-axe. But now it only enables him to play games rather longer than other people, and to a certain extent ministers to bodily health, although the statistics of rowing would seem clearly to prove that it is a pursuit which is rather more apt to damage the vitality of strong boys than to increase the vitality of weak ones.
So, if we look facts fairly in the face, we see that much of the training of school life, especially in the direction of athletics, is really little more than the maintenance of a thoughtless old tradition, and that it is all directed to increase our admiration of prowess and grace and gallantry, rather than to fortify us in usefulness and manual skill and soundness of body. A boy at school may be a skilful carver or carpenter; he may have a real gift for engineering or mechanics; he may even be a good rider, a first-rate fisherman, an excellent shot. He may have good intellectual abilities, a strong memory, a power of expression; he may be a sound mathematician, a competent scientist; he may have all sorts of excellent moral qualities, be reliable, accurate, truthful, punctual, duty-loving; he may in fact be equipped for life and citizenship, able to play his part st.u.r.dily and manfully, and to do the world good service; but yet he may never win the smallest recognition or admiration in his school-days, while all the glory and honour and credit is still reserved for the graceful, attractive, high-spirited athlete, who may have nothing else in the background.
That is certainly the ideal of the boy, and the disconcerting thing is that it is also the ideal, practically if not theoretically, of the parent and the schoolmaster. The school still reserves all its best gifts, its sunshine and smiles, for the knightly and the skilful; it rewards all the qualities that are their own reward. Why, if it wishes to get the right scale adopted, does it not reward the thing which it professes to uphold as its best result, worth of character namely? It claims to be a training-ground for character first, but it does little to encourage secret and un.o.btrusive virtues. That is, it adds its prizes to the things which the natural man values, and it neglects to crown the one thing at which it professes first to aim. In doing this it only endorses the verdict of the world, and while it praises moral effort, it rewards success.
The issue of all this is that the sort of courage which it enforces is essentially a graceful and showy sort of courage, a lively readiness, a high-hearted fearlessness--so that timidity and slowness and diffidence and unreadiness become base and feeble qualities, when they are not the things of which anyone need be ashamed! Let me say then that moral courage, the patient and unrecognised facing of difficulties, the disregard of popular standards, solidity and steadfastness of purpose, the tranquil performance of tiresome and disagreeable duties, homely perseverance, are not the things which are regarded as supreme in the ideal of the school; so that the fear which is the shadow of sensitive and imaginative natures is turned into the wrong channels, and becomes a mere dread of doing the unpopular and unimpressive thing, or a craven determination not to be found out. And the dread of being obscure and unacceptable is what haunts the minds of boys brought up on these ambitious and compet.i.tive lines, rather than the fear which is the beginning of wisdom.
VIII
FEARS OF YOUTH
The fears of youth are as a rule just the terrors of self-consciousness and shyness. They are a very irrational thing, something purely instinctive and of old inheritance. How irrational they are is best proved by the fact that shyness is caused mostly by the presence of strangers; there are many young people who are bashful, awkward, and tongue-tied in the presence of strangers, whose tremors wholly disappear in the family circle. If these were rational fears, they might be caused by the consciousness of the inspection and possible disapproval of those among whom one lives, and whose annoyance and criticism might have unpleasant practical effects. Yet they are caused often by the presence of those whose disapproval is not of the smallest consequence, those, in fact, whom one is not likely to see again. One must look then for the cause of this, not in the fact that one"s awkwardness and inefficiency is likely to be blamed by those of one"s own circle, but simply in the terror of the unknown and the unfamiliar.
It is probably therefore an old inherited instinct, coming from a time when the sight of a stranger might contain in it a menace of some hostile usage. If one questions a shy boy or girl as to what it is they are afraid of in the presence of strangers, they are quite unable to answer. They are not afraid of anything that will be said or done; and yet they will have become intensely conscious of their own appearance and movements and dress, and will be quite unable to command themselves. That it is a thing which can be easily cured is obvious from the fact which I often observed when I was a schoolmaster, that as a rule the boys who came from houses where there was much entertaining, and a constant coming and going of guests, very rarely suffered from such shyness. They had got used to the fact that strangers could be depended upon to be kind and friendly, and instead of looking upon a new person as a possible foe, they regarded him as a probable friend.
I often think that parents do not take enough trouble in this respect to make children used to strangers. What often happens is that parents are themselves shy and embarra.s.sed in the presence of strangers, and when they notice that their children suffer from the same awkwardness, they criticise them afterwards, partly because they are vexed at their own clumsy performance; and thus the shyness is increased, because the child, in addition to his sense of shyness before strangers, has in the background of his mind the feeling that any mauvaise honte that he may display may he commented upon afterwards. No exhibition of shyness on the part of a boy or girl should ever be adverted upon by parents. They should take for granted that no one is ever willingly shy, and that it is a misery which all would avoid if they could. It is even better to allow children considerable freedom of speech with strangers, than to repress and silence them. Of course impertinence and unpleasant comments, such as children will sometimes make on the appearance or manners of strangers, must be checked, but it should be on the grounds of the unpleasantness of such remarks, and not on the ground of forwardness. On the other hand, all attempts on the part of a child to be friendly and courteous to strangers should be noted and praised; a child should be encouraged to look upon itself as an integral part of a circle, and not as a silent and lumpish auditor.
Probably too there are certain physical and psychological laws, which we do not at all understand, which account for the curious subjective effects which certain people have at close quarters; there is something hypnotic and mesmeric about the glance of certain eyes; and there is in all probability a curious blending of mental currents in an a.s.sembly of people, which is not a mere fancy, but a very real physical fact.
Personalities radiate very real and unmistakable influences, and probably the undercurrent of thought which happens to be in one"s mind when one is with others has an effect, even if one says or does nothing to indicate one"s preoccupation. A certain amount of this comes from an unconscious inference on the part of the recipients. We often augur, without any very definite rational process, from the facial expressions, gestures, movements, tones of others, what their frame of mind is. But I believe that there is a great deal more than that. We must all know that when we are with friends to whose moods and emotions we are attuned, there takes place a singular degree of thought-transference, quite apart from speech. I had once a great friend with whom I was accustomed to spend much time tete-a-tete. We used to travel together and spend long periods, day after day, in close conjunction, often indeed sharing the same bedroom. It became a matter at first of amus.e.m.e.nt and interest, but afterwards an accepted fact, that we could often realise, even after a long silence, in what direction the other"s thought was travelling. "How did you guess I was thinking of that?" would be asked. To which the reply was, "I did not guess--I knew." On the other hand I have an old and familiar friend, whom I know well and regard with great affection, but whose presence, and particularly a certain fixity of glance, often, even now, causes me a curious subjective disturbance which is not wholly pleasant, a sense of some odd psychical control which is not entirely agreeable.
I have another friend who is the most delightful and easy company in the world when we are, alone together; but he is a sensitive and highly-strung creature, much affected by personal influences, and when I meet him in the company of other people he is often almost unrecognisable. His mind becomes critical, combative, acrid; he does not say what he means, he is touched by a vague excitement, and there pa.s.ses over him an unnatural sort of brilliance, of a hard and futile kind, which makes him sacrifice consideration and friendliness to the instinctive desire to produce an effect and to score a point. I sometimes actually detest him when he is one of a circle. I feel inclined to say to him, "If only you could let your real self appear, and drop this tiresome posturing and fencing, you would be as delightful as you are to me when I am alone with you; but this hectic t.i.ttering and feverish jocosity is not only not your real self, but it gives others an impression of a totally unreal and not very agreeable person." But, alas, this is just the sort of thing one cannot say to a friend!
As one goes on in life, this terrible and disconcerting shyness of youth disappears. We begin to realise, with a wholesome loss of vanity and conceit, how very little people care or even notice how we are dressed, how we look, what we say. We learn that other people are as much preoccupied with their thoughts and fancies and reflections as we are with our own. We realise that if we are anxious to produce an agreeable impression, we do so far more by being interested and sympathetic, than by attempting a brilliance which we cannot command.
We perceive that other people are not particularly interested in our crude views, nor very grateful for the expression of them. We acquire the power of combination and co-operation, in losing the desire for splendour and domination. We see that people value ease and security, more than they admire originality and fantastic contradiction. And so we come to the blessed time when, instead of reflecting after a social occasion whether we did ourselves justice, we begin to consider rather the impression we have formed of other personalities.
I believe that we ought to have recourse to very homely remedies indeed for combating shyness. It is of no use to try to console and distract ourselves with lofty thoughts, and to try to keep eternity and the hopes of man in mind. We so become only more self-conscious and superior than ever. The fact remains that the shyness of youth causes agonies both of antic.i.p.ation and retrospect; if one really wishes to get rid of it, the only way is to determine to get used somehow to society, and not to endeavour to avoid it; and as a practical rule to make up one"s mind, if possible, to ask people questions, rather than to meditate impressive answers. Asking other people questions about things to which they are likely to know the answers is one of the shortest cuts to popularity and esteem. It is wonderful to reflect how much distress personal bashfulness causes people, how much they would give to be rid of it, and yet how very little trouble they ever take to acquiring any method of dealing with the difficulty. I see a good deal of undergraduates, and am often aware that they are friendly and responsive, but without any power of giving expression to it. I sometimes see them suffering acutely from shyness before my eyes. But a young man who can bring himself to ask a perfectly simple question about some small matter of common interest is comparatively rare; and yet it is generally the simplest way out of the difficulty.
IX
FEARS OF MIDDLE AGE
Now with all the tremors, reactions, glooms, shadows, and despairs of youth--it is easy enough to forget them, but they were there--goes a power of lifting and lighting up in a moment at a chord of music, a glance, a word, the song of a bird, the scent of a flower, a flying sunburst, which fills life up like a cup with bubbling and sparkling liquor.
"My soul, be patient! Thou shalt find A little matter mend all this!"
And that is the part of youth which we remember, till on looking back it seems like a time of wandering with like-hearted comrades down some sweet-scented avenue of golden sun and green shade. Our memory plays us beautifully false--splendide mendax--till one wishes sometimes that old and wise men, retelling the story of their life, could recall for the comfort of youth some part of its languors and mischances, its bitter jealousies, its intense and poignant sense of failure.
And then in a moment the door of life opens. One day I was an irresponsible, pleasure-loving, fantastic youth, and a week later I was, or it seemed to me that I was, a professional man with all the cares of a pedagogue upon my back. It filled me at first, I remember, with a gleeful amazement, to find myself in the desk, holding forth, instead of on the form listening. It seemed delicious at first to have the power of correcting and slashing exercises, and placing boys in order, instead of being corrected and examined, and competing for a place. It was a solemn game at the outset. Then came the other side of the picture. One"s pupils were troublesome, they did badly in examinations, they failed unaccountably; and one had a glimpse too of some of the tragedies of school life. Almost insensibly I became aware that I had a task to perform, that my mistakes involved boys in disaster, that I had the anxious care of other destinies; and thus, almost before I knew it, came a new cloud on the horizon, the cloud of anxiety. I could not help seeing that I had mismanaged this boy and misdirected that; that one could not treat them as ingenuous and lively playthings, but that what one said and did set a mark which perhaps could not be effaced. Gradually other doubts and problems made themselves felt. I had to administer a system of education in which I did not wholly believe; I saw little by little that the rigid old system of education was a machine which, if it made a highly accomplished product out of the best material, wasted an enormous amount of boyish interest and liveliness, and stultified the feebler sort of mind. Then came the care of a boarding-house, close relations with parents, a more real knowledge of the infinite levity of boy nature. I became mixed up with the politics of the place, the chance of more ambitious positions floated before me; the need for tact, discretion, judiciousness, moderation, tolerance emphasized itself. I am here outlining my own experience, but it is only one of many similar experiences. I became a citizen without knowing it, and my place in the world, my status, success, all became definite things which I had to secure.
The cares, the fears, the anxieties of middle life lie for most men and women in this region; if people are healthy and active, they generally arrive at a considerable degree of equanimity; they do not antic.i.p.ate evil, and they take the problems of life cheerfully enough as they come; but yet come they do, and too many men and women are tempted to throw overboard scornfully and disdainfully the dreams of youth as a luxury which they cannot afford to indulge, and to immerse themselves in practical cares, month after month, with perhaps the hope of a fairly careless and idle holiday at intervals. What I think tends to counteract this for many people is love and marriage, the wonder and amazement of having children of their own, and all the offices of tenderness that grow up naturally beside their path. But this again brings a whole host of fears and anxieties as well--arrangements, ways and means, household cares, illnesses, the homely stuff of life, much of it enjoyed, much of it cheerfully borne, and often very bravely and gallantly endured. It is out of this simple material that life has to be constructed. But there is a twofold danger in all this. There is a danger of cynicism, the frame of mind in which a man comes to face little worries as one might put up an umbrella in a shower--"Thou know"st "tis common!" Out of that grows up a rude dreariness, a philosophy which has nothing dignified about it, but is merely a recognition of the fact that life is a poor affair, and that one cannot hope to have things to one"s mind. Or there is a dull frame of mind which implies a meek resignation, a sense of disappointment about life, borne with a mournful patience, a sense of one"s sphere having somehow fallen short of one"s deserts. This produces the grumpy paterfamilias who drowses over a paper or grumbles over a pipe; such a man is inimitably depicted by Mr. Wells in Marriage. That sort of ugly disillusionment, that publicity of disappointment, that frank disregard of all concerns except one"s own, is one of the most hideous features of middle-cla.s.s life, and it is rather characteristically English. It sometimes conceals a robust good sense and even kindliness; but it is a base thing at best, and seems to be the shadow of commercial prosperity. Yet it at least implies a certain st.u.r.diness of character, and a stubborn belief in one"s own merits which is quite impervious to the lessons of experience. On sensitive and imaginative people the result of the professional struggle with life, the essence of which is often social pretentiousness, is different. It ends in a mournful and distracted kind of fatigue, a tired sort of padding along after life, a timid bewilderment at conditions which one cannot alter, and which yet have no dignity or seemliness.
What is there that is wrong with all this? The cause is easy enough to a.n.a.lyse. It is the result of a system which develops conventional, short-sighted, complicated households, averse to effort, fond of pleasure, and with tastes which are expensive without being refined.
The only cure would seem to be that men and women should be born different, with simple active generous natures; it is easy to say that!
But the worst of the situation is that the sordid ba.n.a.lity and ugly tragedy of their lot do not dawn on the people concerned. Greedy vanity in the more robust, lack of moral courage and firmness in the more sensitive, with a social organisation that aims at a surface dignity and a cheap showiness, are the ingredients of this devil"s cauldron.
The worst of it is that it has no fine elements at all. There is a n.o.bility about real tragedy which evokes a quality of pa.s.sionate and sincere emotion. There is something essentially exalted about a fierce resistance, a desperate failure. But this abject, listless dreariness, which can hardly be altered or expressed, this miserable floating down the muddy current, where there is no sharp repentance or fiery battling, nothing but a mean abandonment to a meaningless and unintelligible destiny, seems to have in it no seed of recovery at all.
The dark shadow of professional anxiety is that it has no tragic quality; it is like ploughing on day by day through endless mud-flats.
One does not feel, in the presence of sharp suffering or bitter loss, that they ought not to exist. They are there, stern, implacable, august; stately enemies, great combatants. There is a significance about their very awfulness. One may fall before them, but they pa.s.s like a great express train, roaring, flashing, things deliberately and intently designed; but these dull failures which seem not the outgrowth of anyone"s fierce longing or wilful pa.s.sion, but of everyone"s laziness and greediness and stupidity, how is one to face them? It is the helpless death of the quagmire, not the death of the fight or the mountain-top. Is there, we ask ourselves, anything in the mind of G.o.d which corresponds to comfort-loving vulgarity, if so strong and yet so stagnant a stream can overflow the world? The bourgeois ideal! One would rather have tyranny or savagery than anything so gross and smug.
And yet we see high-spirited and ardent husbands drawn into this by obstinate and vulgar-minded wives. We see fine-natured and sensitive women engulfed in it by selfish and ambitious husbands. The tendency is awfully and horribly strong, and it wins, not by open combat, but by secret and dull persistence. And one sees too--I have seen it many times--children of delicate and eager natures, who would have flourished and expanded in more generous air, become conventional and commonplace and petty, concerned about knowing the right people and doing the right things, and making the same stupid and paltry show, which deceives no one.
There is nothing for it but independence and simplicity and, perhaps best of all, a love of beauty. William Morris a.s.serted pa.s.sionately enough that art was the only cure for all this dreariness--the love of beautiful sounds and sights and words; and I think that is true, if it be further extended to a perception of the quality of beauty in the conduct and relations of life. For those are the cheap and reasonable pleasures of life, accessible to all; and if men and women cared for work first and the decent simplicities of wholesome living, and could further find their pleasure in art, in whatever form, then I believe that many of these fears and anxieties, so maiming and impairing to all that is fine in life, would vanish quietly out of being. The thing seems both beautiful and possible, because one knows of households where it is so, and where it grows up naturally and easily enough. I know households of both kinds--where on the one hand the standard is ambitious and mean, where the inmates calculate everything with a view to success, or rather to producing an impression of success; and there all talk and intercourse is an unreal thing, not the outflow of natural interests and pleasant tastes, but a sham culture and a refinement that is only pursued because it is the right sort of surface to present to the world. One submits to it with boredom, one leaves it with relief.
They have got the right people together, they have shown that they can command their attendance; it is all ceremony and waste.
And then I know households where one sees in the books, the pictures, the glances, the gestures, the movements of the inmates, a sort of grace and delicacy which comes of really caring about things that are beautiful and fine. Sincere things are simply said, humour bubbles up and breaks in laughter; one feels that light is thrown on a hundred topics and facts and personalities. The whole of life then becomes a garden teeming with strange and wonderful secrets, and influences that flash and radiate, pa.s.sing on into some mysterious and fragrant gloom.
Everything there seems charged with significance and charm; there are no pretences--there are preferences, prejudices if you will; but there is tolerance and sympathy, and a desire to see the point of view of others. The effect of such an atmosphere is to set one wondering how one has contrived to miss the sense of so much that is beautiful and interesting in life, and sends one away longing to perceive more, and determined if possible to interpret life more truly and more graciously.
X
FEARS OF AGE
And then age creeps on; and that brings fears of its own, and fears that are all the more intolerable because they are not definite fears at all, merely a loss of nervous vigour, which attaches itself to the most trivial detail and magnifies it into an insuperable difficulty. A friend of mine who was growing old once confided to me that foreign travel, which used to be such a delight to him, was now getting burdensome. "It is all right when I have once started," he said, "but for days before I am the prey of all kinds of apprehensions." "What sort of apprehensions?" I said. He laughed, and replied, "Well, it is almost too absurd to mention, but I find myself oppressed with anxiety for weeks beforehand as to whether, when we get to Calais, we shall find places in the train." And I remember, too, how a woman friend of mine once told me that she called at the house of an elderly couple in London, people of rank and wealth. Their daughter met her in the drawing-room and said, "I am glad you are come--you may be able to cheer my mother up. We are going down to-morrow to our place in the country; the servants and the luggage went this morning, and my mother and father are to drive down this afternoon--my mother is very low about it." "What is the matter?" said my friend. The daughter replied, "She is afraid that they will not get there in time!" "In time for what?" said my friend, thinking that there was some important engagement. "In time for tea!" said the daughter gravely.