The Book of Months

by E. F. Benson

I wonder if any of those who perchance read this know of any formula, Christian, pagan, even Christian Scientist, which insures, or has any chance of insuring, decent habit of body or mind during an attack of lumbago. I have been trying my best in all three; that is to say, as a Christian I have tried to be cheerful, to wear a helpful sort of smile, and have said to myself, ‘Think of the early Christian martyrs, the boiling oil, and the lions, and those horrors.’ But myself has said to me, ‘That was for a good cause; besides, they soon died.’ Now, lumbago does not kill anybody, and, as far as I am aware, it is an invention of the devil. Thus Christianity failed to help me.

Then I tried paganism. In other words, I swore. It did not do the slightest good.

Then I tried Christian Science. I said: ‘There is no such thing as pain—ow!—-- Moral mind refuses to recognise the existence of mortal mind. There is nothing material; all material is mortal mind, and there isn’t any. Therefore I have no back, and consequently no small of it. It is all a false claim. Thus, as there isn’t any, it is perfectly ridiculous to think I have a shooting pain there, for there is no such thing as either (i.) the small of my back, (ii.) pain, either there or anywhere else. I will therefore smile, and get up with a firm, brisk movement.’ I did.

Oh, Mrs. Eddy! The false claim was more than usually clamant.

In fact, for two days I have felt myself such a martyr that I am now, happily, beginning to feel that I cannot possibly be a martyr at all. Nobody can conceivably have suffered such agonies as I have been thinking I suffered and survived. All the same——

I was riding down Davies Street on my bicycle two mornings ago, in the very best of health and spirits. Where Grosvenor Street crosses it, a fool of a cabman (though I had rung my bell) drove slowly across my path, and I had to dismount. I exchanged a pleasantry or two with him of a bitingly high-spirited nature, and essayed to get on again. At that moment, so it seemed, I was stabbed in the back, and I heard the cabman say, ‘Comin’ over me like that, and drunk at this hour of the morning’—continuing, you will have seen, our previous conversation. Bad, untrue, unkind as it was, it was the last word, and so is entitled to a certain respect. But next time I see No. 24,304 I will see if I cannot give him lumbago. (This, evidently, is the pagan mood returning.)

Since that moment the joy of life has vanished. It—I cannot write the word again, and I will only remark that it sounds like a second-rate Spanish watering-place—has known my down-sitting and mine uprising, and has smirched my days. I have eaten no meat, I have drunk no wine, I have been incapable of taking part in all social and pleasant affairs. I was told that exercise was good, and went to skate at Niagara, and retired after one stroke with a cold-dewed brow. I was told a Turkish bath was good, and caught a cold in the head on the top of it. I was told not to think about it—this was the Christian Science treatment, more or less—and the effect was that the Spanish watering-place thought the more of me. Only two hours ago, dressing for dinner—I dined alone in my horrid room—I dropped a sovereign on the floor, seriously considered whether it was worth picking up, and decided it was not. At that moment any tramp could have had it. Then by pure chance my servant came in, and I regained it. I was told to take Lithia Varalettes: the only effect, as far as I am aware, is that I am lowered for life. I even went so far as to see a doctor, who asked me whether I had done anything which might have produced a chill. Thank goodness, I had the face to say ‘No.’ In consequence he talked of the functions of certain internal organs; into these regions I did not attempt to follow him.

Now, all that I have written with regard to the second-rate Spanish watering-place is literally true. All the things which I am conscious of enjoying every day, such as reading, food, silly conversation, proper wine, violent physical exertion, cold baths, grew pale or impossible. But looking back even from the middle of it all—for to-night it is, if anything, a little more acute—I begin to see that nothing on the whole matters less than physical pain. Once before in my life, when I was eight years old, I had bad earache, so my family assure me. Of that I can remember nothing whatever, except that in consequence I went to stay near Dartmouth for change of air. But of Dartmouth I remember much. There was an aloe in the garden, and one of its great fibrous leaves projected across the path, and was cut off. This had to be done by a strong gardener with a saw. A leaf cut by a saw! There were also rock pools in the estuary, with strawberry anemones—so we called them—waving in the water; steamers passed, visible through a telescope, that would go straight on, self-contained, unhelped till they reached America. Ruta-muraria, a small mean fern (I cannot even remember hearing its name except then), grew in crevices in the garden wall; it was rare, and began and ended my collection of ferns. That is what remains to me of the earache. Once again I had a tooth out. That was half a crown.

And now I have lumbago, and from analogy I see that a fortnight hence, and a week hence (I hope), and a year hence, I shall remember nothing of it, except that for a few days I stopped indoors mostly, wrote notes of regret, and read a variety of delightful books. ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ I have read; I have quaked with Hyde, and shuddered with Jekyll: I have been down the Sambre canalized; I have been sucked under the fallen tree on the Oise; I have understood why Mr. Crummles deluded himself into thinking the Phenomenon was a phenomenon; I have admired the moral valour of Mrs. Nickleby when she convinced herself about the previous sanity of the gentleman in small-clothes and gray stockings; I have killed the Red Dhole from the Deccan, and have sat (a remarkable feat) with Princess Napraxine in a temperature of over 130° Fahrenheit. But for the lumbago, I should probably have done none of these delightful things. Also I have learned (I shall have to learn it again and again) that the moment is always tolerable. Even this tiny pin-prick of a pain can teach one that. ‘Circumscribe the moment’ as Marcus Aurelius said. You can get along all right for the moment (unless you die, and then the trouble is solved): why think of the moments to come? When they come, deal with them. And I hope that if I ever suffer from carcinomato-cerebrospinal sciatica, I may think of that.

Besides—I must justify my conscience with respect to the doctor—I do not think it proved that my night adventure had anything to do with the lumbago. Thus, it would have been unfair to cast it, like bread on the waters, to a suspicious physician. And even if it had, it was well worth it. I would do it again to-morrow night, if the mood only could come again.