Life in the sick-room

by Harriet Martineau

There is some set-off to the winter privileges I have spoken of, in an occasional day of storms; perhaps two or three in each season. These are very dreary while they last; though, considering the reaction, the next fine day, salutary on the whole. On these days, the horror of the winds is great. One’s very bed shakes under them; and some neighbour’s house is pretty sure to be unroofed. The window-cushions must be removed, because nothing can keep out the rain, not even the ugly array of cloths laid over all the sashes. The rain and spray seem to ooze through the very glass. The wet comes through to the ceiling, however perfect the tiling. The splash and dash against the panes are wearing to the nerves. Balls of foam drive, like little balloons, over the garden; and, sooner or later in the day, we see the ominous rush of men and boys to the rocks and the ridge, and we know that there is mischief. We see either a vessel labouring over the bar, amidst an universal expectation that she will strike; or we see, by a certain slope of the masts, that she is actually on the rocks; or she drives wilfully over to the sands, in spite of all the efforts of steam-tugs and her own crew; and then come forth the life-boats, which we cannot help watching, but which look as if they must themselves capsize, and increase the misery instead of preventing it. Then, when the crew are taken from the rigging, and carried up to the port, ensues the painful sight of the destruction of the vessel; parties, or files of women, boys, and men, passing along the ridge or the sands with the spoils; bundles of sailcloth, armsful of spars, shoulder-loads of planks; while, in the midst, there is sure to be a report, false or true, of a vessel having foundered, somewhere near at hand. On such days, it is a relief to bar the shutters at length, and close the curtains, and light the lamp, and, if the wind will allow, to forget the history of the day. Still more thankful are we to go to bed—I can hardly say to rest—for invalids are liable to a return in the night of the painful impressions of noon, with exaggerations, unless the agitation has been such as to wear them out with fatigue. But, as I said, such days are very few. Two or three such in a year, and two or three weeks of shifting sea-fog in spring, are nearly all the drawbacks we have; nearly the only obscurations of Nature’s beauties.

How different are “the seasons, and their change,” to us, and to the busy inhabitants of towns! How common is it for townspeople to observe, that the shortest day is past without their remembering it was so near! or the equinox, or even the longest day! Whereas, we sick watchers have, as it were, a property in the changes of the seasons, and even of the moon. It is a good we would not sell for any profit, to say to ourselves, at the end of March, that the six months of longest days are now before us; that we are entering upon a region of light evenings, with their soft lulling beauties; and of short nights, when, late as we go to rest, we can almost bid defiance to horrors, and the depressions of darkness. There is a monthly spring of the spirits too, when the young moon appears again, and we have the prospect of three weeks’ pleasure in her course, if the sky be propitious. I have often smiled in detecting in myself this sense of property in such shows; in becoming aware of a sort of resentment, of feeling of personal grievance, when the sky is not propitious; when I have no benefit of the moon for several nights together, through the malice of the clouds, or the sea-haze in spring. But, now I have learned by observation where and when to look for the rising moon, what a superb pleasure it is to lie watching the sea-line, night after night, unwilling to shut the window, to leave the window-couch, to let the lamp be lighted, till the punctual and radiant blessing comes, answering to my hope, surpassing my expectation, and appearing to greet me with express and consolatory intent! Should I actually have quitted life without this set of affections, if I had not been ill? I believe it. And, moreover, I believe that my interest in these spectacles of Nature has created a new regard to them in others. I see a looking out for the rising moon among the neighbours, who have possessed the same horizon-line all their lives, but did not know its value till they saw what it is to me. I observe the children from the cottage swinging themselves up to obtain a peep over the palings, when they see me on the watch in the window; and an occasional peep at a planet, through my telescope, appears to dress the heavens in quite a new light to such as venture to take a look.

They do not know, however, anything of my most thrilling experience of these things—for it happens when they are all at rest. I keep late hours, (for the sake of husbanding my seasons of ease;) and now and then I have nerve enough to look abroad for my last vision of the day, an hour after midnight, when the gibbous moon,—having forsaken the sea,—slowly surmounts the priory ruins on the high rock, appearing in the black-blue heaven like a quite different planet from that which I have been watching,—and from that which I shall next greet, a slender crescent in the light western sky, just after sunset. To go from this spectacle to one’s bed is to recover for the hour one’s health of soul, at least: and the remembrance of such a thrill is a cordial for future sickly hours which strengthens by keeping.

I have a sense of property too in the larks which nestle in all the furrows of the down. It is a disquietude to see them start up and soar, with premature joy, on some mild January day, before our snows and storms have begun, when I detect in myself a feeling of duty to the careless creatures,—a longing to warn them, by my superior wisdom, that they must not reckon yet on spring. And on April mornings, when the shadows are strong in the hollows, and some neighbour’s child sends me in a handful of primroses from the fields, I look forth, as for my due, to see the warblers spring and fall, and to catch their carol above the hum and rejoicing outcry of awakening Nature. If the yellow butterflies do not come to my flower-box in the sunny noon, I feel myself wronged. But they do come,—and so do the bees: and there are times when the service is too importunate,—when the life and light are more than I can bear, and I draw down the blind, and shut myself in with my weakness, and with thoughts more abstract. But when, in former days, had simple, natural influences such power over me? How is it that the long-suffering sick, already deprived of so much, are ever needlessly debarred from natural and renovating pleasures like these?

Watch the effect upon them of a picture, or a print of a breezy tree,—of a gushing stream,—of a group of children swinging on a gate in a lane. If they do not (because they cannot) express in words the thirst of their souls for these images, observe how their eyes wistfully follow the portfolio or volume of plates which ministers this scenery to them. Observe how, in looking at portraits, their notice fastens at once on any morsel of back-ground which presents any rural objects. Observe the sad fondness with which they cherish flowers,—how reluctantly it is admitted that they fade. Mark the value of presents of bulbs,—above the most splendid array of plants in flower, which kind people love to send to sick prisoners. Plants in bloom are beautiful and glorious; but the pleasure to a prisoner is to see the process of growth. It is less the bright and fragrant flower that the spirit longs for than the spectacle of vegetation.

Blessings on the inventors and improvers of fern-houses! We feel towards them a mingling of the gratitude due to physicians, and appropriate to the Good People. We find under their glass-bells fairy gifts, and prescriptions devised with consummate skill. In towns, let the sick prisoner have a fern-house as a compensation for rural pleasures; and in the country as an addition to them.

Blessings on the writers of voyages and travels; and not the less for their not having contemplated our case in describing what they have seen! A school-boy’s or a soldier’s eagerness after voyages and travels is nothing to that of an invalid. We are insatiable in regard to this kind of book. To us it is scenery, exercise, fresh air. The new knowledge is quite a secondary consideration. We are weary of the aspect of a chest of drawers,—tired of certain marks on the wall, and of many unchangeable features of our apartment; so that when a morning comes, and our eyes open on these objects, and we foresee the seasons of pain or bodily distress, or mental depression, which we know must come round as regularly as the hours, we loathe the prospect of our day. Things clear up a little when we rise, and we think we ought to be writing a letter to such-a-one, which has been on our conscience for some time. While the paper and ink are being brought, we put out our hand for that book,—arrived or laid in sight this morning. It is a Journal of Travels to the Polar Sea, or over the Passes of the Alps,—or in the Punjâb,—or in Central or South America. Here the leaves turn over rapidly;—there we linger, and read one paragraph again and again, dwelling fondly on some congregation of images, to be seen by our bodily eyes no more:—on we go till stopped by the fluttering and distress,—the familiar pain, or the leaden down-sinking of the spirits, and wonder that our trying time has come so soon, before the letter is written. It has not come soon;—it is only that some hours of our penance have been beguiled,—that we have been let out of our prison for a holiday, and are now brought back to our schooling. But the good does not end here. We see everything with different eyes,—the chest of drawers,—the walls,—the bookshelves, and the pattern of the rug. We have been seeing the Northern Lights and icebergs: we have been watching for avalanches, or for the sun-rise from Etna, or gazing over the Pampas, or peering through the primeval forest; and fragments of these visions freshen the very daylight to us.

Blessings, above all, on Christopher North! We cannot but wonder whether he ever cast a thought upon such as we are when breasting the breeze on the moors, or pressing up the mountain-side, or watching beside the trout-stream; or summoning the fowls of heaven, and passing them in review into his Aviary;—or, especially, whether he had any thought of recreating us when he sent forth his “Recreations” within reach of our hands. If he did not think of sick prisoners in issuing his vital, breezy book, he has missed a pleasure worthy of a heart like his. He pities the town-dwellers who might relish nature and will not: but his pity for them must be destitute of the zest which pity derives from a consciousness of helpfulness. He can hardly help those to country privileges who will not help themselves. But has he remembered the chamber-dwellers,—the involuntary plodders within narrow bounds,—few in comparison with the other class, it is true, but, if estimated by emotion—by experience in which his heart can sympathise, not less entitled to his regards?

Whether he thought of us or not, he has recreated us. Whether he is now conscious of the fact or not, his spirit has come, many a time while his tired body slept, and opened our prison-doors, and led us a long flight over mountain and moor, lake and lea, and dropped us again on our beds, refreshed and soothed, to dream at least of having felt the long-lost sensation of health once more. Blessings on him then, as the kindest of the friendly ghosts who use well their privilege of passing in and out of all secret and sorrowful places, as they go to and fro on the earth! If he has ministered to us with more or less deliberate intent, he needs not to be told with what heartiness we drink his health in the first full draught of the spring west wind—how cordially we pledge him in the sparkling thunder-shower, or the brimming harvest-moon.

O! if every one who sorrows for us would help us to assert our claim to Nature’s nursing, we should soon have our solace and our due. We have not all the vigour and spirit,—nor even the inclination, in our morbid state, to turn our faces to the fountain of solace—the fresh waters which cool the spirit when fretted by its tormenting companion. We cannot infallibly keep alive in our weak selves the love of Nature which would lead us to repose ourselves upon her, and forget the evils which even she cannot cure. But this should be done for us. When our sentence is passed, clear and irreversible, the next thing is to make it as lenient as possible in its operation; and especially by seeing that it is through no oversight that, if the outward man must decay, the inward man is not renewed day by day. This renewal, say some, must be by grace. Well, Nature is God’s grace, meant to abound to all,—and not least to those whom, by his chastening, he may be humbly supposed to love.