“But few that court retirement are aware
Of half the toils they must encounter there.”
Cowper.
“We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle.”
Johnson.
I desire to notice, very briefly, some perils and pains of our condition,—briefly premising that, as only the initiated can fully sympathise, it will be sufficient, and therefore best, to indicate rather than expatiate.
We are in ever-growing danger of becoming too abstract,—of losing our sympathy with passing emotions,—and particularly with those shared by numbers. There was a time when we went to public worship with others,—to the theatre,—to public meetings; when we were present at picnic parties and other festivals, and heard general conversation every day of our lives. Now, we are too apt to forget those times. The danger is, lest we should get to despise them, and to fancy ourselves superior to our former selves, because now we feel no social transports.
A lesser danger is that of fearing to experience emotions. If a barrel-organ makes itself heard from the street,—or a salute, on anniversaries, from the castle,—or a crowd gathers on the ridge to enjoy a regatta,—what a strange thrill comes over us! What a shrinking from being moved! How we wonder when we recal some discourse, whereby the voice of the preacher roused the souls of a multitude at once,—or when we awake within us the echoes of some Easter anthem, or of the Hallelujah Chorus in Westminster Abbey,—or when we image to ourselves a crowded theatre, when one tragic fear or horror bound together all the spirits that came for pleasure! When we try to imagine a flow of talk in which minds uttered themselves without thought of individuals;—when we revive these scenes of our former lives, we gasp for breath,—we wonder what we could have been made of to endure the excitement;—we are certain that we should die on the spot if we encountered it now. It might be so: but we must remember that our present condition is the morbid one, and not the former. We must keep up our sympathies, as far as we may, by cherishing such festal feelings as may survive; and ever remembering that our grave, and solid, and abstract life is adapted to only a portion of our nature, and that our exclusion from spontaneous emotions,—from all experience of sympathetic transport,—is a heavy misfortune, under which it behoves us to humble ourselves.
Those of us are well off who have, like myself, the advantage of some outward symbol which serves as communication between them and the world. Flags are my resource of this kind. Little do those who hoist them imagine how a hidden invalid appropriates their signals! The Union Jack on the flag-staff, in the castle-yard, marks Sunday to me in a way I would not miss. When I look abroad on Sabbath mornings, it tells of rest and church-going; and it is a matter of serious business with me to see it brought down at sunset,—a mute token in which there is more pathos than I could tell. And then the flags on the churches of the opposite shore on festal days tell me of a stirring holiday world,—make me hear again the Park and Tower guns,—show me fireworks and illuminations, and arouse something of the hum and buzz of a gay and moving crowd. Once more, the foreign flags hoisted by ships coming into port,—mere signals for pilots in intention,—speak, unknown to any one, a world of things to me. I learned them long ago, by heart, and with my heart. When I see a foreign vessel come bounding towards the harbour, and perceive, the moment she hoists her flag, whether she has cut across from a Norway fiord, or has contested her way from the Levant, or found a path from the far Indies, or brings greetings from some familiar American port,—what a boon is that flag to me! Sometimes I point my telescope, to see the sailors’ lips move in the utterance of a foreign tongue: at all events, I see in a moment the peaks of Sulitelma or of the Andes, or the summits of the Ghauts, or tropical sands, or chilly pine forests spread before me, or palmy West Indian groves. It is morally good, and unspeakably refreshing, to have some such instrumentality of signals with the world without, as these flags are to me.
There is a corresponding danger, though a less serious one, in such sympathy as we have making us repine. Though we may go on from month to month without one momentary wish that things were otherwise with us than as they are, yet, on occasion—once, perhaps, in a year—some incident wakens a thrill of longing to be as we once were. Some notice of a concert, or a picture, brings up the associations of a London spring, with all its intellectual and social pleasures:—or the mere mention of a lane or hedge, at the moment the March sun is shining in, recals the first hunting for violets in our days of long walks:—or a foreign post-mark in autumn transports us to Alpine passes or the shores of Italian lakes; and a sickly longing for scenes we shall see no more comes over us. But the reaction is so rapid and sure, that there is little moral peril in this—only the evanescent pain, which gives place to that act of acquiescence which has in it more joy than can be gathered from all the lanes, mountains, and shores of the globe.
The occasional sense of our being too weak for the ordinary incidents of life, is strangely distressing. The cry of an infant makes us wretched for hours after, in spite of every effort of reason. I saw, through my telescope, two big boys worrying a little one, and I could not look to see the end of it. They were so far off that there was nothing to be done. The distress to me was such—the picture of the lives of the three boys was so vivid—that I felt as if I had no reason nor courage left. The same sort of distress recurred, but in a more moderate degree, when I saw a gentleman do a thing which I wish could dwell on his mind as it does upon mine. I saw, through the same telescope, a gentleman pick up from the grass, where children had been playing the moment before, under the walls of the fort, a gay harlequin—one of those toy-figures whose limbs jerk with a string. He carried it to his party, a lady and another gentleman, sitting on a bench at the top of the rocks, whose base the sea was washing. When he had shown off the jerkings of the toy sufficiently, he began to take aim with it, as if to see how far he could throw. “He never will,” thought I, “throw that toy into the sea, while there are stones lying all about within reach!” He did it! Away whirled harlequin through the air far into the sea below: and there was no appearance of any remonstrance on the part of his companions! I could not look again towards the grass, to see the misery of the little owner of the toy on finding it gone. There was no comfort in the air of genteel complacency with which the three gentry walked down from the rocks, after this magnanimous deed. How glad should I be if this page should ever meet the eye of any one of them, and strike a late remorse into them! To me the incident brought back the passions of my childhood—the shock I have never got over to this hour—on reading that too torturing story of Miss Edgeworth’s, about the footman, who “broke off all the bobbins, and put them in his pocket, rolled the weaving-pillow down the dirty lane, jumped up behind his lady’s carriage, and was out of sight in an instant.” I think these must be the words, for they burnt themselves in upon my childish brain, and have stirred me with passion many a time since; as this harlequin adventure will ever do.
Many will wonder at all this—will despise such sensitiveness to trifles, considering what deeds are done every day in the world. They do not know the pains and penalties of sickness—that is all: and it may do them no harm to learn what they are, while my fellow-sufferers may find some comfort in an honest recognition of them.