Canada and the States

by Sir E. W. Watkin

"The first explosion of the conspiracy laid me fainting at the desk. A sort of truce followed this. I consented for a few days to the terms of the belligerents.

I rested. But resting, I was restless. Unfit to work, I was tormented by an unnatural desire for action. Thus I roused myself early—rode to the office (for I was too weak to walk), buried myself amidst my letters, reports and accounts—and rushed on with the day's duties as if all the work of the world had to be done in that one day, and that one day was the last. But an hour or two usually settled the contest. Head swam, heart beat, fluttered, stopped, struggled,—knees knocked together,—and out oozed that cold clammy sweat which reminds one of weakness and the grave. So with a pale face, anxious eye, and hollow cheek, I had to quit the desk again and ride mournfully home, the remainder of the day being consumed in a rest, which only increased my melancholy feelings, because it made me more than ever conscious of my feebleness and excitability.

"But by great care and management of myself, by desperate strivings to get a little health, I did improve. Two hours a day at work, two or three times a week, became two or three hours every working day of the week. Then, as a wonderful achievement, at last I managed to endure half a day's business at a time. And at the end of some months (one beautiful day in August, bless the sunlight) I actually did a whole day's work! And so, at last, I got before the wind sufficiently to engage again in the competition of business life, with some credit and success. None of those, however, with whom I had to compete, and to whom work (as it should be to every man in health) was easy and pleasant, knew the cost of many of my weary days and nights of labour, or the nervous suffering and physical weakness; in spite of which I endeavoured always to meet my compeers in the working world with pleasantry, or at least with a smile.

"I had many relapses—but I hardly ever laid up for more than an hour or two. In these cases a loll, or rather a recumbent pant, upon the sofa, and a dose of some bitter tonic, or a strong glass of brandy, usually brought down the palpitation, and enabled me to set to work again as if nothing had happened. Indeed, as the eels get accustomed to skinning, so I got used to all this; and it became at last an old habit, and bearable.

"Thus I went on from 1846 until 1850. Four years of incessant and various labour, relieved only by the confidence and appreciation of those who directed, and the good feeling of those who were engaged, like me, in the executive management of the great corporation with which, during this (to me) memorable period of my life, I was connected. I need not repeat how thoroughly I was sustained and comforted by the assiduity of one of the best of women. I tried to thank her by making light of my many miseries.

"This sort of life was, however, too great and continued a strain for a rickety machine to last. And at times, when I gave way to those strange thoughts about the use and end of human existence, which crowd upon the mind in nervous disease—it seemed to me as if I could weigh and measure the particles of vitality from my daily diminishing store— expended in each unnatural effort of labour—as if every stroke of my business craft represented so much of that daily shortening distance which lay between me and the end. I felt the price I was paying for the privilege of labour, and for its remuneration. But I thought, ever, of my wife and little babies, and the thought roused me to a kind of desperation, and made me feel for the time as if I could trample weakness under foot, and tear out, break in pieces, and cast away those miserable, oversensitive organs, which chained, cramped, and hindered me. I like work, too. And I had a sort of shame of confessing myself incapable. I morbidly derided the sympathising regret likely to be shown by my friends, and I pictured the moribund predictions likely to follow a temporary desertion of my post.

"But the estates of my mortal realm stepped in again.

"At the end of a time of hard, anxious, and difficult labours, I went down into the country on business, and was seized, in the streets of a little town, with violent palpitation, and with faintness. I had to take refuge in a shop; to resort to brandy, physic, and a doctor; and, at the close of a day's confinement to my room, to sneak back to London, as miserable as any poor dog, who, having run about all day with a tin kettle at his tail, is, at last, released, to go limping and exhausted home.

"I struggled with this, too, and for some time would not 'give in.' But my face, now, would not answer to my will. It would look pale and miserable. My friends began to commiserate me. This was dreadful. So I at last yielded to the combined movement, of my own convictions of necessity, the wishes of my friends, the orders of my physician, and, most effective of all, the kind commands of one whom I deem it an honour, as it is a necessity, to obey in most things—I went away from business. I went away without hope. I did not expect cure. I believed functional derangement had become, at last, organic disease—and that my days were numbered. I tried the water cure, homoeopathy, allopathy— everything. Some day, I must recount my consultations, on the same Sunday, with Sir James Clarke, Her Majesty's physician, and Dr. Quin, homoeopathist, jester, and, as some said, quack."

At the end of five years of my suffering, I went to America. The trip did me good. It did not cure me. I wrote a book—a very little one. Half-a-crown was its price. The present First Lord of the Treasury, Mr. W. H. Smith, published it. All the edition was sold. I did not venture another. I will quote some portions of it, as a preface to what is to follow.