The Bed-Book of Happiness Part 20

HOBSON'S CHOICE [Sidenote: _William Hazlitt_]

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but, out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

The fields his study, nature was his book.

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and fewer enc.u.mbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for

A friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty to think, feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-s.p.a.ce to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation--

May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd--

that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road[8] before me and a three hours' march to dinner--and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud I plunge into my past being, and revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native sh.o.r.e. Then long-forgotten things, like "sunken wrack and sumless treasuries," burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations, ant.i.theses, argument, and a.n.a.lysis better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be without them. "Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!" I have just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me "very stuff o' the conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald? Yet if I were to explain to you the circ.u.mstance that has so endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better, then, keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party. "Out upon such half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's that he thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time. So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits and starts. "Let me have a companion of my way," says Sterne, "were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It is beautifully said; but, in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb-show, it is insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for this synthetical method on a journey in preference to the a.n.a.lytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any one for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his gla.s.s to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour of a cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circ.u.mstances that present themselves before you--these may recall a number of objects, and lead to a.s.sociations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company seems extravagance or affectation; and, on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered), is a task to which few are competent. We must "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend Coleridge, however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale a summer's day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. "He talked far above singing." If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to hear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had "that fine madness in them which our first poets had"; and, if they could have been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains as the following:

Here be woods as green As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet Face of the curled streams, with flowers as many As the young spring gives, and as choice as any; Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells; Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing, Or gather rushes to make many a ring For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love, How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eye She took eternal fire that never dies; How she convey'd him softly in a sleep, His temples bound with poppy, to the steep Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, Gilding the mountains with her brother's light, To kiss her sweetest.

Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds: but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot: I must have time to collect myself.

In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should be reserved for table-talk. Lamb is for this reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors; because he is the best within. I grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey, and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appet.i.te. Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at approach of night-fall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to "take one's ease at one's inn"! These eventful moments in our lives' history are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to write about afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea--

The cups that cheer, but not inebriate--

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on cow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen (getting ready for the gentlemen in the parlour). _Procul, O procul este profani!_ These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts hereafter.

A GARDEN IDYLL [Sidenote: _Austin Dobson_]

A LADY A POET

THE LADY

Sir Poet, ere you crossed the lawn (If it was wrong to watch you, pardon), Behind this weeping birch withdrawn, I watched you saunter round the garden.

I saw you bend beside the phlox, Pluck, as you pa.s.sed, a sprig of myrtle, Review my well-ranged hollyhocks Smile at the fountain's slender spurtle;

You paused beneath the cherry-tree, Where my marauder thrush was singing, Peered at the bee-hives curiously, And narrowly escaped a stinging; And then--you see, I watched--you pa.s.sed Down the espalier walk that reaches Out to the western wall, and last, Dropped on the seat before the peaches.

What was your thought? You waited long.

Sublime or graceful,--grave,--satiric?

A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song?

A tender Tennysonian lyric?

Tell me. That garden-seat shall be, So long as speech renown disperses, Ill.u.s.trious as the spot where he-- The gifted Blank--composed his verses.

THE POET [Sidenote: _Austin Dobson_]

Madam,--whose uncensorious eye Grows gracious over certain pages, Wherein the Jester's maxims lie, It may be, thicker than the Sage's-- I hear but to obey, and could Mere wish of mine the pleasure do you, Some verse as whimsical as Hood,-- As gay as Praed,--should answer to you.

But, though the common voice proclaims Our only serious vocation Confined to giving nothings names And dreams a "local habitation"; Believe me, there are tuneless days, When neither marble, bra.s.s, nor vellum, Would profit much by any lays That haunt the poet's cerebellum.

More empty things, I fear, than rhymes, More idle things than songs, absorb it; The "finely frenzied" eye, at times, Reposes mildly in its...o...b..t; And--painful truth--at times, to him, Whose jog-trot thought is nowise restive, "A primrose by a river's brim"

Is absolutely unsuggestive.

The fickle Muse! As ladies will, She sometimes wearies of her wooer; A G.o.ddess, yet a woman still, She flies the more that we pursue her; In short, with worst as well as best, Five months in six, your hapless poet Is just as prosy as the rest, But cannot comfortably show it.

You thought, no doubt, the garden scent Brings back some brief-winged bright sensation Of love that came and love that went,-- Some fragrance of a lost flirtation, Born when the cuckoo changes song, Dead ere the apple's red is on it, That should have been an epic long, Yet scarcely served to fill a sonnet.

Or else you thought,--the murmuring noon He turns it to a lyric sweeter, With birds that gossip in the tune, And windy bough-swing in the metre; Or else the zigzag fruit-tree arms Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms, Round singing mouths, and chanted charms, And mediaeval orchard blossoms,--

Quite _a la mode_. Alas for prose!-- My vagrant fancies only rambled Back to the red-walled Rectory close, Where first my graceless boyhood gambolled, Climbed on the dial, teased the fish, And chased the kitten round the beeches, Till widening instincts made me wish For certain slowly ripening peaches.

Three peaches. Not the Graces three Had more equality of beauty: I would not look, yet went to see; I wrestled with Desire and Duty; I felt the pangs of those who feel The laws of Property beset them; The conflict made my reason reel, And, half-abstractedly, I ate them;--

Or two of them. Forthwith Despair-- More keen that one of these was rotten-- Moved me to seek some forest lair Where I might hide and dwell forgotten, Attired in skins, by berries stained, Absolved from brushes and ablution;-- But, ere my sylvan haunt was gained, Fate gave me up to execution.

I saw it all but now. The grin That gnarled old Gardener Sandy's features; My father, scholar-like and thin, Unroused, the tenderest of creatures; I saw--ah me !--I saw again My dear and deprecating mother; And then, remembering the cane, Regretted--that _I'd left the other._

MACAULAY'S WIT [Sidenote: _Macaulay_]

I have not the Chancellor's encyclopedic mind. He is indeed a kind of semi-Solomon. He _half_ knows everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II.

But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen.

His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.

... Lady Millar, who kept a vase wherein fools were wont to put bad verses, and Jerningham, who wrote verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar.

From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife.

CRANFORD [Sidenote: _Mrs. Gaskell_]

In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there? The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon. For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing at the geese that occasionally venture into the gardens if the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody's affairs in the parish; for keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable order; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient. "A man," as one of them observed to me once, "is _so_ in the way in the house!" Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other's proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other's opinions.

Indeed, as each has her own individuality, not to say eccentricity, pretty strongly developed, nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation; but, somehow, good-will reigns among them to a considerable degree.

The Cranford ladies have only an occasional little quarrel, spirted out in a few peppery words and angry jerks of the head; just enough to prevent the even tenor of their lives from becoming too flat. Their dress is very independent of fashion; as they observe, "What does it signify how we dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us?" And if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent, "What does it signify how we dress here, where n.o.body knows us?" The materials of their clothes are, in general, good and plain, and most of them are nearly as scrupulous as Miss Tyler, of cleanly memory; but I will answer for it, the last gigot, the last tight and scanty petticoat in wear in England, was seen at Cranford--and seen without a smile.

I can testify to a magnificent family red silk umbrella, under which a gentle little spinster, left alone of many brothers and sisters, used to patter to church on rainy days. Have you any red silk umbrellas in London? We had a tradition of the first that had ever been seen in Cranford; and the little boys mobbed it, and called it "a stick in petticoats." It might have been the very red silk one I have described, held by a strong father over a troop of little ones; the poor little lady--the survivor of all--could scarcely carry it.

Then there were rules and regulations for visiting and calls; and they were announced to any young people who might be staying in the town with all the solemnity with which the old Manx laws were read once a year on the Tinwald Mount:

"Our friends have sent to inquire how you are after your journey to-night, my dear" (fifteen miles, in a gentleman's carriage); "they will give you some rest to-morrow, but the next day, I have no doubt, they will call; so be at liberty after twelve--from twelve to three are our calling-hours."