think. They are not catalogued under a separate Heading. They puzzle
the writers of Indices; they bewilder Librarians. They must be grouted
out of the mass of rubbish as Pigs in the Perigord grout out truffles.
There is no other way.
Also, in the Perigord, truffles are hunted with Hounds.
The Unfortunate Man
To all those who doubt the power of chance in human affairs; to all
Stoics, Empiricists, Monists, Determinists, and all men whatsoever that
terminate in this fashion, Greeting: Read what follows:
There was a man I used to know whose business it was to succeed in
life, and who had made a profession of this from the age of nineteen.
His father had left him a fortune of about £600 a year, which he still
possesses, but, with that exception, he has been made by the gods a
sort of puffball for their amusement, the sort of thing they throw
about the room. It was before his father’s death that a determination
was taken to make him the land agent at the house of a cousin, who
would give him a good salary, and it was arranged, as is the custom in
that trade, that he should do nothing in return but dine, smoke, and
ride about. The next step was easy. He would be put into Parliament,
and then, by quiet, effective speaking and continual voting, he would
become a statesman, and so grow more and more famous, and succeed more
and more, and marry into the fringes of one of the great families, and
then die.
To this happy prospect was his future turned when he set out, not upon
the old mare but upon the new Arab which his father had foolishly
bought as an experiment, to visit his cousin’s home and to make
the last arrangements. And note in what follows that every step in
the success-business came off, and yet somehow the sum total was
disappointing, and at the present moment one can very definitely say
that he has not succeeded.
He set out, I say, upon the new Arab, going gently along the sunken
road that leads to the Downs, when a man carrying a faggot at the end
of a pitchfork seemed to that stupid beast a preternatural apparition,
and it shied forward and sideways like a knight’s move, so that the
Unfortunate Man fell off heavily and hurt himself dreadfully. When the
Arab had done this it stood with its beautiful tail arched out, and
its beautiful neck arched also, looking most pitifully at its fallen
rider, and with a sadness in its eye like that of the horse in the
Heliodorus. The Unfortunate Man got on again, feeling but a slight pain
in the right shoulder. But what I would particularly have you know is
this: that the pain has never wholly disappeared, and is perhaps a
little worse now after twenty years than it has been at any previous
time. Moreover, he has spent quite £350 in trying to have it cured, and
he has gone to foreign watering-places, and has learnt all manner of
names, how that according to one man it is rheumatism, and according
to another it is suppressed gout, and according to another a lesion.
But the point to him is the pain, and this endures.
Well, then, he rode over the Down and came out through the Combe to his
cousin’s house. The gate out of the field into the park was shut, and
as he leaned over to open it he dropped his crop. I am ashamed to say
that--it was the only act of the kind in his career, but men who desire
to succeed ought not to act in this fashion--he did not get down to
pick it up because he was afraid that if he did he might not be able to
get on to the horse again. With infinite trouble, leaning right down
over the horse’s neck, he managed to open the gate with his hands, but
in doing so he burst his collar, and he had to keep it more or less in
place by putting down his chin in a ridiculous and affected attitude.
His hopes of making a fine entry at a pretty ambling trot, that perhaps
his cousin would be watching from the window, were already sufficiently
spoilt by the necessity he was under of keeping his collar thus, when
the accursed animal bolted, and with the speed of lightning passed
directly in front of a little lawn where his cousin, his cousin’s wife,
and their little child were seated admiring the summer’s day. It was
not until the horse had taken him nearly half a mile away that he got
him right again, and so returned hot, dishevelled, and very miserable.
But they received him kindly, and his cousin’s wife, who was a most
motherly woman, put him as best she could at his ease. She even got him
another collar, knowing how terrible is the state of the soul when the
collar is burst in company. And he sat down with them to make friends
and discuss the future. He had always heard that among the chief
avenues to success is to play with and be kind to the children of the
Great, so he smiled in a winning manner at his cousin’s little boy,
and stretching out his arms took the child playfully by the hand. A
piercing scream and a sharp kick upon the shin simultaneously informed
him that he had fallen into yet another misfortune, and the boy’s
mother, though she was kindness itself, was startled into speaking
to him very sharply, and telling him that the poor lad suffered from
a deeply cut finger which was then but slowly healing. He made his
apologies in a nervous but sincere manner, and in doing so was awkward
enough to upset the little table which they had carried out upon the
lawn, and upon which had been set the cups and saucers for tea. The
whole thing was exceedingly annoying.
In this way did the Unfortunate Man enter the great arena of modern
political life.
You must not imagine that he failed to obtain the sinecure which his
father had sent him to secure. As I have already said, the failure of
the Unfortunate Man was not a failure in major plans but in details.
There may have been some to whom his career appeared enviable or
even glorious, but Fate always watched him in a merry mood, and he
was destined to suffer an interior misery which never failed to be
sharpened and enlivened by the innumerable accidents of life.
He obtained for his cousin from the North of Scotland a man of sterling
capacity, whose methods of agriculture had more than doubled the income
of a previous employer; but as luck would have it this fellow, whose
knowledge of farming was quite amazing, was not honest, and after
some few months he had absconded with a considerable sum of money. A
well which he had advised to be dug failed to find water for some two
hundred feet, and then after all that expense fell in. He lamed one of
his cousin’s best horses by no fault of his own; the animal trod upon
a hidden spike of wood and had to be shot; and in doing his duty by
upbraiding a very frousty old man who was plunging about recklessly
just where a lot of she (or hen) pheasants were sitting on their eggs
he mortally offended the chief landowner of the neighbourhood, who
was none other than the frousty old man himself, and who was tramping
across the brushwood to see his cousin upon most important matters.
It was therefore in a condition of despair that his cousin finally
financed him for Parliament. The constituency which he bought after
some negotiations was a corrupt seaport upon the coast of Rutlandshire
(here is no libel!). He was at first assured that there would be no
opposition, and acting upon this assurance took the one brief holiday
which he had allowed himself for five years. The doctor, who was
anxious about his nerves, recommended a sea voyage of a week upon a
ship without wireless apparatus. He landed in Jamaica to receive a
telegram which informed him that a local gentleman of vast influence,
eccentric, and the chief landowner in the constituency, had determined
to run against him, and which implored him to cable a considerable sum
of money, though no such sum was at his disposal.
In the earthquake the next day he luckily escaped from bodily injury,
but his nerves were terribly shaken. Thenceforward he suffered from
little tricks of grimace which were to him infinitely painful, but to
others always a source of secret, sometimes of open, merriment. He
returned and fought the election. He was elected by a majority of 231,
but not until he had been twice blackmailed, and had upon at least
three occasions given money to men who afterwards turned out to have no
vote. I may say, to put the matter briefly, that he retained the seat
uninterruptedly until the last election, but always by tiny majorities
at the expense of infinite energy, sweating blood, as it were, with
anxiety at every poll, and this although he was opposed by the most
various people. It was Fate!
He spoke frequently in the House of Commons, and always unsuccessfully,
until one day a quite unexpected accident of war in a foreign country
gave him his opportunity. It so happened that the Unfortunate Man knew
all about this country; he had read every book published upon it; it
was the one thing upon which he was an authority. And ridiculous as
had been his numerous efforts to engage the attention of the august
assembly, upon this matter at least his judgment was eagerly expected.
The greatest courtesy was shown him, the Government arranged that he
should speak at the most telling time of the debate, and when he rose
it was before a full House, strained to an eager attention.
He struck an attitude at once impressive and refined, stretched forth
his hand in a manner that gave promise of much to come, and was
suddenly seized with an immoderate fit of coughing. An aged gentleman,
a wool merchant by profession, who sat immediately behind him, thought
to do a kindly thing by slapping him upon the back, being ignorant of
that Shoulder Trouble with which the jolly reader is acquainted. And
the Unfortunate Man, in the midst of his paroxysm of coughing, could
not restrain a loud cry of anguish. Confused interruptions, rising
to a roar of protest, prevented him from going further, and he was
so imprudent, or rather so wretchedly unlucky, as to be stung into a
violent expression of opinion directed towards another member sitting
upon his immediate left, a moneylender by trade and very sensitive.
This fellow alone had heard the highly objectionable word which the
Unfortunate Man had let drop. It is a word very commonly used by
gentlemen in privacy, but rare, indeed, or rather wholly unused on
the public occasions of our dignified political life. In vain did
those about the moneylender pull at his skirts and implore him not to
rise. He was white with passion. He rose and appealed to the Chair. He
reiterated the offensive expression in the clearest and most articulate
fashion, apologising to the horrified assembly for having to sully
the air it breathed by the necessary repetition of so abominable an
epithet, and he demanded the correction of the monster in human form
who had descended to use it. The reprimand which the Unfortunate Man
received from the Chair was lengthy and severe, and from that day
forward he determined that the many omens of ill-fortune which had
marked his life had reached their turn. He was too proud to resign,
but his caucus, in spite of further considerable gifts of money,
indignantly repudiated their Member, and when the election came he had
not the courage to face it.
He is now living, broken and prematurely aged, in a brick house
which he has built for himself in a charming part of the County of
Surrey. He has recently discovered that the title to his freehold
is insecure: an action is pending. Meanwhile, a spring of water has
broken out under the foundations of the building, and some quarter of
a mile before its windows, obscuring the view of the Weald in which he
particularly delighted, a very large factory with four tall chimneys
is in process of erection. These things have depressed him almost to
the verge of despair, and he can only forget his miseries in motoring.
He is continually fined for excessive speed, though by nature the most
cautious of men, and terrified by high speeds, and I learn only to-day
that as he was getting ready to go into Guildford to dispute a further
fine before the Bench a backfire has put his wrist out of joint, and he
suffers intolerable pain. _Militia est Vita Hominis!_
The Contented Man
Lucifer, for some time a bishop in Southern Italy (you did not know
that, but it is true nevertheless, and you will find his name in the
writings of Duchesne, and he took part in councils; nay, there was a
time when I knew the very See of which he was bishop, but the passage
of years effaces all these things)--Lucifer, I say, laid it down in
his System of Morals that contentment was a virtue, and said that it
could be aimed at and acquired positively, just as any other virtue
can. Then there are others who have said that it was but a frame of
mind and the result of several virtues; but these are the thinkers. The
great mass of people are willing to say that contentment is strictly
in proportion to the amount of money one may have, and they are wrong.
I remember now there was a Sultan, or some such dignitary, in Spain,
who counted the days of his life which had been filled with content,
and found that they were seventeen. He was lucky; there are not many
of us who can say the same. Then once a man told me this story about
contentment, which seemed to me full of a profound meaning. It seems
there was once an old gentleman who was possessed of something over
half a million pounds, a banker, and this old gentleman every night of
his life would go through certain little private books of his, compare
them with the current list of prices, and estimate to a penny what he
was worth before he slept. It was always a great pleasure to him to
note the figures growing larger, and a great pain to him to note the
rare occasions when they had shrunk a little in twenty-four hours. It
so happened that this old gentleman lost a considerable sum of money
which he had imprudently lent to a distant and foreign country too much
praised in the newspapers, and he worried so much over the loss that
he became ill and could not go to his office. His sons kept on the
business for him, and every succeeding week they lost more and more
of the money. But such was their filial piety that every night they
gave the old gentleman false information, and that in some detail, so
that he could put down his little rows of figures and see them growing
larger night after night. You see, it was not the wealth that he
desired, it was the increase in the little rows of figures; the wealth
he consumed was the same; he wore the same clothes, he ate the same
food, he lived in the same house as before, and he had for a companion
eternally one or another of the two nurses provided by the doctor. The
figures increasing regularly as they did filled him with a greater and
a greater joy. After two years of this business he came to die, but
his passing was a very happy one: he blessed his sons fervently and
told them that nothing had more comforted his old age than their sober
business sense; they had nearly doubled the family fortune during their
short administration of it; he congratulated them and was now ready to
go to his God in peace. Which he did, and two weeks after the petition
in bankruptcy was presented by the young people themselves, always the
more decent way of doing it: but the old man had died content.
Which parable leads up to the point at which I should have begun all
this, which is, that once in my life, in the year 1901, during a
heavy fog in the early morning of the month of November, in London,
I met a perfectly contented man. He was the conductor of an omnibus.
These vehicles depended in those days entirely on the traction of
horses. They were therefore slow, and as the night, or rather the
early morning, was foggy (it was a little after one) people going
Westward--journalists for instance, who are compelled to be up at
such hours--did not choose to travel in this way. There was no one in
the ’bus but myself. I sat next the door as it rumbled along; there
was one of those little faint oil lamps above it which are unique in
Christendom for the small amount of light they give. It was impossible
to read, but by the slight glimmer of it I saw suddenly revealed like
a vision the face of that really happy man. It was a round face,
framed in a somewhat slovenly hat and coat collar, but not slovenly in
feature, though not severe. And as its owner clung to the rail and
swung with the movements of the ’bus he whistled softly to himself a
genial little air. It was not I but he that began the conversation.
He told me that few things were a greater blessing in life than gas
fires, especially if one could regulate the amount of gas by a penny in
the slot. He pointed out to me that in this way there were never any
disputes as to the amount of gas used, and he also said that it kept a
man from the curse of credit, which was the ruin of so many. I told him
that in my house there was no gas, but that his description almost made
me wish there was. And so it did, for he went on to tell me how you
could cook any mortal thing with any degree of heat and at any speed by
the simple regulation of a tap.
It may be imagined how anxious I was on meeting so rare a being to go
more deeply into the matter and to find out on what such happiness
reposed; but I did not know where to begin, because there are always
some questions which men do not like asked, and unless one knows all
about a man’s life one does not know what those questions are. Luckily
for me, he volunteered. He told me that he was married and had eight
children. He told me his wages, which were astonishingly low, his hours
of labour, which were incredibly long, and he further told me that on
reaching the yard that night he would have to walk a mile to his home.
He said he liked this, because it made him sleep, and he added that
in his profession the great difficulty was to get enough exercise. He
told me how often a day off was allowed him and how greatly he enjoyed
it. He told me the rent which he paid for his two rooms, which appeared
to be one-third of his income, and congratulated himself upon the
cheapness and commodity of the place; and so he went on talking as we
rumbled down the King’s Road, going farther and farther and farther
West. My day would end in a few hundred yards; his not for a mile or
two more. Yet his content was far the greater, and it affected me, I am
sorry to say, with wonder rather than with a similar emotion of repose
and pleasure.
The next part of his conversation discovered what you will often
find in the conversation of contented men (or, rather, of partially
contented men, for no other absolutely contented man have I ever met
except this one), that is, a certain good-humoured contempt for those
who grumble. He told me that the drivers of ’buses were never happy;
they had all that life can give: high wages, fresh open-air work, the
dignity of controlling horses, and, what is perhaps more important,
ceaseless companionship, for not only had they the companionship of
chance people who would come and sit on the front seats of the ’bus
outside, but they could and did make appointments with friends who
would come and ride some part of the way and talk to them. Then,
again, as their work was more skilled, their tenure of it was more
secure, nor were they constrained to shout “Liverpool Street” at the
top of their voices for hours on end, nor to say “Benk, Benk, Benk” in
imitation of the pom-pom. Nevertheless they grumbled. He was careful to
tell me that they were not really unhappy. What he condemned in them
was rather the habit and, as it were, the fashion of grumbling. It
seemed as though no weather pleased them; it was always either too hot
or too cold; they took no pleasure in the healthy English rain beating
upon their faces, and warm spring days seemed to put them in a worse
humour than ever. He condemned all this in drivers.
When we had come to the corner of my street in Chelsea as I got out I
offered him a cigar which I had upon me. He told me he did not smoke.
He was going on to tell me that he did not drink, and would, I had no
doubt, if he had had further leisure, have told me his religion, his
politics, and much more about himself; but though the ’buses in those
days would wait very long at street corners they would not wait for
ever, and that particular ’bus rumbled and bumped away. I looked after
it a little wistfully, for fear that I might never see a happy man
again. And I walked down my street towards my home more slowly than
usual, thinking upon the thing that I had just experienced.
I confess I found it a very difficult matter. That experience not
only challenged all that I had heard of happiness, but also re-awoke
the insistent and imperative question which men put to their gods and
which never receives an answer. Ecstasy is independent of all material
conditions whatsoever. That great sense of rectitude which so often
embitters men but permits them to support pain is independent of
material conditions also. But these are not contented moods: oblivion
is ready to every man’s hand, and even the most unfortunate secure a
little sleep, and even the most tortured slaves know that at last, for
all the rules and fines and regulations of the workshop, they cannot
be forbidden to die; but such a prospect is not equivalent to content.
Further, there is a philosophy, rarely achieved but conspicuous in
every rank of fortune, which so steadily regards all external accident
as to remain indifferent to the strain of living and even to be,
to some extent, master of physical pain. But that philosophy, that
mournful philosophy which I have heard called “the permanent religion
of mankind,” is not content: on the contrary, it is very close indeed
to despair. It is the philosophy of which the Roman Empire perished. It
is the philosophy which, just because it utterly failed to satisfy the
heart of man, powerfully accelerated the triumph of the Church, as the
weight and pressure of water powerfully accelerate the rise of a man’s
body through it, to the sunlight and the air above, which are native
and necessary to him. No, it was not the philosophy of the Stoics
which had laid a foundation for the ’bus-conductor’s soul.
I could not explain that content of his in any way save upon the
hypothesis that he was mad.
The Missioner
In one of those great halls which the winter darkens and which are
proper to the North, there sat a group of men, kindly and full of the
winter night and of their food and drink, upon which for many hours
they had regaled together, and not only full of song, but satiated
with it, so long and so loudly had they sung. They all claimed descent
from the Gods, but in varying degrees, and their Chief was descended
from the father of the Gods, by no doubtful lineage, for it was his
granfer’s mother to whom a witch in the woods had told the story of her
birth.
In the midst of them as they so sat, a large fire smouldered, but
having been long lit, sent up so strong a shaft of rising air as drew
all smoke with it, towering to a sort of open cage upon the high roof
tree of that hall whence it could escape to heaven.
I say they were tired of song and filled with many good things, but
chiefly with companionship. They had landed but recently from the sea;
the noise of the sea was in their ears as they so sat round the fire,
still talking low, and a Priest who was among them refused to interpret
the sound; but he said in a manner that some mocked doubtfully, others
heard with awe, that the sea never sounded save upon nights when the
Gods were abroad. He was the Priest of a lesser God, but he was known
throughout the fleet of those pirate fishermen for his great skill in
the interpretation of dreams, and he could tell by the surface of the
water in the nightless midsummer where the shoals were to be found.
He said that on that night the Gods were abroad, and, indeed, the
quality of the wind as it came down the gulf of the fjord provoked such
a fancy, for it rose and fell as though by a volition, and sometimes
one would have said that it was a quiet night, and, again, a moment
after, one heard a noise like a voice round the corners of the great
beams, and the wind pitied or appealed or called. Then a man who was a
serf, but very skilled in woodwork, lying among the serfs in the outer
ring beyond the fire in the straw, called up and said: “Lords, he is
right; the Gods have come down from the Dovrefield; they are abroad.
Let us bless our doors.”