HEALTH AND ECONOMICS
Enough has been said to show that I never heartily settled to a town
life, and that the obstacle to content was my own character. Mere
discontent with one's environment, however useful it may be as an
irritant to prevent stagnation and brutish acquiescence, obviously does
not carry one very far. Men may chafe for years at the conditions of
their lot without in any way attempting to amend them. I soon came to
see that I was in danger of falling into this condition of futility. I
was, therefore, forced to face the question whether my continual inward
protest against the kind of life which I led was founded on anything
more stable than an opinion or a sentiment? No man ever yet took a
positively heroic or original course for the sake of an opinion.
Opinion must become conviction before it has any potency to change the
ordering of life. I saw plainly that I must either bring my thoughts
to the point of conviction or discard them altogether.
There is a good phrase which is sometimes used about men who are
members of a party, without in any way entering into its propagandist
aims--we say that they 'do not play the game.' They may have excellent
philosophic reasons for their aloofness, or even admirable scruples;
but parties do not ask for either. Parties ask for party loyalty, and
to give this loyalty personal scruples must be set aside. I could not
but apply this doctrine to my own state of mind. London asked me to
play the game, and I was not playing it. It was impossible to put
heart into a kind of life which I inwardly detested. I did my day's
work with a mind divided; and, although no one could accuse me of
wilful negligence, yet a child could see that my work missed that
quality of entire efficiency which makes for success. I might count
myself much superior to men like Arrowsmith by the possession of
superior sentiments, yet, in the long run, my sentiment debilitated me,
and his destitution of sentiment was a source of power to him in the
kind of work we both had to do. To the man who detests the nature of
his employment as I detested mine, I would say at once, either conquer
your detestation or change your work. Work that is not genuinely loved
cannot possibly be done well. It is no use chafing and fretting and
wishing that you lived in the country, if you know perfectly well that
you have not the least intention of living anywhere but in the town.
If it is town life you are really bent upon, the sooner rustic
instincts are uprooted the better for you. London can prove herself a
complaisant mistress to those who desire no other, but she will give
nothing to those who flout her in their hearts. In plain words there
is no middle course between accepting the yoke or finally rejecting it;
either course may be justified, but it is the silliest folly to accept
with complacency a yoke which you mean to shake off the moment you have
courage or opportunity to revolt. London marks such dissemblers with
an angry eye, as captains mark reluctant soldiers; and if time holds no
disgrace for them it will certainly bring them no advancement.
Were my fine theories composed of mere fluid sentiment, or had they
some more consistent element in them which was capable of hardening
into invincible conviction? That was my problem. It was debated in
season and out of season. Gradually the two dominant factors in the
problem became evident; they were health and economics.
There could be no question about health. It was true that I had
suffered from no serious illness in my life, but London kept me in a
normal state of low vitality. I had constant headaches, fits of
depression, and minor physical derangements. I rarely knew what it was
to wake in the morning with that clear joyousness of spirit which marks
vigorous vitality. A London winter I dreaded, and I had good reason
for my dread. When the fog lay on the town an unbearable oppression
lay also on my spirits. Imagination had little to do with this
oppression; it was the physical result of lack of oxygen. It was the
same with my children; they grew pinched and bleached in face, and went
about their little tasks with the slowness of old men. It is stated, I
believe, that London is the healthiest city in the world; no doubt it
is true as regards the actual percentage of disease to the immense
population, but statistics take no account of lowered vitality.
Without being actually ill, vitality may be reduced to a point at which
existence becomes a kind of misery. Alcohol dissolves for a time the
cloud on the mind, the incubus upon the energies; and the relief is so
great that men do not think of the price they pay for it. No wonder
public-houses are the landmarks of London locomotion; they are the
Temples of Oblivion, where the devitalised multitudes seek to forget
themselves, that they may regain the courage to live at all.
For myself, I had sense to know that stimulants of this kind were a
remedy much worse than the disease. The only stimulant, at once safe
and effectual, which I needed was fresh air. The moment I found myself
among the hills a miraculous change was wrought in me. I had not
breathed that quick and vital air for an hour before a glow ran through
my veins more delightful, and much more enduring, than the glow of
wine. A single night in some small cottage chamber--where the very bed
had a cool scent of flowers and lawns, where the open window admitted
air fresh from pine forest and mountain streams, where the silence was
so deep that one's pulse seemed to tick aloud like a watch--and I awoke
a man renewed. Six o'clock, or even five, was not too soon for all my
little household to be astir. We were all alike eager for the open
air; for the walk, bare-footed, through the dewy grass to the mountain
pool; for the shock and thrill of that green water into which we
plunged delighted; and in those prolonged and pure ablations I think
our spirits shared. The bells of laughter rang the livelong day. The
cramped mind began to move again, and long abdicated powers of fancy
and of humour were restored. Equanimity of body brought evenness of
temper; it was incredible to recollect how irritable we had been with
one another in those ghastly days of London fog, when the very grating
of a chair along the floor made the nerves jump. Even the mind took
new edge, for though I did not read much upon a holiday, yet I found
that what I did read left a clearness of impression to which I had long
been unaccustomed. And what was the root and cause of all this
miracle? Fresh air, wholesome food, rude health--nothing more! To
feel that it is bliss to be alive, health alone is needed. And by
health I mean not the absence of physical ailment or disease, but a
high condition of vitality. This the country gave me; this the town
denied me. The only question was then, at what rate did I value the
boon?
This brought me immediately to the much more complex problem of
economics. I knew that men could live in the country on small means,
for men did so; but I perceived that the art of living in the country
did not come by nature. Every one supposes that he can drive a horse
or grow potatoes; and, when we recollect how many thousands of men go
to Canada to take up agricultural pursuits without the least knowledge
of the business, it is clear that the belief is general that any man
can farm. I may claim the merit of freedom from this popular delusion.
I not only knew that I could not farm, but I did not wish to be a
farmer. What I wished was to live in the country in some modest way
that answered to my needs; to earn by some form of exertion a small
income; and at the most, to grow my own vegetables, catch my own fish,
and snare my own rabbits.
A legacy of two hundred a year would have served my purpose admirably,
but modesty forbade me laying my case before benevolent millionaires,
and a destitution of maiden aunts put an end to any hopes of a bequest
by natural causes.
What was my precise position then? I had a salary of two hundred and
fifty pounds a year. An investment that had turned out fortunately
gave me about forty pounds a year. I had done from time to time a
little work for the press, which had been worth to me about thirty
pounds a year more. My total budget showed, then, an annual income of
three hundred and twenty pounds, which I found barely sufficient for my
needs as a dweller in towns. If I migrated to a cottage, how would
matters stand with me? I should lose my two hundred and fifty pounds
per annum of course, and this was an alarming prospect. But, on the
other hand, I reminded myself that I had never really possessed it. I
prepared various tables in which I arranged the items of my expenditure
under two heads, viz. the expenditure that was inevitable, and the
expenditure that was evitable, because it was the result of town life.
I shall best explain by giving a sample of these tables:--
TABLE I.
INEVITABLE EXPENDITURE. L. s. d.
Food and general household expenses,
calculated at 30s. per week . . . . . 78 0 0
Books, magazines, and papers . . . . . . 5 0 0
Clothes for two adults and two children . 20 0 0
Insurances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 0 0
Holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 0 0
Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 0 0
Sundries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 0 0
Rent, rates, and taxes . . . . . . . . . 65 0 0
----------
L268 0 0
TABLE II.
EVITABLE EXPENDITURE.
If I adopted a country life. L. s. d.
Holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 0 0
By saving on rent, rates, and taxes,
calculating my cottage cost me not
more than L20 per annum . . . . . . . 45 0 0
By saving in food . . . . . . . . . . . 20 0 0
----------
L95 0 0
It will be seen that I allowed no reduction in clothes and books, for I
did not wish my children to be dressed as beggars, or to be ignorant of
current literature.
It does not need the eye of a chartered accountant to perceive that
whatever may be said for Table II., Table I. is not satisfactory. In
it I accounted for only 268 pounds, whereas I have already stated my
total income was 320 pounds. What became of the 52 pounds which found
no record in my ingenuous schedule? I could not tell, but I was pretty
sure that it was absorbed in the petty wastefulness of town life.
Londoners are so accustomed to constant daily expenditure in small
ways, that it occurs to no one to ascertain how considerable an
encroachment this aggregate expenditure is upon the total yearly
income. In all but very fine weather I must needs use some means of
public conveyance every day; there was a daily lunch to be provided;
and when work kept me late at the office there was tea as well. One
can lunch comfortably on a shilling or eighteenpence a day; and I knew
places where I could have lunched for much less, but they were in parts
of the town which I could not reach in the brief time at my disposal.
Moreover, one must needs be the slave of etiquette even though he be a
clerk, and if all the staff of an office frequent a certain restaurant,
one must perforce fall into line with them under penalty of social
ostracism. Thus, whether I liked it or not, for five days in the week
I had to spend eighteenpence a day for lunch, and fourpence for teas;
and if we add those small gratuities which the poorest men take it as a
point of honour to observe, here was an annual expenditure of 25
pounds. Taking one thing with another 5 pounds might be added for 'bus
and railway fares; so that only 22 pounds is left to be accounted for.
And now, if we return to Table II., it is obvious that my income of 320
pounds per annum was only nominal, because a very great part of it was
really spent in keeping up a position which a town life imposed upon
me. Before I touched a single penny of my nominal income of 250 pounds
per annum, I had paid 30 pounds per year in the daily expenses
inevitable to my position, and 65 pounds for rent and taxes, which was
quite 45 pounds more than I ought to pay. Education comes also to be
considered at this point. My two children went to a very respectable
school at the cost of a little more than 15 pounds per annum each. No
doubt I might have sent them to a Board school, where they would have
received a better education; but in the part of London where I lived
there was no Board school within easy reach, and besides this, though I
hate the pretension of gentility, manners and companionship have to be
considered as well as education in the choice of a school. A child may
take no harm by sitting on the same bench with village children, but
the London gamin is not a desirable acquaintance. In this, as in other
matters, I paid through the nose for my position; and the convention
cost me a clear 35 pounds per annum. Thus I calculated that out of a
nominal income of 250 pounds per annum 100 pounds was paid as a tax to
convention and respectability.
I have no doubt that a good many flaws may be found in these
calculations; but one point is beyond dispute, viz., that a town income
is always more apparent than real. Money is worth no more than its
purchasing power. The business man who is offered 1000 pounds per
annum in New York against 700 pounds per annum in London, refuses the
offer unless it carries with it great contingent advantages, because he
knows perfectly well that 700 pounds a year in London is worth a good
deal more than 1000 pounds a year in New York. But the same kind of
prudent calculation is seldom applied to the case of town versus
country living at home. It is impossible to persuade the labourer that
a pound a week in London is really less than fifteen shillings a week
in the country. Men are dazzled by mere figures, and there is no
country clerk who would not jump at the idea of a fifty pounds a year
rise in London, though ten minutes spent over a sum in addition and
subtraction would be sufficient to assure him that he would not be
enlarging his income but diminishing it. A man has to live upon a
certain scale suited to his needs and tastes, but the income which
makes this kind of life possible is a variable quantity. It is not by
what men earn in the aggregate that their incomes should be measured,
but by what they have left when the necessary cost of living is
defrayed. If it costs a man fifty pounds a year more to live in London
than in the country, he is obviously no better off by the extra fifty
pounds he earns in London. He is not earning fifty pounds for himself
but fifty pounds for the landlord, the rate-collector, the gas-man, the
restaurant proprietor, the omnibus and railway companies. His gold
never reaches his own pocket; it is filched from him by dexterous
thieves; it gleams before him for an instant like the coin spun in the
air by the conjurer or thimble-rigger, and then vanishes for ever. Yet
I have found few men keen enough to penetrate the delusion; it would
seem they love to be deluded, and by their conduct justify the satiric
lines of _Hudibras_--
Doubtless the pleasure is as great
To cheated be as 'tis to cheat.
In most things I claim to be no wiser than my fellow-men, but in this I
knew myself wiser; I knew where I was cheated. I knew that the
schoolmaster who cost me thirty pounds a year was a licensed footpad;
half the money spent in restaurants and tea-shops was blackmail paid to
respectability; the landlord who took his forty-five pounds a year from
my pocket was a mere robber, who took advantage of the need I had to
live in a certain locality that I might attend to my vocation. Not
only were my brains exploited that my employer might maintain a
sumptuous house at Kensington, but the wage he paid me was exploited by
a host of other people, who had houses of their own to maintain.
Before I could feed my children I must help to pay for and cook the
dinner of the folk who lived on the dividends of railways and omnibus
companies. On the way to my office the tailor took toll of me by
forcing me to wear a garb which I detested, simply because I dared wear
no other garb. I could not even drink plain water but that some one
was the richer. I was the common gull of the thing called convention.
I was plucked to the skin, and if my skin had been worth turning into
leather, some one would have put in a claim to that. Even for my skin,
poor asset as it was, some one did wait, when it had ceased to be of
use to me, for London cemeteries declare dividends upon the dead. My
case reminded me of an old gentleman I once knew, who wore so many
coats, waistcoats, and shirts to keep warmth in a body of singular
attenuation, that it was commonly said that by the time James Smith
undressed at night there was very little James Smith that was
discoverable. Certainly by the time London had done wringing gold out
of me there was very little gold left that was my own.
There was, however, one kind of comfort to be deduced from these
reflections; if I was not nearly so well off as I appeared to be, I had
all the less to lose. Rightly considered it would not be 250 pounds
per annum that I should lose by leaving London, for I had never
possessed that sum, I calculated my real loss at something nearer 150
pounds, and this seemed not so terrible a thing. I had my forty pounds
a year for certain. I had the small earnings of my pen, and with
abundant time upon my hands I saw every reason why these should be
increased. Could I face a new kind of life upon an income of seventy
pounds per annum? Ah, how anxiously that problem was debated with my
wife, many a night when the children were abed! The natural
conservatism of woman had a great deal to say in these debates. 'It
was all very well,' said my wife, 'to do these little sums on paper,
but suppose the facts did not correspond? Suppose I found no cottage
at twenty pounds a year, and no decent school at sixpence a week? Then
the world was full of writers for the press.' (I frowned.) 'Not of
course like you, not half so good,' she added with a smile, 'but how do
you know that you will succeed? Show me a fixed income of 100 pounds a
year, and I would chance it, for I can live simply enough,' she would
say, 'and am as fond of liberty as you.'
She might have added what I knew to be true, that the penalties of
London life fell heavier upon her than me. I was not insensible to the
instantaneous lightening of spirits that happened with her when she was
able to forsake the abominable purlieus of the cellar-kitchen where her
life was spent; and although I knew not half her toils, nor half her
dejections and anxieties, which were sedulously kept from me, yet I was
not wholly blind. I had seen her too amid the roses of a cottage
garden flying the colour of long-forgotten roses in her cheeks; in the
hay-field shaking off a dozen years in as many hours; and although she
was always young to me, she never seemed so young and sweet as when we
walked a honeysuckled lane together. Her desire was with me I knew
well; she had no fear of poverty, and would have been content with
plainer fare than I; but her children made her prudent.
At last the one thing happened which made her prudence coincide with
her desires; one of the children sickened with a languor that was the
precursor of disease, and the doctors said that only country air could
bring back strength. And then fate itself took the whole matter out of
my control. Something happened in the city--I know not what--and the
firm I served came near to shipwreck. Business shrank to a diminished
channel, and the staff of clerks must needs be reduced. I have said
some hard words of my employer as the exploiter of my labour; he will
appear no more in this history, and my last word about him shall be
justly kind. He broke the news of his misfortune to me with a delicacy
that made me respect him, and with a hesitating painful shame that made
me pity him. He praised me beyond my merit for my twenty years of
service; he had hoped to keep me with him for another twenty years, and
I believe he spoke the truth when he said it pained him to think that
his misfortunes should be mine. He handed me in silence a cheque for
fifty pounds. He then shook my hand heartily, murmured some vague
words about hoping to reinstate me if things should mend, and hurried
from me; and in his broken look and bowed shoulders I read the prophecy
that his days of fortune and success were gone for ever. The little
tragedy was played out in less than ten minutes. I locked my desk, put
on my hat and coat, and went out into the street; and my heart felt a
pang at leaving the place which I should never have imagined possible.
I had walked fully half a mile before another thought occurred to me.
My blood suddenly sang in my veins, and I remembered that I was an
emancipated slave; at last I was Free!