BUYING HAPPINESS
We are all children, and in nothing so much perhaps as in the kind of
delight we take in any form of building. The architectural efforts of
a child with a box of bricks or a heap of sand explain the Tower of
Babel, the Pyramids, and the Golden House of Nero. House-building
unites the ideal with the real more thoroughly than any other human
employment. What can there be more delightful than to see that which
you have dreamed grow into tangible and enduring form? No wonder the
rich man builds himself 'a lordly pleasure-house'; it is a kind of
practical poetry which he can understand. Were there only millionaires
enough to go round all architects would be wealthy, for building is a
kind of material art admirably suited to men of material intelligence.
The weeks which followed the acquisition of my two deserted cottages
were the most delightful I have ever spent. First of all, there was
the question of structural alterations to be considered. In my opinion
the living-room of the house is the chief consideration. It should be
a _room to live in_, the focus of the whole life of the household. For
this reason it should be large and airy, covering the whole site of the
house as nearly as possible. One large room is infinitely to be
preferred to two or three small rooms; it is healthier, and much more
cheerful. Space and air are most needed in the room which is most in
use. It is of no consequence that the bedrooms should be small; one's
active hours are not spent in them, and a window left wide open summer
and winter will provide an ample supply of oxygen in the smallest
chamber. What can be more absurd than the arrangement of a modern
London villa? It is usually cut up by partition walls into a number of
small rooms, not more than one of which is in constant use. Pretension
takes the place of comfort. Mrs. Grundy must have a 'drawing-room' or
die! It is a kind of holiest of holies, too beautiful for normal
occupation, full of gimcrack chairs that cannot be sat upon, and
decorative futilities which give it the aspect of a miscellaneous stall
at a 'rummage sale.' Such a room is very well as a _with_drawing-room,
its proper use; but as a room into which no one withdraws it is absurd.
As I expected to keep no company, and needed no room into which to
withdraw, I was able to get rid of this apartment. Moreover, in a very
small house, common sense demanded that every room should be really and
thoroughly used.
Fortunately the fireplaces of my two cottages were against the outer or
gable ends, and not against the partition wall, as is commonly the
case. I had only to remove this partition wall, supporting the ceiling
by a strong beam, and I had a room about twenty-four long by fifteen in
breadth. At the back of this room were two small kitchens, only one of
which was needed. By widening the doorway leading to one of them to
double its breadth, I gained another room about ten feet square. This
made my library, by which I mean not a room in which I ever sat, but a
room entirely devoted to the housing of my books. I had the walls
entirely lined with books, making and staining the bookshelves with my
own hands. Across the widened doorway from which the door had been
removed hung a warm curtain, so that it was to all intents and purposes
a part of my living-room. I took infinite and almost childish delight
in the arrangement of this living-room. I had brought not a single
article of domestic furniture with me from London. Such furniture as I
had--chairs, tables, couch, sideboard, and so forth--would have looked
out of place in the country, and moreover it was better economy to sell
them. I sold them very well in a London auction-room, getting almost
as much as they cost me. With the money thus received in my pocket I
went to a neighbouring market town where there happened to be a shop
that dealt in old furniture. For less than ten pounds I bought an
excellent oaken gate-table, half a dozen serviceable oak chairs, a
couple of fine carved chests, and a corner cupboard. My oak dresser
and settle, each good specimens of serviceable cottage furniture, cost
me thirty-seven shillings at a country auction. I found that even at
these modest prices I had paid too much. Oaken furniture was common in
these parts, and had little value. When a church was restored, or an
old house re-constructed, large quantities of old oak were literally
thrown away. Thus, at a merely nominal expense I acquired enough
carved oak to fit together into a handsome fireplace, and later on the
pews of a church came in for oak panelling.
Let me now picture my living-room as it was about four months after I
took possession. It was entirely oak panelled to a height of nine
feet, above which about a foot of white-washed wall showed, forming a
plain frieze. The fireplace at one end of the room was built in with
carved oak; what had been the corresponding fireplace at the other end
of the room was turned into a cupboard, with plain oak doors. The room
had three old-fashioned leaded windows opening outward. Two were
original, one had been added--the centre window taking the place of the
gap left by the destroyed partition wall. My oak chests, dresser and
cupboard, constituted the furniture of the room. The library,
curtained off with a plain curtain of crimson plush, adjoined; the
kitchen door opened at the east corner of the room. The windows faced
due south. The room therefore was always sunny. The floor-boards were
stained, and covered by two or three cheap rugs. Flowers were at the
windows, a vase of flowers always on the table. The fireplace was
open, for I had removed the ugly modern grate, substituting for it a
low hearth of red brick with iron dogs, on which wood could be burned.
This room, with the adjoining library, was the great feature of my
little house.
The other rooms in the house required no alteration; fresh whitewash
and wall-papers soon transformed them; and although they were small,
they were not devoid of charm. When my scheme of adaptation was
complete I found myself possessed of a house containing one beautiful
living-room, a small library, a kitchen, and four good bedrooms. My
bill for labour, including the mason's work in the removal of the
partition wall, the building of a new window, and the laying of a fresh
hearth; the carpenter's work in fitting my oak, and various minor
repairs, amounted in all to about twelve pounds. The cost of my
furniture, including the oak panelling in the living-room, and all that
was needed for the bedrooms, was about fifty pounds, against which I
had to set thirty-eight pounds, received from the sale of my
superfluous effects in London. If I added to these sums the general
expenses of removal, the carriage and cartage of my goods, and so
forth, which I reckoned at ten pounds, I found that the cost of my
exodus and new tenancy had been as follows:--
L. s. d.
By expenses of removal . . . . . . 10 0 0
By alterations and labour . . . . . 12 0 0
By cost of furniture for living-room
and four bedrooms . . . . . . . . 50 0 0
-----------
L72 0 0
Against which, by sale of goods in
London . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 0 0
-----------
Leaving total outlay of . . . . . . L34 0 0
-----------
I am conscious that to a townsman, accustomed to the wastefulness of
towns, some parts of this account must appear incredible. Take, for
instance, the bill for labour. No one has ever lived in London without
having occasion to complain of the dearness and badness of labour. The
chief object of the town artisan is to do as little work as possible.
He is absolutely without conscience in his work, and all that he does
is slovenly. He surveys a job, and meditates upon it for an hour--at
your expense; begins it, and goes away to fetch a tool that he has
forgotten--the time of his absence being duly charged against you;
procrastinates and dawdles; sits down to read the paper, if no one
watches him; and in one way and another takes quite twice as long over
a job as is needed, and then does it badly. When I first became a
householder in London I naturally sent to some neighbouring employer of
labour for any little jobs of carpentering and plumbing that needed to
be done. I soon had to relinquish the practice. If a new latch were
put upon a window, the screws were driven into the old holes, so that
in a week the latch was off again. If the plumber effected one repair
he invariably left some damage that made it necessary to recall him
before the month was out. There are houses in London which must be as
good as an annuity to local tradesmen; I believe the workmen are
instructed to do their work so badly that it is never really done. I
soon found it wise to learn how to do repairs for myself; and it was by
doing them myself that I discovered how I had been victimised by the
rapacity, dishonesty, and inefficiency of the British workman and his
master.
But in the country things are different. The village workman has
honest pride in his reputation, and in his work. Moreover, he can turn
his hand to anything, he does not grudge his time, and he is not
corrupted by the contiguity of the public-house. The man who did my
masonry work for me was a grey-haired, silent, pertinacious fellow, of
great practical intelligence and efficiency. He did not work rapidly,
but all that he did was thoroughly done. The carpenter was a man of
the same type. He took a genuine delight in fitting my oak to its new
uses, and had ideas of his own, which were often ingenious, and always
practical. He even had a true artistic sense; uncultivated for want of
education, but real. I understood the extraordinary skill of mediaeval
craftsmen through my association with this man. The pieces of
exquisite carved oak which find their way into museums to-day were
wrought by men such as he was; quiet, thoughtful men, residing in
villages, who developed their artistic sense in solitude. I am quite
sure that this man thought a great deal more of his work than of the
money he earned by it. At all events he charged me astonishingly
little. He refused a contract, evidently regarding it as implying
suspicions of his honesty. 'I'll charge ye what's fair,' he said, 'and
you and me'll not quarrel as to the price.' If my bill for labour was
so moderate that it seems absurd to a townsman, it was because I had to
deal with honest craftsmen, who brought not only efficiency and
handiness to their work, but a high sense of honour, and a real
intelligence and interest.
It was in the end of August when I took my house; by the beginning of
December I had completed my work upon it. The gardens in front of the
house had been levelled, and covered with the finest mountain turf.
The walls had been colour-washed a warm yellow, and all the
window-frames painted white. For three months every hour had been
busy, and not the least blessing of my toil was that it had brought me
a degree of physical vigour such as I had never yet enjoyed. How
different were my sensations when I woke in the morning now from those
which I had known in London! In London the hour of rising had
invariably found me languid and reluctant. I woke with the sense of a
load upon me, and I dreaded the long grey day. I see now that these
sensations were not so much mental as physical. I had not mental
buoyancy simply because I was deficient in physical vitality. But at
Thornthwaite I woke eager for the day. The first sounds that greeted
me through the open window were the songs of the birds, the sea-like
diapason of the wind in the elm-trees on the lawn, and the animating
song of the river in the glen. The weather during the whole of that
autumn was extraordinarily fine. After a week of equinoctial storm in
the end of September, the weather settled into exquisite repose. Day
succeeded day, calm, bright, sunny. It was as warm as August, but with
all the tonic freshness of autumn. November, usually a month of misery
in London, was here delightful. The year died slowly, amid the pomp of
crimson leaves and bronzed bracken. For the first time I understood
that it is bliss to be alive. Like the child whom Wordsworth
celebrates, I felt my life in every limb. There was no goading of dull
powers to unwelcome tasks; energy ran free, like the mountain-stream at
my door, and the zest of life was strong in me.
I never came downstairs into my living-room without a sense of new
delight. How beautiful, how sweetly habitable it looked in the morning
sunshine! Any one living in a city, who immediately on rising enters
the room which he has used overnight, has noticed the peculiar
staleness of the atmosphere. It is not exactly a noxious atmosphere;
there is no palpable unpleasant odour in it, but it is used up, it is
stale. He will also notice the dust which rests on everything. In a
city the daily grinding of millions of wheels over thousands of miles
of roads fills the air with an acrid, almost impalpable powder, which
finds its way even through closed windows and settles upon everything.
In my London house I could not take up a book without soiled fingers.
Even books which were protected by glass doors, and papers shut up in
drawers, did not escape this filthy powder, composed of the fine-ground
dust and excrement of the London streets. If I wiped a picture with a
white silk handkerchief, a black stain showed itself upon the
handkerchief, and this in spite of the most careful efforts to keep the
house clean. I suppose Londoners get used to dirt, as eels are said to
get used to skinning. They spend their time in washing their hands,
but with the most transient gain of cleanliness. No one knows how
filthy London is till he begins to notice how much longer
window-curtains, household draperies, and personal linen keep clean in
the country. I should not like to be called an old maid, but I confess
to an old-maidish care for cleanliness. Untidiness in books or papers
would not distress me, but dirt is a real distress; and if it be
old-maidish to fight a continual battle with dirt, to scour and polish
and dust, content with nothing less than immaculate purities of
polished surface, then I suppose I am an old maid, and I count it to
myself for righteousness.
Amid the many miseries of cities, this no doubt is but a minor misery,
but the relief which I experienced in deliverance from it was
disproportionately great. The purity and freshness of the atmosphere,
the corresponding cleanliness of all I touched in the house, were
delightful to me, and added to my self-respect. The clean, aromatic
air passed like a ceaseless lustration through every room of the house.
The very bed-linen, bleached in the open air, had acquired the
fragrance of mountain thyme and lavender. I did not need to climb the
hill to find the pine-woods; they grew round the very table where I
ate. Four walls and a roof gave me shelter, yet I lived in the open
air all the time.
Then there was also the silence, at first so strange as to be almost
oppressive, but later on sweeter than music. It was at early morning
and nightfall that this silence was most intense. On a still night one
could almost hear the earth move, and fancy that the stars diffused a
gentle crackling noise as of rushing flame. The fall of an acorn in a
pine wood startled the ear like an explosion. The river also was
discerned as having a definite rhythm of its own. It ran up and down a
perpetual scale, like a bird singing. What had seemed a heavy confused
sound of falling water resolved itself into regular harmonies, which
could have been written down in musical notation. At times there was
also in the air the sense of breathing. On a dark night, standing at
my door, I had the sense of a great heart that beat in the obscurity,
of a bosom that rose and fell, of a pulse as regular as a clock. I
think that the ear must have recovered a fine sensitiveness, normal to
it under normal conditions, but lost or dulled amid the deafening roar
of towns. It is scarcely an exaggeration when poets speak of hearing
the grass grow; we could hear it, no doubt, if the ear were not stunned
by more violent sounds.
It is probable that mere increase of vitality in itself is sufficient
to account for this new delicacy of the physical senses. The senses
adapt themselves to their environment. An example of this is found in
the absence of what is called long sight among city children. Having
no extensive horizon constantly before the eye, the power of discerning
distant objects gradually decays. On the contrary a child brought up
upon the African veldt, where he is daily confronted with almost
infinite distances, acquires what seems to be an almost preternatural
sharpness of vision. It is the same with hearing. The savage can
distinguish sounds which are entirely inaudible to the civilised man.
The footfall of his enemy, the beat of a horse's hoofs, the movement of
a lion in the jungle, are heard at what appear impossible distances. I
do not seek to offer any absolute explanation of these phenomena as
regards myself, but I state the fact that in returning to a natural
life I found a remarkable quickening of my physical senses. As my eye
became accustomed to the wide moorland prospects I found myself
increasingly able to discriminate distant objects. Flowers that had
seemed to me to smell pretty much alike, now had distinct fragrances.
I knew when I woke in the morning from which direction the wind came,
by its odour; the wind from the moorland brought the scent of heather
and wild thyme, the wind from the glen the scent of water.
It was the same with sound. Properly speaking there is no such thing
as silence in Nature. The silence, or what seems silence, is divisible
into a multitude of minute sounds. Everything in Nature is toiling and
straining at its task, the sap in the tree, the rock balanced on its
bed of clay, the grass-blade pushing and urging its way toward the sun.
And as there is no real silence, so there is no real solitude in a
world where every atom is vigorously at work. Wordsworth's conception
of Nature as a Presence becomes at once intelligible when we live close
to the heart of Nature. Had Wordsworth lived in towns his poetry could
never have been written, nor can its central conception of Nature as a
Presence be understood by the townsman. I had often enough read the
wonderful lines--
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man
_A motion and a spirit_, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
But I never really understood them till I lived among scenes similar to
those in which they were composed. And the organ by which they were
interpreted was not the mind so much as the senses, quickened and
invigorated by solitude. I presented a more sensitive surface to
Nature, and the instant result was the perception of Nature as of
something alive. In the silence of the night, as I stood at my door, I
felt the palpitation of a real life around me; the sense, as I have
said, of a breathing movement, of pulsation, of a beating heart, and
then I knew that Wordsworth wrote with strict scientific accuracy, and
not with vague mysticism as is commonly supposed, when he described
Nature as a living Presence.
The sum of these sensations was for me a state of physical beatitude.
I was often reminded of the grim confession of the poor wastrel, who,
when asked where he lived, replied, 'I don't live, I linger.' I had
never really lived; I had lingered. I had trodden the path of the days
and years with reluctant feet. Now every daybreak was a new occasion
of joy to me. I was rejuvenated not only in mind, but in the very core
and marrow of my body. I had put myself in right relation to Nature; I
had established contact, as electricians would say; and as a
consequence all the electric current of Nature flowed through me,
vitalising and quickening me in every nerve. Men who live in cities
are but half alive. They mistake infinite contortion for life. Life
consists in the efficient activity of every part of us, each part
equally efficient, and moving in a perfect rhythm. For the first time,
since I had been conscious of myself, I realised this entire efficiency.
Many times I had coveted what is called 'rude health,' but I had been
led to believe that rude health implies lack of sensitiveness. I now
found the reverse to be the case. Perfect health and perfect
sensitiveness are the same thing. I felt, enjoyed, and received
sensations more acutely simply because my health was perfect. It may
be said that the sensations afforded by such a life as mine were not
upon a grand scale. They were not to be compared with the acute and
poignant sensations afforded--perhaps I should say inflicted--by a
city. I can only say they were enough for me. All pleasures are
relative, and the simplest pleasure is capable of affording as great
delight as the rarest. The sight of a flower can produce as keen a
pleasure as a Coronation pageant, and the song of a bird may become to
the sensitive ear as fine a music as a sonata by Beethoven. May I not
also say that the simplest pleasures are the most enduring, the
commonest delights are the most invigorating, the form of happiness
which is the most easily available is the best? The further we stray
from Nature the harder are we to please, and he knows the truest
pleasure who can find it in the simplest forms.