A friend of mine who was visiting a poor woman in bereavement and
casting about for some phrase of consolation that should not be either
insolent or weak, said at last, “I think one can live through these
great sorrows and even be the better. What wears one is the little
worries.” “That’s quite right, mum,” answered the old woman with
emphasis, “and I ought to know, seeing I’ve had ten of ’em.” It is,
perhaps, in this sense that it is most true that little worries are most
wearing. In its vaguer significance the phrase, though it contains a
truth, contains also some possibilities of self-deception and error.
People who have both small troubles and big ones have the right to say
that they find the small ones the most bitter; and it is undoubtedly
true that the back which is bowed under loads incredible can feel a
faint addition to those loads; a giant holding up the earth and all
its animal creation might still find the grasshopper a burden. But I
am afraid that the maxim that the smallest worries are the worst is
sometimes used or abused by people, because they have nothing but the
very smallest worries. The lady may excuse herself for reviling the
crumpled rose leaf by reflecting with what extraordinary dignity she
would wear the crown of thorns--if she had to. The gentleman may permit
himself to curse the dinner and tell himself that he would behave much
better if it were a mere matter of starvation. We need not deny that
the grasshopper on man’s shoulder is a burden; but we need not pay much
respect to the gentleman who is always calling out that he would rather
have an elephant when he knows there are no elephants in the country. We
may concede that a straw may break the camel’s back, but we like to know
that it really is the last straw and not the first.
I grant that those who have serious wrongs have a real right to grumble,
so long as they grumble about something else. It is a singular fact that
if they are sane they almost always do grumble about something else. To
talk quite reasonably about your own quite real wrongs is the quickest
way to go off your head. But people with great troubles talk about
little ones, and the man who complains of the crumpled rose leaf very
often has his flesh full of the thorns. But if a man has commonly a very
clear and happy daily life then I think we are justified in asking
that he shall not make mountains out of molehills. I do not deny that
molehills can sometimes be important. Small annoyances have this
evil about them, that they can be more abrupt because they are more
invisible; they cast no shadow before, they have no atmosphere. No
one ever had a mystical premonition that he was going to tumble over a
hassock. William III. died by falling over a molehill; I do not suppose
that with all his varied abilities he could have managed to fall over a
mountain. But when all this is allowed for, I repeat that we may ask
a happy man (not William III.) to put up with pure inconveniences,
and even make them part of his happiness. Of positive pain or positive
poverty I do not here speak. I speak of those innumerable accidental
limitations that are always falling across our path--bad weather,
confinement to this or that house or room, failure of appointments
or arrangements, waiting at railway stations, missing posts, finding
unpunctuality when we want punctuality, or, what is worse, finding
punctuality when we don’t. It is of the poetic pleasures to be drawn
from all these that I sing--I sing with confidence because I have
recently been experimenting in the poetic pleasures which arise
from having to sit in one chair with a sprained foot, with the only
alternative course of standing on one leg like a stork--a stork is a
poetic simile; therefore I eagerly adopted it.
To appreciate anything we must always isolate it, even if the thing
itself symbolise something other than isolation. If we wish to see what
a house is it must be a house in some uninhabited landscape. If we wish
to depict what a man really is we must depict a man alone in a desert or
on a dark sea sand. So long as he is a single figure he means all that
humanity means; so long as he is solitary he means human society; so
long as he is solitary he means sociability and comradeship. Add another
figure and the picture is less human--not more so. One is company, two
is none. If you wish to symbolise human building draw one dark tower on
the horizon; if you wish to symbolise light let there be no star in the
sky. Indeed, all through that strangely lit season which we call our day
there is but one star in the sky--a large, fierce star which we call the
sun. One sun is splendid; six suns would be only vulgar. One Tower Of
Giotto is sublime; a row of Towers of Giotto would be only like a row
of white posts. The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower;
the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in
following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the
single star. And so, in the same pensive lucidity, I find the poetry of
all human anatomy in standing on a single leg. To express complete and
perfect leggishness the leg must stand in sublime isolation, like the
tower in the wilderness. As Ibsen so finely says, the strongest leg is
that which stands most alone.
This lonely leg on which I rest has all the simplicity of some Doric
column. The students of architecture tell us that the only legitimate
use of a column is to support weight. This column of mine fulfils its
legitimate function. It supports weight. Being of an animal and organic
consistency, it may even improve by the process, and during these few
days that I am thus unequally balanced, the helplessness or dislocation
of the one leg may find compensation in the astonishing strength and
classic beauty of the other leg. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson in Mr.
George Meredith’s novel might pass by at any moment, and seeing me in
the stork-like attitude would exclaim, with equal admiration and a more
literal exactitude, “He has a leg.” Notice how this famous literary
phrase supports my contention touching this isolation of any admirable
thing. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, wishing to make a clear and perfect
picture of human grace, said that Sir Willoughby Patterne had a leg. She
delicately glossed over and concealed the clumsy and offensive fact
that he had really two legs. Two legs were superfluous and irrelevant,
a reflection, and a confusion. Two legs would have confused Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson like two Monuments in London. That having had one
good leg he should have another--this would be to use vain repetitions
as the Gentiles do. She would have been as much bewildered by him as if
he had been a centipede.
All pessimism has a secret optimism for its object. All surrender
of life, all denial of pleasure, all darkness, all austerity, all
desolation has for its real aim this separation of something so that it
may be poignantly and perfectly enjoyed. I feel grateful for the slight
sprain which has introduced this mysterious and fascinating division
between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to
realise that it might be lost. In one of my feet I can feel how strong
and splendid a foot is; in the other I can realise how very much
otherwise it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly
exhilarating. This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and
beautiful than even we know until some accident reminds us. If you
wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a
moment. If you wish to realise how fearfully and wonderfully God’s image
is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realise the splendid vision of
all visible things--wink the other eye.