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THE
PRIVILEGE OF PAIN
BY
MRS. LEO EVERETT
INTRODUCTION
BY
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1920,
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
TO MY COUSIN
BELLE HUNNEWELL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRIVILEGE OF PAIN
INTRODUCTION
A very suggestive and intriguing title is “_The Privilege of Pain_.”
Those who know a good deal about the subject will doubtless raise the
eyebrow of incredulity, while those who have lived in blissful ignorance
will be curious if not wholly sympathetic. When I first heard the essay
(since developed into this book) read before an audience of very
thoughtful and discriminating women, I fancied, although it awakened the
liveliest interest in all present, that there was not entire unanimity
as to the essayist’s point of view. Several invalids and semi-invalids
wore an expression of modest pride in the eloquent plea that physical
limitations had not succeeded in stemming the tide of mental and
spiritual achievement in the long history of the world’s progress.
Robust ladies, equal to eight hours’ work, and if advisable, eight
hours’ play, out of the twenty-four, looked a trifle aggrieved, as if
the gift of perfect health had been underrated, and the laurels that had
always surmounted their shining hair and glowing faces might be wrested
from them and placed on paler brows. They had no wish to shorten the
list of the essayist’s heroes, (Heaven forbid!) but they evidently
wished to retire to their private libraries and compile a roll of honor
from the merely healthy.
However there was no acrimony in the discussion that followed the
reading of the paper nor any desire to withhold honor where honor was so
gloriously due.
Those who disbelieved in the validity of pain; those who were convinced
that mind is not only superior to, but able to win complete triumph over
matter; those who felt that laying hold of the Great Source of Healing
and Power would enable them not only to deny but to defy pain, these
naturally were not completely in accord with the writer.
Myself, I have always thought that the happy waking after dreamless
sleep; the exultation in the new day and its appointed task; the sense
of vigor and ability to do whatever opportunity offered; the feeling
that one could “run and not be weary, could walk and not faint”—that
these were the most precious things that the gods could vouchsafe to
mankind,—and yet!—What of the latent powers that wake into life when we
look into “the bright face of danger”? Our bodies are not commonly the
temples that God intended them to be, and yet often an unquenchable fire
burns within; an inner flame that incites to effort and achievement,
turns the timid slave into the happy warrior. What if the strength born
of overcoming should rescue dormant powers equal to those that exist
where there is no effort save that engendered by abounding vitality?
After all life is an obstacle race to most of us. Who knows whether the
horse could make a spectacular jump had he not often been confronted by
bar, gate, hurdle and hedge? I wonder how many great things have been
carved, painted, written, conceived, invented, where the creative human
being has never suffered, but has been sheltered, lapped in ease, the
burden lifted from his shoulders? I wonder if the eye that is seldom wet
with tears is ever truly capable of the highest vision?
I think that my own unregenerate watchword would be: “All for health and
the world well lost!” so I am by no means a special pleader, even yet,
for the “privilege of pain”; but Mrs. Everett’s enthusiasm and the ardor
of her conviction compels a new and more sympathetic understanding of
her thesis.
I have more often seen spiritual than intellectual exaltation follow
pain, but both were present in one woman, half-poet, half-saint, whose
verses were written in intense suffering, as indeed were most of W. E.
Henley’s.
With closed eyes and pale lips she once quoted to me:
“Angel of Pain! I think thy face
Will be in all the Heavenly Place
The earliest face that I shall see
And swiftest face to smile on me!”
“How is it possible for you to say it?” I asked brokenly.
“Because,” she answered, “all dreams and all visions have come to me, as
well as all that I know of earth and heaven, through pain. It opens
windows in what would otherwise be blank walls!”
The blind, deaf, dumb, maimed, crippled (if so be it the soul is strong)
seem to develop a splendid fighting spirit unknown to those who,
apparently, have complete command of all their powers. Take one sense
away and the others spring, full-armored, into more active service. Rob
them of a right hand and the underrated left becomes doubly skilful.
These are soldiers in the “army with banners,” and should be led and
followed by acclaiming hosts.
I have known hundreds of invalids more or less saintly, but I have had
personal friendship with only two completely joyous, triumphant
ones,—Robert Louis Stevenson and Helen Keller. If “one with God is a
majority,” then two such conquering human creatures as these furnish
inspiration for our generation, and Mrs. Everett in her eager search has
found hundreds of similar examples. For that reason I call this a
unique, gallant, courageous, helpful little book, likely to give pluck
and spirit to many readers handicapped by various ills! There is nothing
patient, meek, or resigned in its pages; no air of being
crushed-but-still-smiling; it simply radiates a plucky, chin-in-the-air
atmosphere calculated to make an aching hand pick up its pen, brush,
lump of clay or shovel and go to work; not grimly and doggedly, with
lips set, but glowing in triumph over the secret adversary.
The magnificent company marshalled by Mrs. Everett has an exhilarating
effect upon the hearer or reader. As I listened to instance after
instance of weakness gloriously transmuted into strength; of personal
grief and sorrow turned into joy for the whole world; of vast knowledge,
spiritual and intellectual, amassed bit by bit in the very grip of
physical suffering, I remembered the poetic pronouncement in Revelation.
“He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life
which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
New York, May, 1920.
I
HEALTH AND STRENGTH
Several years ago one of the New York papers published an interview with
a well-known physician, on the advisability of women being drafted for
war. He expressed himself in favor of their receiving military training,
although, he casually remarked, “a good many would undoubtedly perish.
But,” he argued, “if we blot out the individual equation and judge from
the standpoint of race, would their perishing be regrettable?” He thinks
not. “For, objectors must remember,” he continues, “that mental and
moral man gets his strength and efficiency only from the physical man. A
sick man, just as a sick race, is the one that goes to the wall.”
This outrageous statement was published at the very height of the world
war, when men without arms, legs, eyes, men permanently shattered in
health, men who will hide all their lives behind masks, were crawling
home in hordes. And the worst of it is, that practically everybody
agrees with his verdict.
We offer these heroes, who have sacrificed their splendid young bodies
on the altar of humanity, a few fine phrases about glory and honor, yet
are smugly content to allow them to be crushed by our degrading
conviction that the heights of achievement are no longer for them.
Now if a sick race could exist at all, it might go to the wall as the
doctor prophesies; but when he narrows his contention to the individual,
when he declares that “a sick man goes to the wall,” he is venturing a
statement which only a surprising ignorance can excuse.
For what is more surprising than for an educated man, a physician, to
put forward a claim which can be refuted by anyone who has even a
superficial knowledge of the past? Every one I have questioned has been
able to recall at least one invalid who has attained celebrity. For
instance, all but the unlettered are familiar with the fact that both
Keats and Robert Louis Stevenson were diseased.
The vast majority, however, even of cultivated people, do not seem to
realize what an extraordinarily large percentage of the greatest men and
women have been physically handicapped. It is the joyous mission of this
book to prove to all invalids, but more especially to those living
victims of the Great War, that Keats and Stevenson, far from
representing isolated instances of achievement despite bodily
infirmities, are but members of a gallant army, some of whom have
reached even greater heights in spite of more painful disabilities.
The relation of insanity to genius has not escaped the notice of
scholars, who have already exhaustively dealt with it. I intend
therefore to confine myself to those giants of the past who have
suffered either from disease, mutilation or constitutional debility. If
I have cited a few who have been afflicted with attacks of insanity, I
have selected only those whose best work was done after recovering from
such seizures, and have carefully excluded all who have had to pay with
their intellects the price of a too stupendous vision. I wish
furthermore to impress upon you that of all the illustrious men and
women I shall enumerate there is not one whose fullest development was
not coincident with ill-health, or reached after joining the ranks of
the physically unfit.
If we scrutinize more closely this heterogeneous assemblage, we shall
discover that it is composed of representatives of the most varied forms
of human endeavor,—Saint and philosopher, poet and scientist, author and
statesman, musician and artist, and, what is really astonishing, some of
the greatest soldiers and one, at least, of the greatest sailors are
among them.
II
SOLDIERS AND A SAILOR
Of all vocations, the profession of arms is the one for which it might
be supposed that a perfect physique is the most essential.
Yet Alexander, Cæsar, Alfred the Great, John of Bohemia, Torstensson, Le
Grand Condé and his great rival Turenne, Luxembourg, Napoleon, General
Wolfe and finally Lord Nelson are proofs to die contrary.
Alexander the Great, singular even among men of action for the splendor
of his imagination, was an epileptic. So also was Julius Cæsar. The
latter was often attacked by his malady on the very field of battle.
Alfred, so justly called “the Great,” was stricken in his twentieth year
by a mysterious disease which caused him intense pain and from which he
was never afterwards free. The extent and diversity of his activities
are, however, almost incredible. He excelled as a soldier, politician
and administrator. He was also a scholar, and the revival of learning
which took place under his reign was due solely to his efforts.
King John of Bohemia stands out as the most romantic and chivalrous
figure of the Middle Ages. He dazzled his contemporaries by his exploits
and his reputation for valor has never been exceeded. He was overtaken
by blindness at the age of forty-three, but, strapped to his horse,
continued to lead his armies to battle. For six years this blind hero
successfully resisted all the attacks of the Emperor Louis and his
allies. His heroic death at the battle of Creçy was a fitting conclusion
to a gallant life. According to Camden, the ostrich feathers and the
motto “Ich dien,” borne ever since by the Prince of Wales, originally
formed the crest of King John, and were first assumed by the Black
Prince as a token of the admiration with which his antagonist inspired
him.
Condé, known to history as “Le Grand Condé,” was so delicate in
childhood that he was not expected to reach maturity, and his nervous
system was “at no time to be trifled with.” During his innumerable
campaigns he was a constant martyr to fevers and other maladies, but
these seldom interfered with his untiring energy or his capacity for
work. He had also the power of arousing the enthusiasm of his followers.
They said of him: “In the midst of misfortune Condé always maintains the
character of a hero.”
Turenne is one of the captains whose campaigns Napoleon recommended all
soldiers to “read and re-read.” Physical infirmities and an impediment
in his speech hampered his career in youth. However, by devoting himself
to bodily exercises, he succeeded in a measure in overcoming his
weaknesses, but to the end he never possessed a normal physique.
Count Torstensson, the brilliant Swedish field-marshal, celebrated after
Gustavus Adolphus as the hero of the Thirty Years’ War, and compared to
Napoleon for the rapidity with which he was able to move his troops, had
frequently to lead his army from a litter, as his infirmities would not
permit him to mount a horse. He is considered by experts to have been a
greater man than his opponent, Tilly, although the latter, strangely
enough, has a more widespread reputation.
A propos Luxembourg and William III (although the latter should be
included among the statesmen), I will quote a passage from Macaulay. “In
such an age (1694) bodily vigor is the most indispensable qualification
for a warrior. At the battle of Landon two poor, sickly beings, who, in
a rude state of society, would have been considered too puny to bear
part in combats, were the souls of two great armies.” And further on:
“It is probable that the two feeblest in body among the hundred and
twenty thousand soldiers that fought at Neerwinden were the hunch-backed
dwarf (Luxembourg) who urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the
asthmatic skeleton (William III) who covered the slow retreat of
England.”
Napoleon was an epileptic and Lord Nelson, at the height of his
efficiency, had lost an arm and an eye and what is even more remarkable
was, so it is said, sick every time he went to sea or whenever the
weather was exceptionally rough.
General Wolfe, although only thirty-two years old, was already a man of
shattered health when he undertook his famous expedition against Quebec.
In spite of disheartening failures and the torture of an internal
malady, he finally won the decisive victory which wrested Quebec from
the French. During the battle he was twice wounded but refused to leave
the field until a third bullet pierced his lung. He survived only long
enough to give a final order for cutting off the retreat and breathed
his last murmuring: “Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.”
Let us consider for a moment what made these men pre-eminent. It was not
courage. Cæsar and Napoleon were no braver than thousands of their
followers. Nor was it the capacity for endurance. What then was the
secret of their power? I answer unhesitatingly,—imagination. No leader
has been without it and the greatest leaders are the men who have had it
to a superlative degree. Napoleon recognized its mysterious sway, for it
was he who said: “Imagination rules the world.” Now, imagination is the
very quality we find most frequently allied to ill-health.
I beg to call to your attention that with the exception of le grand
Condé and possibly Napoleon, not one of these men would have passed his
“medical.”
It is certainly curious that the profession of arms, the most physically
exacting of all professions, is the only one whose greatest examples
have without exception been tainted with disease.
III
ILL-HEALTH AND ITS RELATION TO GENIUS
“The physical conditions which accompany and affect what we call genius
are obscure, and have hitherto attracted little but empirical notice. It
is impossible not to see that absolutely normal man or woman, as we
describe normality, is very rarely indeed an inventor, or a seer, or
even a person of remarkable mental energy. The bulk of what are called
entirely ‘healthy’ people add nothing to the sum of human achievement,
and it is not the average navvy who makes a Darwin nor a typical
daughter of the plough who develops into an Elizabeth Barrett
Browning.... The more closely we study, with extremely slender resources
of evidence, the lives of great men of imagination and action since the
beginning of the world, the more clearly we ought to recognize that a
reduction of all types to one stolid uniformity of what is called
‘health’ would have the effect of depriving humanity of precisely those
individuals who have added most to the beauty and variety of human
existence.... When the physical conditions of men of the highest
celebrity in the past are touched upon, it is usual to pass them over
with indifference, or else to account for them as the result of disease.
The peculiarities of Pascal, or of Pope, or of Michelangelo are either
denied, or it is presumed that they were the result of purely morbid
factors against which their genius, their rectitude, or their common
sense more or less successfully contended. It is admitted that Tasso had
a hypersensitive constitution, which cruelty tortured into melancholia,
but it is taken for granted that he would have been a greater poet, if
he had taken plenty of out-door exercise.”
These are the conclusions of Mr. Edmund Gosse, and they are even more
radical than mine. It is, however, true that in sickness the
perceptions, physical, mental and spiritual, become supernormally acute,
and this extreme sensitiveness to impression is one of the attributes of
genius. It follows, therefore, that imagination is stimulated by
suffering, but not that suffering creates genius or is even inseparably
allied to it.
The most universal concomitant of genius is the power of concentration
and there is nothing that so fosters that quality as ill-health. By
forcing us to limit our activities, our human contacts, it automatically
eliminates everything that is not the basic essential of each
individual.
We may dream of an absolutely balanced man, one equally supreme in mind,
body, and spirit, but I do not believe it possible for such a being to
exist. It seems to be a law that we must purchase and develop one
faculty at the expense of another. Only by excessive application to one
restricted form of activity can we excel in it. Genius is not eccentric,
it is concentric. The all-round man is the mediocre man. To perfect even
a rose, you must mutilate the bush.
Of all the great men of imagination Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe seem to
have been the most superabundantly healthy. This was certainly true of
Leonardo in his youth, but I cannot help feeling that when he painted
Mona Lisa’s smile, Pain, the great teacher, was not unknown to him.
However, I may be mistaken, and if so, he is the most complete man in
the whole history of art, science or literature, for he enjoyed the
advantages of health without forfeiting the hypersensitiveness of
suffering.
There is no doubt, however, about Goethe. He kept his splendid physique
to the last, and Goethe was unquestionably a very great man. His
gigantic intellect is curiously stimulating. No one else of whom I know,
with the exception of Leonardo, has had such a multiple outlook on life.
That amazing eye of his dissected as well as comprehended all that it
rested upon, and it rested upon almost everything tangible. But the very
universality of Goethe’s genius is one of its limitations. He gives so
much, and yet—there it is, he knows no “half-lights.” He never leads one
to those shadowy regions where the soul is in travail; he knows nothing
of that mysterious tract which lies beyond the last outpost of the
intellect. His imagination even in its wildest flights is curiously
earthbound. I feel that he was too healthy.
IV
AMONG THE POETS
“THEY LEARN IN SUFFERING WHAT THEY TEACH IN SONG”
Horace was a man of feeble health; Milton was blind; Pope deformed.
George Herbert, to whom we owe so many of our most beautiful hymns and
anthems, was consumptive. John Donne had an enormous influence on
English literature, although, according to Mr. Edmund Gosse, his
influence was mostly malign. He was praised by Dryden, paraphrased by
Pope, and then completely forgotten for a century. His versification is
often harsh, but “behind that fantastic garb of language there is an
earnest and vigorous mind, and imagination that harbors fire within its
cloudy folds and an insight into the mysteries of spiritual life which
is often startling. Donne excels in brief flashes of wit and beauty, and
in sudden, daring phrases that have the full perfume of poetry in them.”
Izaak Walton was his admiring friend and first biographer. Donne was
constantly ill during the years of his greatest creative activity, yet
this is what he once said, speaking of his illnesses: “The advantage you
and my other friends have by my frequent fevers is that I am so much the
oftener at the gate of heaven; and, by the solitude and close
imprisonment they reduce me to, I am so much the oftener at my prayers,
in which you and my other dear friends are not forgotten.”
It was owing to ill-health that Coleridge first took opium under the
guise of a patent medicine.
William Cowper early showed a tendency to melancholia, but it was not
until he was almost thirty that the prospects of having to appear at the
bar of the House of Lords, preliminary to taking up the position of
clerk—a mere formality—drove him completely insane. He attempted suicide
and was sent to an asylum where he spent eighteen months. At the age of
forty-two he had another attack from which it took him almost three
years to recover completely. Nevertheless we find him three years later
making his first appearance as an author with “Olney Hymns,” written in
conjunction with a friend. This was followed by a collection of poems,
which was badly received, one critic declaring that “Mr. Cowper was
certainly a good, pious man, but without one spark of poetic fire.” It
was not until 1785 when he was already fifty-four years old and had been
twice declared insane that he published the book that was to make him
famous. It is entitled: “The Task, Tircinium or a Review of Schools, and
the History of John Gilpin.” Cowper is among the poets who are
epoch-makers. “He brought a new spirit into English verse. With him
begins the ‘enthusiasm for humanity,’ that was afterwards to become so
marked in the poetry of Burns, Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron.”
Keats suffered from consumption and it is interesting to note that the
progress of his disease coincided with the expansion of his genius.
Chatterton is the most astounding and precocious figure in the whole
history of letters. He was only seventeen years and nine months old when
starvation drove him to commit suicide, “but the best of his numerous
productions, both in prose and verse, require no allowance to be made
for the immaturity of their author.” Chatterton’s audience has never
been a large one for the reason that with a few exceptions all his poems
are written in Fifteenth Century English. Among the discriminating,
however, he holds a very high place. His genius and tragic death are
commemorated by Wordsworth in “Resolution and Independence,” by
Coleridge in “A Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” by D. G. Rossetti in
“Five English Poets,” and Keats dedicated “Endymion” to his memory.
I have hesitated as to whether I had a right to include Chatterton among
my examples, because I can find no record of his having suffered from
actual disease. On the other hand he was so abnormal that I feel that I
have no right to ignore him. From his earliest years he was subject to
fits of abstraction during which he would sit for hours in seeming
stupor from which it was almost impossible to wake him. For a time he
was even considered deficient in intellect.
Thomas Hood was a chronic invalid; his most famous poem, “The Bridge of
Sighs,” was written on his death-bed. Byron and Swinburne were also
physically handicapped.
W. E. Henley was not only a poet but a trenchant critic and a successful
editor. A physical infirmity forced him at the age of twenty-five to
become an inmate of an Edinburgh hospital. While there he wrote a number
of poems in irregular rhythm describing, with poignant force, his
experiences as a patient. Sent to the _Cornhill Magazine_, they at once
aroused the interest of Leslie Stephen, the editor, and induced him to
visit the young poet and to take Robert Louis Stevenson with him. This
meeting in the hospital and the friendship which ensued between
Stevenson and Henley were famous in the literary gossip of the last
century. Henley’s reputation will rest on his poetry, and the best of
his poems will retain a permanent place in English literature. As a
literary editor he displayed a gift for discovering men of promise, and
“Views and Reviews” is a “volume of notable criticism.”
Sidney Lanier, one of the most original and talented of American poets,
was consumptive, and Francis Thompson, author of “The Hound of Heaven,”
wrote his flaming verse under acute pain.
The Sixteenth Century was the heyday of poets. Princes regarded them as
the chief ornament of their courts and disputed among themselves the
honor of their company. Ronsard’s life, therefore, was exceptionally
fortunate. He enjoyed the favor of the three sons of Catherine de’
Medici, more especially of Charles IX, after whose premature death the
poet retired from Paris. Ronsard is celebrated as the chief glory of an
association of poets who called themselves the “Pléiade.” His own
generation bestowed upon him the title of “Prince of Poets.” Ronsard
became deaf at eighteen and so he became a man of letters instead of a
diplomatist. His infirmity is probably responsible for a “certain
premature agedness, a tranquil, temperate sweetness” which characterizes
the school of poetry he founded.
Joachim du Bellay was destined for the army and his poetry would most
probably have been lost to the world if he had not been attacked by a
serious illness which seemed likely to prove fatal. It was during the
idle days of his convalescence that he first read the Greek and Latin
poets. He was also a member of the “Pléiade” and some of his isolated
pieces excel those of Ronsard in “airy lightness of touch.”
Molière is the greatest name in French literature. The facts as to his
youth and early manhood are so wrapped in uncertainty, that it is
impossible to say when the frailty of his health first became manifest.
When he emerges from obscurity we find him already subject to attacks of
illness and forced to limit himself to a milk diet. His best work,
however, was still undone. “Tartuffe” was not written until 1664 when
Molière was already forty-two years old, and “Le Misanthrope” was
performed a year later. Although it had probably long been latent, he
first showed unmistakable symptoms of consumption in 1667. In spite of
the ravages of disease, and the continual strain of an impossible
domestic situation, he produced “Le Bourgois Gentilhomme” three years
later, followed by “Les Fourberies de Scapin.” “Le Malade Imaginaire”
was written shortly before his death, and it was while acting the title
rôle that he ruptured a blood vessel. He died a few hours afterwards,
alone, except for the casual presence of two Sisters of Charity.
Scarron, poet, dramatist and novelist, lived twenty years in a state of
miserable deformity and pain. His head and body were twisted; his legs
useless. He bore his sufferings with invincible courage. Scarron was a
prominent figure in the literary and fashionable society of his day. His
work, however, is very unequal. That the “Roman Burlesque” is a novel of
real merit, no competent critic can deny. It was republished during the
nineteenth century, not only in the original French but in an English
translation. Scarron is also of interest as the first husband of the
lady who as Mme. de Maintenon became the wife of Louis XIV.
Boileau was the youngest of fifteen children. He is said to have had but
one passion, the hatred of stupid books. He was the first critic to
demonstrate the poetical possibilities of the French language. His two
masterpieces are “L’Art Poétique” and “Lutrin.” “After much depreciation
Boileau’s critical work has been rehabilitated and his judgments have
been substantially adopted by his successors.” He suffered all his life
from constitutional debility.
Schiller was a leading spirit of his age, yet from his thirty-second
year “every one of his nerves was an avenue of pain.” Nevinson, however,
considered “it possible the disease served in some way to increase
Schiller’s eager activity and fan his intellect into keener flame.”
Carlyle also writes of the poet that “in the midst of his infirmities he
persevered with unabated zeal in the great business of his life. His
frame might be impaired, but his spirit retained its fire
unextinguished.” Schiller wrote some of his noblest and greatest plays
during the periods of his most acute suffering. When he died it was
found that all his vital organs were deranged.
Heinrich Heine, another immortal, spent eight years of his agitated
struggling life on what he called “a mattress-grave.” “These years of
suffering seem to have effected what might be called a spiritual
purification of Heine’s nature, and to have brought out all the good
side of his character, whereas adversity in earlier days had only
emphasized his cynicism.” Though crippled and racked with constant pain,
his intellectual and creative powers were no whit dimmed. His greatest
poems were written during these years of suffering from which he found
relief only in death.
Petrarch suffered from epilepsy, and Alfieri, one of the greatest of the
Italian tragic poets, was a martyr to pain. So likewise was Leopardi,
author of some immortal odes; the latter was, furthermore, deformed. It
was said of him that “Pain and Love are the two-fold poetry of his
existence.”
Camoens, the greatest of Portuguese poets, lost his right eye attempting
to board an enemy ship. After a life of incredible hardship, he died in
a public almshouse worn out by disease.
There are hardly any women poets, which is rather curious, as it is
almost the only career that requires neither training nor paraphernalia,
yet among this handful we find four, three of them being of real
importance, namely: Mrs. Browning, Christina Rossetti and Emily
Dickinson. Mrs. Browning was a chronic invalid and wrote her greatest
poems, “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” while actually on her back. Mr.
Edmund Gosse says of Christina Rossetti, “All we really know about her,
save that she was a great saint, was that she was a great poet.” She was
also a great sufferer.
The most curious event of American literary history was the sudden rise
of Emily Dickinson into a posthumous fame. This strange woman, who
shunned publicity with a morbid terror and never left her “father’s
house for any house or town,” nevertheless bequeathed to the world poems
which for life and fire are unexcelled. She was an invalid. In 1863 she
writes: “I was ill since September, and since April in Boston for a
physician’s care. He does not let me go, yet I work in my prison, and
make guests for myself. Carlo (her dog) did not come, because he would
die in jail and the mountains I could not hold now, so I brought but the
gods!”
Frances Ridley Havergal wrote some of her most beautiful hymns on a sick
bed.
V
NOVELISTS
The first name I find on my list of novelists who have been subject to
ill health is that of Cervantes. He did not start life an invalid,—far
from it. He seems to have been a youth of unusual vigor. But when only
twenty-three years old he was severely wounded and lost his left hand in
battle—“For the greater glory of the right,” as he gallantly exclaimed.
After that he spent five years in slavery and he escaped from the Moors
only to languish at various times in a Spanish prison. Hardship, and
privations doubtless, and also his old wounds, had completely shattered
his health when he finally sat down to create his immortal “Don
Quixote.” The first part was published when he was fifty-eight years
old, the last when he was sixty-nine.
When Fielding wrote “Tom Jones,” he had been for years a martyr to gout
and other diseases: Gibbon predicted for this work “a diuturnity
exceeding that of the house of Austria!” It is curious that this book,
which bubbles over with the joy of life, was written at a time when
Fielding was plunged into the deepest melancholy.
Swift suffered from “labyrinthian vertigo.”
Laurence Sterne, creator of “Tristram Shandy,” was consumptive, as he
says of himself, “from the first hour I drew breath unto this that I can
hardly breathe at all.” Sterne, no longer young, was increasingly
suffering during the years he brought forth the numerous volumes of his
unique book.
Sir Walter Scott was not only lame from infancy but is an inspiring
example of what can be accomplished under conditions of extreme physical
suffering. When he was forty-six years old began a series of agonizing
attacks of cramps of the stomach which recurred at frequent intervals
for two years. But his activity and capacity for work remained unbroken.
He made his initial attempt at play-writing when he was recovering from
this first seizure. Before the year was out he had completed “Rob Roy.”
Within six months it was followed by “The Heart of Midlothian,” which
filled four volumes of the second series of “Tales of my Landlord,” and
has remained one of the most popular among his novels. “The Bride of
Lammermoor” and “The Legend of Montrose” were dictated to amanuenses,
through fits of suffering so acute that he could not suppress cries of
agony. When Laidlaw begged him to stop dictating he only answered, “Nay,
Willie, only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry,
as well as all the wool to ourselves, but to give over work, that can
only be when I am woolen.”
Mme. de La Fayette lost her health a year before her epoch-making novel,
“La Princess de Cléves,” was published. She lived fifteen years
afterwards, “étant de ceux,” as Sainte-Beuve says, “qui traînent leur
miserable vie jusqu’à la dernière goutte d’huile.” “La Princesse de
Cléves” is not only intrinsically a work of real merit, which is still
read with pleasure, but is important because it is the first novel of
sentiment, the first novel, in the sense we moderns use the word, that
was ever written.
Le Sage was a handsome, engaging youth, but it was not until he was
thirty-nine years old that he made his first success with the “Diable
Boiteux.” Already his deafness was rapidly increasing; and he was
sixty-seven years old and had long been completely deaf when the last
volume of the masterpiece, “Gil Blas,” appeared.
Vauvenargues was a soldier until he had both of his legs frozen during a
winter campaign. This injury, from which he never recovered, forced him
to leave the army. An attack of small-pox completed the ruin of his
health, and thenceforth he led a secluded life devoted to literary
pursuits. It is mainly as a novelist that Vauvenargues occupies a place
in French literature, although his other works were held in high esteem
by his contemporaries.
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt are names famous in French literary
history. “Learning something from Flaubert, and teaching almost
everything to Zola, they invented a new kind of novel, and their works
are the result of a new vision of the world.... A novel of the Goncourts
is made up of an infinite number of details, set side by side, every
detail equally prominent.... French critics have complained that the
language of the Goncourts is no longer the French of the past, and this
is true. It is their distinction, the finest of their inventions, that
in order to render new sensations, a new vision of things, they invented
a new language.” (Mr. Arthur Symons.) Their journal is a gold mine from
which present-day writers still carry away unacknowledged nuggets. M.
Paul Bourget said of them: “Life reduced itself to a series of epileptic
attacks, preceded and followed by a blank.”
Dostoievsky is considered by many critics the greatest of the great
Russian novelists.
His health was completely shattered by his spending four years in a
Siberian prison as a political offender. This terrible experience,
however, served to create “Recollections of a Dead House” and “Buried
Alive in Siberia.”
Anton Chekhov, the Russian novelist and short story writer, was only a
little over twenty when he began to suffer from attacks of blood
spitting. Although he believed that these came from his throat they were
undoubtedly due to consumption. He was also a martyr to digestive
trouble and headaches.
Chekhov possessed to an unusual degree the nervous energy which so
frequently accompanies disease. He was a remarkably prolific author, so
much so that in one of his letters he prophesies that he will soon have
written enough to fill a library with his own works. Literature was,
however, not his only pursuit. He also practiced medicine, although he
refused to receive any remuneration for his services. He was public
spirited and altruistic and organized an association for the relief of
Siberian prisoners.
His books enjoy an immense vogue and have been translated into every
language.
Whatever may be the future of English fiction, Charlotte Brontë’s novels
will always command attention, by reason of their intensity and
individuality. She suffered from permanent bodily weakness with various
complications.
Some critics consider Emily Brontë superior to her sister. “Wuthering
Heights” is a “thing apart, passionate, unforgettable.” This remarkable
book was written while its author was dying of consumption.
That super-woman, known to fame as George Eliot, suffered all her life
from frequent attacks of illness. In spite of her physical limitations
she was capable of the most prolonged and intense application. Her
numerous novels, dating from her thirty-sixth year, are only a part of
her widespread intellectual activities.
Jacobsen, the great Danish novelist, unfortunately too little known in
this country, was, like so many others, cut off from his chosen or
destined profession and driven into literature by ill health. During the
worst phases of his sufferings he produced books that in their way have
never been surpassed.
I must mention here, though she belongs to no category, that
extraordinary child, Marie Bashkirtseff, who, dying of consumption at
twenty-four, left behind her several pictures of great promise (two of
them are in the Luxembourg Gallery, I believe) and her “Journal,” a
remarkable production which created a sensation thirty years ago and
which has lately been republished.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s life is so well-known that I need only to
recall him to your memory.
Henry James was so delicate that he was forced to remain a spectator of
the Civil War, in which his younger brothers fought. Mr. Edmund Gosse
writes the following description of a visit to Henry James when the
latter was already thirty-two years old. “Stretched on a sofa and
apologizing for not rising to greet me, his appearance gave me a little
shock, for I had not thought of him as an invalid. He hurriedly and
rather evasively declared that he was not that, but that a muscular
weakness of the spine obliged him, as he said, ‘to assume a horizontal
posture during some hours of every day in order to bear an almost
unbroken routine of evening engagements.’” It is recorded that in one
winter he dined out one hundred and seven times. What amazing assiduity!
His health gradually grew stronger, but for many years it seriously
handicapped his activity.
I should like to linger a moment with Lafcadio Hearn. He is known to the
world at large as the foremost interpreter of the old and new Japan. He
married a Japanese wife and this gave him a peculiar insight into the
customs as well as the psychology of his adopted countrymen. His books
show a unique understanding of the Oriental mind and their literary art
is exquisite. He not only suffered from ill health, but in addition lost
the sight of one eye in early youth and ever after went in fear of total
blindness. Yet, far from regretting his afflictions, this is what he
said about them: “The owner of pure horse-health never purchased the
power of discerning the half-lights. In its separation of the spiritual
from the physical portion of existence, severe sickness is often
invaluable to the sufferer, in the revelation it bestows of the
psychological undercurrents of human existence. From the intuitive
recognition of the terrible but at the same time glorious fact, that the
highest life can only be reached by subordinating physical to spiritual
influences, separating the immaterial from the material self,—therein
lies all the history of asceticism and self-suppression as the most
efficacious measure of developing religious and intellectual power.”
That is what experience had taught one who was certainly not a
religionist.
VI
PHYSICAL PERFECTION AND ITS RELATION TO CIVILIZATION
I am persuaded that it is impossible to banish suffering from the world.
All we have so far accomplished is to exchange one form of suffering for
another.
Take the case of women, for example, and the ailments to which they are
subject. Primitive woman was virtually free from these. She suffered
little at childbirth. To-day the operation of even the normal female
functions has become a serious matter. Science with all its strides has
not been able to cope successfully with the increasing burden which the
conditions of modern life impose on woman’s physique.
I have chosen women as an illustration because they themselves would be
the first to insist that they had profited more than men from the
advance of thought and the perfecting of a social system that is largely
their own creation. Well, compare this Flower of the Ages, as we see her
in shops, offices, ball-rooms or even colleges, with an Australian
bush-woman, and we will find that neither in health, strength nor
endurance can she rival her savage sister. The woman of the bush is
capable of following her master all day with a baby on her back; of
stopping for a brief period to produce another and of resuming her
progress, unimpeded by her additional burden.
It is well to realize that civilization, which has bestowed such
incalculable benefits upon mankind, has done so largely at the expense
of its physical welfare. Moreover, as men, and more particularly women,
rise in the intellectual scale, they risk the sacrifice not only of a
robust, but of a normal, body. But what of it? “Wisdom is better than
strength; and a wise man is better than a strong man.” Nor must we
forget that while civilization has undoubtedly undermined our physique,
it has also abolished the circumstances which made strength and
endurance the supreme necessities of the battle of life. To be able to
follow her male with a child on her back—to say nothing of the
interesting interlude—is not a quality that would add either to the
allurement or efficiency of the woman of to-day.
Let me here cite four celebrated women who, differing from each other in
every other particular, suffered in common from ill health.
The first in order of time is Madame du Deffand who was for many years
the center of one of the most brilliant of the Eighteenth Century
salons. Her correspondence with Voltaire, La Duchesse Choiseul and
Horace Walpole is immortal and has been frequently republished. Many of
her letters to Voltaire and all of those to Mme. de Choiseul and Horace
Walpole were dictated when she was over sixty-seven years of age, broken
in health and totally blind.
Rachel was the daughter of a poor Jew pedlar, and from the age of four
she roamed the streets singing patriotic songs. A famous singing teacher
heard her and, impressed by the crude power of the little creature,
offered to teach her gratuitously. It is almost unbelievable to read of
the excitement this small, plain Jewess created. She still lives in
hundreds of books and is an integral part of the history of her period.
If we can judge from contemporary praises, Rachel is the greatest
actress of whom there is any record. She suffered from continual ill
health and died of consumption in her thirty-seventh year.
Grace Darling was the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, and with her
father braved almost certain death in attempting to save the survivors
of the wreck of the _Forfarshire_. By well-nigh superhuman efforts they
succeeded in rescuing a great number. This gallant exploit made them
both famous. Grace Darling had always been delicate and died of
consumption four years later.
Florence Nightingale, immortal nurse and one of the most influential
women in history, had at the time of her greatest activity a body so
weak that it was a wonder how a woman in such delicate health was able
to perform so much of what Sidney Herbert called “a man’s work.” During
many years of important achievement she was altogether bed-ridden.
Working incessantly, writing, organizing, she was a power throughout the
British Empire. Her influence has spread over the world; to her we owe
the first idea of training nurses.
It is really curious that physical fitness should have become an ideal
only after it had ceased to be the indispensable requirement of our
environment. Piano-moving is perhaps the sole occupation to-day where
strength is the only qualification, and intelligence of no account
whatsoever; yet few of us aspire to become piano-movers!
The body is a most delicate machine and only in exceptional cases can it
be kept through life in perfect condition, without an immense
expenditure of time and trouble. Now, a perfect body should only be
considered desirable, if it enables us to rise to greater heights of
achievement. Countless people, however, regard health and vigor not
merely as the means but as the goal itself. They tend and exercise their
bodies at the expense of every other form of activity. The
disproportionate amount of time, energy and aspiration that is wasted in
attempting to perfect and preserve that which is inevitably doomed to
destruction is incredible. A child building a castle on the sand is
engaged in a more durable occupation. For the child, while erecting its
tunnelled and turreted fortress, is at least attempting to realize some
haunting dream of the heights, the depths, the mystery and magnificence
of life. What matter the tide?—the vision is indestructible.
The Greeks regarded a beautiful body as an end in itself, because their
civilization, by permitting its unveiling, allowed it to act as an
inspiration to others. The nude, however, has no recognized place among
us, and although it still serves to create beauty, it does so under
restricted and abnormal conditions. To be a model is not a title to
fame, nor the ideal of our most enlightened contemporaries.
I hope that I have proved conclusively that a splendid body is no longer
a necessary means of enabling us to rise to the greatest heights either
of ambition or of service. Why, therefore, should we so morbidly covet
physical perfection?
VII
THE PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED PHILOSOPHERS
Τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώσαντα τὸν πάθει μάθος θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.
—_Aeschylus, Agememnon, line 186._
Among the British philosophers who were physical sufferers we find the
great Francis Bacon, who from childhood was always weak and delicate.