When the golden Summer has rounded languidly to his close, when Autumn
has been carried forth in russet winding-sheet, then all good fellows
who look upon holidays as a chief end of life return from moor and
stream and begin to take stock of gains and losses. And the wisest,
realising that the time of action is over while that of reminiscence
has begun, realise too that the one is pregnant with greater pleasures
than the other—that action, indeed, is only the means to an end of
reflection and appreciation. Wisest of all, the Loafer stands apart
supreme. For he, of one mind with the philosopher as to the end, goes
straight to it at once; and his happy summer has accordingly been spent
in those subjective pleasures of the mind whereof the others, the men
of muscle and peeled faces, are only just beginning to taste.
And yet though he may a little despise (or rather pity) them, the
Loafer does not dislike nor altogether shun them. Far from it: they are
very necessary to him. For _“Suave mari magno”_ is the motto of your
true Loafer; and it is chiefly by keeping ever in view the struggles
and the clamorous jostlings of the unenlightened making holiday that he
is able to realise the bliss of his own condition and maintain his
self-satisfaction at boiling-point. And so is he never very far away
from the track beaten by the hurrying Philistine hoof, but hovers more
or less on the edge of it, where, the sole fixed star amidst whirling
constellations, he may watch the mad world “glance, and nod, and hurry
by.”
There are many such centres of contemplation along the West Coast of
Scotland. Few places are better loafing-ground than a pier, with its
tranquil “lucid interval” between steamers, the ever recurrent throb of
paddle-wheel, the rush and foam of beaten water among the piles, splash
of ropes and rumble of gangways, and all the attendant hurry and scurry
of the human morrice. Here, _tanquam in speculo,_ the Loafer as he
lounges may, by attorney as it were, touch gently every stop in the
great organ of the emotions of mortality. Rapture of meeting, departing
woe, love at first sight, disdain, laughter, indifference—he may
experience them all, but attenuated and as if he saw them in a dream;
as if, indeed, he were Heine’s god in dream on a mountain-side. Let the
drowsy deity awake and all these puppets, emanations of his dream, will
vanish into the nothing whence they came. And these emotions may be
renewed each morning; if a fair one sail to-day, be sure that one as
fair will land to-morrow. The supply is inexhaustible.
But in the South perhaps the happiest loafing-ground is the gift of
Father Thames; for there again the contrast of violent action, with its
blisters, perspiration, and the like, throws into fine relief the bliss
of “quietism.” I know one little village in the upper reaches where
loafing may be pushed to high perfection. Here the early hours of the
morning are vexed by the voices of boaters making their way down the
little street to the river. The most of them go staggering under
hampers, bundles of waterproofs, and so forth. Their voices are clamant
of feats to be accomplished: they will row, they will punt, they will
paddle, till they weary out the sun. All this the Loafer hears through
the open door of his cottage, where in his shirt-sleeves he is dallying
with his bacon, as a gentleman should. He is the only one who has had a
comfortable breakfast—and he knows it. Later he will issue forth and
stroll down in their track to the bridge. The last of these Argonauts
is pulling lustily forth; the river is dotted with evanishing blazers.
Upon all these lunatics a pitiless Phoebus shines triumphant. The
Loafer sees the last of them off the stage, turns his back on it, and
seeks the shady side of the street.
A holy calm possesses the village now; the foreign element has passed
away with shouting and waving of banners, and its natural life of
somnolency is in evidence at last. And first, as a true Loafer should,
let him respectfully greet each several village dog. _Arcades
ambo_—loafers likewise—they lie there in the warm dust, each outside
his own door, ready to return the smallest courtesy. Their own lords
and masters are not given to the exchange of compliments nor to
greetings in the market-place. The dog is generally the better
gentleman, and he is aware of it; and he duly appreciates the loafer,
who is not too proud to pause a moment, change the news, and pass the
time of day. He will mark his sense of this attention by rising from
his dust-divan and accompanying his caller some steps on his way. But
he will stop short of his neighbour’s dust-patch; for the morning is
really too hot for a shindy. So, by easy stages (the street is not a
long one: six dogs will see it out), the Loafer quits the village; and
now the world is before him. Shall he sit on a gate and smoke? or lie
on the grass and smoke? or smoke aimlessly and at large along the road?
Such a choice of happiness is distracting; but perhaps the last course
is the best—as needing the least mental effort of selection. Hardly,
however, has he fairly started his first daydream when the snappish
“ting” of a bellkin recalls him to realities. By comes the bicyclist:
dusty, sweating, a piteous thing to look upon. But the irritation of
the strepitant metal has jarred the Loafer’s always exquisite nerves:
he is fain to climb a gate and make his way towards solitude and the
breezy downs.
Up here all vestiges of a sordid humanity disappear. The Loafer is
alone with the south-west wind and the blue sky. Only a carolling of
larks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the brooding noonday
stillness; above, the wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on the
blue. Prone on his back on the springy turf, gazing up into the sky,
his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges at will
among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. Earth no
longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so
below him the thing still “spins like a fretful midge.” The Loafer
knows not nor cares. His is now an astral body, and through golden
spaces of imagination his soul is winging her untrammelled flight. And
there he really might remain for ever, but that his vagrom spirit is
called back to earth by a gentle but resistless, very human summons,—a
gradual, consuming, Pantagruelian, god-like, thirst: a thirst to thank
Heaven on. So, with a sigh half of regret, half of anticipation, he
bends his solitary steps towards the nearest inn. Tobacco for one is
good; to commune with oneself and be still is truest wisdom; but beer
is a thing of deity—beer is divine.
Later the Loafer may decently make some concession to popular taste by
strolling down to the river and getting out his boat. With one paddle
out he will drift down the stream: just brushing the flowering rush and
the meadow-sweet and taking in as peculiar gifts the varied sweets of
even. The loosestrife is his, and the arrow-head: his the distant moan
of the weir; his are the glories, amber and scarlet and silver, of the
sunset-haunted surface. By-and-by the boaters will pass him
homeward-bound. All are blistered and sore: his withers are unwrung.
Most are too tired and hungry to see the sunset glories; no corporeal
pangs clog his _æsthesis_—his perceptive faculty. Some have quarrelled
in the day and are no longer on speaking terms; he is at peace with
himself and with the whole world. Of all that lay them down in the
little village that night, his sleep will be the surest and the
sweetest. For not even the blacksmith himself will have better claim to
have earned a night’s repose.