MARCH
I wonder if any of those who perchance read this know of any formula,
Christian, pagan, even Christian Scientist, which insures, or has any
chance of insuring, decent habit of body or mind during an attack of
lumbago. I have been trying my best in all three; that is to say, as a
Christian I have tried to be cheerful, to wear a helpful sort of smile,
and have said to myself, ‘Think of the early Christian martyrs, the
boiling oil, and the lions, and those horrors.’ But myself has said to
me, ‘That was for a good cause; besides, they soon died.’ Now, lumbago
does not kill anybody, and, as far as I am aware, it is an invention of
the devil. Thus Christianity failed to help me.
Then I tried paganism. In other words, I swore. It did not do the
slightest good.
Then I tried Christian Science. I said: ‘There is no such thing as
pain--ow!---- Moral mind refuses to recognise the existence of mortal
mind. There is nothing material; all material is mortal mind, and there
isn’t any. Therefore I have no back, and consequently no small of it. It
is all a false claim. Thus, as there isn’t any, it is perfectly
ridiculous to think I have a shooting pain there, for there is no such
thing as either (i.) the small of my back, (ii.) pain, either there or
anywhere else. I will therefore smile, and get up with a firm, brisk
movement.’ I did.
Oh, Mrs. Eddy! The false claim was more than usually clamant.
In fact, for two days I have felt myself such a martyr that I am now,
happily, beginning to feel that I cannot possibly be a martyr at all.
Nobody can conceivably have suffered such agonies as I have been
thinking I suffered and survived. All the same----
I was riding down Davies Street on my bicycle two mornings ago, in the
very best of health and spirits. Where Grosvenor Street crosses it, a
fool of a cabman (though I had rung my bell) drove slowly across my
path, and I had to dismount. I exchanged a pleasantry or two with him of
a bitingly high-spirited nature, and essayed to get on again. At that
moment, so it seemed, I was stabbed in the back, and I heard the cabman
say, ‘Comin’ over me like that, and drunk at this hour of the
morning’--continuing, you will have seen, our previous conversation.
Bad, untrue, unkind as it was, it was the last word, and so is entitled
to a certain respect. But next time I see No. 24,304 I will see if I
cannot give him lumbago. (This, evidently, is the pagan mood returning.)
Since that moment the joy of life has vanished. It--I cannot write the
word again, and I will only remark that it sounds like a second-rate
Spanish watering-place--has known my down-sitting and mine uprising, and
has smirched my days. I have eaten no meat, I have drunk no wine, I have
been incapable of taking part in all social and pleasant affairs. I was
told that exercise was good, and went to skate at Niagara, and retired
after one stroke with a cold-dewed brow. I was told a Turkish bath was
good, and caught a cold in the head on the top of it. I was told not to
think about it--this was the Christian Science treatment, more or
less--and the effect was that the Spanish watering-place thought the
more of me. Only two hours ago, dressing for dinner--I dined alone in my
horrid room--I dropped a sovereign on the floor, seriously considered
whether it was worth picking up, and decided it was not. At that moment
any tramp could have had it. Then by pure chance my servant came in, and
I regained it. I was told to take Lithia Varalettes: the only effect, as
far as I am aware, is that I am lowered for life. I even went so far as
to see a doctor, who asked me whether I had done anything which might
have produced a chill. Thank goodness, I had the face to say ‘No.’ In
consequence he talked of the functions of certain internal organs; into
these regions I did not attempt to follow him.
Now, all that I have written with regard to the second-rate Spanish
watering-place is literally true. All the things which I am conscious of
enjoying every day, such as reading, food, silly conversation, proper
wine, violent physical exertion, cold baths, grew pale or impossible.
But looking back even from the middle of it all--for to-night it is, if
anything, a little more acute--I begin to see that nothing on the whole
matters less than physical pain. Once before in my life, when I was
eight years old, I had bad earache, so my family assure me. Of that I
can remember nothing whatever, except that in consequence I went to stay
near Dartmouth for change of air. But of Dartmouth I remember much.
There was an aloe in the garden, and one of its great fibrous leaves
projected across the path, and was cut off. This had to be done by a
strong gardener with a saw. A leaf cut by a saw! There were also rock
pools in the estuary, with strawberry anemones--so we called
them--waving in the water; steamers passed, visible through a telescope,
that would go straight on, self-contained, unhelped till they reached
America. _Ruta-muraria_, a small mean fern (I cannot even remember
hearing its name except then), grew in crevices in the garden wall; it
was rare, and began and ended my collection of ferns. That is what
remains to me of the earache. Once again I had a tooth out. That was
half a crown.
And now I have lumbago, and from analogy I see that a fortnight hence,
and a week hence (I hope), and a year hence, I shall remember nothing of
it, except that for a few days I stopped indoors mostly, wrote notes of
regret, and read a variety of delightful books. ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ I have
read; I have quaked with Hyde, and shuddered with Jekyll: I have been
down the Sambre canalized; I have been sucked under the fallen tree on
the Oise; I have understood why Mr. Crummles deluded himself into
thinking the Phenomenon was a phenomenon; I have admired the moral
valour of Mrs. Nickleby when she convinced herself about the previous
sanity of the gentleman in small-clothes and gray stockings; I have
killed the Red Dhole from the Deccan, and have sat (a remarkable feat)
with Princess Napraxine in a temperature of over 130° Fahrenheit. But
for the lumbago, I should probably have done none of these delightful
things. Also I have learned (I shall have to learn it again and again)
that the moment is always tolerable. Even this tiny pin-prick of a pain
can teach one that. ‘Circumscribe the moment’ as Marcus Aurelius said.
You can get along all right for the moment (unless you die, and then
the trouble is solved): why think of the moments to come? When they
come, deal with them. And I hope that if I ever suffer from
carcinomato-cerebrospinal sciatica, I may think of that.
Besides--I must justify my conscience with respect to the doctor--I do
not think it proved that my night adventure had anything to do with the
lumbago. Thus, it would have been unfair to cast it, like bread on the
waters, to a suspicious physician. And even if it had, it was well worth
it. I would do it again to-morrow night, if the mood only could come
again.
I wonder how the writing and the subsequent publication of any book, the
meanest, affects the average author? No doubt the great powers in
authorship, so to speak, care as little when another volume is launched
as does the Empire at large when another battleship leaves the slips to
join its mighty brothers. But for the majority--those of us, in fact,
who hope some day (however vainglorious the hope, we all cling to it) to
produce a book which may rouse laughter or tears or interest twenty
years hence--I imagine that there is scarcely any excitement,
depression, exaltation or misgiving that we have ever felt which is
comparable to those attendant on the writing and launching of our little
paper fleets. And as I have just launched another little paper boat to
go and look after its drowned brothers, and the memory of all the
emotions attendant on it is consequently keen, it may be of interest, in
however small a degree, to others to read what even so uneminent an
author as myself experiences in these times.
Birds, perhaps, give one the only simile possible for the first period.
For the idea of the book, its scope, its aim, its plot, and, to a
certain degree, its characters, all exist, in my case, before I put a
word down on paper. When these are complete, we may say that the egg is
there. The writing it, to my mind, is equivalent to the hatching only;
but the definite production of the egg--of that which contains potential
vitality--is over and complete at the moment the writing begins. If
there is no potential vitality in it then, there never will be. When I
begin to write, I am sitting on my egg.
Now, this first period--here we dismiss the simile of the egg, and take
that of disease--lasts for a very ill-defined period. During it the
patient is continually conscious of an abnormality of condition. His
spirits are very variable: sometimes for days together the appetite will
be good (mine always is), and the only symptom of the malady is a
slightly increased vividness. Speech is coherent, but rather more fluent
than usual; he tends to talk nonsense (this must not be confused with
the subsequent wandering). Then, without apparent cause, stages of
depression, irritability, and general peevishness ensue: he will decry
his favourite pursuits, particularly authorship, and express audibly a
desire for a large and settled income in Consols. Shortly before the
crisis approaches (_i.e._, the first dip of the pen in ink) a period of
febrile excitement ensues; he will put sudden problems to his nurses as
to how A would act given B, C, and D did so-and-so, and, whatever the
answers given him, he will certainly take exception to them. This is the
period of wandering alluded to above. Both the period of excitement
previous to this and the period of depression are marked by a certain
listlessness with regard to other pursuits; the patient takes nothing,
except his malady, quite seriously, and though he performs the ordinary
routine of life with correctness, he performs it somehow subaqueously.
Indeed, he is never quite himself from the time the seeds of the malady
first attack him.
All these symptoms are temporarily ameliorated when, to go back to our
first simile, the egg is laid. For a time the nurses are encouraged to
hope that the worst is over. Large quantities of what is known as
‘sermon-paper’ should be given without stint, and special care taken
that there should be in every room, where the patient can possibly
desire to sit, plenty of black ink and suitable pens. For a day or two
he may refuse to go out altogether, or play any game, and here it is a
mistake on the part of the nurses to urge him to do so. He may, in fact,
be entirely left to himself. Probably these favourable symptoms will
last for a week or two (during which the supply of sermon-paper should
be renewed), and then a change for the worse comes over the patient.
The irritability returns, and with it an attack, more or less severe, of
complete idleness and indescribable misgivings. He again expresses a
wish for a settled income in Consols, and often goes suddenly to stay
with his friends, or, if the disease is not so acute, merely lunches and
dines out every day, and seems to fear being left alone. Then the malady
becomes spasmodic, the periods of inaction alternate with periods of
feverish industry, to which succeeds an attack of apparent coma with
regard to everything except the disease itself, which is now confluent
and completely encompasses him. A series of absolutely happy days ensue,
accompanied by great mental activity and enormous consumption of
sermon-paper. As soon as this definitely sets in, the nurses may make
themselves quite happy for the time being. All fears of suicide may be
considered over, and there is no allusion to Consols. And thus the egg
is hatched in a blaze of hypertrophied glory.
It is hatched. That is to say, the MS.--such as it is--is complete, and
personally one is completely happy for about a week. Then ensues a very
tedious period, which is at times brightened by finding that something
is better than one thought, but oftener darkened by finding that
something is worse than one thought. In other words, after a week of
idleness, I sit laboriously down, and copy out the whole thing from
beginning to end. Other patients at this point, I believe, use a
typewriter, but personally, on the one occasion when I did so, I found
that the corrections were not compassable even in triple-spaced type. So
now, when the first MS. is complete, I begin from the beginning, and
write the whole story out again. Chapters are often excised, and
chapters (more rarely) inserted, since in my first MS. I find that I
much more commonly say too much than too little. (Here is an opening for
critics to point out how extraordinarily superfluous the first MS. must
have been.) This period is the tiresome part of the hatching of the egg.
The writing of the first MS., astounding though it may appear, was
attended by a certain excitement: whereas the writing of the second is
due to the desire, shall we call it? to catch one’s self tripping, to
detect, by the painful process of copying, one, perhaps, of the hundred
absurdities that one has committed. Yet there is a certain delight even
in this, for since one would not set pen to paper at all unless one
thought that one had an idea of some kind, it is mildly pleasant even
now, when the first excitement is over, to see in cool blood what the
idea was, to emphasize what appear to be its decent points, to suppress
its bad ones. After that the second MS. goes to the typewriter, and
peace again reigns.
Now, during the first writing of the MS. a curious thing has more than
once happened to me; that is to say, a character, or a situation, or
even the story itself, takes the bit between its teeth, and, as far as I
know, bolts. One had meant to do and to say something different, but
whether it is that even in the meanest-imagined character one, so to
speak, raises the devil, and cannot be held responsible for his
subsequent action, or whatever the cause, this phenomenon occurs. In the
terms of our first simile, this is the cuckoo’s egg in the
hedge-sparrow’s nest. One sits on the thing--writes it, that is--but it
is not going to be a hedge-sparrow at all, but something quite
different. This has happened to me more than once, in ---- and ---- (my
egotism does not go quite so far as to write the names of these obscure
tales), I had definitely meant to give a different outcome. I had meant
a character to be different in character, and thus to play another part.
But writing I found it was not so. That character would go another way.
And did. I followed faint but pursuing.
To resume. The MS. comes back from the typewriter’s, and the sickening
part of the work begins. In print, somehow, the degrading stuff looks
even more degraded; for print, as Hazlitt said, in more senses than one,
had he known it, ‘print settles it.’ What one suspected was rather
sketchy and amateur becomes indubitably so. What one thought was
somewhat workmanlike appears merely slip-shod carpentering, unplaned,
out of line, with screws and nails not driven home. One taps here, one
whacks there; one planes down, and finds one has planed too much; one
planes down, and finds one has to plane more. One thinks--and this is,
perhaps, the worst of all--that A rather resembles one’s dear friend,
John Smith, and ruthlessly takes all the stuff out of him, leaving an
enfeebled marionette. Then, like a pin-prick to a man on fire, come the
inevitable typewriter’s errors, necessitating reference to the MS. Some
typewriters omit whole sentences, because they are not certain (no
wonder); others rush in where angels fear to tread, with brilliant
repartees of a sort undreamed of; others spell a name wrong throughout;
others--and they are worse--spell it wrong occasionally. When I have
time I will write an article on typewriters. They will not, after that,
hold their heads so high.
Then comes the last step. When the typoscript (an awful word) has been
corrected, and if necessary another made, and also corrected, the whole
thing goes to the publisher, and in course of time come proofs. Proofs
are of two kinds--galley proofs and page proofs. Galley proofs are
interminable strips of paper which slide off one’s desk, get mixed, and
are altogether impossible. Page proofs, though depressing, are
manageable, because they come in folded sheets of sixteen pages. Then
once again are all weak points glaringly emphasized, the indescribable
misgivings return with redoubled vigour, and invariably I long to live
the last year, or whatever it may be, over again, in order to have
profited by my previous experience and do better. Usually at this
stage--perhaps because I am used to it--the ‘idea’ does not seem to me
so bad. It is only everything else that is wrong. Yet even then come
sanguine moments. Quite suddenly I find myself thinking it is extremely
good. How delicate, for instance, is the way in which Y behaves, how
subtle and correct is Z’s induction. Back swings the pendulum: over go
these unstable ninepins.
There is probably a revise--there may be two--and the bread is cast upon
the waters. As the date for publication approaches I feel ill. If I
could, I would recall it all. One has felt a certain situation, or a
certain character, keenly; was it not enough to have felt it, without
throwing it, like early Christians, to the public? They will tear it
into shreds, and probably refuse to swallow it.
But just then--when, in my experience, the darkest hour is on one, when
one distrusts utterly all one has done, when one is afraid that that
which is to one’s self a chiefest joy of life is to everyone else just a
mud-pie made by a child in a populous roadway, to be carefully stepped
over by three-quarters of the passers-by, to be stepped into by the
remaining quarter, who, with a careless cuff to the maker of it, will
pass on, remembering it only as they would remember some tiny
untowardness in the menu at dinner--then comes quite suddenly the
remembrance of an exceeding unexpected joy. A man or a woman, otherwise
quite unknown to one, has on the last occasion of this kind thought it
worth while to send a line, it may be a postcard only, to say ‘thank
you.’ Once this ‘thank you’ arrived to me from New Zealand, and was
accompanied by two frozen sheep bred on the reader’s farm. The letter
said, ‘Please do not answer this, or you will think I am wanting an
autograph.’ Or, again, it may be just a press-cutting from a provincial
paper, that shows me that someone whom I have never seen, and probably
will never see, has understood something of what made me so happy when I
thought of it. And that--unreasonably, perhaps--more than
counterbalances the vituperation or the scorn of those who either do not
or will not see. For a friend concerns me very much: an enemy, or, if
that is too big a word, an acquaintance to whom I am antipathetic,
concerns me not at all. He is a negative quantity, and in this life of
ours the negative quantities do not matter, for the man who has one
friend is infinitely better off than the man who has no enemies and a
million acquaintances.
Acquaintances! They are the bane and the absurdity of life, and
especially of ordinary London life. How often has one heard it said,
and, indeed, said one’s self, ‘Such a bore! I’ve got to go and call on
So-and-so.’ For if one finds it a burden to go and talk to anybody, for
social reasons, it shows a very unbecoming conceit if one imagines that
one’s hostess will fail to find it a bore too. The custom, for instance,
of calling after one has dined at a house is a very sensible and
pleasant one, but it presumes that you have been dining with a friend.
In this case the call will not bore you. But if the call bores you, it
is probable that the dinner bored you too, in which case, unless you
dined there for the sake of being fed gratis, why did you dine there at
all? Again, a step further, how often have you exclaimed, ‘What a bore!
I’ve got to dine with ---- to-night.’ And if you say that, you have no
business to eat ----’s cutlet.
Of course, there is another side to the question--for questions with
only one side to them have ceased to be questions at all--and that is,
that at any such house you may meet a friend, or you may meet someone
who will eventually become a friend. Then, I grant, it were worth while
trudging there a hundred miles on foot, for from pole to pole, if you
search the earth, you will find nothing better than a friend. How many
have you? I have nine, and consider myself most fortunate. Or, again,
you may find the very fact of meeting a certain number of people, though
they are the barest acquaintances, stimulating, just as there are
certain plants which thrive better with others of their species than
alone. That, again, is a good reason: only when social etiquette demands
a call of you, do not say, ‘What a bore!’ You have received a benefit:
pay the current coin for it and don’t grumble.
Now, this herding together of human beings with wealth and leisure into
London for several months every year--there to meet their friends, of
course, but also a whole host of people who will never, and can never,
be more than acquaintances--is a very curious modern phenomenon.
London--in this sense of the word--was born not so many decades ago, and
since then has grown, and is growing, in a manner perfectly amazing.
There was a time, say eighty years ago, when London in this sense
practically did not exist; the ‘season’ was enjoyed by those who now go
to London in a dozen country towns, to which the rank and fashion of the
country flocked, and there made gay on their native pavements. And, by
all accounts, they _did_ make gay. Then, by degrees, this remarkable
monster of London began growing. People of leisure--or so I take
it--began to weary of that priceless benefit, and in a couple of
generations have turned themselves into perfect galley-slaves in the
barque which they term, some of them mistakenly, ‘Pleasure.’ Means of
travel got easier, quicker, and cheaper; more families every year, who
had no business, either political or of money-making, took to going to
London, where they found twenty theatres instead of one, a million
people to move among instead of a thousand. Intimacies, it is true,
were less common there than in the friendly and less populous streets of
their county town, but, instead, they might in the streets or at the
houses of their acquaintances behold, in _propriâ personâ_, the man or
woman with whose name at the moment the world was ringing; or a new play
claimed their attention and provided an easy subject of
conversation--for conversation, unless they were people of brains, and
many excellent folk are not, began, perhaps, to wear a little thin in
the sixth week of their season at York or Winchester. But it would be
impossible to be in London in the autumn or winter, during the months of
shooting and hunting, and so, by common consent, the London season--a
unique fact--was fixed for the months May, June, and July--a time when
air in town is scarce, and suns are sultry, but a time in the country
when Nature holds high festival, and all who have eyes to see and ears
to hear are equally honoured at her banquet. But--and this could only
happen in the Anglo-Saxon race, and it is symptomatic of the strength,
and possibly, in years to come, of its weakness--Sport said the final
word. Half-fledged pheasants are not shootable, and foxes, that strange
breed, which would have been exterminated long ago were it not for the
ordinance that they shall be killed in one way only, were busy with the
propagation of their species. And thus, though Nature spreads her feast,
but sits alone at her empty board, she still has the last compelling
word on the subject.