|Any careful observer of my habits would know that I am on the eve of
an adventure--a holiday, or a bankruptcy, or a fire, or a voluntary
liquidation (whatever that may be), or an elopement, or a duel, or a
conspiracy, or--in short, of something out of the normal, something
romantic or dangerous, pleasurable or painful, interrupting the calm
current of my affairs. Being the end of July, he would probably say:
That fellow is on the brink of the holiday fever. He has all the
symptoms of the epidemic. Observe his negligent, abstracted manner.
Notice his slackness about business--how he just comes and looks in and
goes out as though he were a visitor paying a call, or a person who had
been left a fortune and didn't care twopence what happened. Observe his
clothes, how they are burgeoning into unaccustomed gaiety, even levity.
Is not his hat set on at just a shade of a sporting angle? Does not
his stick twirl with a hint of irresponsible emotions? Is there not the
glint of far horizons in his eye? Did you not hear him humming as he
came up the stairs? Yes, assuredly the fellow is going for a holiday.
Your suspicions would be confirmed when you found me ransacking my
private room and clearing up my desk. The news that I am clearing up my
desk has been an annual sensation for years. I remember a colleague of
mine once coming in and finding me engaged in that spectacular feat.
His face fell with apprehension. His voice faltered. “I hope you are not
leaving us,” he said. He, poor fellow, could not think of anything else
that could account for so unusual an operation.
For I am one of those people who treat their desks with respect. We do
not believe in worrying them about their contents. We do not bully them
into disclosing their secrets. We stuff the drawers full of papers and
documents, and leave them to mellow and ripen. And when the drawers are
full we pile up other papers and documents on either side of us; and the
higher the pile gets the more comfortable and cosy we feel. We would not
disturb them for worlds. Why should we set our sleeping dogs barking at
us when they are willing to go on sleeping if we leave them alone? And
consider the show they make. No one coming to see us can fail to be
impressed by such piles of documents. They realise how busy we are. They
understand that we have no time for idle talk. They see that we have
all these papers to dispose of--otherwise, why are they there? They get
their business done and go away quickly, and spread the news of what
tremendous fellows we are for work.
I am told by one who worked with him, that old Lord Strathcona knew the
trick quite well, and used it unblushingly. When a visitor was announced
he tumbled his papers about in imposing confusion and was discovered
breasting the mighty ocean of his labours, his chin resolutely out
of the water. But he was a supreme artist in this form of amiable
imposture. On one occasion he was entertained at a great public dinner
in a provincial city. In the midst of the proceedings a portly flunkey
was observed carrying a huge envelope, with seals and trappings, on a
salver. For whom was this momentous document intended? Ah, he has paused
behind the grand old man with the wonderful snowy head. It is for him.
The company looks on in respectful silence. Even here this astonishing
old man cannot escape the cares of office. As he takes the envelope his
neighbour at the table looks at the address. It was in Strathcona's own
hand-writing!
But we of the rank and file are not dishevelled by artifice, like this
great man. It is a natural gift. And do not suppose that our disorder
makes us unhappy. We like it. We follow our vocation, as Falstaff says.
Some people are born tidy and some are born untidy. We were bom untidy,
and if good people, taking pity on us, try to make us tidy we get lost.
It was so with George Crabbe. He lived in magnificent disorder, papers
and books and letters all over the floor, piled on every chair, surging
up to the ceiling. Once, in his absence, his niece tidied up for him.
When he came back he found himself like a stranger in a strange land.
He did not know his way about in this desolation of tidiness, and he
promptly restored the familiar disorder, so that he could find things.
It sounds absurd, of course, but we people with a genius for untidiness
must always seem absurd to the tidy people. They cannot understand that
there is a method in our muddle, an order in our disorder, secret paths
through the wilderness known only to our feet, that, in short, we are
rather like cats whose perceptions become more acute the darker it gets.
It is not true that we never find things. We often find things.
And consider the joy of finding things you don't hope to find. You, sir,
sitting at your spotless desk, with your ordered and labelled shelves
about you, and your files and your letter-racks, and your card indexes
and your cross references, and your this, that, and the other--what do
you know of the delights of which I speak? You do not come suddenly
and ecstatically upon the thing you seek. You do not know the shock of
delighted discovery. You do not shout “Eureka,” and summon your family
around you to rejoice in the miracle that has happened. No star swims
into your ken out of the void. You cannot be said to find things at
all, for you never lose them, and things must be lost before they can
be truly found. The father of the Prodigal had to lose his son before
he could experience the joy that has become an immortal legend of the
world. It is we who lose things, not you, sir, who never find them, who
know the Feast of the Fatted Calf.
This is not a plea for untidiness. I am no hot gospeller of disorder.
I only seek to make the best, of a bad job, and to show that we untidy
fellows are not without a case, have our romantic compensations, moments
of giddy exaltation unknown to those who are endowed with the pedestrian
and profitable virtue of tidiness. That is all. I would have the
pedestrian virtue if I could. In other days, before I had given up hope
of reforming myself, and when I used to make good resolutions as piously
as my neighbours, I had many a spasm of tidiness. I looked with envy on
my friend Higginson, who was a miracle of order, could put his hand on
anything he wanted in the dark, kept his documents and his files and
records like regiments of soldiers obedient to call, knew what he had
written on 4th March 1894, and what he had said on 10th January 1901,
and had a desk that simply perspired with tidiness. And in a spirit
of emulation I bought a roll-top desk. I believed that tidiness was a
purchasable commodity. You went to a furniture dealer and bought a large
roll-top desk, and when it came home the genius of order came home with
it. The bigger the desk, the more intricate its devices, the larger
was the measure of order bestowed on you. My desk was of the first
magnitude. It had an inconceivable wealth of drawers and pigeon-holes.
It was a desk of many mansions. And I labelled them all, and gave them
all separate jobs to perform.
And then I sat back and looked the future boldly in the face. Now, said
I, the victory is won. Chaos and old night are banished. Order reigns
in Warsaw. I have but to open a drawer and every secret I seek will
leap magically to light. My articles will write themselves, for every
reference will come to my call, obedient as Ariel to the bidding of
Prospero.
“Approach, my Ariel; come,”
I shall say, and from some remote fastness the obedient spirit will
appear with--
“All hail, great master; grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be 't to fly,