Now, this is a subject on which I flatter myself I really am _au fait_.
The gentleman who, when I was young, bathed me at wisdom's font for nine
guineas a term--no extras--used to say he never knew a boy who could
do less work in more time; and I remember my poor grandmother once
incidentally observing, in the course of an instruction upon the use
of the Prayer-book, that it was highly improbable that I should ever do
much that I ought not to do, but that she felt convinced beyond a doubt
that I should leave undone pretty well everything that I ought to do.
I am afraid I have somewhat belied half the dear old lady's prophecy.
Heaven help me! I have done a good many things that I ought not to have
done, in spite of my laziness. But I have fully confirmed the accuracy
of her judgment so far as neglecting much that I ought not to have
neglected is concerned. Idling always has been my strong point. I take
no credit to myself in the matter--it is a gift. Few possess it. There
are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow-coaches, but a genuine
idler is a rarity. He is not a man who slouches about with his hands in
his pockets. On the contrary, his most startling characteristic is that
he is always intensely busy.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of
work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to
do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting
one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was taken very ill--I never
could see myself that much was the matter with me, except that I had
a beastly cold. But I suppose it was something very serious, for the
doctor said that I ought to have come to him a month before, and that
if it (whatever it was) had gone on for another week he would not have
answered for the consequences. It is an extraordinary thing, but I
never knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpired
that another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical
guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama--he
always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in the nick of time. It
is Providence, that is what it is.
Well, as I was saying, I was very ill and was ordered to Buxton for a
month, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the while
that I was there. "Rest is what you require," said the doctor, "perfect
rest."
It seemed a delightful prospect. "This man evidently understands my
complaint," said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time--a four
weeks' _dolce far niente_ with a dash of illness in it. Not too much
illness, but just illness enough--just sufficient to give it the flavor
of suffering and make it poetical. I should get up late, sip chocolate,
and have my breakfast in slippers and a dressing-gown. I should lie out
in the garden in a hammock and read sentimental novels with a melancholy
ending, until the books should fall from my listless hand, and I should
recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament,
watching the fleecy clouds floating like white-sailed ships across
its depths, and listening to the joyous song of the birds and the low
rustling of the trees. Or, on becoming too weak to go out of doors,
I should sit propped up with pillows at the open window of the
ground-floor front, and look wasted and interesting, so that all the
pretty girls would sigh as they passed by.
And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the Colonnade to
drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then,
and was rather taken with the idea. "Drinking the waters" sounded
fashionable and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I should like them. But,
ugh! after the first three or four mornings! Sam Weller's description of
them as "having a taste of warm flat-irons" conveys only a faint idea of
their hideous nauseousness. If anything could make a sick man get well
quickly, it would be the knowledge that he must drink a glassful of them
every day until he was recovered. I drank them neat for six consecutive
days, and they nearly killed me; but after then I adopted the plan of
taking a stiff glass of brandy-and-water immediately on the top of them,
and found much relief thereby. I have been informed since, by various
eminent medical gentlemen, that the alcohol must have entirely
counteracted the effects of the chalybeate properties contained in the
water. I am glad I was lucky enough to hit upon the right thing.
But "drinking the waters" was only a small portion of the torture I
experienced during that memorable month--a month which was, without
exception, the most miserable I have ever spent. During the best part of
it I religiously followed the doctor's mandate and did nothing whatever,
except moon about the house and garden and go out for two hours a day in
a Bath chair. That did break the monotony to a certain extent. There is
more excitement about Bath-chairing--especially if you are not used to
the exhilarating exercise--than might appear to the casual observer. A
sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might not understand, is ever
present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute
that the whole concern is going over, a conviction which becomes
especially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly macadamized
road comes in sight. Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to
run into him; and he never finds himself ascending or descending a
hill without immediately beginning to speculate upon his chances,
supposing--as seems extremely probable--that the weak-kneed controller
of his destiny should let go.
But even this diversion failed to enliven after awhile, and the _ennui_
became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving way under it. It is
not a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to tax it too far.
So somewhere about the twentieth morning I got up early, had a good
breakfast, and walked straight off to Hayfield, at the foot of the
Kinder Scout--a pleasant, busy little town, reached through a lovely
valley, and with two sweetly pretty women in it. At least they were
sweetly pretty then; one passed me on the bridge and, I think, smiled;
and the other was standing at an open door, making an unremunerative
investment of kisses upon a red-faced baby. But it is years ago, and I
dare say they have both grown stout and snappish since that time.
Coming back, I saw an old man breaking stones, and it roused such strong
longing in me to use my arms that I offered him a drink to let me take
his place. He was a kindly old man and he humored me. I went for those
stones with the accumulated energy of three weeks, and did more work in
half an hour than he had done all day. But it did not make him jealous.
Having taken the plunge, I went further and further into dissipation,
going out for a long walk every morning and listening to the band in
the pavilion every evening. But the days still passed slowly
notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the last one came and I
was being whirled away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London with its
stern work and life. I looked out of the carriage as we rushed through
Hendon in the evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mighty city
seemed to warm my heart, and when, later on, my cab rattled out of St.
Pancras' station, the old familiar roar that came swelling up around me
sounded the sweetest music I had heard for many a long day.
I certainly did not enjoy that month's idling. I like idling when I
ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. That
is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my
back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped
highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like
to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work
before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly
early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I
love to lie an extra half-hour in bed.
Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for
five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of
a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly? There
are some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utter
impossibility. If eight o'clock happens to be the time that they should
turn out, then they lie till half-past. If circumstances change and
half-past eight becomes early enough for them, then it is nine before
they can rise. They are like the statesman of whom it was said that he
was always punctually half an hour late. They try all manner of schemes.
They buy alarm-clocks (artful contrivances that go off at the wrong time
and alarm the wrong people). They tell Sarah Jane to knock at the door
and call them, and Sarah Jane does knock at the door and does call them,
and they grunt back "awri" and then go comfortably to sleep again. I
knew one man who would actually get out and have a cold bath; and even
that was of no use, for afterward he would jump into bed again to warm
himself.
I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once got
out. It is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that I find so
hard, and no amount of over-night determination makes it easier. I say
to myself, after having wasted the whole evening, "Well, I won't do
any more work to-night; I'll get up early to-morrow morning;" and I am
thoroughly resolved to do so--then. In the morning, however, I feel less
enthusiastic about the idea, and reflect that it would have been much
better if I had stopped up last night. And then there is the trouble of
dressing, and the more one thinks about that the more one wants to put
it off.
It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic grave, where we stretch our
tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest. "O bed,
O bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head," as sang
poor Hood, you are a kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls. Clever
and foolish, naughty and good, you take us all in your motherly lap and
hush our wayward crying. The strong man full of care--the sick man
full of pain--the little maiden sobbing for her faithless lover--like
children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom, and you gently
soothe us off to by-by.
Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us.
How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those hideous
nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie, like living
men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly
between us and the light. And oh! those still more hideous nights when
we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now and
then with a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer
beating out the life that we are watching.
But enough of beds and bedrooms. I have kept to them too long, even for
an idle fellow. Let us come out and have a smoke. That wastes time just
as well and does not look so bad. Tobacco has been a blessing to us
idlers. What the civil-service clerk before Sir Walter's time found
to occupy their minds with it is hard to imagine. I attribute the
quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of
the soothing weed. They had no work to do and could not smoke, and
the consequence was they were forever fighting and rowing. If, by any
extraordinary chance, there was no war going, then they got up a deadly
family feud with the next-door neighbor, and if, in spite of this, they
still had a few spare moments on their hands, they occupied them with
discussions as to whose sweetheart was the best looking, the arguments
employed on both sides being battle-axes, clubs, etc. Questions of taste
were soon decided in those days. When a twelfth-century youth fell in
love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell
her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see
about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head--the
other man's head, I mean--then that proved that his--the first
fellow's--girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke _his_
head--not his own, you know, but the other fellow's--the other fellow
to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would
only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who--well, if he
broke his head, then _his_ girl--not the other fellow's, but the fellow
who _was_ the--Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a
pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty
girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art
criticism.
Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out among
themselves.
They do it very well. They are getting to do all our work. They are
doctors, and barristers, and artists. They manage theaters, and promote
swindles, and edit newspapers. I am looking forward to the time when we
men shall have nothing to do but lie in bed till twelve, read two novels
a day, have nice little five-o'clock teas all to ourselves, and tax
our brains with nothing more trying than discussions upon the latest
patterns in trousers and arguments as to what Mr. Jones' coat was
made of and whether it fitted him. It is a glorious prospect--for idle
fellows.