If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years
of thy life--thy shining youth--in the irksome confinement of an
office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to
decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to
have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to
remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then
only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.
It is now six and thirty years since I took my seat at the desk in
Mincing-lane. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from the
abundant play-time, and the frequently-intervening vacations of school
days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance
at a counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to anything.
I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in
cages.
It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, admirable as the
institution of them is for purposes of worship, are for that very
reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. In
particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a
weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and
the ballad-singers--the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those
eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures,
all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws,
and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a
week-day saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so
delightful--are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over--No
busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever passing
by--the very face of business a charm by contrast to his temporary
relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy countenances--or
half-happy at best--of emancipated 'prentices and little trades-folks,
with here and there a servant maid that has got leave to go out, who,
slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity of
enjoying a free hour; and livelily expressing the hollowness of a
day's pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on that day look
anything but comfortable.
But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christmas,
with a full week in the summer to go and air myself in my native
fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and the
prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the
year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did
the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me? or rather
was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit
of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most
of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a
taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon
the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another
snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something of
an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I
have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom.
Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted
with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.
This, during my latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it
was visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health and my good
spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I
should be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over
again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary
false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years
of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown
to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul.
My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the trouble
legible in my countenance; but I did not know that it had raised the
suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the 5th of last month,
a day ever to be remembered by me, L----, the junior partner in the
firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks,
and frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made
confession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should
eventually be obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words of
course to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I
remained labouring under the impression that I had acted imprudently
in my disclosure; that I had foolishly given a handle against myself,
and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this
manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when
on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was about quitting my
desk to go home (it might be about eight o'clock) I received an awful
summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the
formidable back parlour. I thought, now my time is surely come, I
have done for myself, I am going to be told that they have no longer
occasion for me. L----, I could see, smiled at the terror I was in,
which was a little relief to me,--when to my utter astonishment B----,
the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of
my services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time
(the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? I protest I never
had the confidence to think as much). He went on to descant on the
expediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how my heart
panted!) and asking me a few questions as to the amount of my own
property, of which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which
his three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from
the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to the
amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary--a magnificent offer! I
do not know what I answered between surprise and gratitude, but it was
understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was
free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow,
and at just ten minutes after eight I went home--for ever. This noble
benefit--gratitude forbids me to conceal their names--I owe to the
kindness of the most munificent firm in the world--the house of
Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy.
_Esto perpetua!_
For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only
apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I
wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I
was in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let
loose after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself
with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity--for it
is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself.
It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever
manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into
a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some
steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.
And here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not
lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their
customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I
feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient; and
now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet
home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry.
Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy
upon me, I could walk it away; but I do _not_ walk all day long, as
I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to
make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away,
but I do _not_ read in that violent measure, with which, having no
Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and
eyesight in by-gone winters. I walk, read or scribble (as now) just
when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come
to me. I am like the man
--That's born, and has his years come to him,
In some green desart.
"Years," you will say! "what is this superannuated simpleton
calculating upon? He has already told us, he is past fifty."
I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the
hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you
will find me still a young fellow. For _that_ is the only true Time,
which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to
himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is
other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or
short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if
I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair
rule-of-three sum.
Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commencement of my
freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a
vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting House.
I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners,
and the clerks, with whom I had for so many years, and for so many
hours in each day of the year, been closely associated--being suddenly
removed from them--they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage,
which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert
Howard, speaking of a friend's death:
--'Twas but just now he went away;
I have not since had time to shed a tear;
And yet the distance does the same appear
As if he had been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure in Eternity.
To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them
once or twice since; to visit my old desk-fellows--my co-brethren of
the quill--that I had left below in the state militant. Not all the
kindness with which they received me could quite restore to me that
pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed among them.
We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went off but
faintly. My old desk; the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated
to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D----l
take me, if I did not feel some remorse--beast, if I had not,--at
quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six
and thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums
the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then
after all? or was I a coward simply? Well, it is too late to repent;
and I also know, that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the
mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken
the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some
time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old
cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will come among
ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell Ch----, dry, sarcastic,
and friendly! Do----, mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly! Pl----,
officious to do, and to volunteer, good services!--and thou, thou
dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old,
stately House of Merchants; with thy labyrinthine passages, and
light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one half the year
supplied the place of the sun's light; unhealthy contributor to my
weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell! In thee remain, and not
in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my "works!"
There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy
shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as
useful! My mantle I bequeath among ye.
A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At
that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had not reached it.
I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of
the first flutter was left; an unsettling sense of novelty; the dazzle
to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old chains, forsooth,
as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a
poor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some
revolution returned upon the world. I am now as if I had never been
other than my own master. It is natural to me to go where I please,
to do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the day in
Bond-street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there
at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a
book-stall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. There is
nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture
in a morning. Was it ever otherwise? What is become of Fish-street
Hill? Where is Fenchurch-street? Stones of old Mincing-lane, which I
have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six and thirty years, to the
footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now
vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is Change time, and
I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I
ventured to compare the change in my condition to a passing into
another world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all
distinction of season. I do not know the day of the week, or of the
month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference
to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to,
the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights'
sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the
whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the
next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor
Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What
is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself--that
unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity
of pleasure out of it--is melted down into a week day. I can spare
to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used
to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation
when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation to take
a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is
Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind
in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on
in the same eternal round--and what is it all for? A man can never
have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little
son, I would christen him NOTHING-TO-DO; he should do nothing. Man, I
verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am
altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come
and swallow up those accursed cotton mills? Take me that lumber of a
desk there, and bowl it down
As low as to the fiends.
I am no longer ******, clerk to the Firm of &c. I am Retired Leisure.
I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by
my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace,
nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to and from. They tell
me, a certain _cum dignitate_ air, that has been buried so long with
my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow
into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read
the state of the opera. _Opus operatum est_. I have done all that I
came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest
of the day to myself.