linen. I was qualified to make a bill, or keep a book; and being
therefore often called, at a busy time, to serve the customers, expected
that I should now be happy, in proportion as I was useful. But my
mistress appropriated every day part of the profit to some private use,
and, as she grew bolder in her thefts, at last deducted such sums, that
my master began to wonder how he sold so much, and gained so little. She
pretended to assist his inquiries, and began, very gravely, to hope that
"Betty was honest, and yet those sharp girls were apt to be
light-fingered." You will believe that I did not stay there much longer.
The rest of my story I will tell you in another letter; and only beg to
be informed, in some paper, for which of my places, except perhaps the
last, I was disqualified by my skill in reading and writing.
I am, Sir,
Your very humble servant,
BETTY BROOM.
No. 27. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1758.
It has been the endeavour of all those whom the world has reverenced for
superior wisdom, to persuade man to be acquainted with himself, to learn
his own powers and his own weakness, to observe by what evils he is most
dangerously beset, and by what temptations most easily overcome.
This counsel has been often given with serious dignity, and often
received with appearance of conviction; but, as very few can search deep
into their own minds without meeting what they wish to hide from
themselves, scarcely any man persists in cultivating such disagreeable
acquaintance, but draws the veil again between his eyes and his heart,
leaves his passions and appetites as he found them, and advises others
to look into themselves.
This is the common result of inquiry even among those that endeavour to
grow wiser or better: but this endeavour is far enough from frequency;
the greater part of the multitudes that swarm upon the earth have never
been disturbed by such uneasy curiosity, but deliver themselves up to
business or to pleasure, plunge into the current of life, whether placid
or turbulent, and pass on from one point or prospect to another,
attentive rather to any thing than the state of their minds; satisfied,
at an easy rate, with an opinion, that they are no worse than others,
that every man must mind his own interest, or that their pleasures hurt
only themselves, and are therefore no proper subjects of censure.
Some, however, there are, whom the intrusion of scruples, the
recollection of better notions, or the latent reprehension of good
examples, will not suffer to live entirely contented with their own
conduct; these are forced to pacify the mutiny of reason with fair
promises, and quiet their thoughts with designs of calling all their
actions to review, and planning a new scheme for the time to come.
There is nothing which we estimate so fallaciously as the force of our
own resolutions, nor any fallacy which we so unwillingly and tardily
detect. He that has resolved a thousand times, and a thousand times
deserted his own purpose, yet suffers no abatement of his confidence,
but still believes himself his own master; and able, by innate vigour of
soul, to press forward to his end, through all the obstructions that
inconveniencies or delights can put in his way.
That this mistake should prevail for a time, is very natural. When
conviction is present, and temptation out of sight, we do not easily
conceive how any reasonable being can deviate from his true interest.
What ought to be done, while it yet hangs only on speculation, is so
plain and certain, that there is no place for doubt; the whole soul
yields itself to the predominance of truth, and readily determines to do
what, when the time of action comes, will be at last omitted.
I believe most men may review all the lives that have passed within
their observation, without remembering one efficacious resolution, or
being able to tell a single instance of a course of practice suddenly
changed in consequence of a change of opinion, or an establishment of
determination. Many, indeed, alter their conduct, and are not at fifty
what they were at thirty; but they commonly varied imperceptibly from
themselves, followed the train of external causes, and rather suffered
reformation than made it.
It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and
performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and
studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in
the world; we do not so often endeavour or wish to impose on others, as
on ourselves; we resolve to do right, we hope to keep our resolutions,
we declare them to confirm our own hope, and fix our own inconstancy by
calling witnesses of our actions; but at last habit prevails, and those
whom we invited to our triumph laugh at our defeat.
Custom is commonly too strong for the most resolute resolver, though
furnished for the assault with all the weapons of philosophy. "He that
endeavours to free himself from an ill habit," says Bacon, "must not
change too much at a time, lest he should be discouraged by difficulty;
nor too little, for then he will make but slow advances." This is a
precept which may be applauded in a book, but will fail in the trial, in
which every change will be found too great or too little. Those who have
been able to conquer habit, are like those that are fabled to have
returned from the realms of Pluto:
--"Pauci, quos aequus amavit
Jupiter, atque ardens evexit ad aethera virtus."
They are sufficient to give hope, but not security; to animate the
contest, but not to promise victory.
Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can;
and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be
attained; but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by
timely caution, preserve their freedom; they may effectually resolve to
escape the tyrant, whom they will very vainly resolve to conquer.
No. 28. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1758.
TO THE IDLER.
Sir,
It is very easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to
please but himself, to ridicule or to censure the common practices of
mankind; and those who have no present temptation to break the rules of
propriety, may applaud his judgment, and join in his merriment; but let
the author or his readers mingle with common life, they will find
themselves irresistibly borne away by the stream of custom, and must
submit, after they have laughed at others, to give others the same
opportunity of laughing at them.
There is no paper published by the Idler which I have read with more
approbation than that which censures the practice of recording vulgar
marriages in the newspapers. I carried it about in my pocket, and read
it to all those whom I suspected of having published their nuptials, or
of being inclined to publish them, and sent transcripts of it to all the
couples that transgressed your precepts for the next fortnight. I hoped
that they were all vexed, and pleased myself with imagining their
misery.
But short is the triumph of malignity. I was married last week to Miss
Mohair, the daughter of a salesman; and, at my first appearance after
the wedding night, was asked, by my wife's mother, whether I had sent
our marriage to the Advertiser? I endeavoured to show how unfit it was
to demand the attention of the publick to our domestick affairs; but she
told me, with great vehemence, "That she would not have it thought to be
a stolen match; that the blood of the Mohairs should never be disgraced;
that her husband had served all the parish offices but one; that she had
lived five-and-thirty years at the same house, had paid every body
twenty shillings in the pound, and would have me know, though she was
not as fine and as flaunting as Mrs. Gingham, the deputy's wife, she was
not ashamed to tell her name, and would show her face with the best of
them; and since I had married her daughter--" At this instant entered my
father-in-law, a grave man, from whom I expected succour; but upon
hearing the case, he told me, "That it would be very imprudent to miss
such an opportunity of advertising my shop; and that when notice was
given of my marriage, many of my wife's friends would think themselves
obliged to be my customers." I was subdued by clamour on one side, and
gravity on the other, and shall be obliged to tell the town, that "three
days ago Timothy Mushroom, an eminent oilman in Seacoal-lane, was
married to Miss Polly Mohair of Lothbury, a beautiful young lady, with a
large fortune."
I am, Sir, &c.
Sir,
I am the unfortunate wife of the grocer whose letter you published about
ten weeks ago, in which he complains, like a sorry fellow, that I loiter
in the shop with my needle-work in my hand, and that I oblige him to
take me out on Sundays, and keep a girl to look after the child. Sweet
Mr. Idler, if you did but know all, you would give no encouragement to
such an unreasonable grumbler. I brought him three hundred pounds, which
set him up in a shop, and bought in a stock, on which, with good
management, we might live comfortably; but now I have given him a shop,
I am forced to watch him and the shop too. I will tell you, Mr. Idler,
how it is. There is an alehouse over the way, with a ninepin alley, to
which he is sure to run when I turn my back, and there he loses his
money, for he plays at ninepins as he does every thing else. While he is
at this favourite sport, he sets a dirty boy to watch his door, and call
him to his customers; but he is so long in coming, and so rude when he
comes, that our custom falls off every day.
Those who cannot govern themselves, must be governed. I have resolved to
keep him for the future behind his counter, and let him bounce at his
customers if he dares. I cannot be above stairs and below at the same
time, and have therefore taken a girl to look after the child, and dress
the dinner; and, after all, pray who is to blame?
On a Sunday, it is true, I make him walk abroad, and sometimes carry the
child; I wonder who should carry it! But I never take him out till after
church-time, nor would do it then, but that, if he is left alone, he
will be upon the bed. On a Sunday, if he stays at home, he has six
meals, and, when he can eat no longer, has twenty stratagems to escape
from me to the alehouse; but I commonly keep the door locked, till
Monday produces something for him to do.
This is the true state of the case, and these are the provocations for
which he has written his letter to you. I hope you will write a paper to
show, that, if a wife must spend her whole time in watching her husband,
she cannot conveniently tend her child, or sit at her needle.
I am, Sir, &c.
Sir,
There is in this town a species of oppression which the law has not
hitherto prevented or redressed.
I am a chairman. You know, Sir, we come when we are called, and are
expected to carry all who require our assistance. It is common for men
of the most unwieldy corpulence to crowd themselves into a chair, and
demand to be carried for a shilling as far as an airy young lady whom we
scarcely feel upon our poles. Surely we ought to be paid, like all other
mortals, in proportion to our labour. Engines should be fixed in proper
places to weigh chairs as they weigh waggons; and those, whom ease and
plenty have made unable to carry themselves, should give part of their
superfluities to those who carry them.
I am, Sir, &c.
No. 29. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1758.
TO THE IDLER.
Sir,
I have often observed, that friends are lost by discontinuance of
intercourse without any offence on either part, and have long known,
that it is more dangerous to be forgotten than to be blamed; I therefore
make haste to send you the rest of my story, lest, by the delay of
another fortnight, the name of Betty Broom might be no longer remembered
by you or your readers.
Having left the last place in haste, to avoid the charge or the
suspicion of theft, I had not secured another service, and was forced to
take a lodging in a back-street. I had now got good clothes. The woman
who lived in the garret opposite to mine was very officious, and offered
to take care of my room and clean it, while I went round to my
acquaintance to inquire for a mistress. I knew not why she was so kind,
nor how I could recompense her; but in a few days I missed some of my
linen, went to another lodging, and resolved not to have another friend
in the next garret.
In six weeks I became under-maid at the house of a mercer in Cornhill,
whose son was his apprentice. The young gentleman used to sit late at
the tavern, without the knowledge of his father; and I was ordered by my
mistress to let him in silently to his bed under the counter, and to be
very careful to take away his candle. The hours which I was obliged to
watch, whilst the rest of the family was in bed, I considered as
supernumerary, and, having no business assigned for them, thought myself
at liberty to spend them my own way: I kept myself awake with a book,
and for some time liked my state the better for this opportunity of
reading. At last, the upper-maid found my book, and showed it to my
mistress, who told me, that wenches like me might spend their time
better; that she never knew any of the readers that had good designs in
their heads; that she could always find something else to do with her
time, than to puzzle over books; and did not like that such a fine lady
should sit up for her young master.
This was the first time that I found it thought criminal or dangerous to
know how to read. I was dismissed decently, lest I should tell tales,
and had a small gratuity above my wages.
I then lived with a gentlewoman of a small fortune. This was the only
happy part of my life. My mistress, for whom publick diversions were too
expensive, spent her time with books, and was pleased to find a maid who
could partake her amusements. I rose early in the morning, that I might
have time in the afternoon to read or listen, and was suffered to tell
my opinion, or express my delight. Thus fifteen months stole away, in
which I did not repine that I was born to servitude. But a burning fever
seized my mistress, of whom I shall say no more, than that her servant
wept upon her grave.
I had lived in a kind of luxury, which made me very unfit for another
place; and was rather too delicate for the conversation of a kitchen; so
that when I was hired in the family of an East-India director, my
behaviour was so different, as they said, from that of a common servant,
that they concluded me a gentlewoman in disguise, and turned me out in
three weeks, on suspicion of some design which they could not
comprehend.
I then fled for refuge to the other end of the town, where I hoped to
find no obstruction from my new accomplishments, and was hired under the
housekeeper in a splendid family. Here I was too wise for the maids, and
too nice for the footmen; yet I might have lived on without much
uneasiness, had not my mistress, the housekeeper, who used to employ me
in buying necessaries for the family, found a bill which I had made of
one day's expense. I suppose it did not quite agree with her own book,
for she fiercely declared her resolution, that there should be no pen
and ink in that kitchen but her own.
She had the justice, or the prudence, not to injure my reputation; and I
was easily admitted into another house in the neighbourhood, where my
business was to sweep the rooms and make the beds. Here I was, for some
time, the favourite of Mrs. Simper, my lady's woman, who could not bear
the vulgar girls, and was happy in the attendance of a young woman of
some education. Mrs. Simper loved a novel, though she could not read
hard words, and therefore, when her lady was abroad, we always laid hold
on her books. At last, my abilities became so much celebrated, that the
house-steward used to employ me in keeping his accounts. Mrs. Simper
then found out, that my sauciness was grown to such a height that nobody
could endure it, and told my lady, that there never had been a room well
swept, since Betty Broom came into the house.
I was then hired by a consumptive lady, who wanted a maid that could
read and write. I attended her four years, and though she was never
pleased, yet when I declared my resolution to leave her, she burst into
tears, and told me that I must bear the peevishness of a sick bed, and I
should find myself remembered in her will. I complied, and a codicil was
added in my favour; but in less than a week, when I set her gruel before
her, I laid the spoon on the left side, and she threw her will into the
fire. In two days she made another, which she burnt in the same manner,
because she could not eat her chicken. A third was made, and destroyed
because she heard a mouse within the wainscot, and was sure that I
should suffer her to be carried away alive. After this I was for some
time out of favour, but as her illness grew upon her, resentment and
sullenness gave way to kinder sentiments. She died, and left me five
hundred pounds; with this fortune I am going to settle in my native
parish, where I resolve to spend some hours every day in teaching poor
girls to read and write[1].
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
BETTY BROOM.
[1] Mrs. Gardiner, a pious, sensible, and charitable woman, for whom
Johnson entertained a high respect, is said to have afforded a hint
for the story of Betty Broom, from her zealous support of a Ladies'
Charity-school, confined to females. Boswell, vol. iv.
No. 30. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1758.
The desires of man increase with his acquisitions; every step which he
advances brings something within his view, which he did not see before,
and which, as soon as he sees it, he begins to want. Where necessity
ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with every thing
that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial
appetites.
By this restlessness of mind, every populous and wealthy city is filled
with innumerable employments, for which the greater part of mankind is
without a name; with artificers, whose labour is exerted in producing
such petty conveniencies, that many shops are furnished with
instruments, of which the use can hardly be found without inquiry, but
which he that once knows them quickly learns to number among necessary
things.
Such is the diligence with which, in countries completely civilized, one
part of mankind labours for another, that wants are supplied faster than
they can be formed, and the idle and luxurious find life stagnate for
want of some desire to keep it in motion. This species of distress
furnishes a new set of occupations; and multitudes are busied, from day
to day, in finding the rich and the fortunate something to do.
It is very common to reproach those artists as useless, who produce only
such superfluities as neither accommodate the body, nor improve the
mind; and of which no other effect can be imagined, than that they are
the occasions of spending money, and consuming time.
But this censure will be mitigated, when it is seriously considered,
that money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and that the
unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they
know how to use. To set himself free from these incumbrances, one
hurries to Newmarket; another travels over Europe; one pulls down his
house and calls architects about him; another buys a seat in the
country, and follows his hounds over hedges and through rivers; one
makes collections of shells; and another searches the world for tulips
and carnations.
He is surely a publick benefactor who finds employment for those to whom
it is thus difficult to find it for themselves. It is true, that this is
seldom done merely from generosity or compassion; almost every man seeks
his own advantage in helping others, and therefore it is too common for
mercenary officiousness to consider rather what is grateful, than what
is right.
We all know that it is more profitable to be loved than esteemed; and
ministers of pleasure will always be found, who study to make themselves
necessary, and to supplant those who are practising the same arts.
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of
close attention, and the world therefore swarms with writers whose wish
is not to be studied, but to be read.
No species of literary men has lately been so much multiplied as the
writers of news. Not many years ago the nation was content with one
gazette; but now we have not only in the metropolis papers for every
morning and every evening, but almost every large town has its weekly
historian, who regularly circulates his periodical intelligence, and
fills the villages of his district with conjectures on the events of
war, and with debates on the true interest of Europe.
To write news in its perfection requires such a combination of
qualities, that a man completely fitted for the task is not always to be
found. In Sir Henry Wotton's jocular definition, _An ambassador_ is said
to be _a man of virtue sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his
country_; a news-writer is _a man without virtue, who writes lies at
home for his own profit_. To these compositions is required neither
genius nor knowledge, neither industry nor sprightliness; but contempt
of shame and indifference to truth are absolutely necessary. He who by a
long familiarity with infamy has obtained these qualities, may
confidently tell to-day what he intends to contradict to-morrow; he may
affirm fearlessly what he knows that he shall be obliged to recant, and
may write letters from Amsterdam or Dresden to himself.
In a time of war the nation is always of one mind, eager to hear
something good of themselves and ill of the enemy. At this time the task
of news-writers is easy: they have nothing to do but to tell that a
battle is expected, and afterwards that a battle has been fought, in
which we and our friends, whether conquering or conquered, did all, and
our enemies did nothing.
Scarcely any thing awakens attention like a tale of cruelty. The writer
of news never fails in the intermission of action to tell how the
enemies murdered children and ravished virgins; and, if the scene of
action be somewhat distant, scalps half the inhabitants of a province.
Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the
love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity
encourages. A peace will equally leave the warriour and relater of wars
destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded
from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets
filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.
No. 31. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1758.
Many moralists have remarked, that pride has of all human vices the
widest dominion, appears in the greatest multiplicity of forms, and lies
hid under the greatest variety of disguises; of disguises, which, like
the moon's _veil of brightness_, are both its _lustre and its shade_,
and betray it to others, though they hide it from ourselves.
It is not my intention to degrade pride from this pre-eminence of
mischief; yet I know not whether idleness may not maintain a very
doubtful and obstinate competition.
There are some that profess idleness in its full dignity, who call
themselves the _Idle_, as Busiris in the play calls himself the _Proud_;
who boast that they do nothing, and thank their stars that they have
nothing to do; who sleep every night till they can sleep no longer, and
rise only that exercise may enable them to sleep again; who prolong the
reign of darkness by double curtains, and never see the sun but to _tell
him how they hate his beams_; whose whole labour is to vary the posture
of indolence, and whose day differs from their night, but as a couch or
chair differs from a bed.
These are the true and open votaries of idleness, for whom she weaves
the garlands of poppies, and into whose cup she pours the waters of
oblivion; who exist in a state of unruffled stupidity, forgetting and
forgotten; who have long ceased to live, and at whose death the
survivors can only say, that they have ceased to breathe.
But idleness predominates in many lives where it is not suspected; for,
being a vice which terminates in itself, it may be enjoyed without
injury to others; and it is therefore not watched like fraud, which
endangers property; or like pride, which naturally seeks its
gratifications in another's inferiority. Idleness is a silent and
peaceful quality, that neither raises envy by ostentation, nor hatred by
opposition; and therefore nobody is busy to censure or detect it.
As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness is often covered by
turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real
employment, naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that
may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does any thing but
what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in
his own favour.