THE CURSE OF IDLENESS.
Or fia dunque giammai, che tu, Ozio, possi esser grato veramente, se
non quando succedi a degne occupazioni. L'ozio vile et inerte
voglio, che ad un animo generoso sia la maggior fatica, che aver egli
possa, se non gli rappresenta dopo lodabile esercizio e lavoro.
GIORDANO BRUNO.--_Spaccio._
The consequences of this little scene were manifold.
"Papa," said Violet to her father on the following day, "you have
done what I knew you would do, and what I accept as a presage for the
future."
"And what is that, my dear?"
"Sent Blanche some money."
"Who told you so?" exclaimed he, greatly surprised.
"I divined it," she answered, with a quiet smile.
"You ... you are mistaken, Violet, ... I send ... I have renounced
her."
"Yes, but your heart speaks for her in secret, and in secret you send
money. Though I question whether sixty pounds..."
"Fifty," interrupted her father.
"Oh, then, you did know of it?" she said, archly.
Meredith Vyner bit his lip.
"Sixty was the sum Mama gave, at any rate, because Rose, who was
present, told me so."
"Kind, generous creature!" ejaculated Vyner. "She must have added
the other ten from her own purse. Violet, you have guessed aright,
but keep the secret, unless you wish me to withhold even my underhand
charity from your wretched sister."
Violet promised to do so; but how great was her scorn of her mother's
hypocrisy, when she thus found her suspicions verified! From her
knowledge of her father and mother, she had at once guessed the real
state of the case, and confusedly, but strongly, suspected the motive
of the latter.
This was the way in which their mutual hatred was nourished. Violet
was not a dupe, and her mother saw that she was not.
On Cecil, the influence of this gift was fatal.
"This comes most fortunately," he said; "for not only do I now begin
to see that our income is barely sufficient to meet our scanty
expenditure, but the more I advance in my 'Nero,' the more am I
impressed with the necessity for not hurrying it. All great works
demand time and labour. Were I to hurry the execution I should spoil
it, and too much depends upon success for me to be precipitate."
He was sincere in saying so; he was his own dupe in asserting that
what he most needed was ample leisure in which to elaborate his
conception. He caught at the excuse offered to his idleness, and
like all men, covered his weakness in the imposing folds of an
aphorism. The brain is singularly fertile in inventing plausible
reasons to excuse weaknesses.
Labour is a sublime necessity: it is beneficence under a rude aspect.
But although so beneficent to man, it is radically antipathetic to
his nature. All men are _constrained_ to work. Poverty or ambition
are the invariable taskmasters, and it is only by dint of the strong
stimulus of want, or the stronger dictates of indomitable will, that
human nature, vagabond as are its tendencies, can be made to
persevere in the tasks set before it.
What wonder, then, if men under all conditions avidly seize upon
every occasion which enables them for a moment to escape from the
tyranny of work? What wonder if this weak, wayward, susceptible
Cecil, who had laboured cheerily under the impulsion of necessity,
now forgot the sweet delights of his daily task, and relapsed into
his old habits of dreaming idleness?
There was no longer any remarkable hurry. His daily existence did
not depend upon the immediate accomplishment of his task. He could
wait, he could mature his plans, he could work only when the
inspiration came to him; there was no need to harass an unwilling;
brain, he could bide his time. To any one who knew him, it would be
easy to foresee that from the moment he was released from the
immediate necessity of labour, his time would be frittered away in
sterile efforts. It is only genius, which, goaded by an irresistible
inward impulse to transmute into art all that it has felt, labours
with courageous love, and sings because it cannot choose but sing.
Talent of every kind needs an external stimulus, and Cecil was a man
of talent, not a man of genius.
Blanche confirmed him in his opinions; partly, perhaps, out of
sincere belief in him and in all he said, which made her think he
could not be in error; partly, also, out of a little egotism of love
which made her rejoice in every hour that he could snatch from labour
to spend at her side. He was so loveable, that she would deserve
pardon, even if her sex's ignorance of life had not concealed from
her the enormity of her fault. There was something so caressing in
his manner, that few people withstood it; and to her he was the
perfection of tenderness, delicacy and amiability. Persons of his
lively, susceptible organization, are usually fascinating in their
manners--there is a _laisser aller_ (which in him was tempered with
perfect good breeding), a frankness, a gaiety, and a general
consideration for the feelings and opinions of others, founded on a
desire of universal approbation, which create more regard than great
qualities in a less agreeable exterior. If he was charming to
others, what was he to the wife he loved!
She wished to have him with her, and he was but too glad to gratify
her wish. A little excursion to Richmond occupied one day; a visit
to some Exhibition broke in upon another. There were always pleasant
walks and satisfactory excuses. He was not idle, he said; his brain
was working, his ideas were gradually becoming clearer; the details
stood out more distinctly in his imagination; and 'Nero' would
benefit by this delay.
The effect of alms is always enervating, however it may relieve a
present want; and the contributions of Mrs. Vyner were a species of
alms. This was the case with Cecil. His sense of independence--his
healthy confidence in his own powers--becomes destroyed. Had Vyner
made a distinct allowance to his daughter, it would have then formed
a certain part of their income, and Cecil would have no more relaxed
his efforts than he did when his own small but definite income was
all he could rely on. But this uncertain charity--this indefinite
alms-giving which Mrs. Vyner's first gift seemed to indicate, had the
injurious effect of all unascertained indeterminate assistance: it
made Cecil rely on it as on a fund.
In this mental analysis I am exhibiting motives in all their nudity,
but the reader will not suppose that because I drag them into the
light of day, they were as clear to Cecil, in whose breast they were
enveloped in the sophisms and obscurities with which men hide from
themselves their own infirmities.
As Cecil sat after breakfast smoking his cigars, and watching the
graceful involutions of the clouds he puffed before him, he honestly
believed that he was not wasting his time. Because he occasionally
arrested his wandering thoughts, and fixed them on his plans for
'Nero,' or for his Comic Opera, he fancied he was maturing them. He
mistook reveries for meditation. And because in those hours of
pensive idleness he made but trifling progress in the elaboration of
his plans, he imagined that elaboration must necessarily be slow, and
demanded more time. Thus his very infirmity was alimented, and each
day's error only made the original mistake more plausible.
Who has indulged in all the enchantment of the world of reverie,
wherein materials are so plastic, and triumphs are so easy,--when man
seems to be endowed with the god-like privilege of creation, and his
thoughts take shape without an effort, passing from the creative mind
into the created act, without the hard obstacle of a medium,--who is
there, I say, that, having known such intellectual triumph, has not
felt humbled and discouraged when, descending from the region of
reverie and intention, to that of reality and execution, he has
become aware of the immensity of labour, of hard resolute labour to
be undergone before he can incarnate his ideas into works? The
unwritten poems--the unpainted pictures--the unnoted melodies are, it
is often said, transcendantly superior to those poems, pictures, and
melodies which artists succeed in producing. Perhaps so; but the
world justly takes no account of unaccomplished promises, of unfought
victories. What it applauds is the actual victory won in earnest
struggle with difficulty; the heroes it crowns are those who have
enriched them with trophies, not those who might have done so.
But Cecil was content to dream of victory--to "dally with the faint
surmise" of beauty--to plan, to hope, to dream--but not to act. He
would stand before his easel, looking at his canvass, or playing
listlessly with the colours on his palette, but never boldly using
his pencil; and because "ideas" did not come to him in that
irresolute mood, he threw the palette down, lighted a cigar, and
declared himself unfit for work that day.
He then would seat himself at the piano to try if Euterpe were more
propitious. His fingers running over the keys would naturally
suggest to him some melody that he liked; it was played, of course,
or a fragment of it--then another fragment; then he began to
sing--his voice was good, and it pleased him to hear it. In this way
another hour or so would pass, and he would then take up his hat and
stroll out. Day after day was this miserable farce of "awaiting
inspiration" played with the same success.
Enthusiastic artists and critics will assuredly award him their
esteem, and proclaim him a genuine artist--a real genius--when they
hear that Cecil had a profound contempt for "mechanical fellows," who
sat down to their work whether under "inspiration," or under the mere
impulse to finish what they have begun. He was really eloquent in
his scorn of the "drudges." Genius, in his eyes, was a divine
caprice. It came and went in moments of excitement: a sort of
intermittent phrenzy. Being a scholar, he entirely approved of
Plato's theory to that effect, as developed in the dialogue of _Ion_.
The business of an artist was consequently to await those moments,
and then to set himself to work, when his soul was stung to ecstacy
by overpowering visions of beauty.
There is, in the present day, an overplus of raving about genius, and
its prescriptive rights of vagabondage, its irresponsibility, and its
insubordination to all the laws of common sense. Common sense is so
prosaic! Yet it appears from the history of art that the real men of
genius did not rave about anything of the kind. They were resolute
workers, not idle dreamers. They knew that their genius was not a
phrenzy, not a supernatural thing at all, but simply the colossal
proportions of faculties which in a lesser degree, the meanest of
mankind shared with them. They knew that whatever it was, it would
not enable them to accomplish with success the things they undertook,
unless they devoted their whole energies to the task.
Would Michael Angelo have built St. Peter's, sculptured the Moses,
and made the walls of the Vatican sacred with the presence of his
gigantic pencil, had he awaited inspiration while his works were in
progress. Would Rubens have dazzled all the galleries of Europe, had
he allowed his brush to hesitate? would Beethoven and Mozart have
poured out their souls into such abundant melodies? would Göthe have
written the sixty volumes of his works,--had they not often, very
often, sat down like drudges to an unwilling task, and found
themselves speedily engrossed with that to which they were so averse?
"Use the pen," says a thoughtful and subtle author, "there is no
magic in it; _but it keeps the mind from staggering about!_"* This
is an aphorism which should be printed in letters of gold over the
studio door of every artist. Use the pen or the brush; do not pause,
do not trifle, have no misgivings; but keep your mind from staggering
about by fixing it resolutely on the matter before you, and then all
that you can do you will do: inspiration will not enable you to do
more. Write or paint: act, do not hesitate. If what you have
written or painted should turn out imperfect, you can correct it, and
the correction will be more efficient than that correction which
takes place in the shifting thoughts of hesitation. You will learn
from your failures infinitely more than from the vague wandering
reflections of a mind loosened from its moorings; because the failure
is absolute, it is precise, it stands bodily before you, your eyes
and judgment cannot be juggled with, you know whether a certain verse
is harmonious, whether the rhyme is there or not there; but in the
other case you not only can juggle with yourself but do so, the very
indeterminateness of your thoughts makes you do so; as long as the
idea is not positively clothed in its artistic form, it is impossible
accurately to say what it will be. The magic of the pen lies in the
concentration of your thoughts upon one object. Let your pen fall,
begin to trifle with blotting-paper, look at the ceiling, bite your
nails, and otherwise dally with your purpose, and you waste your
time, scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous energy necessary
for your task. Some men dally and dally, hesitate and trifle until
the last possible moment, and when the printer's boy is knocking at
the door, they begin: necessity goading them, they write with
singular rapidity, and with singular success; they are astonished at
themselves. What is the secret? Simply this; they have had no time
to hesitate. Concentrating their powers upon the one object before
them, they have done what they _could_ do.
* Essays written during the intervals of business.
Impatient reader! if I am tedious, forgive me. These lines may meet
the eyes of some to whom they are specially addressed, and may awaken
thoughts in their minds not unimportant to their future career.
Forgive me, if only because I have taken what is called the prosaic
side! I have not flattered the shallow sophisms which would give a
gloss to idleness and incapacity. I have not availed myself of the
splendid tirades, so easy to write, about the glorious privileges of
genius. My "preaching" may be very ineffectual, but at any rate it
advocates the honest dignity of labour; let my cause excuse my
tediousness.