very much whether bodily health, the mere absence of physical disease,
be nearly as indispensable a condition of happiness as certain
peculiarities of the mental and moral constitution. The disposition to
Anxiety, for instance, which reduces many lives to a purgatory of
incessant care,—about money, about the opinion of society, or about the
health and well-being of children,—is certainly a worse drawback to
peace and happiness than half the diseases in the Registrar-General’s
list. This anxious temperament is commonly supposed to be fostered and
excited in towns, and laid to sleep in the peaceful life of the country;
and, if it were certainly and invariably so, I think the balance of
happiness between the two would well-nigh be settled by that fact alone.
But again there is something to be said on the side of the town. An
African traveller has described to me how, after months exposed to the
interminable perils from man and brute and climate, he felt, after his
first night on board a homeward-bound English ship, a reaction from the
tension of anxiety which revealed to himself the anguish he had been
half-unconsciously enduring for many months. In like manner the city man
or the statesman feels, when at last he takes his summer holiday, under
what tremendous pressure of care he has been living during the past
year, or session, in London; and he compares it, naturally enough, with
the comparatively careless life of his friend, the country squire. But
every one in London does not run a race for political victory or social
success, and there are yet some sober old ways of business—both legal
and mercantile—which do not involve the alternative of wealth or ruin
every hour. For such people I apprehend London life is actually rather a
cure for an anxious temperament than a provocative of care. There is no
time for dwelling on topics of a painful sort, or raising spectres of
possible evils ahead. Labors and pleasures, amusements and monetary
worries, succeed each other so rapidly that the more serious anxieties
receive less and less attention as the plot of London life thickens year
by year. One nail drives out another, and we are now and then startled
to remember that there has been really for days and months a reasonable
fear of disaster hanging over us to which we have somehow scarcely given
a thought, while in the country it would have filled our whole horizon,
and we should scarcely have forgotten it day or night.
And, again, quite as important as bodily health and freedom from anxiety
is the possession of a certain childlike freshness of character; a
simplicity which enables men and women, even in old age, to enjoy such
innocent pleasures as come in their way without finding them pall, or
despising them as not worth their acceptance. Great minds and men of
genius seem generally specially gifted with this invaluable attribute of
perennial youth; while little souls, full of their own petty importance
and vanities, lose it before they are well out of the school-room. The
late sculptor, John Gibson (whose works will be, perhaps, appreciated
when all the monstrosities of modern English statuary are consigned to
the lime-kiln), used to say in his old age that he wished he could live
over again every day and hour of his past life precisely as he had spent
it. Let the reader measure what this means in the mouth of a man of
transparent veracity, and it will appear that the speaker must needs
have carried on through his seventy years the freshness of heart of a
boy, never wearied by his ardent pursuit of the Beautiful, and supported
by the consciousness that this pursuit was not wholly in vain. People
who are always “looking for the next thing,” taking each pleasure not as
pleasure _per se_, but merely as a useful stepping-stone to something
else which may possibly be pleasure, or as a subject to be talked of;
people who are always climbing, like boys at a fair, up the slippery
pole of ambition,—cannot possibly know the meaning of such genuine and
ever fresh enjoyment.
Is a man likely to grow more or less simple-hearted and single-minded in
Town or in the Country? Alas! there can be little or no doubt that
London life is a sad trial to all such simplicity; and that nothing is
more difficult than to preserve, in its hot, stifling atmosphere, the
freshness and coolness of any flower of sentiment, or the glory of any
noble, unselfish enthusiasm. Social wear and tear, and the tone of
easy-letting-down commonly adopted by men of the world towards any lofty
aspiration, compel those who would fain cherish generous and
conscientious motives to cloak them under the guise of a hobby or a
whim, and, before many years are over, the glow and bloom of almost
every enthusiasm is rubbed off and spoiled.
But it is time to pass from the general subjective conditions of
happiness common to us all to those individual tastes and idiosyncrasies
which are probably more often concerned in the preference of town or
country life. We are all of us mingled of pretty nearly the same
ingredients of character; but they are mixed in very different
proportions in each man’s brewing, and in determining the flavor of the
compound everything depends on the element which happens to prevail. By
some odd chance, few of us, notwithstanding all our egotism and
self-study, really know ourselves well enough to recognize whether we
are by nature gregarious or solitary, acted upon most readily by
meteorological or by psychological influences, capable of living only on
our affections or requiring the exercise of our brains. We are always,
for example, talking about the gloom or brightness of the weather, as if
we were so many pimpernels, to whom the sun is everything and a cloudy
day or a sharp east wind the most pitiable calamity. The real truth is
that, to ninety-nine healthy English men and women out of a hundred,
atmospheric conditions are insignificant compared to social ones; and
the spectacle of a single member of the family in the dumps, or even the
suspicion that the servants are quarrelling in the kitchen, detracts
more from our faculty of enjoyment than a fall of the barometer from
Very Dry to Stormy. In the same way we talk about people “loving the
country” or “loving the town,” just as if the character which fitted in
and found its natural gratification in the one were qualified to enjoy
quite equally the other. Obviously, in some of us the passion for Nature
and natural beauty is so prominent that, if it be starved (as it must
needs be in a great city) or only tantalized by the sight of pictures
reminding us of woods and hills and fresh breezes when we are stifled
and jostled in the crowded rooms of Burlington House or the Grosvenor
Gallery, we miss so much out of life that nothing can make up for it,
and no pleasures of the intellect in the company of clever people, or
gratification of taste in the most luxurious home, are sufficient to
banish the regret. A young branch swaying in the breeze of spring, and
the song of the lark rising out of the thyme and the clover, are better
than all the pictures, the concerts, the conversation which the town can
offer. And just in the opposite way there are others amongst us in whom
the æsthetic element is subordinate to the social, and who long to take
a part in the world’s work rather than to stand by and watch the grand
panorama of summer and winter move before them while they remain
passive. Is it not patently absurd to talk as if persons so differently
constituted as these could find happiness,—the one where his ingrained
passion for Nature is permanently denied its innocent and easy
gratification, the other where his no less deeply rooted interest in the
concerns of his kind is narrowed within the petty sphere of rural social
life?
But let us now pass on, hoping that we have found the round man for the
round hole, and the square man for the square one. What are the more
hidden and recondite charms of the two modes of life, of which the Town
Mouse and the Country Mouse have rehearsed the superficial characters?
What is the meaning in the first place of that taste for “Life at High
Pressure,” against which W. R. Greg cautioned us, and Matthew Arnold
inveighed? How was it that the sage Dr. Johnson felt undoubtedly a
twinge of the same unholy passion when he remarked to the faithful
Boswell how delightful it was to drive fast in a post-chaise,—in _such_
a post-chaise, and over such roads as existed in his time? I apprehend
that the love for rapid movement comes from the fact that it always
conveys to us a sense of vivid volition, and effectually stirs both our
pulses and our brains, causing us not only to seem to ourselves, but
actually to become, more intelligent. At first the bustle and hurry of
London life bewilder the visitor; and, finding it impossible to think,
move, and speak as fast as is needful, he feels as a feeble old lady
might do arm-in-arm with Jack in his Seven-league boots. But after a
little while he learns to step out mentally as rapidly as his neighbors,
and thereby acquires the double satisfaction of the intrinsic pleasure
of thinking quickly and not dwelling on ideas till they become tedious,
and the further sense of gratified vanity in being as clever as other
people. This last is again a curious source of metropolitan
satisfaction. It is all very well to boast of having “also dwelt in
Arcadia.” Such pastoral pride is humility beside the conceit of being a
thorough-bred Londoner. There may live many men with souls so dead as
never to themselves to have said—anything signifying peculiar
appropriation of the soil of Scotland, or of any other “native land.”
But who has ever yet met a Cockney who was not from the bottom to the
top of his soul proud of being a Londoner, and deeply convinced that he
and his fellows can alone be counted as standing “in the foremost files
of time”? Of course, whilst he is actually in London, he has no
provocation to betray his self-satisfaction among people who can all
make the same boast. But watch him the moment he passes into the
country. Observe the pains he takes that the natives shall fully
understand what manner of man, even a Londoner, they have the privilege
of entertaining, and no doubt will remain as to how immensely superior
he feels himself to those who habitually dwell “far from the madding
crowd.” If he wander into the remoter provinces, say of Scotland, Wales,
or Ireland, there is always in his recognition of the hospitality shown
to him a tone like that of the shipwrecked apostle in Malta: “The
Barbarous people there showed us no small kindness.” He manages to
convey by looks, words, and manners his astonishment at any vestiges of
civilization which he may meet on those distant shores, and exhibits
graceful forbearance in putting up with the delicious fresh fruit,
cream, vegetables, and home-fed beef and mutton of his entertainers in
lieu of the stale produce of the London shops. One such stranded Cockney
I have known to remark that he “observed” that the eggs at N——, and at
another country house where he occasionally visited, had in them a
“peculiar milky substance,” about whose merits he seemed doubtful; and
another I have heard, after landing at Holyhead on his return from
Ireland, complacently comparing his watch (which had, like himself,
faithfully kept London time during all his tour) with the clock in the
station, and observing to his fellow-passengers “that there was not a
single clock right in Dublin,—they were all twenty minutes too
slow,—and, when he went to Galway, he found them still worse.”
Even if a man sincerely prefer country life, and transfer his abode from
London to the rural districts, he still retains a latent satisfaction at
having lived once in the very centre of human interests, close to the
throbbing heart of the world. The old squire, who has been too gouty and
too indolent to run up to town for twenty years, will still brighten up
at the names of the familiar streets and play-houses, and will tell
anecdotes, the chief interest of which seems to lie in the fact that he
formerly lodged in Jermyn Street, or bought his seals at the corner of
Waterloo Place, or had his hair cut in Bond Street, preparatory to going
to the play in Drury Lane.
As volunteers enjoy a field day with the manœuvres and marches, so a
Londoner experiences a dim sense of pleasure in forming part of the huge
army of four millions of human beings who are for ever moving hither and
thither, and yet strangely bringing about, not confusion, but order. The
Greek philosophers and statesmen, who thought such a little tiny “Polis”
as Athens or Sparta (not an eighth part of one postal district of
London) almost a miracle of divine order, would have fallen down and
worshipped at the shrine of Gog and Magog for having provided that a
whole nation should be fed, housed, clothed, washed, lighted, warmed,
taught, and amused for years and generations in a single city eight
miles long. It is impossible not to feel an ever fresh interest and even
surprise in the solution of so marvellous a problem as this human
ant-hill presents, and Londoners themselves, perhaps even more than
their visitors, are wont to watch with pleasant wonder each occurrence
which brings its magnitude to mind: the long quadruple train of splendid
equipages filing through Hyde Park of a summer afternoon; the scene
presented by the river at the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race; or the
overwhelming spectacle of such crowds as greeted the Queen on her
Jubilee.
The facility wherewith a busy-minded person, possessed of moderate
pecuniary resources, can carry out almost any project in London, is
another great source of the pleasure of town life. At every corner a
cab, a hansom, an omnibus, an underground station, or a penny steamboat,
is ready to convey him rapidly and securely to any part of the vast
area; and a post-pillar or post-office or telegraph office, to forward
his letter or card or telegram. He has acquired the privilege of
Briareus for doing the work of a hundred hands, while the scores of
penny and half-penny newspapers give him the benefit of the hundred eyes
of Argus to see how to do it.
Not many people seem to notice wherein the last and greatest of London
pleasures, that of London society, has its special attraction. It is
contrasted with the very best society which the Country can ever afford,
by offering the charm of the _imprévu_. There are always indefinite
possibilities of the most delightful and interesting new acquaintances
or of the renewal of old friendships in London: whereas even in the most
brilliant circles in the country we are aware, before we enter a house,
that our host’s choice of our fellow-guests must have lain within a very
narrow and restricted circle, and that, if a stranger should happily
have fallen from the skies into the neighborhood, his advent would have
been proclaimed in our note of invitation. Now it is much more piquant
to meet an agreeable person unexpectedly than by formal rendezvous; and,
for that large proportion of mankind who are not particularly agreeable,
it is still more essential that they should be presented freshly to our
acquaintance. Other things being equal, a Stranger Bore is never half so
great a bore as a Familiar Bore, of whose boredom we have already had
intimate and painful experience. There yet hangs about the Stranger Bore
somewhat of the mists of early day, and we are a little while in
piercing them and thoroughly deciding that he _is_ a bore and nothing
better. Often, indeed, for the first hour or two of acquaintanceship, he
fails to reveal himself in his true colors, and makes remarks and tells
anecdotes the dulness of which we shall only thoroughly recognize when
we have heard them repeated on twenty other occasions. With our own
Familiar Bore no illusion is possible. The moment we see him enter the
room, we know everything that is going to be said for the rest of the
evening, and Hope itself escapes out of Pandora’s box. Thus, even if
there were proportionately as many bores in London as in the provinces,
we should still, in town, enjoy a constant change of them, which would
considerably lighten the burden. This, however, is very far from being
the case; and the stupid wives of clever men and the dull husbands of
clever wives, who alone smuggle into the inner coteries (few people
having the effrontery to omit them in their invitations), are so far
rubbed up and instructed in the best means of concealing their
ignorance, silliness, or stupidity, that they are often quite harmless
and inoffensive, and even qualified to shine with a mild reflected
lustre in rural society in the autumn. Certain immutable laws made and
provided by society against bores are brought sooner or later to their
knowledge. They do not tell stories more than five minutes long in the
narration, nor rehearse jokes till they fancy they can recall the point,
nor entertain their friends by an abridgment of their own pedigree, or
by a catalogue of the ages, names, heights, and attainments in the Latin
grammar of their hopeful offspring. To all this sort of thing the
miserable visitor in the country is liable to be subjected in every
house the threshold of which he may venture to cross; for, even if his
host and hostess be the most delightful people, they generally have some
old uncle or aunt, or privileged and pompous neighbor, with whom nobody
has ever dared to interfere in his ruthless exercise of the power to
bore, and who will fasten on a new-comer just as mosquitoes do on fresh
arrivals at a seaport after having tormented all the old inhabitants.
And if London Bores are as lions with drawn teeth and clipped claws,
London pleasant people on the other hand are beyond any doubt the
pleasantest in the world; more true and kind and less eaten up by vanity
and egotism than Parisians, and twice as agile-minded as the very
cleverest German.
Again, a great charm of London is that wealth is of so much less social
weight there than anywhere else. It is singular what misapprehensions
are current on this subject, and how apt are country people to say that
money is everything in town, whereas the exact converse of the
proposition is nearer the truth. In a country neighborhood, the man who
lives in the largest house, drives the handsomest horses, and gives the
most luxurious entertainments is allowed with little question to assume
a prominent position, be he never so dull and never so vulgar; and,
though respect will still be paid to well-born and well-bred people of
diminished or narrow fortune, their position as regards their _nouveau
riche_ neighbors is every year less dignified or agreeable. Quite on the
contrary in town: with no income beyond what is needful to subscribe to
a club and wear a good coat, a man may take his place (hundreds _do_ so
take a place) in the most delightful circles, welcomed by all for his
own worth or agreeability, for the very simple and sufficient reason
that people like his society and want nothing more from him. In a city
where there are ten thousand people ready to give expensive dinners, it
is not the possession of money enough to entertain guests which can by
itself make the owner an important personage, or cause the world to
overlook the fact that he is a snob; nor will the lack of wealth prevent
those thousands who are on the look-out only for a pleasant and
brilliant companion from cultivating one, be he never so poor. The
distinction between the rural and the urban way of viewing a new
acquaintance as regards both birth and fortune is very curiously
betrayed by the habit of townsfolk to ask simply “_what_ a man may be”
(meaning, “Is he a lawyer, a _littérateur_, a politician, a
clergyman,—above all, is he a pleasant fellow?”) and that of country
gentry invariably to inquire, “_Who_ is he?” (meaning, Has he an estate,
and is he related to the So-and-so’s of such a place?) It is not a
little amusing sometimes to witness the discomfiture of both parties
when a bland old gentleman is introduced in London to some man of
world-wide celebrity, whose antecedents none of the company ever dreamed
of investigating, and the squire courteously intimates, as the
pleasantest thing he can think of to say, that he “used to meet often in
the hunting field a gentleman of that name who had a fine place in
Cheshire,” or that “he remembers a man who must surely have been his
father—a gentleman-commoner of Christchurch.”
For those men and women—numerous enough in these days—who hold rather
pronounced opinions of the sort not relished in country circles, who are
heretics regarding the religious or political creed of their relatives
and neighbors, London offers the real Broad Sanctuary, where they may
rest in peace, and be no more looked upon as black sheep, suspicious and
uncomfortable characters, the “gentleman who voted for Topsy Turvey at
the last election,” or “the lady who doesn’t go to church on Sundays.”
In town, not only will their errors be overlooked, but they will find
scores of pleasant and reputable persons who share the worst of them and
go a great deal further, and in whose society they will soon begin to
feel themselves by comparison quite orthodox, and perhaps rather
conservative characters.
And lastly, besides all the other advantages of London which I have
recapitulated, there is one of which very little note is ever taken. If
many sweet and beautiful pleasures are lost by living there, many sharp
and weary pains also therein find a strange anodyne. There is no time to
be very unhappy in London. Past griefs are buried away under the
surface, since we may not show them to the unsympathizing eyes around;
and present cares and sorrows are driven into dark corners of the mind
by the crowd of busy every-day thoughts which inevitably take their
place. A man may feel the heart-ache in the country, and wander mourning
by the solitary shore or amid the silent winter woods. But let him go,
after receiving a piece of sad intelligence, into the busy London
streets, and be obliged to pick his way amid the crowd; to pass by a
score of brilliant shops, avoid being run over by an omnibus, give a
penny to a streetsweeper, push through the children looking at Punch,
close his ears to a German band, hail a hansom and drive to his office
or his chambers,—and at the end of the hour how many thoughts will he
have given to his sorrow?
Before it has had time to sink into his mind, many days of similar fuss
and business will have intervened; and by that time the edge of the
grief will be dulled, and he will never experience it in its sharpness.
Of the influence of this process, continually repeated, on the
character, a good deal might be said; and there may be certainly room to
doubt whether thus perpetually shirking all the more serious and solemn
passages of life is conducive to the higher welfare. After we have
suffered a good deal, and the readiness of youth to encounter every new
experience and drink every cup to the dregs has been exchanged for the
dread of strong emotions and the weariness of grief which belong to
later years, there is an immense temptation to spare our own hearts as
much as we can; and London offers the very easiest way, without any
failure of kindness, duty, or decorum, to effect such an end.
Nevertheless, the sacred faculties of sympathy and unselfish sorrow are
not things to be lightly tampered with; and it is to be feared that the
consequences of any conscious evasion of their claims must always be
followed by that terrible Nemesis, the hardening of our hearts and the
disbelief in the sympathy of our neighbors. We have made love and
friendship unreal to ourselves, and it becomes impossible to continue to
believe they are real to other people. Yet, I think, if the shelter be
not wilfully or intentionally sought, if it merely come in the natural
course of things that the business and variety of town life prevent us
from dwelling on sorrows which cannot be lightened by our care, it seems
a better alternative than the almost infinite durability and emphasis
given to grief in the monotonous life of the country.