oct. 21, 1898.
i have been reading some of my old diaries to-day; and i am tempted to try and disentangle, as far as i can, the motif that seems to me to underlie my simple life.
one question above all others has constantly recurred to my mind; and the answer to it is the sum of my slender philosophy.
the question then is this: is a simple, useful, dignified, happy life possible to most of us without the stimulus of affairs, of power, of fame? i answer unhesitatingly that such a life is possible. the tendency of the age is to measure success by publicity, not to think highly of any person or any work unless it receives “recognition,” to think it essential to happiness monstrari digito, to be in the swim, to be a personage.
i admit at once the temptation; to such successful persons comes the consciousness of influence, the feeling of power, the anxious civilities of the undistinguished, the radiance[224] of self-respect, the atmosphere of flattering, subtle deference, the seduction of which not even the most independent and noble characters can escape. indeed, many an influential man of simple character and unpretending virtue, who rates such conveniences of life at their true value, and does not pursue them as an end, would be disagreeably conscious of the lack of these petits soins if he adopted an unpopular cause or for any reason forfeited the influence which begets them.
a friend of mine came to see me the other day fresh from a visit to a great house. his host was a man of high cabinet rank, the inheritor of an ample fortune and a historic name, who has been held by his nearest friends to cling to political life longer than prudence would warrant. my friend told me that he had been left alone one evening with his host, who had, half humorously, half seriously, indulged in a lengthy tirade against the pressure of social duties and unproductive drudgery that his high position involved. “if they would only let me alone!” he said; “i think it very hard that in the evening of my days i cannot order my life to suit my tastes. i have served the public long enough....[225] i would read—how i would read—and when i was bored i would sleep in my chair.”
success
“and yet,” my friend said, commenting on these unguarded statements, “i believe he is the only person of his intimate circle who does not know that he would be hopelessly bored—that the things he decries are the very breath of life to him. there is absolutely no reason why he should not at once and forever realise his fancied ideal—and if his wife and children do not urge him to do so, it is only because they know that he would be absolutely miserable.” and this is true of many lives.
if the “recognition,” of which i have spoken above, were only accorded to the really eminent, it would be a somewhat different matter; but nine-tenths of the persons who receive it are nothing more than phantoms, who have set themselves to pursue the glory, without the services that ought to earn it. a great many people have a strong taste for power without work, for dignity without responsibility; and it is quite possible to attain consideration if you set yourself resolutely to pursue it.
the temptation comes in a yet more subtle form to men of a really high-minded type, whose chief preoccupation is earnest work and[226] the secluded pursuit of some high ideal. such people, though they do not wish to fetter themselves with the empty social duties that assail the eminent, yet are tempted to wish to have the refusal of them, and to be secretly dissatisfied if they do not receive this testimonial to the value of their work. the temptation is not so vulgar as it seems. every one who is ambitious wishes to be effective. a man does not write books or paint pictures or make speeches simply to amuse himself, to fill his time; and they are few who can genuinely write, as the late mark pattison wrote of a period of his life, that his ideal was at one time “defiled and polluted by literary ambition.”
nevertheless, if there is to be any real attempt to win the inner peace of the spirit, such ambition must be not sternly but serenely resisted. not until a man can pass by the rewards of fame oculis irretortis—“nor cast one longing, lingering look behind”—is the victory won.
pure ambition
it may be urged, in my case, that the obscurity for which i crave was never likely to be denied me. true; but at the same time ambition in its pettiest and most childish[227] forms has been and is a real temptation to me: the ambition to dominate and dazzle my immediate circle, to stimulate curiosity about myself, to be considered, if not a successful man, at least a man who might have succeeded if he had cared to try—all the temptations which are depicted in so masterly and merciless a way by that acute psychologist mr. henry james in the character of gilbert osmond in the portrait of a lady—to all of these i plead guilty. had i not been gifted with sufficient sensitiveness to see how singularly offensive and pitiful such pretences are in the case of others, i doubt if i should not have succumbed—if indeed i have not somewhat succumbed—to them.
indeed, to some morbid natures such pretences are vital—nay, self-respect would be impossible without them. i know a lady who, like mrs. wittiterly, is really kept alive by the excitement of being an invalid. if she had not been so ill she would have died years ago. i know a worthy gentleman who lives in london and spends his time in hurrying from house to house lamenting how little time he can get to do what he really enjoys—to read or think. another has come to my mind[228] who lives in a charming house in the country, and by dint of inviting a few second-rate literary and artistic people to his house and entertaining them royally, believes himself to be at the very centre of literary and artistic life, and essential to its continuance. these are harmless lives, not unhappy, not useless; based, it is true, upon a false conception of the relative importance of their own existence, but then is there one of us—the most hard-working, influential, useful person in the world—who does not exaggerate his own importance? does any one realise how little essential he is, or how easily his post is filled—indeed, how many people there are who believe that they could do the same thing better if they only had the chance.
a life to be happy must be compounded in due degree of activity and pleasure, using the word in its best sense. there must be sufficient activity to take off the perilous and acrid humours of the mind which, left to themselves, poison the sources of life, and enough pleasure to make the prospect of life palatable.
the first necessity is to get rid, as life goes on, of all conventional pleasures. by the age[229] of forty a man should know what he enjoys, and not continue doing things intended to be pleasurable, either because he deludes himself into thinking that he enjoys them, or because he likes others to think that he enjoys them. i know now that i do not care for casual country-house visiting, for dancing, for garden parties, for cricket matches, and many another form of social distraction, but that the pleasures that remain and grow are the pleasures derived from books, from the sights and sounds of nature, from sympathetic conversation, from music, and from active physical exercise in the open air. it is my belief that a man is happiest who is so far employed that he has to scheme to secure a certain share of such pleasures. my own life unhappily is so ordered that it is the other way—that i have to scheme to secure sufficient activities to make such pleasure wholesome. but i am stern with myself. at times when i find the zest of simple home pleasures deserting me, i have sufficient self-control deliberately to spend a week in london, which i detest, or to pay a duty-visit where i am so acutely and sharply bored by a dull society—castigatio mea matutina[230] est—that i return with delicious enthusiasm to my own trivial round.
our own importance
i do not flatter myself that i hold any very important place in the world’s economy. but i believe that i have humbly contributed somewhat to the happiness of others, and i find that the reward for thwarted, wasted ambitions has come in the shape of a daily increasing joy in quiet things and tender simplicities. i need not reiterate the fact that i draw from nature, ever more and more, the most unfailing and the purest joy; and if i have forfeited some of the deepest and most thrilling emotions of the human heart, it is but what thousands are compelled to do; and it is something to find that the heart can be sweet and tranquil without them. the only worth of these pages must rest in the fact that the life which i have tried to depict is made up of elements which are within the reach of all or nearly all human beings. and though i cannot claim to have invented a religious system, or to have originated any new or startling theory of existence, yet i have proved by experiment that a life beset by many disadvantages, and deprived of most of the stimulus that to some would seem essential, need not drift into being discontented or evil or cold or hard.
