Now, this is a subject on which I flatter myself I really am
au fait. The gentleman who, when I was young, bathed me at
wisdom's font for nine guineas a term—no extras—used to say he
never knew a boy who could do less work in more time; and I
remember my poor grandmother once incidentally observing, in the
course of an instruction upon the use of the Prayer-book, that it
was highly improbable that I should ever do much that I ought not
to do, but that she felt convinced beyond a doubt that I should
leave undone pretty well everything that I ought to do.
I am afraid I have somewhat belied half the dear old lady's
prophecy. Heaven help me! I have done a good many things that I
ought not to have done, in spite of my laziness. But I have fully
confirmed the accuracy of her judgment so far as neglecting much
that I ought not to have neglected is concerned. Idling always has
been my strong point. I take no credit to myself in the matter—it
is a gift. Few possess it. There are plenty of lazy people and
plenty of slow-coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. He is not
a man who slouches about with his hands in his pockets. On the
contrary, his most startling characteristic is that he is always
intensely busy.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has
plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you
have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and
a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be
stolen.
Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was taken very ill—I
never could see myself that much was the matter with me, except
that I had a beastly cold. But I suppose it was something very
serious, for the doctor said that I ought to have come to him a
month before, and that if it (whatever it was) had gone on for
another week he would not have answered for the consequences. It is
an extraordinary thing, but I never knew a doctor called into any
case yet but what it transpired that another day's delay would have
rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide, philosopher, and friend
is like the hero in a melodrama—he always comes upon the scene
just, and only just, in the nick of time. It is Providence, that is
what it is.
Well, as I was saying, I was very ill and was ordered to Buxton
for a month, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the
while that I was there. "Rest is what you require," said the
doctor, "perfect rest."
It seemed a delightful prospect. "This man evidently understands
my complaint," said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time—a
four weeks' dolce far niente with a dash of illness in it.
Not too much illness, but just illness enough—just sufficient to
give it the flavor of suffering and make it poetical. I should get
up late, sip chocolate, and have my breakfast in slippers and a
dressing-gown. I should lie out in the garden in a hammock and read
sentimental novels with a melancholy ending, until the books should
fall from my listless hand, and I should recline there, dreamily
gazing into the deep blue of the firmament, watching the fleecy
clouds floating like white-sailed ships across its depths, and
listening to the joyous song of the birds and the low rustling of
the trees. Or, on becoming too weak to go out of doors, I should
sit propped up with pillows at the open window of the ground-floor
front, and look wasted and interesting, so that all the pretty
girls would sigh as they passed by.
And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the
Colonnade to drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing
about them then, and was rather taken with the idea. "Drinking the
waters" sounded fashionable and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I
should like them. But, ugh! after the first three or four mornings!
Sam Weller's description of them as "having a taste of warm
flat-irons" conveys only a faint idea of their hideous
nauseousness. If anything could make a sick man get well quickly,
it would be the knowledge that he must drink a glassful of them
every day until he was recovered. I drank them neat for six
consecutive days, and they nearly killed me; but after then I
adopted the plan of taking a stiff glass of brandy-and-water
immediately on the top of them, and found much relief thereby. I
have been informed since, by various eminent medical gentlemen,
that the alcohol must have entirely counteracted the effects of the
chalybeate properties contained in the water. I am glad I was lucky
enough to hit upon the right thing.
But "drinking the waters" was only a small portion of the
torture I experienced during that memorable month—a month which
was, without exception, the most miserable I have ever spent.
During the best part of it I religiously followed the doctor's
mandate and did nothing whatever, except moon about the house and
garden and go out for two hours a day in a Bath chair. That did
break the monotony to a certain extent. There is more excitement
about Bath-chairing—especially if you are not used to the
exhilarating exercise—than might appear to the casual observer. A
sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might not understand, is
ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every
minute that the whole concern is going over, a conviction which
becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly
macadamized road comes in sight. Every vehicle that passes he
expects is going to run into him; and he never finds himself
ascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning to
speculate upon his chances, supposing—as seems extremely
probable—that the weak-kneed controller of his destiny should let
go.
But even this diversion failed to enliven after awhile, and the
ennui became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving
way under it. It is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be
unwise to tax it too far. So somewhere about the twentieth morning
I got up early, had a good breakfast, and walked straight off to
Hayfield, at the foot of the Kinder Scout—a pleasant, busy little
town, reached through a lovely valley, and with two sweetly pretty
women in it. At least they were sweetly pretty then; one passed me
on the bridge and, I think, smiled; and the other was standing at
an open door, making an unremunerative investment of kisses upon a
red-faced baby. But it is years ago, and I dare say they have both
grown stout and snappish since that time. Coming back, I saw an old
man breaking stones, and it roused such strong longing in me to use
my arms that I offered him a drink to let me take his place. He was
a kindly old man and he humored me. I went for those stones with
the accumulated energy of three weeks, and did more work in half an
hour than he had done all day. But it did not make him jealous.
Having taken the plunge, I went further and further into
dissipation, going out for a long walk every morning and listening
to the band in the pavilion every evening. But the days still
passed slowly notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the
last one came and I was being whirled away from gouty, consumptive
Buxton to London with its stern work and life. I looked out of the
carriage as we rushed through Hendon in the evening. The lurid
glare overhanging the mighty city seemed to warm my heart, and
when, later on, my cab rattled out of St. Pancras' station, the old
familiar roar that came swelling up around me sounded the sweetest
music I had heard for many a long day.
I certainly did not enjoy that month's idling. I like idling
when I ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have
to do. That is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to
stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when
my desk is heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the
next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I
have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent
reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is
then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie an extra
half-hour in bed.
Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again:
"just for five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder,
besides the hero of a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets
up willingly? There are some men to whom getting up at the proper
time is an utter impossibility. If eight o'clock happens to be the
time that they should turn out, then they lie till half-past. If
circumstances change and half-past eight becomes early enough for
them, then it is nine before they can rise. They are like the
statesman of whom it was said that he was always punctually half an
hour late. They try all manner of schemes. They buy alarm-clocks
(artful contrivances that go off at the wrong time and alarm the
wrong people). They tell Sarah Jane to knock at the door and call
them, and Sarah Jane does knock at the door and does call them, and
they grunt back "awri" and then go comfortably to sleep again. I
knew one man who would actually get out and have a cold bath; and
even that was of no use, for afterward he would jump into bed again
to warm himself.
I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once
got out. It is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that
I find so hard, and no amount of over-night determination makes it
easier. I say to myself, after having wasted the whole evening,
"Well, I won't do any more work to-night; I'll get up early
to-morrow morning;" and I am thoroughly resolved to do so—then. In
the morning, however, I feel less enthusiastic about the idea, and
reflect that it would have been much better if I had stopped up
last night. And then there is the trouble of dressing, and the more
one thinks about that the more one wants to put it off.
It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic grave, where we
stretch our tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence
and rest. "O bed, O bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the
weary head," as sang poor Hood, you are a kind old nurse to us
fretful boys and girls. Clever and foolish, naughty and good, you
take us all in your motherly lap and hush our wayward crying. The
strong man full of care—the sick man full of pain—the little maiden
sobbing for her faithless lover—like children we lay our aching
heads on your white bosom, and you gently soothe us off to
by-by.
Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not
comfort us. How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep!
Oh! those hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain,
when we lie, like living men among the dead, staring out into the
dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh!
those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain,
when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling
cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the
life that we are watching.
But enough of beds and bedrooms. I have kept to them too long,
even for an idle fellow. Let us come out and have a smoke. That
wastes time just as well and does not look so bad. Tobacco has been
a blessing to us idlers. What the civil-service clerk before Sir
Walter's time found to occupy their minds with it is hard to
imagine. I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages
young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed. They had no
work to do and could not smoke, and the consequence was they were
forever fighting and rowing. If, by any extraordinary chance, there
was no war going, then they got up a deadly family feud with the
next-door neighbor, and if, in spite of this, they still had a few
spare moments on their hands, they occupied them with discussions
as to whose sweetheart was the best looking, the arguments employed
on both sides being battle-axes, clubs, etc. Questions of taste
were soon decided in those days. When a twelfth-century youth fell
in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes,
and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step
outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and
broke his head—the other man's head, I mean—then that proved that
his—the first fellow's—girl was a pretty girl. But if the other
fellow broke his head—not his own, you know, but the other
fellow's—the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of
course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not
the first fellow who—well, if he broke his head, then his
girl—not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was the—
Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl;
but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but
B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art
criticism.
Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out among
themselves.
They do it very well. They are getting to do all our work. They
are doctors, and barristers, and artists. They manage theaters, and
promote swindles, and edit newspapers. I am looking forward to the
time when we men shall have nothing to do but lie in bed till
twelve, read two novels a day, have nice little five-o'clock teas
all to ourselves, and tax our brains with nothing more trying than
discussions upon the latest patterns in trousers and arguments as
to what Mr. Jones' coat was made of and whether it fitted him. It
is a glorious prospect—for idle fellows.