Part 3

“There is something extremely absurd and ridiculous,” says the holy Hartley, “in supposing a person to be perpetually feasting his own mind with, and dwelling upon, the praises that already are, or which he hopes will hereafter be, given to him. And yet, unless a man does this (which besides would evidently incapacitate him for deserving or obtaining praise), how can he fill up a thousandth part of his time with the pleasures of ambition?” Even more absurd is to me the image of a lonely sufferer, trying not only to fill up his time, but to soothe his pains of body, and calm his anguish of spirit, by drawing delight from the remembrance of his own little contrivings and doings in the world. I would recommend, in preference, the project of drawing sunbeams from cucumbers, as a solace on the rack.

If it is asked, after all this, “who can console? how is it possible to please and soothe the sufferer?” I answer, that nothing is easier--nothing is more common--nothing more natural to simple-minded people. Never creature had more title than I to speak confidently of this, from experience which melts my heart day by day. “Speaking the truth in love,” is the way. One who does this cannot but be an angel of consolation. Everything but truth becomes loathed in a sick-room. The restless can repose on nothing but this: the sharpened intellectual appetite can be satisfied with nothing less substantial; the susceptible spiritual taste can be gratified with nothing less genuine, noble, and fair.

Then the question arises, what sort of truth? Why, that which is appropriate to the one who administers. To each a separate gift may be appointed. Only let all avoid every shadow of falsehood. Let the nurse avow that the medicine is nauseous. Let the physician declare that the treatment will be painful. Let sister, or brother, or friend, tell me that I must never look to be well. When the time approaches that I am to die, let me be told that I am to die, and when. If I encroach thoughtlessly on the time or strength of those about me, let me be reminded; if selfishly, let me be remonstrated with. Thus to speak the truth in love is in the power of all. Higher service is a talent in the hands of those who have a genius for sympathy--a genius less rare, thank God! than other kinds.

The archangel of consolation is the friend who, at a fitting moment, reminds me of my high calling. Not the clergyman, making his stated visit for the purpose; not the zealous watcher for souls, who fears for mine on the ground of difference of doctrine; not the meddler, who takes charge of my spiritual relations whether I will or no: none such are, by virtue of these offices, effectual consolers. But if the friend of my brighter days--with whom I have travelled, sung, danced, consulted about my work, enjoyed books and society--the friend, now far off, busy in robust health of body and spirit, sends me a missive which says, “You languish--you are sick at heart. But put this sickness from your heart, and your pains under your feet. You have known before that there is a divine joy in endurance. Prove it now. Lift up your head amidst your lot, and wait the issue--not submissively, but heroically. Live out your season, not wistfully looking out for hope, or shrinking from fear: but serenely and immoveably (because in full understanding with God), ENDURE;” if such an appeal comes, and at any hour (for there is no hour of sickness with which it is not congenial), what an influx of life does it bring! What a heavenly day, week, year, succeeds! How the crippled spirit leaps up at the miraculous touch, and springs on its way, praising God in his very temple! And again, when a thoughtful, conscientious spirit, guided by an analytical intellect, utters from a distance, not as an appeal, but as in soliloquy--“With an eternity before us, it cannot matter much, if we would but consider it, whether we are laid aside for such or such a length of time; whether we can be busy for others at this moment, or must wait so many months or years: and as for ourselves, how can we tell but that we shall find the experience we are gaining worth any cost of suffering?” When such a thought comes under my eye, as if I overheard some spirit in the night-wind communing with itself, I feel a strong and kindly hand take my heart and steep it in patience. Again, a kind visitor, eloquent by using few words or none on matters nearest at heart, takes down from my shelves a Fenelon or other quietist, and with silent finger points to the saying, inexhaustible in truth, that it is what we _are_ that matters--not what we _do_; and here, in one moment, do I find a boundless career opened to me within the four walls of my room. Again--a tender spirit, anxious under responsibility, says “If you could but fully feel, as you will one day feel, the privilege of having your life and lot settled for you--your spirit free, your mind at leisure--no hurry, no conflicts nor misgivings about duty--you would easily conceive that there are some who would gladly exchange with you, and pour into your lap willingly all the good things that you seem to be without. I dare say we are very philosophical for you about your sufferings; but where I do sympathise with you, is in regard to this clearness and settledness of your life’s duty and affairs.” To this again, my whole being cries “amen!” Here are a few of the heavenly messages which have come to me through human hearts. When below these are ranged the innumerable ministrations of help, of smiles and tears, of solid comforts and beguiling luxuries, it does indeed seem impossible that I should be in any degree dubious or hard to please in the contemplation and reception of human sympathy. What I have said of its most perfect forms, I have said from my own knowledge.

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Under this head of sympathy occurs the important practical consideration, what should be the arrangements of a permanent invalid, in regard to companionship?

In most cases, this is no matter of choice, but a point settled by domestic circumstances; where it is not, however, I cannot but wish that more consideration was given to the comfort of being alone in illness. This is so far from being understood, that, though the cases are numerous of sufferers who prefer, and earnestly endeavour to procure solitude, they are, if not resisted, wondered at, and humoured for a supposed peculiarity, rather than seen to be reasonable; whereas, if they are listened to as the best judges of their own comforts, it may be found that they have reason on their side.

In a house full of relations, it may be unnatural for an invalid to pass many hours alone; but where, as is the case with numbers who belong to the middle and working classes of society, all the other members of the family have occupations and duties--regular business in life--without the charge of the invalid, it does appear to me, and is felt by me through experience, to be incomparably the happiest plan for the sick one to live alone. By experience it is found to be not only expedient, but important in regard to happiness. In pictures of the sick-room, drawn by those who are at ease and happy, the group is always of the sufferer supported and soothed by some loving hand and tender voice, and every pain shared by sympathy. This may be an approach to truth in the case of short sharp illness, where the sufferer is taken by surprise, and has his whole lesson to learn; but a very different account would often be given by an invalid whose burden is for life, and who has learned the truths of the condition. We, of that class, find it best and happiest to admit our friends only in our easiest hours, when we can enjoy their society, and feel ourselves least of a burden; and it is indispensable to our peace of mind to be alone when in pain. Where welfare of body is out of the question, peace of mind becomes an object of supreme importance; and this is unattainable when we see any whom we love suffering, in our sufferings, even more than we do: or when we know that we have been the means of turning any one’s day of ease and pleasure into sorrow. The experience of years qualifies me to speak about this; and I declare that I know of no comfort, at the end of a day of suffering, comparable to that of feeling that, however it may have been with one’s self, no one else has suffered,--that one’s own fogs have dimmed nobody’s sunshine: and when this grows to be the nightly comfort of weeks, months, and years, it becomes the most valuable element in the peace of the sufferer, and lightens his whole lot. If not in the midst of pain, he feels in prospect of it, and after it, that it really matters very little whether and how much he suffers, if nobody else is pained by it. It becomes a habit, from the recurrence of this feeling, to write letters in one’s best mood; to give an account of one’s self in one’s best hours; to present one’s most cheerful aspect abroad, and keep one’s miseries close at home, under lock and key.

The objection commonly brought to this system is, that it is injurious to one’s loving and anxious friends. But I do not find it so. So loving and anxious are my friends, that they do not need the wretched stimulus of seeing me suffer. All that can be done for me is done; and it would be no consolation, but a great aggravation to me, that they should suffer gratuitously. Their general love, and care and concern for me, are fully satisfying to me; and I know that I have only to call and they will come. But I feel with inexpressible comfort what a difference there is between their general concern for my state, and the pain of days, now separately spent by them in ease and joy, which would be more dreary to them than to me, if I let them share my dreariness. A trifling incident, which occurred the other day, gave me strong satisfaction, as proving that where my method can be made a system, it works well,--promoting the cheerfulness, without impairing the sympathies, of even the youngest of those for whom I have a welcome only at certain seasons. Two little friends were with me--one greatly admiring various luxuries about me, and thence proceeding to reckon up a large amount of privileges and enjoyments in my possession and prospect, when his companion said, with a sigh and tenderness of tone, musical to my soul, “Ah! but then, there is the unhealthiness! that spoils everything!” To which the other mournfully assented. What more could these children know by having their hearts wounded by the spectacle of suffering! And if they may be spared the pain, larger minds and more ripened hearts must require it even less.

I need not say that this plan of solitude in pain supposes sufficient and kindly attendance; but, for a permanence, (though I know it to be otherwise in short illnesses,) there is no attendance to be compared with that of a servant. In as far as the help is mechanical, it tends to habituate the sufferer to his lot, and the relation is sustained with the least expenditure of painful feeling on both sides,--with the least anxiety, as well as pain of sympathy.

There is sufficient kindliness excited in the attendant by the appeal to her feelings, while there is no call for the agony which a congenial friend must sustain; and, on the other side, there is no overwhelming sense of obligation to the nurse, but a satisfactory consciousness of, at least, partial requital. It is no small item in the account of this method, that the promotion of the happiness of the attendant is a cheerful, natural, and salutary pursuit to the invalid; a daily duty imposed when so many others are withdrawn; a fragment of beneficent power left in the scene of its wreck. To dignify her by putting one’s self under express and frequent obligations to her,--to rejoice her by enjoying relief or pleasure devised by her ingenuity,--to spare her health, promote her little fortunes, encourage her best tastes and aspirations, and draw out for her, as well as for one’s self, the lessons of the sick-room; to study these things befits the mutual relation, and cheers the life of the sufferer, while the connexion is not so close as to involve the severer pains of sympathy.

In a sick-room, where health is never again to enter, it is well and easily understood that commemorative seasons, anniversaries, &c., are far from being, as elsewhere, among the gayest. In truth, they are often mournful enough; but I am confident that they are most cheerily spent alone. No heart leal to its kind can bear to let them pass unnoticed. It is an intolerable selfishness to abolish them, as far as in one lies, because they have ceased to gladden us; this would be as paltry as to turn one’s back on an old companion, formerly all merriment and smiles, because he comes to us in mourning or in tears; or, let us say, abstracted and thoughtful. But it does not succeed to make small attempts to keep the day, for the sake of one or two companions, putting up Christmas holly over the fire-place, where there is only one to sit, and having Christmas fare brought to the couch, to be sent away again. But when one is alone, the matter is very different, and becomes far gayer. There is nothing, then, to prevent my being in the world again for the day; no human presence to chain me to my prison. When my servant is dismissed to make merry with the rest, and I am alone with my holly sprigs and the memories of old years, I can flit at will among the family groups that I see gathered round many fire-sides. If the morning is sunny, I actually see, with my telescope, the gay crowds that throng the opposite shore after church; and the sight revives the dimmed image of crowded streets, and brings back to my ear the almost forgotten sound of “the church-going bell.” When it grows dark, and my lamp burns so steadily as to give of itself a deep impression of stillness; when there is no sound but of the cinder dropping on the hearth, or of the turning of the leaf as I read or write, there is something of a holiday feeling in pausing to view and listen to what is going on in all the houses where one has an interest. By means of that inimitable telescope we carry about in us, (which acts as well in the pitch-dark night as at noon, and defies distance and house-walls,) I see in turn a Christmas tree, with its tapers glittering in a room full of young eyes, or the games and the dance, or the cozy little party of elderly folk round the fire or the tea-table; and I hear, not the actual jokes, but the laughter, and “the sough of words without the sense,” and can catch at least the soul of the merriment. If I am at ease, I am verily among them: if not, I am thankful not to be there; and, at all events have, from life-long association, caught so much of the contagious spirit of sociability, that, when midnight comes, I lie down with an impression of its having been an extraordinary day,--a social one, though, (as these are the days when one is sure _not_ to see one’s doctor,) the face of my maid is, in reality, the only one that has met my eyes. O yes! on these marked days, however it may be on ordinary ones, our friends may take our word for it that we are most cheery alone.

There is one day of the year of which everybody will believe this,--one’s birthday. Regarded as a birthday usually and naturally is, in ordinary circumstances, there must be something melancholy in it when attempted to be kept in the sick-room of a permanent invalid: but this melancholy is lost when one is alone. It is true, one’s mind goes back to the festivals of the day in one’s childhood, and to the mantling feelings of one’s youth, when each birthday brought us a step further into the world which lay in its gay charms all before us; and we find the gray hairs and thin hands of to-day form an ugly contrast with the images conjured up. But, in another view,--a view which can be enjoyed only in silence and alone,--what a sanctity belongs to these gray hairs and other tokens of decay! They and the day are each tokens (how dear!) seals (how distinct!) of promise of our selection for a not distant admittance to a station whence we may review life and the world to better advantage than even now. If, with every year of contemplation, the world appears a more astonishing fact, and life a more noble mystery, we cannot but be reanimated by the recurrence of every birthday which draws us up higher into the region of contemplation, and nearer to the gate within which lies the disclosure of all mysteries which worthily occupy us now, and doubtless a new series of others adapted to our then ennobled powers. This is a birthday experience which it requires leisure and solitude fully to appropriate: and it yet leaves liberty for the human sympathies which belong to the season. Post time is looked to for its sure freight of love and pity and good wishes from a few--or not a few--whose affections keep them even more on the watch than ourselves for one’s own holy day. Letters are one’s best company on that day,--and best if they are one’s only company.

There is one point on which I can speak only as every one may,--from observation and thought,--but on which I have a very decided impression, notwithstanding;--as to the conduct which would be dictated by the truest sympathy in a case which not unfrequently occurs. I have known instances of persons, most benevolent and thoughtless of themselves through life, becoming _exigeans_ and oppressive in their last days, merely through want of information as to what they are doing. One attendant is usually preferred to all others by a dying person: and I have seen the favourite nurse worn out by the incessant service required day and night by the sufferer, in ignorance how time passes,--even in mistake of the night for the day. I have known the most devoted and benevolent of women call up her young nurse from a snatch of sleep at two in the morning to read aloud, when she had been reading aloud for six or seven hours of the preceding day. I have known a kind-hearted and self-denying man require of two or three members of his family to sit and talk and be merry in his chamber, two or three hours after midnight:--and both for want of a mere intimation that it was night, and time for the nurse’s rest. How it makes one shudder to think of this being one’s own case! The passing doubt whether one can trust one’s friends, when the season comes, to save one from such tyrannical mistakes, is a doubt sickening to the heart. Nothing is clearer _now_, when we are in full possession of ourselves, than that the most sympathising friend is one who cherishes our amiability and reasonableness to the last,--who preserves our perfect understanding with those about us through all dimness of the eyes and wandering of the brain. If I could not trust my friends to save me from involuntary encroachment at the last, I had rather scoop myself a hole in the sand of the desert, and die alone, than be tended by the gentlest hands, and soothed by the most loving voices in the choicest chamber.

It is doubtless easiest to comply at the moment of such exactions, at any sacrifice of subsequent health and nerve: but it should be remembered that the sacrifice is not of health alone. The posthumous love must suffer;--or if not the love, the respect for the departed. It is impossible to love one who appears in a selfish aspect,--though it be the merest mask, most briefly worn,--so well as the countenance that never concealed its benevolence for a moment. Let then the timely thought of the future,--a provident care for the memory of the dying friend, suggest the easy prudence which may obviate encroachment. Let the bewildered sufferer be frequently and cheerfully told the hour,--and informed that such an one is going to rest, to be replaced by another for so many hours. A little forethought and resource may generally prevent the great evil I speak of: and if not, true sympathy requires that there should be a cheerful word of remonstrance--or let us call it rectification. So may it be with me, if so lingering a departure be appointed! Thus would every one say beforehand; and it seems to me a sin against every one’s moral rights not to take him at his word.

NATURE TO THE INVALID.

“O mighty love! Man is one world and hath Another to attend him!” GEORGE HERBERT.

“Let us find room for this great guest in our small houses.” _Emerson._

“Shut not so soon! The dull-eyed night Has not as yet begun To make a seizure of the light, Or to seal up the sun.” HERRICK.

When an invalid is under sentence of disease for life, it becomes a duty of first-rate importance to select a proper place of abode. This is often overlooked; and a sick prisoner goes on to live where he lived before, for no other reason than because he lived there before. Many a sufferer languishes amidst street noises, or passes year after year in a room whose windows command dead walls, or paved courts, or some such objects; so that he sees nothing of Nature but such sky and stars as show themselves above the chimney-tops. I remember the heart-ache it gave me to see a youth, confined to a recumbent posture for two or three years, lying in a room whence he could see nothing, and dependent therefore on the cage of birds by his bed-side, and the flowers his friends sent him, for the only notices of Nature that reached him, except the summer’s heat and winter’s cold. There was no sufficient reason why he should not have been placed where he could overlook fields, or even the sea.

If a healthy man, entering upon a temporary imprisonment, hangs his walls with a paper covered with roses, and every one sympathises in this forethought for his mind’s health, much more should the invalid, (who, though he must be a prisoner, has yet liberty of choice where his prison shall be,) provide for sustaining and improving his attachment to Nature, and for beguiling his sufferings, by the unequalled refreshments she affords. He will be wise to sacrifice indolence, habit, money and convenience, at the outset, to place himself where he can command the widest or the most beautiful view that can be had without sacrificing advantages more essential still. There are few things more essential still: but there are some;--such as medical attendance, and a command of the ordinary conveniences of life.

What is the best kind of view for a sick prisoner’s windows to command? I have chosen the sea, and am satisfied with my choice. We should have the widest expanse of sky, for night scenery. We should have a wide expanse of land or water, for the sake of a sense of liberty, yet more than for variety; and also because then the inestimable help of a telescope may be called in. Think of the difference to us between seeing from our sofas the width of a street, even if it be Sackville-street, Dublin, or Portland Place, in London, and thirty miles of sea view, with its long boundary of rocks, and the power of sweeping our glance over half a county, by means of a telescope! But the chief ground of preference of the sea is less its space than its motion, and the perpetual shifting of objects caused by it. There can be nothing in inland scenery which can give the sense of life and motion and connexion with the world like sea changes. The motion of a waterfall is too continuous,--too little varied,--as the breaking of the waves would be, if that were all the sea could afford. The fitful action of a windmill,--the waving of trees, the ever-changing aspects of mountains are good and beautiful: but there is something more life-like in the going forth and return of ships, in the passage of fleets, and in the never-ending variety of a fishery.