Part 6
But at this rate, occupying this scope, I shall never have done. I might write on for every day of my life, and be no nearer the end of our speculations. Let what I have said go for specimens of our observation of life in two or three particulars. When I think of what I have seen with my own eyes from one back window, in the few years of my illness; of how indescribably clear to me are many truths of life from my observation of the doings of the tenants of a single row of houses; it seems to me scarcely necessary to see more than the smallest sample, in order to analyse life in its entireness. I could fill a volume--and an interesting one too--with a simple detail of what I have witnessed, as I said, from one back-window. But I must tell, nothing. These two or three little courts and gardens ought to be as sacred as any interior. Nothing of the spy shall mix itself with my relation to neighbours who have ever been kind to me. Suffice it, that if I saw no further into the world with the mental than with the bodily eye, I should be kept in a state of perpetual wonder, (of pleasing wonder, on the whole,) at the operation of the human heart and mind, in its most ordinary circumstances. Nothing can be more ordinary than the modes of life which I overlook, yet am I kept wide awake in my watch by ever new instances of the fulness of pleasure derivable from the scantiest sources; of the vividness of emotion excitable by the most trifling incidents; of the wonderful power pride has of pampering itself upon the most meagre food; and, above all, of the infinite ingenuity of human love. Nothing, perhaps, has impressed me so deeply as the clear view I have of almost all, if not quite the whole, of the suffering I have witnessed being the consequence of vice or ignorance. But when my heart has sickened at the sight, and at the thought of so much gratuitous pain, it has grown strong again in the reflection that, if unnecessary, this misery is temporary,--that the true ground of mourning would be if the pain were not from causes which are remediable. Then I cannot but look forward to the time when the bad training of children,--the petulancies of neighbours--the errors of the ménage--the irksome superstitions, and the seductions of intemperance, shall all have been annihilated by the spread of intelligence, while the mirth at the minutest jokes--the proud plucking of nosegays--the little neighbourly gifts, (less amusing hereafter, perhaps, in their taste)--the festal observances--the disinterested and refined acts of self-sacrifice and love, will remain as long as the human heart has mirth in it, or a humane complacency and self-respect,--as long as its essence is what it has ever been, “but a little lower than the angels.”
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How is it possible to give an idea of what the gradual disclosure of the fates of individuals is to us? In reading chronicles, and the lighter kinds of history, we have all found ourselves eagerly watching the course of love and domestic life, and pausing over the winding up, at death, of the lot of personages whose mere names were all the interest we began with. To us, in the monotony of our lives, it seems as if other people’s lives slipped away with the rapidity with which we read a book, while the interest we feel is that of personal knowledge. It is as if Time himself were present unseen, whispering to us of a new kindled love,--of marriage, with all its details of “pomp and circumstance;” and then comes the deeper social interest,--the opening of a glimpse into the vista of new generations, while all around the other interests of life are transacting, and the children we knew at their parents’ knees are abroad in the world, acting for themselves, and putting a hand to the destinies of society.
Of all the announcements made in the silence of our solitude, none are so striking as those of deaths, familiar as the thought of death is to us, and natural as our own death would appear to ourselves, and to everybody. To present witnesses, and in the midst of the activity of life, the spectacle of death loses half its force. It is we who feel the awful beauty of it, when the great Recorder intimates to us that they who were strenuous in mutual conflict have lain down side by side; that to old age its infirmities matter no longer, as the body itself is surrendered; that the weary spirit of care is at rest, and that the most active affections and occupations of life have been brought to a sudden close. Many young and busy persons wish, as I used to wish, that Time would be prophet as well as watchman. On New Year’s Eves, such long to divine how many, and who of those they know, will be smitten and withdrawn during the coming year. We, in our solitude, do not desire to forestal the unrolling of the scroll. To ponder the register of the year’s deaths at its close, is enough for us, to whom our seclusion serves for all purposes of speculation. While we are waiting, every year conveys away before us the infant, (a new immortality created before our eyes); the busy citizen, or indispensable mother, (showing how much more important in the eye of God is it what we are than what we do;) the young maiden, full of sympathy, (perhaps for us,) and of hope; and the aged, full of years, but perhaps not less of life. Such is the register of every year at its close.
To us, whose whole life is sequestered,--who see nothing of the events of which we hear so much, or see them only as gleam or shadow passing along our prison-walls, there is something indescribably affecting in the act of regarding History, Life, and Speculation as one. All are enhanced to us by their melting into each other. History becomes like actual life; life becomes comprehensive as history, and abstract as speculation. Not only does human life, from the cradle to the grave, lie open to us, but the whole succession of generations, without the boundary line of the past being interposed; and with the very clouds of the future so thinned,--rendered so penetrable, as that we believe we discern the salient and bright points of the human destiny yet to be revealed.
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It would be impossible to set down, within any moderate limits, notices of changes in the Modes of life,--modes arising from progressive civilisation, and deeply affecting morals;--but there is one branch of one great change, which I will mention, as it bears a relation to the morals of the sick-room.
We all know how the present action of our new civilisation works to the impairing of Privacy. As new discoveries are causing all-penetrating physical lights so to abound as that, as has been said, we shall soon not know where in the world to get any darkness, so our new facilities for every sort of communication work to reduce privacy much within its former limits. There are some limits, however, which ought to be preserved with vigilance and care, as indispensable, not only to comfort, but to some of the finest virtues and graces of mind and life.
It is to be hoped that the privacy of _vivâ voce_ conversation will ever remain sacred: but it is known that that which ought to be as holy, that of epistolary correspondence,--(the private conversation of distant friends,) is constantly and deliberately violated, where there are certain inducements to do so. The press works so diligently and beneficially for society at large, that there is a tendency to commit everything to it, on utilitarian considerations of a rather coarse kind: and the moment it can be made out that the publication of anything will and may do some ostensible good, the thing is published,--whatever considerations of a different or a higher sort may lie behind. If the people of note in society were inquired of, they would say that the privilege--the right--of privacy of epistolary correspondence now exists only for the obscure;--and for them, only till some person meets them whose zeal for the public good leads him to lay hold on all material by which anybody may be supposed likely to learn anything. As for people of note,--their letters are naturally preserved by the recipients: when the writer dies, these recipients are plied with entreaties and remonstrances,--placed in a position of cruel difficulty (as it is to many) between their delicacy of affection for the deceased, and the pain of being made responsible for intercepting his fame, and depriving society of the benefit of the disclosure of his living mind.
Under this state of things, what happens? Some destroy, through life, all the letters they receive, but those on business. Some, with an agonising heart, burn them after the writer’s death, to escape the requisitions of executors. Many, alas! resign their privilege of freedom of epistolary speech, and write no letters which any one would care to preserve for an hour. Some call in their own letters;--a painful process, both to writer and receivers. Of such as do not care what becomes of their letters, there is no need to say anything. Their feelings require no consideration, for their letters cannot be of a private,--nor, therefore, of the most valuable kind. The misery of the liability is in regard to letters of affection and confidence,--letters which the writer could no more bear to see again than to have notes taken of the out-pourings of his heart in an hour of confidence. It is too certain that many such letters are now never written which crave to be so: and it is much to be feared that some letters, purporting to be private, are written with a view to ultimate publication; and thus the receiver is insulted, or there is a sacrifice of honesty all round.
I do not see any probability of a dearth of biographies. I believe that there will always be interest enough in human life and character to secure a sufficiency of records of individuals:--that there will always be enough of persons whose letters are not of a very private kind,--always enough of provided and exceptional cases to serve society with a sufficiency of biography, of a duly analytical kind. But if I did not believe this,--if I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would keep the old and precious privacy,--the inestimable right of every one who has a friend and can write to him;--I would keep our written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the good of society. I would keep the power of free speech under all the influences of life and fate,--and leave Biography to exist or perish.
And pretty sure it is of existence. It has, for its material, the life and actions of all men and women of note;--their printed and otherwise public writings and sayings;--the recollections of those who knew them; and, in no small number of cases, material which, however we may wonder at, we have only to take and be thankful for. A Doddridge keeps a copy of every letter or note he ever wrote, labelled and put by for posthumous use. A D’Arblay spends her last hours in elaborating her revelations of the transactions, private and public, of her day; and revises, for publication, the expressions of fondness and impulse, written to sisters and other intimates, long dead. A Rousseau here and there gives more. One way and another, the resources of biography are secure enough, without encroachment on a sacred process of intercourse. Biography will never fail. Would that we were all equally secure of a higher matter,--our right of freedom of epistolary speech!
“But when all are dead,--and nobody concerned remains to be hurt?” remonstrates one. The reply is, that as long as people of note, who love their friends, remain, there are some left to be concerned and injured.
“But,” says another, “would you object to do good, after your death, by your letters being published?” The reply is that, in the supposition, I see an enormous sacrifice of a higher and greater good to a lower and smaller. No letters, in any number and of any quality,--if they exhibited all the wisdom of Solomon, and all the graces of the Queen of Sheba, could do so much good as a single clear and strong protest against the preservation of strictly private letters for biographical material.
“But,” says another, “had you not better leave the matter to the discretion of survivors? Surely you can trust your executors;--surely you can trust the friends who will survive you.” The reply is--when this critical state of our morals is past, no doubt executors may be trusted about letters, as about other matters. But the very point of the case is that its morality is not yet ascertained by those who do not suffer under the liability, and have not fellow-feeling with those who do. My executors may very sincerely think it their duty to publish my most private letters,--and even to be now laying them by in order for the purpose: while I feel that, once aroused to a view of the liability, I could more innocently leave to the discretion of survivors the disposition of lands and money than that of my private utterances to my friends. In a case of differing or opposing views of duty,--if my own is clear and stringent, I cannot innocently leave the matter to the chance of other persons’ convictions. There cannot be a more strictly personal duty, and I must do it myself.
I have, therefore, done it. Having made the discovery of the preservation of my letters for purposes of publication hereafter, I have ascertained my own legal rights, and acted upon them. I have adopted legal precautions against the publication of my private letters;--I have made it a condition of my confidential correspondence that my letters shall not be preserved: and I have been indulged by my friends, generally, with an acquiescence in my request that my entire correspondence, except such as relates to business, shall be destroyed. Of course, I do as I would be done by. The privacy I claim for myself, I carefully guard for others. I keep no letters of a private and passing nature. I know that others are thinking and acting with me. We enjoy, by this provision, a freedom and fulness of epistolary correspondence which could not possibly exist if the press loomed in the distance, or executors’ eyes were known to be in wait hereafter. Our correspondence has all the flow and lightness of the most secret talk. This is a present reward, and a rich one, for the effort and labour of making our views and intentions understood. But it is not our only reward. We perceive that we have fixed attention upon what is becoming an important point of Morals: and we feel, in our inmost hearts, that we have done what we could to guard from encroachment an important right, and from destruction a precious privilege. This may appear a strange statement to persons whose privacy is safe in their obscurity. Those who know in their own experience the liabilities of fame, will understand, and deeply feel, what I have said.
I have mentioned above, that, to us in seclusion, History, Life, and Speculation, assume a continuity such as would not have been believed possible by ourselves in former days, when they appeared to constitute departments of study as separate as moral studies can be. It would be curious and interesting to an observer of the human mind, to pass from retreat to retreat, and watch the progress of this fusion of objects; to see the formerly busy member of society--“the practical man,”--growing speculative in his turn of thought; the speculative writer nourishing more and more of an antiquarian taste; and the antiquary finding seclusion serve as well as the passage of ages, and viewing the modes and instruments of the life of to-day with the eye and the gusto of the antiquary of ten centuries hence.
And not only in their studies would men of such differing tastes be found to be brought together under the influences of sequestration from the world. There are matters of moral perception and taste in which they would draw near no less remarkably. The one conspicuous, undying humanity, which is the soul of all the forms of life that they contemplate, must be, to all, the sun of their intellectual day, beneath whose penetrating light all adventitious distinctions melt into insignificance. Distinctions of rank, for instance, become attenuated to a previously inconceivable degree. To the antiquary, as well as to the most radical speculator, there would be little more in the sovereign entering the sick-room than any other stranger whom kindness might bring. It requires that we should live in the midst of the arrangements of society, that our conventional ideas should be nourished by daily associations, in order to keep up even the remembrance of differences of hereditary rank, so overpowering in our view are the great interests of life which are common to all,--Duty, Thought, Love, Joy, Sorrow, and Death.
If the sovereign were to enter our rooms, there would be strong interests and affections connected with her, but interests relating to her responsibilities and her destinies, and scarcely at all to her rank--to the singularity, and not the exaltation, of her position. It is a strong doubt to me, whether one of high degree, placed in our circumstances, could long retain aristocratic ideas and tendencies; whether to the proudest noble, shut up in his chamber for five years, the cottage child he sees from his window, the footboy who brings his fuel, must not necessarily become as imposing to his imagination and his heart as the young princes of the blood.
Something of the same process takes place, even with regard to the distinctions of intellectual nobility. As for the nothingness of literary fame, amidst the stress of personal trial (except in the collateral benefits it brings), an hour in the sick-room might convince the most superstitious worshipper of celebrity. As for the rest; in the presence of the general ignorance, on the brink of that black abyss, our best lights are really so ineffectual, that it is impossible to pride ourselves on our intellectual differences, ranging merely as from the torch to the farthing candle.
In truth, in our retreat, moral considerations are all in all. Moral distinctions are the chief; and moral interests, common to all, are supreme. They are so from their essential nature; and they are so to us especially, from the singular advantage of our position for seeing their beauty, and the abundance of it. We could make known--what is little suspected by busy stirrers in the world, and wholly disbelieved by despondent moralists who dwell amidst its apparent confusion--that there is a deep heaven lying inclosed in the very centre of society, and a genuine divinity residing in the heart of every member of it, which might, if we would but recognise it, check, our longing to leave the present scene, to search for God and Heaven elsewhere. All, that is most frivolous and insignificant is ever most noisy and obtrusive; all that is most wicked is most boastful and audacious; all that is worst in men, and society, has a tendency to come uppermost; and thus the most superficial observers of life are the most despondent. Meantime, whatever is holy, pure, and peaceable, works silently and unremittingly; and while turbulent passions are exhausting themselves before the eyes of men, a calm and perpetual renovation is spreading outwards from the central heart, of humanity. I have the image before my eyes at this moment--the awful type of the blessed reality--in the tossing sea, which the neighbours dare hardly look upon. It rages and rolls, it dashes, the drift-wood on the shore, and heavy squalls come driving over it, like messengers of dismay. At this very instant, how calm are its depths! There light dwells, as long as there is light in heaven; and there is no end to the treasures of beauty on which it shines. If it be a fable that there are happy beings dwelling there, basking and singing, unconscious of the tempests overhead, it is certainly true that it is thus in the upper world, of which the ocean is a type. It is true, as a friend said to me, that “the dark is full of beautiful things.” Without an image, speaking in the plainest and most absolute terms, the least known parts of human life are full of moral beauty. I am fully persuaded, that, if we wish to extend and confirm our ideas of Heaven, we should not wander back and afar to the old Eden, or forward and upward to some bright star of the firmament, but we should look into the retired places of our own actual world, of our own country, of our own town and village. We should look into the faces to be met in the street every day; we should look round by the light of our common sun. However, my immediate business is to say that we, who are not abroad in the streets, and cannot go in bodily presence into the by-places of life, have more of this heaven disclosed to us than others, because we appear to need it more. If any one of us could and might tell what we know of the good of human hearts, the heavenly deeds of human hands, the desponding would hang their heads no longer with fear, but with shame for their fear. If I alone might make a record of the heavenly aspects which have been presented in this one room, such a record would extinguish all revilings of man and of life. And when I think that what has appeared to me must, in natural course, have appeared to all my companions in infirmity, when I gather into one all these revelations of the real moral life of society, I perceive that, till death satisfies us in regard to a local heaven, we may well be satisfied with that which lies all round about us--not mute, while tender and pitying voices speak to us; nor wholly unseen, while tearful or kindling eyes meet our own.
Thus, in some few of its leading aspects, does Life appear to the invalid.
DEATH TO THE INVALID.
“To smell a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are the thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.”
FULLER.
“And yet as angels, in some brighter dreams, Call to the soul when man doth sleep, So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, And into glory peep.” HENRY VAUGHAN.
What subject is so interesting to the full of life as that of death? What taste is so universal in childhood and youth as that for learning all that can be known of the thoughts and feelings of the dying? Did we not all, in our young days, turn to the death part in all biographies; to the death articles in all cyclopædias; to the discourses on sickness and death in all sermon books; to the prayers in the prospect of death in all books of devotion? Do not the most common-place writers of fiction crowd their novels with death scenes, and indifferent tragedy writers kill off almost all their characters? Do not people crowd to executions; and do not those who stay at home learn all they can of the last words and demeanour of the sufferers? Are not the visions of heroic children, (and of many grown children), chiefly about pain and a noble departure? Is there any curiosity more lively than that which we all feel about the revelations of persons resuscitated from drowning? Is it not their nearer position to death which makes sick persons so awful to children who are not familiar with them,--so interesting a subject of speculation to all? How is it then with the invalids themselves?