Part 8

If there are hours when, through pain and weakness, we would fain decline existence altogether, as a sick and wearied child frets at sunshine and music, and would rather sleep in darkness and silence, there is no moment in which we do not believe, as if we saw, that the departed righteous are in communion, full and active, in exact proportion as the ardour and fidelity of their mutual love deserves and necessitates. We believe this as if we saw it, whatever be our own immediate mood, as, on every night of winter, however cloudy, we are well assured that the constellations are in the sky,--that Orion and the Wain have risen and are circling, steady, clear and serene, whatever be the state of the elements below them. As the life of the sick-room must necessarily be, whether its objects be high or low, one of faith and not of sight, those who visit it may easily perceive that it is not the appropriate field for demonstration. In its own province Demonstration is supreme. There let it dictate and pronounce. But we sufferers inhabit a separate region of human experience, where there is another and a prophetic oracle; where the voice of Demonstration itself must be dumb before that of the steadfast, incommunicable assurance of the soul.

Here are some of the aspects of Death to the long-suffering Invalid.

TEMPER.

“We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.” SHAKSPERE.

“Behold thy trophies within thee, not without thee. Lead thine own captivity captive, and be Cæsar unto thyself.”

SIR THOMAS BROWN.

It is very surprising, and rather amusing, to invalids whose constitution and disease dispose them to other kinds of ill-temper rather than irritability, to perceive how this tendency, and no other, is set up as a test of temper by persons inexperienced in sickness. There are cases, and they are not few, where an invalid’s freedom from irritability of temper is a merit of a very high order indeed: but there are many,--perhaps more,--where, to award praise on this ground, is like extolling the sick person for being worthy of trust with untold gold, or for his being never known to game or get drunk. This last, indeed, may,--amidst the sinkings of illness, with wine and laudanum in the closet,--often be actually the greater merit. It is a case in which every thing depends on the existence of temptation. Persons suffering under frequent fever, or certain kinds of pain or nervous disturbance, or afflicted with ill-qualified nurses, may be pardoned for almost any degree of irritability, or may be unspeakably meritorious in resisting the tendency, with more or less steadiness. But there are some of us who cannot but smile at compliments on our freedom from irritability, when we feel that we never have the slightest inclination to be cross, nor have the least excuse for being so,--while we may be most abasingly aware of other kinds of frailty of temper.

To me it appears that we are, for the most part, in greater peril from other faults, because they are less looked for, less discussed and recognised, and we are, therefore, less put upon our guard against them: and also because their consequences are less immediately and obviously detrimental to our own comfort. Besides that all persons grow up on the look-out for irritability of temper, and therefore are more or less on the watch against it when they come to be ill, it is clear to the idlest and most selfish mind, that the whole hope of comfort in the sick-room depends on the freedom and cheerfulness of the intercourse held in it,--a freedom and cheerfulness forfeited by irritability on the part of the sufferer,--necessarily forfeited, even if he were tended by the hands of angels. Children are the brightest, if not the tenderest, angels of the sick-room; and the alternative between their coming springing in, not only voluntarily but eagerly, and their being brought, for observance’ sake, with force and fear, is of itself inducement enough to self-control on the part of the most fretted patient, in the most feverish hour. Even in the middle of the night, when no one is by but the soundly sleeping nurse, the invalid feels admonished to suppress the slightest moan, when he sees in fancy his little friends the next morning either leaping from their beds at the joyful thought that they may visit him, or asking, with awe and gravity, whether they must go, and how soon they may come away. It is the sweetest of cordials to the heart of an invalid to learn, by chance, that children count the days and hours till they may come, and that all their gravity is about having to go away. It is the most refined flattery to let one know it: and the knowledge of it may well be almost a specific against ill-temper. And then again, the nurse. It is by no means sufficient for one’s comfort that one’s nurse should be well qualified,--ever so trust-worthy, and ever so kind: it is necessary too that she should be free and happy. There must be no fear in her tread,--no reserve in her eye,--no management in her voice--no choice in her tidings. There is no ill-temper in that jealousy of the invalid’s spirit which requires assurance of being no burden, and no restraint. It is a righteous jealousy, and among the most effectual safeguards against the indulgence of ill-humour. That there are disorders, and seasons of illness, which almost compel the forfeiture of the mental and moral freedom and ease of the sick-room, is a painful truth; and those who suffer under such irresistible or unresisted irritation are supremely to be compassionated, whether their actual pain of body be more or less. But it is quite as certain that a large number of sufferers are exempt from temptation to this kind of failure, being subject, the while, to some other,--more tolerable, as affecting only, or chiefly, their own happiness.

The very opposite failure to that of irritability,--which shows itself in dissatisfaction with others,--is no less common,--unreasonable dissatisfaction with one’s self. This lowering, depraving tendency to self-contempt requires for its establishment as a fault of temper, long protraction or permanence of illness: but when once established, it is as serious a fault of temper as can be entertained. Where religious faith and trust are insufficient for the need, this temper is almost a necessary consequence of any degree of mental and moral activity in a sick prisoner. The retrospect of one’s own life, from the stillness of the sick room, is unendurable to any considerate person, except in the light of the deepest religious humility; and the strongest faith in the all-wise ordering of the moral world, is no more than sufficient to counteract that sickening which spreads from the distressed body to the anxious heart, when intervals of ease and lightness are few and brief. When to the pains and misgivings of such perpetual retrospect are added the burdens of a sense of present and permanent uselessness, and of overwhelming gratitude for services received from hour to hour,--there is no self-respect in the world that will, unaided, support cheerfulness and equanimity.

Without self-respect, there can be none of that healthy freedom of spirit which animates others to freedom, and exerts that influence which is ascribed to “a good temper,” which removes hesitancy from the transaction of the daily business of life, and so permits life to appear in its natural aspect. Instead of this, where the spirit has lost its security of innocence, unconsciousness, or self-reliance, and become morbidly sensitive to failures and dangers,--where it has become cowardly in conscience, shrinking from all moral enterprise, and dreading moral injury from every occurrence, the temper of anxiety must spread from the sufferer to all about him, whether the causes of his trouble are intelligible to them or not. Moral progress, or even holding what he has gained, seems out of the question for one so shaken; for, constantly feeling, as he does, that he cannot afford to do the least questionable thing, and every act being questionable in one aspect or another, he can only preserve one incessant shrinking attitude before the fearful ghost of Conscience, instead of bestirring himself to prove and use his new opportunities of spiritual exertion and conquest. This abasement may co-exist with the most perfect sweetness and gentleness of speech and manners, and the sufferer may enjoy great credit for not being irritable, when he is in a far lower moral state than often co-exists with irritability.

One effect, deplorably mean and perilous, of such a tendency, is immediately opposed to the mood which prompts hasty words and complaints. The sufferer’s spirits rise in proportion to the pain he experiences. He is never so happy as when he feels his paroxysms coming on,--not only because pain of body acts as relief from the gnawing misery of his mind, but because every tangible proof that he is under chastening and discipline, conveys to him a sense of his dignity--reassures him, as a child of Providence. From this may follow too naturally his learning to regard pain as a qualification for ease--as a purchase-money of future good--a superstition as low and depraving as almost any the mind can entertain.

To persons in health, and at ease, this detail of the tempers of a sick-room may well appear fanciful, irrational, and shocking enough. But the time may come when they may recognise it as true; and, meanwhile, it will be their wisest and kindest way to receive it with belief. It may possibly prove the key, even now, to a mystery which otherwise they can make nothing of, when they see one under tedious suffering, gentle but low when at ease--evidently borne down by speechless sadness--while, on the first return of pain, the spirits rise, and the more restless is the distressed body, the more at ease does the spirit appear. Such a state may be morbid and perilous; but, the more it is so, the more desirable it becomes that the attending friend should have an insight into the case, and a respectful and tender sympathy with it.

As to the remedy, it is easy to say that it is to be found in a cheerful trust in the Ordainer of our lot. While no one questions this, who can show how this trust is to be made available at every need, when the workings of the spirit are all confused, its vision impaired, and its powers distorted? The only advice that even experience can give in such an instance, is to revive healthy old associations, to occupy the morbid powers with objects from without, and to use the happiest rather than the lowest seasons for leading the mind to a consideration of its highest relations. As the case is opposite to that most commonly discoursed of in connexion with the sick-room, so must a wise ministration be also opposite to common notions; the appeal must be, in seasons of ease and enjoyment, to the sense of dependence on God; and, in times of mental distress, to the principles of endurance and self-mastery.

Other tempers of the sick-room are more easily understood by those without. The particularity about trifles is one. This, though often reaching a point of absurdity, should be scrupulously indulged, because no one but the sufferer can be fully aware of the annoyance of want of order in so confined a space and range of objects. A healthy person, who can go everywhere at pleasure, leaving litters to be put away by servants during absence, can have no idea of the oppression felt by a feeble invalid, when looking round upon the confusion left in one little room by careless visitors,--chairs standing in all directions, books thrown down here and there, and work or papers strewed on the floor. It is easy to laugh at such trifles--easy to the invalid himself at times; but if any healthy person will recal his feelings during convalescence from any former illness, he will remember the sort of painful sympathy with which he saw the servants going about their work--how his frame ached at hearing of a long walk, or even at seeing his friends sitting upright upon chairs. If he considers what it must be to have this set of feelings for life, he will think the particularity of the invalid not only worth indulging, but less absurd than in the eye of reason it appears; and if it be too much to expect of men, it may be hoped that women visiting the sick may be careful to leave the spaces of the room clear, not to shake the sofa or the table, to put up books upon their shelves, and leave all in such a state that the invalid may, immediately on being left alone, sink down to such rest as can be found.

No one challenges this particularity when it relates to hours. The most careless observer must know that it is illness of itself to a sick person to have to wait for food or medicines, or to be put off from regular sleep. Meantime, the invalid cannot keep too careful a watch upon the increase of his own particularity--his refuge in custom. There is something shocking to us invalids, when we fix our meditation upon this, in our attachments to our own comforts, and cowardice about dispensing with them. I have myself observed, with inexpressible shame, that, with the newspaper in my hand, no details of the peril of empires, or of the starving miseries of thousands of my countrymen, could keep my eye from the watch before me, or detain my attention one second beyond the time when I might have my opiate. For two years, too, I wished and intended to dispense with my opiate for once, to try how much there was to bear, and how I should bear it: but I never did it, strong as was the shame of always yielding; and I have now long given up all thoughts of it. Moreover, though as fully convinced as ever of the moral evil and danger of being wedded to custom and habits, I have now a far too decided and satisfactory impression that the sick-room is not the place for a conquest of that kind, and that it is enough if the patient breaks through his trammels when he casts off his illness, and emerges again into the world, which is the same thing as acquiescing in the invalid for life being a life-long slave to custom and habit. Bad as this is, I do not see how it is to be helped; for the suffering and injury caused by irregularity of methods, and uncertainty of arrangements in the sick-room, seem to show that freedom of this kind does not belong to an invalid life: and perhaps the most that ought to be required or desired of the sick person is, rather to welcome than complain of any necessary interruption to his ways, by a change of nurse, or other accidental interference with ordinary comforts,--not to extend his particularity beyond the bounds of his own little domain, and no more to expect the healthy and active to be, in their own homes, as strict and punctual as himself, than to desire the servants to leave off rubbing tables and lighting fires, because it makes his frame ache to think of such work. If he can preserve sympathy enough in the impulses of the active abroad, he may hope for indulgence in his particularity at home.

There are other liabilities which may be clear to observers, or easily conceivable when mentioned. I hardly know whether we may allude, under the head of Tempers, to the despair which I believe to be universally felt (however discountenanced), by all, on the assault of very severe pain. The reason may speak, and even through the lips, of hope and courage; but the _sensation_ of which I speak is peculiar, so peculiarly connected with bodily agony, that I cannot but believe it felt wherever bodily agony is felt. It has nothing to do with the courage of the soul; affords not the shadow of contradiction to patience, fortitude, religious trust. I mean simply that when extreme pain seizes on us, down go our spirits, fathoms deep; and, though the soul may yet be submissive and even willing, the sickening question rises,--“How _shall_ I bear this for five minutes? What _will_ become of me?” And if the imagination stretches on to an hour, or hours, there is no word but _despair_ which expresses the feeling. The by-standers can never fully understand this suffering; no, though they may themselves have suffered to extremity. The patient himself, in any interval, when devoutly ready to endure again, cannot understand, nor believe in his late emotion, or fancy that he can feel it again. As it is thus peculiar and transient, there could be no use in mentioning it, except for two possibilities; that some sufferer may, in the moment of anguish, remember that the sensation has been recognised and recorded; and that attendants, on witnessing a sudden abasement of high courage, on seeing horror of countenance succeed a calm determination, may remember, at the right moment, that there is that passing within of which they can have no conception, and certainly no right to judge.

I might add, as a justification for allusion to so painful a subject, that it may teach us to honour, in some less faint degree, the strength of soul of those who, with any composure, die of sheer pain,--of the most torturing diseases. If, amidst successive shocks of this despairing sensation, their power of reaction, in the intervals, remains unimpaired, and they retain their spiritual dignities to the end, no degree of admiration can transcend their claims.

One strong peril to temper, in the case of a permanent invalid, I do not remember to have seen noticed, while, I am sure, none can be more worthy of being guarded against. By our being withdrawn from the disturbing bustles of life in the world; by our leisure for reading and contemplation of various sides of questions, and by our singular opportunities for quiet reflection, we must, almost necessarily, see further than we used to do, and further than many others do on subjects of interest, which involve general principles. Through the post, we hold the best kind of correspondence with the society from which we are withdrawn; we have the opinions of the wise, and the impressions of the active, transmitted to us, stripped of much of the passion and prejudice in which they would have been presented in conversation. Instead of one newspaper or pamphlet, we now have time to look over several, and can hear all sides. Far removed from the little triumphs or disappointments of the day, which warp the judgments of all men who have hearts to feel, whatever may be their abstract wisdom; endowed with long night hours of wakefulness, when our spirit of Humanity is all alive; permitted sequestered days, when our review of historical periods may be continuous, and when some great new idea, a stalactite of long formation, at length descends to our level, and touches our heads, or a diamond of thought, slowly distilled, drops into our hand as we penetrate and explore;--when some such gain--the guerdon of our condition--is frequently occurring, it cannot be but that--unless we are fools, our judgments of things must be worth something more than formerly. If formerly we associated with our equals, it cannot be but that we must now see further than they, on such questions of the time as interest us.

Such divergences of opinion as hence arise require care on the part both of sick and well, if a perfectly just and generous understanding is to be preserved between friends.

The liability of us sick is double. We are in danger of forgetting, amidst the inevitable consciousness of our own improved insight and foresight, that the activities of life have a corrective as well as a disturbing influence; and that transient incidents and emotions which do not reach us, may form real elements of a great question for the week or the year, though lost in our abstract view of it. In this way, our judgment may involve great imperfections, which it behoves us to remember all the more, the less we can supply them. A worse liability is that to our tempers, of impatience at others not seeing so far as we do. There is something strange, disappointing and irritating, in finding those whom we have always regarded as sensible and clear-headed, holding some expectation which we see to be unreasonable, and offering to our consideration some fallacy or misty notion, whose incorrectness is to us as distinct as a cloud in the sky. While religiously careful not to fret ourselves “because of evil doers,” being so expressly desired, we are sadly prone to the far worse weakness of fretting ourselves because of mistaken thinkers. We long to send by a carrier-pigeon the answer or refutation which seems to us so clear: the post is too slow for us; and if we do not disburden our minds of their weight of wisdom, we are apt to spend the night in reiterating to ourselves our triumphant arguments, in the strongest and most condensed language we can find, till, exhausted by such efforts, at last the thought occurs to us whether truth cannot wait,--whether, supposing us ever so right intellectually, we are not morally wrong in our perturbation. This confession looks foolish and humbling enough in black and white; but I cannot escape making it, if, as I intend, I complain of some little injustice on the other hand, sustained by us.

Where such divergences of opinion arise, men of activity (and women, no less) are apt, whatever may be their abstract respect for closet speculators, and reverence for sequestered sufferers, to speak with regret, or at least with respectful compassion, of the warping influences of seclusion and illness, as particularly illustrated by the case in point. They attribute all differences to these causes, and never doubt that the old agreement would exist, by the invalid’s views being the same as their own, but for the distorting medium through which the sick are compelled to regard events; or but for the influence which certain parties have obtained over his mind, by service or sympathy. This may be more or less true, in individual cases. Still, it is for the interests of truth and temper to remind the healthy and busy that the warp may possibly not be all on one side, and the enlightenment on the other; and that there may be influences in the life of the meditative invalid which may render his views more comprehensive, and his judgments more, rather than less, sound than heretofore. If there is any practicable test of this, it must be looked for in his habitual tone of mind and life. Unless this proves perversion or folly, his mind must, in justice, be held as at least as worthy of consideration as at any former season of his life. If his fundamental opinions have undergone no change, but rather enlargement with special modifications, they are decidedly worthy of more respect than ever.