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THE PRIVILEGE OF PAIN

BY

MRS. LEO EVERETT

INTRODUCTION BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1920, BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY (INCORPORATED)

TO MY COUSIN

BELLE HUNNEWELL

THE PRIVILEGE OF PAIN

INTRODUCTION

A very suggestive and intriguing title is “_The Privilege of Pain_.” Those who know a good deal about the subject will doubtless raise the eyebrow of incredulity, while those who have lived in blissful ignorance will be curious if not wholly sympathetic. When I first heard the essay (since developed into this book) read before an audience of very thoughtful and discriminating women, I fancied, although it awakened the liveliest interest in all present, that there was not entire unanimity as to the essayist’s point of view. Several invalids and semi-invalids wore an expression of modest pride in the eloquent plea that physical limitations had not succeeded in stemming the tide of mental and spiritual achievement in the long history of the world’s progress. Robust ladies, equal to eight hours’ work, and if advisable, eight hours’ play, out of the twenty-four, looked a trifle aggrieved, as if the gift of perfect health had been underrated, and the laurels that had always surmounted their shining hair and glowing faces might be wrested from them and placed on paler brows. They had no wish to shorten the list of the essayist’s heroes, (Heaven forbid!) but they evidently wished to retire to their private libraries and compile a roll of honor from the merely healthy.

However there was no acrimony in the discussion that followed the reading of the paper nor any desire to withhold honor where honor was so gloriously due.

Those who disbelieved in the validity of pain; those who were convinced that mind is not only superior to, but able to win complete triumph over matter; those who felt that laying hold of the Great Source of Healing and Power would enable them not only to deny but to defy pain, these naturally were not completely in accord with the writer.

Myself, I have always thought that the happy waking after dreamless sleep; the exultation in the new day and its appointed task; the sense of vigor and ability to do whatever opportunity offered; the feeling that one could “run and not be weary, could walk and not faint”—that these were the most precious things that the gods could vouchsafe to mankind,—and yet!—What of the latent powers that wake into life when we look into “the bright face of danger”? Our bodies are not commonly the temples that God intended them to be, and yet often an unquenchable fire burns within; an inner flame that incites to effort and achievement, turns the timid slave into the happy warrior. What if the strength born of overcoming should rescue dormant powers equal to those that exist where there is no effort save that engendered by abounding vitality? After all life is an obstacle race to most of us. Who knows whether the horse could make a spectacular jump had he not often been confronted by bar, gate, hurdle and hedge? I wonder how many great things have been carved, painted, written, conceived, invented, where the creative human being has never suffered, but has been sheltered, lapped in ease, the burden lifted from his shoulders? I wonder if the eye that is seldom wet with tears is ever truly capable of the highest vision?

I think that my own unregenerate watchword would be: “All for health and the world well lost!” so I am by no means a special pleader, even yet, for the “privilege of pain”; but Mrs. Everett’s enthusiasm and the ardor of her conviction compels a new and more sympathetic understanding of her thesis.

I have more often seen spiritual than intellectual exaltation follow pain, but both were present in one woman, half-poet, half-saint, whose verses were written in intense suffering, as indeed were most of W. E. Henley’s.

With closed eyes and pale lips she once quoted to me:

“Angel of Pain! I think thy face Will be in all the Heavenly Place The earliest face that I shall see And swiftest face to smile on me!”

“How is it possible for you to say it?” I asked brokenly.

“Because,” she answered, “all dreams and all visions have come to me, as well as all that I know of earth and heaven, through pain. It opens windows in what would otherwise be blank walls!”

The blind, deaf, dumb, maimed, crippled (if so be it the soul is strong) seem to develop a splendid fighting spirit unknown to those who, apparently, have complete command of all their powers. Take one sense away and the others spring, full-armored, into more active service. Rob them of a right hand and the underrated left becomes doubly skilful. These are soldiers in the “army with banners,” and should be led and followed by acclaiming hosts.

I have known hundreds of invalids more or less saintly, but I have had personal friendship with only two completely joyous, triumphant ones,—Robert Louis Stevenson and Helen Keller. If “one with God is a majority,” then two such conquering human creatures as these furnish inspiration for our generation, and Mrs. Everett in her eager search has found hundreds of similar examples. For that reason I call this a unique, gallant, courageous, helpful little book, likely to give pluck and spirit to many readers handicapped by various ills! There is nothing patient, meek, or resigned in its pages; no air of being crushed-but-still-smiling; it simply radiates a plucky, chin-in-the-air atmosphere calculated to make an aching hand pick up its pen, brush, lump of clay or shovel and go to work; not grimly and doggedly, with lips set, but glowing in triumph over the secret adversary.

The magnificent company marshalled by Mrs. Everett has an exhilarating effect upon the hearer or reader. As I listened to instance after instance of weakness gloriously transmuted into strength; of personal grief and sorrow turned into joy for the whole world; of vast knowledge, spiritual and intellectual, amassed bit by bit in the very grip of physical suffering, I remembered the poetic pronouncement in Revelation.

“He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

New York, May, 1920.

I HEALTH AND STRENGTH

Several years ago one of the New York papers published an interview with a well-known physician, on the advisability of women being drafted for war. He expressed himself in favor of their receiving military training, although, he casually remarked, “a good many would undoubtedly perish. But,” he argued, “if we blot out the individual equation and judge from the standpoint of race, would their perishing be regrettable?” He thinks not. “For, objectors must remember,” he continues, “that mental and moral man gets his strength and efficiency only from the physical man. A sick man, just as a sick race, is the one that goes to the wall.”

This outrageous statement was published at the very height of the world war, when men without arms, legs, eyes, men permanently shattered in health, men who will hide all their lives behind masks, were crawling home in hordes. And the worst of it is, that practically everybody agrees with his verdict.

We offer these heroes, who have sacrificed their splendid young bodies on the altar of humanity, a few fine phrases about glory and honor, yet are smugly content to allow them to be crushed by our degrading conviction that the heights of achievement are no longer for them.

Now if a sick race could exist at all, it might go to the wall as the doctor prophesies; but when he narrows his contention to the individual, when he declares that “a sick man goes to the wall,” he is venturing a statement which only a surprising ignorance can excuse.

For what is more surprising than for an educated man, a physician, to put forward a claim which can be refuted by anyone who has even a superficial knowledge of the past? Every one I have questioned has been able to recall at least one invalid who has attained celebrity. For instance, all but the unlettered are familiar with the fact that both Keats and Robert Louis Stevenson were diseased.

The vast majority, however, even of cultivated people, do not seem to realize what an extraordinarily large percentage of the greatest men and women have been physically handicapped. It is the joyous mission of this book to prove to all invalids, but more especially to those living victims of the Great War, that Keats and Stevenson, far from representing isolated instances of achievement despite bodily infirmities, are but members of a gallant army, some of whom have reached even greater heights in spite of more painful disabilities.

The relation of insanity to genius has not escaped the notice of scholars, who have already exhaustively dealt with it. I intend therefore to confine myself to those giants of the past who have suffered either from disease, mutilation or constitutional debility. If I have cited a few who have been afflicted with attacks of insanity, I have selected only those whose best work was done after recovering from such seizures, and have carefully excluded all who have had to pay with their intellects the price of a too stupendous vision. I wish furthermore to impress upon you that of all the illustrious men and women I shall enumerate there is not one whose fullest development was not coincident with ill-health, or reached after joining the ranks of the physically unfit.

If we scrutinize more closely this heterogeneous assemblage, we shall discover that it is composed of representatives of the most varied forms of human endeavor,—Saint and philosopher, poet and scientist, author and statesman, musician and artist, and, what is really astonishing, some of the greatest soldiers and one, at least, of the greatest sailors are among them.

II SOLDIERS AND A SAILOR

Of all vocations, the profession of arms is the one for which it might be supposed that a perfect physique is the most essential.

Yet Alexander, Cæsar, Alfred the Great, John of Bohemia, Torstensson, Le Grand Condé and his great rival Turenne, Luxembourg, Napoleon, General Wolfe and finally Lord Nelson are proofs to die contrary.

Alexander the Great, singular even among men of action for the splendor of his imagination, was an epileptic. So also was Julius Cæsar. The latter was often attacked by his malady on the very field of battle.

Alfred, so justly called “the Great,” was stricken in his twentieth year by a mysterious disease which caused him intense pain and from which he was never afterwards free. The extent and diversity of his activities are, however, almost incredible. He excelled as a soldier, politician and administrator. He was also a scholar, and the revival of learning which took place under his reign was due solely to his efforts.

King John of Bohemia stands out as the most romantic and chivalrous figure of the Middle Ages. He dazzled his contemporaries by his exploits and his reputation for valor has never been exceeded. He was overtaken by blindness at the age of forty-three, but, strapped to his horse, continued to lead his armies to battle. For six years this blind hero successfully resisted all the attacks of the Emperor Louis and his allies. His heroic death at the battle of Creçy was a fitting conclusion to a gallant life. According to Camden, the ostrich feathers and the motto “Ich dien,” borne ever since by the Prince of Wales, originally formed the crest of King John, and were first assumed by the Black Prince as a token of the admiration with which his antagonist inspired him.

Condé, known to history as “Le Grand Condé,” was so delicate in childhood that he was not expected to reach maturity, and his nervous system was “at no time to be trifled with.” During his innumerable campaigns he was a constant martyr to fevers and other maladies, but these seldom interfered with his untiring energy or his capacity for work. He had also the power of arousing the enthusiasm of his followers. They said of him: “In the midst of misfortune Condé always maintains the character of a hero.”

Turenne is one of the captains whose campaigns Napoleon recommended all soldiers to “read and re-read.” Physical infirmities and an impediment in his speech hampered his career in youth. However, by devoting himself to bodily exercises, he succeeded in a measure in overcoming his weaknesses, but to the end he never possessed a normal physique.

Count Torstensson, the brilliant Swedish field-marshal, celebrated after Gustavus Adolphus as the hero of the Thirty Years’ War, and compared to Napoleon for the rapidity with which he was able to move his troops, had frequently to lead his army from a litter, as his infirmities would not permit him to mount a horse. He is considered by experts to have been a greater man than his opponent, Tilly, although the latter, strangely enough, has a more widespread reputation.

A propos Luxembourg and William III (although the latter should be included among the statesmen), I will quote a passage from Macaulay. “In such an age (1694) bodily vigor is the most indispensable qualification for a warrior. At the battle of Landon two poor, sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would have been considered too puny to bear part in combats, were the souls of two great armies.” And further on: “It is probable that the two feeblest in body among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers that fought at Neerwinden were the hunch-backed dwarf (Luxembourg) who urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton (William III) who covered the slow retreat of England.”

Napoleon was an epileptic and Lord Nelson, at the height of his efficiency, had lost an arm and an eye and what is even more remarkable was, so it is said, sick every time he went to sea or whenever the weather was exceptionally rough.

General Wolfe, although only thirty-two years old, was already a man of shattered health when he undertook his famous expedition against Quebec. In spite of disheartening failures and the torture of an internal malady, he finally won the decisive victory which wrested Quebec from the French. During the battle he was twice wounded but refused to leave the field until a third bullet pierced his lung. He survived only long enough to give a final order for cutting off the retreat and breathed his last murmuring: “Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.”

Let us consider for a moment what made these men pre-eminent. It was not courage. Cæsar and Napoleon were no braver than thousands of their followers. Nor was it the capacity for endurance. What then was the secret of their power? I answer unhesitatingly,—imagination. No leader has been without it and the greatest leaders are the men who have had it to a superlative degree. Napoleon recognized its mysterious sway, for it was he who said: “Imagination rules the world.” Now, imagination is the very quality we find most frequently allied to ill-health.

I beg to call to your attention that with the exception of le grand Condé and possibly Napoleon, not one of these men would have passed his “medical.”

It is certainly curious that the profession of arms, the most physically exacting of all professions, is the only one whose greatest examples have without exception been tainted with disease.

III ILL-HEALTH AND ITS RELATION TO GENIUS

“The physical conditions which accompany and affect what we call genius are obscure, and have hitherto attracted little but empirical notice. It is impossible not to see that absolutely normal man or woman, as we describe normality, is very rarely indeed an inventor, or a seer, or even a person of remarkable mental energy. The bulk of what are called entirely ‘healthy’ people add nothing to the sum of human achievement, and it is not the average navvy who makes a Darwin nor a typical daughter of the plough who develops into an Elizabeth Barrett Browning.... The more closely we study, with extremely slender resources of evidence, the lives of great men of imagination and action since the beginning of the world, the more clearly we ought to recognize that a reduction of all types to one stolid uniformity of what is called ‘health’ would have the effect of depriving humanity of precisely those individuals who have added most to the beauty and variety of human existence.... When the physical conditions of men of the highest celebrity in the past are touched upon, it is usual to pass them over with indifference, or else to account for them as the result of disease. The peculiarities of Pascal, or of Pope, or of Michelangelo are either denied, or it is presumed that they were the result of purely morbid factors against which their genius, their rectitude, or their common sense more or less successfully contended. It is admitted that Tasso had a hypersensitive constitution, which cruelty tortured into melancholia, but it is taken for granted that he would have been a greater poet, if he had taken plenty of out-door exercise.”

These are the conclusions of Mr. Edmund Gosse, and they are even more radical than mine. It is, however, true that in sickness the perceptions, physical, mental and spiritual, become supernormally acute, and this extreme sensitiveness to impression is one of the attributes of genius. It follows, therefore, that imagination is stimulated by suffering, but not that suffering creates genius or is even inseparably allied to it.

The most universal concomitant of genius is the power of concentration and there is nothing that so fosters that quality as ill-health. By forcing us to limit our activities, our human contacts, it automatically eliminates everything that is not the basic essential of each individual.

We may dream of an absolutely balanced man, one equally supreme in mind, body, and spirit, but I do not believe it possible for such a being to exist. It seems to be a law that we must purchase and develop one faculty at the expense of another. Only by excessive application to one restricted form of activity can we excel in it. Genius is not eccentric, it is concentric. The all-round man is the mediocre man. To perfect even a rose, you must mutilate the bush.

Of all the great men of imagination Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe seem to have been the most superabundantly healthy. This was certainly true of Leonardo in his youth, but I cannot help feeling that when he painted Mona Lisa’s smile, Pain, the great teacher, was not unknown to him. However, I may be mistaken, and if so, he is the most complete man in the whole history of art, science or literature, for he enjoyed the advantages of health without forfeiting the hypersensitiveness of suffering.

There is no doubt, however, about Goethe. He kept his splendid physique to the last, and Goethe was unquestionably a very great man. His gigantic intellect is curiously stimulating. No one else of whom I know, with the exception of Leonardo, has had such a multiple outlook on life. That amazing eye of his dissected as well as comprehended all that it rested upon, and it rested upon almost everything tangible. But the very universality of Goethe’s genius is one of its limitations. He gives so much, and yet—there it is, he knows no “half-lights.” He never leads one to those shadowy regions where the soul is in travail; he knows nothing of that mysterious tract which lies beyond the last outpost of the intellect. His imagination even in its wildest flights is curiously earthbound. I feel that he was too healthy.

IV AMONG THE POETS “THEY LEARN IN SUFFERING WHAT THEY TEACH IN SONG”

Horace was a man of feeble health; Milton was blind; Pope deformed. George Herbert, to whom we owe so many of our most beautiful hymns and anthems, was consumptive. John Donne had an enormous influence on English literature, although, according to Mr. Edmund Gosse, his influence was mostly malign. He was praised by Dryden, paraphrased by Pope, and then completely forgotten for a century. His versification is often harsh, but “behind that fantastic garb of language there is an earnest and vigorous mind, and imagination that harbors fire within its cloudy folds and an insight into the mysteries of spiritual life which is often startling. Donne excels in brief flashes of wit and beauty, and in sudden, daring phrases that have the full perfume of poetry in them.” Izaak Walton was his admiring friend and first biographer. Donne was constantly ill during the years of his greatest creative activity, yet this is what he once said, speaking of his illnesses: “The advantage you and my other friends have by my frequent fevers is that I am so much the oftener at the gate of heaven; and, by the solitude and close imprisonment they reduce me to, I am so much the oftener at my prayers, in which you and my other dear friends are not forgotten.”

It was owing to ill-health that Coleridge first took opium under the guise of a patent medicine.

William Cowper early showed a tendency to melancholia, but it was not until he was almost thirty that the prospects of having to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, preliminary to taking up the position of clerk—a mere formality—drove him completely insane. He attempted suicide and was sent to an asylum where he spent eighteen months. At the age of forty-two he had another attack from which it took him almost three years to recover completely. Nevertheless we find him three years later making his first appearance as an author with “Olney Hymns,” written in conjunction with a friend. This was followed by a collection of poems, which was badly received, one critic declaring that “Mr. Cowper was certainly a good, pious man, but without one spark of poetic fire.” It was not until 1785 when he was already fifty-four years old and had been twice declared insane that he published the book that was to make him famous. It is entitled: “The Task, Tircinium or a Review of Schools, and the History of John Gilpin.” Cowper is among the poets who are epoch-makers. “He brought a new spirit into English verse. With him begins the ‘enthusiasm for humanity,’ that was afterwards to become so marked in the poetry of Burns, Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron.”

Keats suffered from consumption and it is interesting to note that the progress of his disease coincided with the expansion of his genius.

Chatterton is the most astounding and precocious figure in the whole history of letters. He was only seventeen years and nine months old when starvation drove him to commit suicide, “but the best of his numerous productions, both in prose and verse, require no allowance to be made for the immaturity of their author.” Chatterton’s audience has never been a large one for the reason that with a few exceptions all his poems are written in Fifteenth Century English. Among the discriminating, however, he holds a very high place. His genius and tragic death are commemorated by Wordsworth in “Resolution and Independence,” by Coleridge in “A Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” by D. G. Rossetti in “Five English Poets,” and Keats dedicated “Endymion” to his memory.