Part 2
I have hesitated as to whether I had a right to include Chatterton among my examples, because I can find no record of his having suffered from actual disease. On the other hand he was so abnormal that I feel that I have no right to ignore him. From his earliest years he was subject to fits of abstraction during which he would sit for hours in seeming stupor from which it was almost impossible to wake him. For a time he was even considered deficient in intellect.
Thomas Hood was a chronic invalid; his most famous poem, “The Bridge of Sighs,” was written on his death-bed. Byron and Swinburne were also physically handicapped.
W. E. Henley was not only a poet but a trenchant critic and a successful editor. A physical infirmity forced him at the age of twenty-five to become an inmate of an Edinburgh hospital. While there he wrote a number of poems in irregular rhythm describing, with poignant force, his experiences as a patient. Sent to the _Cornhill Magazine_, they at once aroused the interest of Leslie Stephen, the editor, and induced him to visit the young poet and to take Robert Louis Stevenson with him. This meeting in the hospital and the friendship which ensued between Stevenson and Henley were famous in the literary gossip of the last century. Henley’s reputation will rest on his poetry, and the best of his poems will retain a permanent place in English literature. As a literary editor he displayed a gift for discovering men of promise, and “Views and Reviews” is a “volume of notable criticism.”
Sidney Lanier, one of the most original and talented of American poets, was consumptive, and Francis Thompson, author of “The Hound of Heaven,” wrote his flaming verse under acute pain.
The Sixteenth Century was the heyday of poets. Princes regarded them as the chief ornament of their courts and disputed among themselves the honor of their company. Ronsard’s life, therefore, was exceptionally fortunate. He enjoyed the favor of the three sons of Catherine de’ Medici, more especially of Charles IX, after whose premature death the poet retired from Paris. Ronsard is celebrated as the chief glory of an association of poets who called themselves the “Pléiade.” His own generation bestowed upon him the title of “Prince of Poets.” Ronsard became deaf at eighteen and so he became a man of letters instead of a diplomatist. His infirmity is probably responsible for a “certain premature agedness, a tranquil, temperate sweetness” which characterizes the school of poetry he founded.
Joachim du Bellay was destined for the army and his poetry would most probably have been lost to the world if he had not been attacked by a serious illness which seemed likely to prove fatal. It was during the idle days of his convalescence that he first read the Greek and Latin poets. He was also a member of the “Pléiade” and some of his isolated pieces excel those of Ronsard in “airy lightness of touch.”
Molière is the greatest name in French literature. The facts as to his youth and early manhood are so wrapped in uncertainty, that it is impossible to say when the frailty of his health first became manifest. When he emerges from obscurity we find him already subject to attacks of illness and forced to limit himself to a milk diet. His best work, however, was still undone. “Tartuffe” was not written until 1664 when Molière was already forty-two years old, and “Le Misanthrope” was performed a year later. Although it had probably long been latent, he first showed unmistakable symptoms of consumption in 1667. In spite of the ravages of disease, and the continual strain of an impossible domestic situation, he produced “Le Bourgois Gentilhomme” three years later, followed by “Les Fourberies de Scapin.” “Le Malade Imaginaire” was written shortly before his death, and it was while acting the title rôle that he ruptured a blood vessel. He died a few hours afterwards, alone, except for the casual presence of two Sisters of Charity.
Scarron, poet, dramatist and novelist, lived twenty years in a state of miserable deformity and pain. His head and body were twisted; his legs useless. He bore his sufferings with invincible courage. Scarron was a prominent figure in the literary and fashionable society of his day. His work, however, is very unequal. That the “Roman Burlesque” is a novel of real merit, no competent critic can deny. It was republished during the nineteenth century, not only in the original French but in an English translation. Scarron is also of interest as the first husband of the lady who as Mme. de Maintenon became the wife of Louis XIV.
Boileau was the youngest of fifteen children. He is said to have had but one passion, the hatred of stupid books. He was the first critic to demonstrate the poetical possibilities of the French language. His two masterpieces are “L’Art Poétique” and “Lutrin.” “After much depreciation Boileau’s critical work has been rehabilitated and his judgments have been substantially adopted by his successors.” He suffered all his life from constitutional debility.
Schiller was a leading spirit of his age, yet from his thirty-second year “every one of his nerves was an avenue of pain.” Nevinson, however, considered “it possible the disease served in some way to increase Schiller’s eager activity and fan his intellect into keener flame.” Carlyle also writes of the poet that “in the midst of his infirmities he persevered with unabated zeal in the great business of his life. His frame might be impaired, but his spirit retained its fire unextinguished.” Schiller wrote some of his noblest and greatest plays during the periods of his most acute suffering. When he died it was found that all his vital organs were deranged.
Heinrich Heine, another immortal, spent eight years of his agitated struggling life on what he called “a mattress-grave.” “These years of suffering seem to have effected what might be called a spiritual purification of Heine’s nature, and to have brought out all the good side of his character, whereas adversity in earlier days had only emphasized his cynicism.” Though crippled and racked with constant pain, his intellectual and creative powers were no whit dimmed. His greatest poems were written during these years of suffering from which he found relief only in death.
Petrarch suffered from epilepsy, and Alfieri, one of the greatest of the Italian tragic poets, was a martyr to pain. So likewise was Leopardi, author of some immortal odes; the latter was, furthermore, deformed. It was said of him that “Pain and Love are the two-fold poetry of his existence.”
Camoens, the greatest of Portuguese poets, lost his right eye attempting to board an enemy ship. After a life of incredible hardship, he died in a public almshouse worn out by disease.
There are hardly any women poets, which is rather curious, as it is almost the only career that requires neither training nor paraphernalia, yet among this handful we find four, three of them being of real importance, namely: Mrs. Browning, Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson. Mrs. Browning was a chronic invalid and wrote her greatest poems, “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” while actually on her back. Mr. Edmund Gosse says of Christina Rossetti, “All we really know about her, save that she was a great saint, was that she was a great poet.” She was also a great sufferer.
The most curious event of American literary history was the sudden rise of Emily Dickinson into a posthumous fame. This strange woman, who shunned publicity with a morbid terror and never left her “father’s house for any house or town,” nevertheless bequeathed to the world poems which for life and fire are unexcelled. She was an invalid. In 1863 she writes: “I was ill since September, and since April in Boston for a physician’s care. He does not let me go, yet I work in my prison, and make guests for myself. Carlo (her dog) did not come, because he would die in jail and the mountains I could not hold now, so I brought but the gods!”
Frances Ridley Havergal wrote some of her most beautiful hymns on a sick bed.
V NOVELISTS
The first name I find on my list of novelists who have been subject to ill health is that of Cervantes. He did not start life an invalid,—far from it. He seems to have been a youth of unusual vigor. But when only twenty-three years old he was severely wounded and lost his left hand in battle—“For the greater glory of the right,” as he gallantly exclaimed. After that he spent five years in slavery and he escaped from the Moors only to languish at various times in a Spanish prison. Hardship, and privations doubtless, and also his old wounds, had completely shattered his health when he finally sat down to create his immortal “Don Quixote.” The first part was published when he was fifty-eight years old, the last when he was sixty-nine.
When Fielding wrote “Tom Jones,” he had been for years a martyr to gout and other diseases: Gibbon predicted for this work “a diuturnity exceeding that of the house of Austria!” It is curious that this book, which bubbles over with the joy of life, was written at a time when Fielding was plunged into the deepest melancholy.
Swift suffered from “labyrinthian vertigo.”
Laurence Sterne, creator of “Tristram Shandy,” was consumptive, as he says of himself, “from the first hour I drew breath unto this that I can hardly breathe at all.” Sterne, no longer young, was increasingly suffering during the years he brought forth the numerous volumes of his unique book.
Sir Walter Scott was not only lame from infancy but is an inspiring example of what can be accomplished under conditions of extreme physical suffering. When he was forty-six years old began a series of agonizing attacks of cramps of the stomach which recurred at frequent intervals for two years. But his activity and capacity for work remained unbroken. He made his initial attempt at play-writing when he was recovering from this first seizure. Before the year was out he had completed “Rob Roy.” Within six months it was followed by “The Heart of Midlothian,” which filled four volumes of the second series of “Tales of my Landlord,” and has remained one of the most popular among his novels. “The Bride of Lammermoor” and “The Legend of Montrose” were dictated to amanuenses, through fits of suffering so acute that he could not suppress cries of agony. When Laidlaw begged him to stop dictating he only answered, “Nay, Willie, only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry, as well as all the wool to ourselves, but to give over work, that can only be when I am woolen.”
Mme. de La Fayette lost her health a year before her epoch-making novel, “La Princess de Cléves,” was published. She lived fifteen years afterwards, “étant de ceux,” as Sainte-Beuve says, “qui traînent leur miserable vie jusqu’à la dernière goutte d’huile.” “La Princesse de Cléves” is not only intrinsically a work of real merit, which is still read with pleasure, but is important because it is the first novel of sentiment, the first novel, in the sense we moderns use the word, that was ever written.
Le Sage was a handsome, engaging youth, but it was not until he was thirty-nine years old that he made his first success with the “Diable Boiteux.” Already his deafness was rapidly increasing; and he was sixty-seven years old and had long been completely deaf when the last volume of the masterpiece, “Gil Blas,” appeared.
Vauvenargues was a soldier until he had both of his legs frozen during a winter campaign. This injury, from which he never recovered, forced him to leave the army. An attack of small-pox completed the ruin of his health, and thenceforth he led a secluded life devoted to literary pursuits. It is mainly as a novelist that Vauvenargues occupies a place in French literature, although his other works were held in high esteem by his contemporaries.
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt are names famous in French literary history. “Learning something from Flaubert, and teaching almost everything to Zola, they invented a new kind of novel, and their works are the result of a new vision of the world.... A novel of the Goncourts is made up of an infinite number of details, set side by side, every detail equally prominent.... French critics have complained that the language of the Goncourts is no longer the French of the past, and this is true. It is their distinction, the finest of their inventions, that in order to render new sensations, a new vision of things, they invented a new language.” (Mr. Arthur Symons.) Their journal is a gold mine from which present-day writers still carry away unacknowledged nuggets. M. Paul Bourget said of them: “Life reduced itself to a series of epileptic attacks, preceded and followed by a blank.”
Dostoievsky is considered by many critics the greatest of the great Russian novelists.
His health was completely shattered by his spending four years in a Siberian prison as a political offender. This terrible experience, however, served to create “Recollections of a Dead House” and “Buried Alive in Siberia.”
Anton Chekhov, the Russian novelist and short story writer, was only a little over twenty when he began to suffer from attacks of blood spitting. Although he believed that these came from his throat they were undoubtedly due to consumption. He was also a martyr to digestive trouble and headaches.
Chekhov possessed to an unusual degree the nervous energy which so frequently accompanies disease. He was a remarkably prolific author, so much so that in one of his letters he prophesies that he will soon have written enough to fill a library with his own works. Literature was, however, not his only pursuit. He also practiced medicine, although he refused to receive any remuneration for his services. He was public spirited and altruistic and organized an association for the relief of Siberian prisoners.
His books enjoy an immense vogue and have been translated into every language.
Whatever may be the future of English fiction, Charlotte Brontë’s novels will always command attention, by reason of their intensity and individuality. She suffered from permanent bodily weakness with various complications.
Some critics consider Emily Brontë superior to her sister. “Wuthering Heights” is a “thing apart, passionate, unforgettable.” This remarkable book was written while its author was dying of consumption.
That super-woman, known to fame as George Eliot, suffered all her life from frequent attacks of illness. In spite of her physical limitations she was capable of the most prolonged and intense application. Her numerous novels, dating from her thirty-sixth year, are only a part of her widespread intellectual activities.
Jacobsen, the great Danish novelist, unfortunately too little known in this country, was, like so many others, cut off from his chosen or destined profession and driven into literature by ill health. During the worst phases of his sufferings he produced books that in their way have never been surpassed.
I must mention here, though she belongs to no category, that extraordinary child, Marie Bashkirtseff, who, dying of consumption at twenty-four, left behind her several pictures of great promise (two of them are in the Luxembourg Gallery, I believe) and her “Journal,” a remarkable production which created a sensation thirty years ago and which has lately been republished.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s life is so well-known that I need only to recall him to your memory.
Henry James was so delicate that he was forced to remain a spectator of the Civil War, in which his younger brothers fought. Mr. Edmund Gosse writes the following description of a visit to Henry James when the latter was already thirty-two years old. “Stretched on a sofa and apologizing for not rising to greet me, his appearance gave me a little shock, for I had not thought of him as an invalid. He hurriedly and rather evasively declared that he was not that, but that a muscular weakness of the spine obliged him, as he said, ‘to assume a horizontal posture during some hours of every day in order to bear an almost unbroken routine of evening engagements.’” It is recorded that in one winter he dined out one hundred and seven times. What amazing assiduity! His health gradually grew stronger, but for many years it seriously handicapped his activity.
I should like to linger a moment with Lafcadio Hearn. He is known to the world at large as the foremost interpreter of the old and new Japan. He married a Japanese wife and this gave him a peculiar insight into the customs as well as the psychology of his adopted countrymen. His books show a unique understanding of the Oriental mind and their literary art is exquisite. He not only suffered from ill health, but in addition lost the sight of one eye in early youth and ever after went in fear of total blindness. Yet, far from regretting his afflictions, this is what he said about them: “The owner of pure horse-health never purchased the power of discerning the half-lights. In its separation of the spiritual from the physical portion of existence, severe sickness is often invaluable to the sufferer, in the revelation it bestows of the psychological undercurrents of human existence. From the intuitive recognition of the terrible but at the same time glorious fact, that the highest life can only be reached by subordinating physical to spiritual influences, separating the immaterial from the material self,—therein lies all the history of asceticism and self-suppression as the most efficacious measure of developing religious and intellectual power.” That is what experience had taught one who was certainly not a religionist.
VI PHYSICAL PERFECTION AND ITS RELATION TO CIVILIZATION
I am persuaded that it is impossible to banish suffering from the world. All we have so far accomplished is to exchange one form of suffering for another.
Take the case of women, for example, and the ailments to which they are subject. Primitive woman was virtually free from these. She suffered little at childbirth. To-day the operation of even the normal female functions has become a serious matter. Science with all its strides has not been able to cope successfully with the increasing burden which the conditions of modern life impose on woman’s physique.
I have chosen women as an illustration because they themselves would be the first to insist that they had profited more than men from the advance of thought and the perfecting of a social system that is largely their own creation. Well, compare this Flower of the Ages, as we see her in shops, offices, ball-rooms or even colleges, with an Australian bush-woman, and we will find that neither in health, strength nor endurance can she rival her savage sister. The woman of the bush is capable of following her master all day with a baby on her back; of stopping for a brief period to produce another and of resuming her progress, unimpeded by her additional burden.
It is well to realize that civilization, which has bestowed such incalculable benefits upon mankind, has done so largely at the expense of its physical welfare. Moreover, as men, and more particularly women, rise in the intellectual scale, they risk the sacrifice not only of a robust, but of a normal, body. But what of it? “Wisdom is better than strength; and a wise man is better than a strong man.” Nor must we forget that while civilization has undoubtedly undermined our physique, it has also abolished the circumstances which made strength and endurance the supreme necessities of the battle of life. To be able to follow her male with a child on her back—to say nothing of the interesting interlude—is not a quality that would add either to the allurement or efficiency of the woman of to-day.
Let me here cite four celebrated women who, differing from each other in every other particular, suffered in common from ill health.
The first in order of time is Madame du Deffand who was for many years the center of one of the most brilliant of the Eighteenth Century salons. Her correspondence with Voltaire, La Duchesse Choiseul and Horace Walpole is immortal and has been frequently republished. Many of her letters to Voltaire and all of those to Mme. de Choiseul and Horace Walpole were dictated when she was over sixty-seven years of age, broken in health and totally blind.
Rachel was the daughter of a poor Jew pedlar, and from the age of four she roamed the streets singing patriotic songs. A famous singing teacher heard her and, impressed by the crude power of the little creature, offered to teach her gratuitously. It is almost unbelievable to read of the excitement this small, plain Jewess created. She still lives in hundreds of books and is an integral part of the history of her period. If we can judge from contemporary praises, Rachel is the greatest actress of whom there is any record. She suffered from continual ill health and died of consumption in her thirty-seventh year.
Grace Darling was the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, and with her father braved almost certain death in attempting to save the survivors of the wreck of the _Forfarshire_. By well-nigh superhuman efforts they succeeded in rescuing a great number. This gallant exploit made them both famous. Grace Darling had always been delicate and died of consumption four years later.
Florence Nightingale, immortal nurse and one of the most influential women in history, had at the time of her greatest activity a body so weak that it was a wonder how a woman in such delicate health was able to perform so much of what Sidney Herbert called “a man’s work.” During many years of important achievement she was altogether bed-ridden. Working incessantly, writing, organizing, she was a power throughout the British Empire. Her influence has spread over the world; to her we owe the first idea of training nurses.
It is really curious that physical fitness should have become an ideal only after it had ceased to be the indispensable requirement of our environment. Piano-moving is perhaps the sole occupation to-day where strength is the only qualification, and intelligence of no account whatsoever; yet few of us aspire to become piano-movers!
The body is a most delicate machine and only in exceptional cases can it be kept through life in perfect condition, without an immense expenditure of time and trouble. Now, a perfect body should only be considered desirable, if it enables us to rise to greater heights of achievement. Countless people, however, regard health and vigor not merely as the means but as the goal itself. They tend and exercise their bodies at the expense of every other form of activity. The disproportionate amount of time, energy and aspiration that is wasted in attempting to perfect and preserve that which is inevitably doomed to destruction is incredible. A child building a castle on the sand is engaged in a more durable occupation. For the child, while erecting its tunnelled and turreted fortress, is at least attempting to realize some haunting dream of the heights, the depths, the mystery and magnificence of life. What matter the tide?—the vision is indestructible.
The Greeks regarded a beautiful body as an end in itself, because their civilization, by permitting its unveiling, allowed it to act as an inspiration to others. The nude, however, has no recognized place among us, and although it still serves to create beauty, it does so under restricted and abnormal conditions. To be a model is not a title to fame, nor the ideal of our most enlightened contemporaries.
I hope that I have proved conclusively that a splendid body is no longer a necessary means of enabling us to rise to the greatest heights either of ambition or of service. Why, therefore, should we so morbidly covet physical perfection?
VII THE PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED PHILOSOPHERS
Τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώσαντα τὸν πάθει μάθος θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.