Where No Fear Was, Arthur Christopher Benson [the little red hen read aloud txt] 📗

bent on proving his importance and dignity, in laying claim to force and influence, in affecting to play a large part in the world. But there is something even more afflicting in the people who drop all decent pretence of dignity, and pour the product of an acrid and disappointed spirit into all conversations.

Age can establish itself very firmly in the hearts of its circle, if it is kind, sympathetic, appreciative, ready to receive confidences, willing to encourage the fitful despondencies of youth. But here again we are met by the perennial difficulty as to how far we can force ourselves to do things which we do not really want to do, and how far again, if we succeed in forcing ourselves into action, we can give any accent of sincerity and genuineness to our comments and questions.

In this particular matter, that of sympathy, a very little effort does undoubtedly go a long way, because there are a great many people in the world eagerly on the look out for any sign of sympathy, and not apt to scrutinise too closely the character of the sympathy offered. And the best part of having once forced oneself to exhibit sympathy, at whatever cost of strain and effort, is that one is at least ashamed to withdraw it.

I remember a foolish woman who was very anxious to retain the hold upon the active world which she had once possessed. She very seldom spoke of any subject but herself, her performances, her activities, the pressure of the claims which she was forced to try to satisfy. I can recall her now, with her sanguine complexion, her high voice, her anxious and restless eye wandering in search of admiration. "The day's post!" she cried, "that is one of my worst trials--so many duties to fulfil, so many requests for help, so many irresistible claims come before me in the pile of letters--that high," indicating about a foot and a half of linear measurement above the table. "It is the same story every day--a score of people bringing their little mugs of egotism to be filled at my pump of sympathy!"

It was a ridiculous exhibition, because one was practically sure that there was nothing of the kind going on. One was inclined to believe that they were mugs of sympathy filled at the pump of egotism! But if the thing were really being done, it was certainly worth doing!

One of the causes of the failure of nerve-force in age, which lies behind so much of these miseries, is that people who have lived at all active lives cannot bring themselves to realise their loss of vigour, and try to prolong the natural energies of middle age into the twilight of elderliness. Men and women cling to activities, not because they enjoy them, but to delude themselves into believing that they are still young. That terrible inability to resign positions, the duties of which one cannot adequately fulfil, which seems so disgraceful and unconscientious a handling of life to the young, is often a pathetic clinging to youth. Such veterans do not reflect that the only effect of such tenacity is partly that other people do their work, and partly also that the critic observes that if a post can be adequately filled by so old a man it is a proof that such a post ought not to exist. The tendency ought to be met as far as possible by fixing age-limits to all positions. Because even if the old and weary do consult their friends as to the advisability of retirement, it is very hard for the friends cordially to recommend it. A public man once told me that a very aged official consulted him as to the propriety of resignation. He said in his reply something complimentary about the value of the veteran's services. Whereupon the old man replied that as he set so high an estimation upon his work, he would endeavour to hold on a little longer!

The conscientious thing to do, as we get older and find ourselves slower, more timid, more inactive, more anxious, is to consult a candid friend, and to follow his advice rather than our own inclination; a certain fearfulness, an avoidance of unpleasant duty, a dreary foreboding, is apt to be characteristic of age. But we must meet it philosophically. We must reflect that we have done our work, and that an attempt to galvanise ourselves into activity is sure to result in depression. So we must condense our energies, be content to play a little, to drowse a little, to watch with interest the game of life in which we cannot take a hand, until death falls as naturally upon our wearied eyes as sleep falls upon the eyes of a child tired with a long summer day of eager pleasure and delight.

But there is one practical counsel that may here be given to all who find a tendency to dread and anxiety creeping upon them as life advances. I have known very truly and deeply religious people who have been thus beset, and who make their fears the subject of earnest prayer, asking that this particular terror may be spared them, that this cup may be withdrawn from their shuddering lips. I do not believe that this is the right way of meeting the situation. One may pray as whole-heartedly as one will against the tendency to fear; but it is a great help to realise that the very experiences which seem now so overwhelming had little or no effect upon one in youthful and high-hearted days. It is not really that the quality of events alter; it is merely that one is losing vitality, and parting with the irresponsible hopefulness that did not allow one to brood, simply because there were so many other interesting and delightful things going on.

One must attack the disease, for it is a disease, at the root; and it is of little use to shrink timidly from the particular evil, because when it is gone, another will take its place. We may pray for courage, but we must practise it; and the best way of meeting particular fears is to cultivate interests, distractions, amusements, which may serve to dispel them. We cannot begin to do that while we are under the dominion of a particular fear, for the strength of fear lies in its dominating and nauseating quality, so that it gives us a dreary disrelish for life; but if we really wish to combat it, we must beware of inactivity; it may be comfortable, as life goes on, to cultivate a habit of mild contemplation, but it is this very habit of mind which predisposes us to anxiety when anxiety comes. Dr. Johnson pointed out how comparatively rare it was for people who had manual labour to perform, and whose work lay in the open air, to suffer from hypochondriacal terrors. The truth is that we are made for labour, and we have by no means got rid of the necessity for it. We have to pay a price for the comforts of civilisation, and above all for the pleasures of inactivity. It is astonishing how quickly a definite task which one has to perform, whether one likes it or not, draws off a cloud of anxiety from one's spirit. I am myself liable to attacks of depression, not causeless depression, but a despondent exaggeration of small troubles. Yet in times of full work, when meetings have to be attended, papers tackled, engagements kept, I seldom find myself suffering from vague anxieties. It is simply astonishing that one cannot learn more common sense! I suppose that all people of anxious minds tend to find the waking hour a trying one. The mind, refreshed by sleep, turns sorrowfully to the task of surveying the difficulties which lie before it. And yet a hundred times have I discovered that life, which seemed at dawn nothing but a tangle of intolerable problems, has become at noon a very bearable and even interesting affair; and one should thus learn to appreciate the tonic value of occupation, and set oneself to discern some pursuit, if we have no compulsory duties, which may set the holy mill revolving, as Dante says; for it is the homely grumble of the gear which distracts us from the other sort of grumbling, the self-pitying frame of mind, which is the most fertile seed-plot of fear.

"How happy I was long ago; how little I guessed my happiness; how little I knew all that lay before me; how sadly and strangely afflicted I am!" These are the whispers of the evil demon of fearfulness; and they can only be checked by the murmur of wholesome and homely voices.

The old motto says, "Orare est laborare," "prayer is work"--and it is no less true that "laborare est orare," "work is prayer." The truth is that we cannot do without both; and when we have prayed for courage, and tried to rejoice in our beds, as the saints who are joyful in glory do, we had better spend no time in begging that money may be sent us to meet our particular need, or that health may return to us, or that this and that person may behave more kindly and considerately, but go our way to some perfectly commonplace bit of work, do it as thoroughly as we can, and simply turn our back upon the hobgoblin whose grimaces fill us with such uneasiness. He melts away in the blessed daylight over the volume or the account-book, in the simple talk about arrangements or affairs, and above all perhaps in trying to disentangle and relieve another's troubles and anxieties. We cannot get rid of fear by drugs or charms; we have to turn to the work which is the appointed solace of man, and which is the reward rather than the penalty of life.


XI


DR. JOHNSON

There is one great and notable instance in our annals which ought once and for all to dispose of the idea that there is anything weak or unmanly in finding fear a constant temptation, and that is the case of Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson holds his supreme station as the "figure" par excellence of English life for a number of reasons. His robustness, his wit, his reverence for established things, his secret piety are all contributory causes; but the chief of all causes is that the proportion in which these things were mixed is congenial to the British mind. The Englishman likes a man who is deeply serious without being in the least a prig; a man who is tender-hearted without being sentimental; he likes a rather combative nature, and enjoys repartee more than he enjoys humour. The Englishman values good sense above almost all qualities; by a sensible man he means a man with a clear judgment of right and wrong, a man who is not taken in by pretences nor gulled by rhetoric; a man who can instinctively see what is important and what is unimportant. But of course the chief external reason, apart from the character of Johnson himself, for his supremacy of fame, is that his memory is enshrined in an incomparable biography. It shows the strange ineptness of Englishmen for literary and artistic criticism, their incapacity for judging a work of art on its own merits, their singular habit of allowing their disapprobation of a man's private character to depreciate his work, that an acknowledged critic like Macaulay could waste time in carefully considering whether Boswell was more fool or more knave, and triumphantly announce that he produced a good book by accident. Probably Boswell did not realise how matchless a biographer he was, though he was not disposed to belittle his own performances. But his unbridled interest in the smallest details,