Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI.

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Now all this lack of Resignation on the part of princes and kings comes
of the fact, that they are so far like children that they have not
become accustomed to be resisted, and to be obliged to forego what they
would like. Resignation comes by the habit of being disappointed, and
of finding things go against you. It is, in the case of ordinary human
beings, just what they expect. Of course, you remember the adage,
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed."
I have a good deal to say about that adage. Reasonableness of
expectation is a great and good thing: despondency is a thing to be
discouraged and put down as far as may be. But meanwhile let me say,
that the corollary drawn from that dismal beatitude seems to me
unfounded in fact. I should say just the contrary. I should say,
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he will very likely be
disappointed." You know, my reader, whether things do not generally
happen the opposite way from that which you expected. Did you ever try
to keep off an evil you dreaded by interposing this buffer? Did you ever
think you might perhaps prevent a trouble from coming by constantly
anticipating it,--keeping, meanwhile, an under-thought that things
rarely happen as you anticipate them, and thus that your anticipation of
the thing might possibly keep it away? Of course you have; for you are
a human being. And in all common cases, a watch might as well think to
keep a skilful watchmaker in ignorance of the way in which its movements
are produced, as a human being think to prevent another human being from
knowing exactly how he will think and feel in given circumstances. We
have watched the working of our own watches far too closely and long,
my friends, to have the least difficulty in understanding the great
principles upon which the watches of other men go. I cannot look inside
your breast, my reader, and see the machinery that is working there: I
mean the machinery of thought and feeling. But I know exactly how it
works, nevertheless; for I have long watched a machinery precisely like
it.

There are a great many people in this world who feel that things are all
wrong, that they have missed stays in life, that they are beaten,--and
yet who don't much mind. They are indurated by long use. They do not try
to disguise from themselves the facts. There are some men who diligently
try to disguise the facts, and who in some measure succeed in doing so.
I have known a self-sufficient and disagreeable clergyman who had a
church in a large city. Five-sixths of the seats in the church were
quite empty; yet the clergyman often talked of what a good congregation
he had, with a confidence which would have deceived any one who had not
seen it. I have known a church where it was agony to any one with an ear
to listen to the noise produced when the people were singing; yet the
clergyman often talked of what splendid music he had. I have known an
entirely briefless barrister, whose friends gave out that the sole
reason why he had no briefs was that he did not want any. I have known
students who did not get the prizes for which they competed, but who
declared that the reason of their failure was, that, though they
competed for the prizes, they did not wish to get them. I have known a
fast young woman, after many engagements made and broken, marry as the
last resort a brainless and penniless blackguard; yet all her family
talk in big terms of what a delightful connection she was making. Now,
where all that self-deception is genuine, let us be glad to see it; and
let us not, like Mr. Snarling, take a spiteful pleasure in undeceiving
those who are so happy to be deceived. In most cases, indeed, such
trickery deceives nobody. But where it truly deceives those who
practise it, even if it deceive nobody else, you see there is no true
Resignation. A man who has made a mess of life has no need to be
resigned, if he fancies he has succeeded splendidly. But I look with
great interest, and often with deep respect, at the man or woman who
feels that life has been a failure,--a failure, that is, as regards
_this_ world,--and yet who is quite resigned. Yes: whether it be the
un-soured old maid, sweet-tempered, sympathetic in others' joys, God's
kind angel in the house of sorrow,--or the unappreciated genius, quiet,
subdued, pleased to meet even one who understands him amid a community
which does not,--or the kind-hearted clever man to whom eminent success
has come too late, when those were gone whom it would have made happy:
I reverence and love, more than I can express, the beautiful natures I
have known thus subdued and resigned.

Yes: human beings get indurated. When you come to know well the history
of a great many people, you will find that it is wonderful what they
have passed through. Most people have suffered a very great deal,
since they came into this world. Yet in their appearance there is no
particular trace of it all. You would not guess, from looking at them,
how hard and how various their lot has been. I once knew a woman, rather
more than middle-aged. I knew her well, and saw her almost every day,
for several years, before I learned that the homely Scotchwoman had seen
distant lands, and had passed through very strange ups and downs, before
she settled into the quiet, orderly life in which I knew her. Yet when
spoken to kindly, by one who expressed surprise that all these trials
had left so little trace, the inward feeling, commonly suppressed, burst
bitterly out, and she exclaimed, "It's a wonder that I'm living at all!"
And it is a wonder that a great many people are living, and looking so
cheerful and so well as they do, when you think what fiery passion, what
crushing sorrow, what terrible losses, what bitter disappointments, what
hard and protracted work they have gone through. Doubtless, great good
comes of it. All wisdom, all experience, comes of suffering. I should
not care much for the counsel of the man whose life had been one long
sunshiny holiday. There is greater depth in the philosophy of Mr.
Dickens than a great portion of his readers discern. You are ready to
smile at the singular way in which Captain Cuttle commended his friend
Jack Bunsby as a man of extraordinary wisdom, whose advice on any point
was of inestimable value. "Here's a man," said Captain Cuttle, "who has
been more beaten about the head than any other living man!" I hail the
words as the recognition of a great principle. To Mr. Bunsby it befell
in a literal sense; but we have all been (in a moral sense) a good deal
beaten about both the head and the heart before we grew good for much.
Out of the travail of his nature, out of the sorrowful history of his
past life, the poet or the moralist draws the deep thought and feeling
which find so straight a way to the hearts of other men. Do you think
Mr. Tennyson would ever have been the great poet he is, if he had not
passed through that season of great grief which has left its noble
record in "In Memoriam"? And a youthful preacher, of vivid imagination
and keen feeling, little fettered by anything in the nature of good
taste, may by strong statements and a fiery manner draw a mob of
unthinking hearers: but thoughtful men and women will not find anything
in all _that_, that awakens the response of their inner nature in its
truest depths; they must have religious instruction into which real
experience has been transfused; and the worth of the instruction will be
in direct proportion to the amount of real experience which is embodied
in it. And after all, it is better to be wise and good than to be gay
and happy, if we must choose between the two things; and it is worth
while to be severely beaten about the head, if _that_ is the condition
on which alone we can gain true wisdom. True wisdom is cheap at almost
any price. But it does not follow at all that you will be happy (in
the vulgar sense) in direct proportion as you are wise. I suppose
most middle-aged people, when they receive the ordinary kind wish at
New-Year's time of a Happy New-Year, feel that _happy_ is not quite the
word; and feel that, too, though well aware that they have abundant
reason for gratitude to a kind Providence. It is not _here_ that we
shall ever be happy,--that is, completely and perfectly happy. Something
will always be coming to worry and distress. And a hundred sad
possibilities hang over us: some of them only too certainly and quickly
drawing near. Yet people are content, in a kind of way. They have learnt
the great lesson of Resignation.

* * * * *

There are many worthy people who would be quite fevered and flurried
by good fortune, if it were to come to any very great degree. It would
injure their heart. As for bad fortune, they can stand it nicely, they
have been accustomed to it so long. I have known a very hard-wrought
man, who had passed, rather early in life, through very heavy and
protracted trials. I have heard him say, that, if any malicious enemy
wished to kill him, the course would be to make sure that tidings of
some signal piece of prosperity should arrive by post on each of six or
seven successive days. It would quite unhinge and unsettle him, he said.
His heart would go: his nervous system would break down. People to whom
pieces of good-luck come rare and small have a great curiosity to know
how a man feels when he is suddenly told that he has drawn one of the
greatest prizes in the lottery of life. The kind of feeling, of course,
will depend entirely on the kind of man. Yet very great prizes, in the
way of dignity and duty, do for the most part fall to men who in some
measure deserve them, or who at least are not conspicuously undeserving
of them and unfit for them. So that it is almost impossible that the
great news should elicit merely some unworthy explosion of gratified
self-conceit. The feeling would in almost every case be deeper and
worthier. One would like to be sitting at breakfast with a truly good
man, when the letter from the Prime-Minister comes in, offering him the
Archbishopric of Canterbury. One would like to see how he would take
it. Quietly, I have no doubt. Long preparation has fitted the man
who reaches that position for taking it quietly. A recent Chancellor
publicly stated how _he_ felt, when offered the Great Seal. His first
feeling, that good man said, was of gratification that he had fairly
reached the highest reward of the profession to which he had given
his life; but the feeling which speedily supplanted _that_ was an
overwhelming sense of his responsibility and a grave doubt as to his
qualifications. I have always believed, and sometimes said, that good
fortune--not so great or so sudden as to injure one's nerves or
heart, but kindly and equable--has a most wholesome effect upon human
character. I believe that the happier a man is, the better and kinder
he will be. The greater part of unamiability, ill-temper, impatience,
bitterness, and uncharitableness comes out of unhappiness. It is because
a man is so miserable that he is such a sour, suspicious, fractious,
petted creature. I was amused, this morning, to read in the newspaper an
account of a very small incident which befell the new Primate of England
on his journey back to London, after being enthroned at Canterbury.
The reporter of that small incident takes occasion to record that
the Archbishop had quite charmed his travelling-companions in the
railway-carriage by the geniality and kindliness of his manner. I have
no doubt he did. I am sure he is a truly good Christian man. But think
of what a splendid training for producing geniality and kindliness he
has been going through for a great number of years! Think of the moral
influences which have been bearing on him for the last few weeks! We
should all be kindly and genial, if we had the same chance of being so.
But if Dr. Longley had a living of a hundred pounds a year, a fretful,
ailing wife, a number of half-fed and half-educated little children, a
dirty, miserable house, a bleak country round, and a set of wrong-headed
and insolent parishioners to keep straight, I venture to say he would
have looked, and been, a very different man in that railway-carriage
running up to London. Instead of the genial smiles that delighted his
fellow-travellers, (according to the newspaper-story,) his face would
have been sour, and his speech would have been snappish; he would have
leaned back in the corner of a second-class carriage, sadly calculating
the cost of his journey, and how part of it might be saved by going
without any dinner. Oh, if I found a four-leaved shamrock, I would
undertake to make a mighty deal of certain people I know! I would put an
end to their weary schemings to make the ends meet. I would cut off all
those wretched cares which jar miserably on the shaken nerves. I know
the burst of thankfulness and joy that would come, if some dismal load,
never to be cast off, were taken away. And I would take it off. I would
clear up the horrible muddle. I would make them happy: and in doing
_that_, I know that I should make them good.

* * * * *

But I have sought the four-leaved shamrock for a long time, and never
have found it; and so I am growing subdued to the conviction that I
never shall. Let us go back to the matter of Resignation, and think a
little longer about _that_.

Resignation, in any human being, means that things are not as you would
wish, and yet that you are content.

Who has all he wishes? There are many houses in this world in which
Resignation is the best thing that can be felt any more. The bitter blow
has fallen; the break has been made; the empty chair is left (perhaps a
very little chair); and never more, while Time goes on, can things be
as they were fondly wished and hoped. Resignation would need to be
cultivated by human beings; for all round us there is a multitude of
things very different from what we would wish. Not in your house, not
in your family, not in your street, not in your parish, not in your
country, and least of all in yourself, can you have things as you would
wish. And you have your choice of two alternatives. You must either
fret yourself into a nervous fever, or you must cultivate the habit of
Resignation. And very often Resignation does not mean that you are at
all reconciled to a thing, but just that you feel you can do nothing
to mend it. Some friend, to whom you are really attached, and whom
you often see, vexes and worries you by some silly and disagreeable
habit,--some habit which it is impossible you should ever like, or ever
even overlook; yet you try to make up your mind to it, because it cannot
be helped, and you would rather submit to it than lose your friend. You
hate the east-wind: it withers and pinches you, in body and soul:
yet you cannot live in a certain beautiful city without feeling the
east-wind many days in the year. And that city's advantages and
attractions are so many and great that no sane man with sound lungs
would abandon the city merely to escape the east-wind. Yet, though
resigned to the east-wind, you are anything but reconciled to it.

Resignation is not always a good thing. Sometimes it is a very bad
thing. You should never be resigned to things continuing wrong, when you
may rise and set them right. I dare say, in the Romish Church, there
were good men before Luther who were keenly alive to the errors and
evils that had crept into it, but who, in despair of making things
better, tried sadly to fix their thoughts upon other subjects: who
took to illuminating missals, or constructing systems of logic, or
cultivating vegetables in the garden of the monastery, or improving the
music in the chapel: quietly resigned to evils they judged irremediable.
Great reformers have not been resigned men. Luther was not resigned;
Howard was not resigned; Fowell Buxton was not resigned; George
Stephenson was not resigned. And there is hardly a nobler sight than
that of a man who determines that he will NOT make up his mind to the
continuance of some great evil: who determines that he will give his
life to battling with that evil to the last: who determines that either
that evil shall extinguish him, or he shall extinguish it. I reverence
the strong, sanguine mind, that resolves to work a revolution to better
things, and that is not afraid to hope it _can_ work a revolution. And
perhaps, my reader, we should both reverence it all the more that we
find in ourselves very little like it. It is a curious thing, and a sad
thing, to remark in how many people there is too much resignation. It
kills out energy. It is a weak, fretful, unhappy thing. People are
reconciled, in a sad sort of way, to the fashion in which things go on.
You have seen a poor, slatternly mother, in a way-side cottage, who has
observed her little children playing in the road before it, in the way
of passing carriages, angrily ordering the little things to come away
from their dangerous and dirty play; yet, when the children disobey
her, and remain where they were, just saying no more, making no farther
effort. You have known a master tell his man-servant to do something
about stable or garden, yet, when the servant does not do it, taking no
notice: seeing that he has been disobeyed, yet wearily resigned, feeling
that there is no use in always fighting. And I do not speak of the not
unfrequent cases in which the master, after giving his orders, comes to
discover that it is best they should not be carried out, and is very
glad to see them disregarded: I mean when he is dissatisfied that what
he has directed is not done, and wishes that it were done, and feels
worried by the whole affair, yet is so devoid of energy as to rest in a
fretful resignation. Sometimes there is a sort of sense as if one had
discharged his conscience by making a weak effort in the direction of
doing a thing, an effort which had not the slightest chance of being
successful. When I was a little boy, many years since, I used to
think this; and I was led to thinking it by remarking a singular
characteristic in the conduct of a school-companion. In those days, if
you were chasing some other boy who had injured or offended you, with
the design of retaliation, if you found you could not catch him, by
reason of his superior speed, you would have recourse to the following
expedient. If your companion was within a little space of you, though a
space you felt you could not make less, you would suddenly stick out one
of your feet, which would hook round his, and he, stumbling over it,
would fall. I trust I am not suggesting a mischievous and dangerous
trick to any boy of the present generation. Indeed, I have the firmest
belief that existing boys know all we used to know, and possibly more.
All this is by way of rendering intelligible what I have to say of my
old companion. He was not a good runner. And when another boy gave him
a sudden flick with a knotted handkerchief, or the like, he had little
chance of catching that other boy. Yet I have often seen him, when
chasing another, before finally abandoning the pursuit, stick out his
foot in the regular way, though the boy he was chasing was yards beyond
his reach. Often did the present writer meditate on that phenomenon, in
the days of his boyhood. It appeared curious that it should afford
some comfort to the evaded pursuer, to make an offer at upsetting the
escaping youth,--an offer which could not possibly be successful. But
very often, in after-life, have I beheld in the conduct of grown-up men
and women the moral likeness of that futile sticking-out of the foot.
I have beheld human beings who lived in houses always untidy and
disorderly, or whose affairs were in a horrible confusion and
entanglement, who now and then seemed roused to a a feeling that this
would not do, who querulously bemoaned their miserable lot, and made
some faint and futile attempt to set things right, attempts which never
had a chance to succeed, and which ended in nothing. Yet it seemed
somehow to pacify the querulous heart. I have known a clergyman, in a
parish with a bad population, seem suddenly to waken up to a conviction
that he must do something to mend matters, and set agoing some weak
little machinery, which could produce no appreciable result, and
which came to a stop in a few weeks. Yet that faint offer appeared to
discharge the claims of conscience, and after it the clergyman remained
long time in a comatose state of unhealthy Resignation. But it is a
miserable and a wrong kind of Resignation which dwells in that man who
sinks down, beaten and hopeless, in the presence of a recognized evil.
Such a man may be in a sense resigned, but, he cannot possibly be
content.

If you should ever, when you have reached middle age, turn over the
diary or the letters you wrote in the hopeful though foolish days when
you were eighteen or twenty, you will be aware how quietly and gradually
the lesson of Resignation has been taught you. You would have got into
a terrible state of excitement, if any one had told you then that you
would have to forego your most cherished hopes and wishes of that time;
and it would have tried you even more severely to be assured that in
not many years you would not care a single straw for the things and the
persons who were then uppermost in your mind and heart. What an entirely
new set of friends and interests is that which now surrounds you!
and how completely the old ones are gone: gone, like the sunsets you
remember in the summers of your childhood; gone, like the primroses that
grew in the woods where you wandered as a boy! Said my friend Smith to
me, a few days ago: "You remember Miss Jones, and all about that? I
met her yesterday, after ten years. She is a fat, middle-aged,
ordinary-looking woman. What a terrific fool I was!" Smith spoke to me
in the confidence of friendship; yet I think he was a little mortified
at the heartiness with which I agreed with him on the subject of his
former folly. He had got over it completely; and in seeing that he was
(at a certain period) a fool, he had come to discern that of which his
friends had always been aware. Of course, early interests do not always
die out. You remember Dr. Chalmers, and the ridiculous exhibition about
the wretched little likeness of an early sweetheart, not seen for forty
years, and long since in her grave. You remember the singular way in
which he signified his remembrance of her, in his famous and honored
age. I don't mean the crying, nor the walking up and down the
garden-walk calling her by fine names. I mean the taking out his card:
not his _carte_; you could understand _that_: but his visiting-card
bearing his name, and sticking it behind the portrait with two wafers.
Probably it pleased him to do so; and assuredly it did harm to no one
else. And we have all heard of the like things. Early affections are
sometimes, doubtless, cherished in the memory of the old. But still,
more material interests come in, and the old affection is crowded out
of its old place in the heart. And so those comparatively fanciful
disappointments sit lightly. The romance is gone. The mid-day sun
beats down, and _there_ lies the dusty way. When the cantankerous and
unamiable mother of Christopher North stopped his marriage with a person
at least as respectable as herself, on the ground that the person was
not good enough, we are told that the future professor nearly went
mad, and that he never quite got over it. But really, judging from
his writings and his biography, he bore up under it, after a little,
wonderfully well.

But looking back to the days which the old yellow letters bring back,
you will think to yourself, Where are the hopes and anticipations of
that time? You expected to be a great man, no doubt. Well, you know you
are not. You are a small man, and never will be anything else; yet
you are quite resigned. If there be an argument which stirs me to
indignation at its futility, and to wonder that any mortal ever regarded
it as of the slightest force, it is that which is set out in the famous
soliloquy in "Cato," as to the Immortality of the Soul. Will any sane
man say, that, if in this world you wish for a thing very much, and
anticipate it very clearly and confidently, you are therefore sure to
get it? If that were so, many a little schoolboy would end by driving
his carriage and four, who ends by driving no carriage at all. I have
heard of a man whose private papers were found after his death all
written over with his signature as he expected it would be when he
became Lord Chancellor. Let us say his peerage was to be as Lord Smith.
There it was, SMITH, C., SMITH, C., written in every conceivable
fashion, so that the signature, when needed, might be easy and imposing.
That man had very vividly anticipated the woolsack, the gold robe, and
all the rest. It need hardly be said, he attained none of these. The
famous argument, you know of course, is, that man has a great longing to
be immortal, and that therefore he is sure to be immortal. Rubbish! It
is not true that any longing after immortality exists in the heart of
a hundredth portion of the race. And if it were true, it would prove
immortality no more than the manifold signatures of SMITH, C., proved
that Smith was indeed to be Chancellor. No: we cling to the doctrine
of a Future Life; we could not live without it; but we believe it, not
because of undefined longings within ourselves, not because of reviving
plants and flowers, not because of the chrysalis and the butterfly,--but
because "our Saviour, Jesus Christ, hath abolished death, and brought
life and immortality to light through the gospel."

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