Chapter V: The Curse of Idleness

Or fia dunque giammai, che tu, Ozio, possi esser grato veramente, se non quando succedi a degne occupazioni. L'ozio vile et inerte voglio, che ad un animo generoso sia la maggior fatica, che aver egli possa, se non gli rappresenta dopo lodabile esercizio e lavoro.

GIORDANO BRUNO.--_Spaccio._

The consequences of this little scene were manifold.

"Papa," said Violet to her father on the following day, "you have done what I knew you would do, and what I accept as a presage for the future."

"And what is that, my dear?"

"Sent Blanche some money."

"Who told you so?" exclaimed he, greatly surprised.

"I divined it," she answered, with a quiet smile.

"You ... you are mistaken, Violet, ... I send ... I have renounced her."

"Yes, but your heart speaks for her in secret, and in secret you send money. Though I question whether sixty pounds..."

"Fifty," interrupted her father.

"Oh, then, you did know of it?" she said, archly.

Meredith Vyner bit his lip.

"Sixty was the sum Mama gave, at any rate, because Rose, who was present, told me so."

"Kind, generous creature!" ejaculated Vyner. "She must have added the other ten from her own purse. Violet, you have guessed aright, but keep the secret, unless you wish me to withhold even my underhand charity from your wretched sister."

Violet promised to do so; but how great was her scorn of her mother's hypocrisy, when she thus found her suspicions verified! From her knowledge of her father and mother, she had at once guessed the real state of the case, and confusedly, but strongly, suspected the motive of the latter.

This was the way in which their mutual hatred was nourished. Violet was not a dupe, and her mother saw that she was not.

On Cecil, the influence of this gift was fatal.

"This comes most fortunately," he said; "for not only do I now begin to see that our income is barely sufficient to meet our scanty expenditure, but the more I advance in my 'Nero,' the more am I impressed with the necessity for not hurrying it. All great works demand time and labour. Were I to hurry the execution I should spoil it, and too much depends upon success for me to be precipitate."

He was sincere in saying so; he was his own dupe in asserting that what he most needed was ample leisure in which to elaborate his conception. He caught at the excuse offered to his idleness, and like all men, covered his weakness in the imposing folds of an aphorism. The brain is singularly fertile in inventing plausible reasons to excuse weaknesses.

Labour is a sublime necessity: it is beneficence under a rude aspect. But although so beneficent to man, it is radically antipathetic to his nature. All men are _constrained_ to work. Poverty or ambition are the invariable taskmasters, and it is only by dint of the strong stimulus of want, or the stronger dictates of indomitable will, that human nature, vagabond as are its tendencies, can be made to persevere in the tasks set before it.

What wonder, then, if men under all conditions avidly seize upon every occasion which enables them for a moment to escape from the tyranny of work? What wonder if this weak, wayward, susceptible Cecil, who had laboured cheerily under the impulsion of necessity, now forgot the sweet delights of his daily task, and relapsed into his old habits of dreaming idleness?

There was no longer any remarkable hurry. His daily existence did not depend upon the immediate accomplishment of his task. He could wait, he could mature his plans, he could work only when the inspiration came to him; there was no need to harass an unwilling; brain, he could bide his time. To any one who knew him, it would be easy to foresee that from the moment he was released from the immediate necessity of labour, his time would be frittered away in sterile efforts. It is only genius, which, goaded by an irresistible inward impulse to transmute into art all that it has felt, labours with courageous love, and sings because it cannot choose but sing. Talent of every kind needs an external stimulus, and Cecil was a man of talent, not a man of genius.

Blanche confirmed him in his opinions; partly, perhaps, out of sincere belief in him and in all he said, which made her think he could not be in error; partly, also, out of a little egotism of love which made her rejoice in every hour that he could snatch from labour to spend at her side. He was so loveable, that she would deserve pardon, even if her sex's ignorance of life had not concealed from her the enormity of her fault. There was something so caressing in his manner, that few people withstood it; and to her he was the perfection of tenderness, delicacy and amiability. Persons of his lively, susceptible organization, are usually fascinating in their manners--there is a _laisser aller_ (which in him was tempered with perfect good breeding), a frankness, a gaiety, and a general consideration for the feelings and opinions of others, founded on a desire of universal approbation, which create more regard than great qualities in a less agreeable exterior. If he was charming to others, what was he to the wife he loved!

She wished to have him with her, and he was but too glad to gratify her wish. A little excursion to Richmond occupied one day; a visit to some Exhibition broke in upon another. There were always pleasant walks and satisfactory excuses. He was not idle, he said; his brain was working, his ideas were gradually becoming clearer; the details stood out more distinctly in his imagination; and 'Nero' would benefit by this delay.

The effect of alms is always enervating, however it may relieve a present want; and the contributions of Mrs. Vyner were a species of alms. This was the case with Cecil. His sense of independence--his healthy confidence in his own powers--becomes destroyed. Had Vyner made a distinct allowance to his daughter, it would have then formed a certain part of their income, and Cecil would have no more relaxed his efforts than he did when his own small but definite income was all he could rely on. But this uncertain charity--this indefinite alms-giving which Mrs. Vyner's first gift seemed to indicate, had the injurious effect of all unascertained indeterminate assistance: it made Cecil rely on it as on a fund.

In this mental analysis I am exhibiting motives in all their nudity, but the reader will not suppose that because I drag them into the light of day, they were as clear to Cecil, in whose breast they were enveloped in the sophisms and obscurities with which men hide from themselves their own infirmities.

As Cecil sat after breakfast smoking his cigars, and watching the graceful involutions of the clouds he puffed before him, he honestly believed that he was not wasting his time. Because he occasionally arrested his wandering thoughts, and fixed them on his plans for 'Nero,' or for his Comic Opera, he fancied he was maturing them. He mistook reveries for meditation. And because in those hours of pensive idleness he made but trifling progress in the elaboration of his plans, he imagined that elaboration must necessarily be slow, and demanded more time. Thus his very infirmity was alimented, and each day's error only made the original mistake more plausible.

Who has indulged in all the enchantment of the world of reverie, wherein materials are so plastic, and triumphs are so easy,--when man seems to be endowed with the god-like privilege of creation, and his thoughts take shape without an effort, passing from the creative mind into the created act, without the hard obstacle of a medium,--who is there, I say, that, having known such intellectual triumph, has not felt humbled and discouraged when, descending from the region of reverie and intention, to that of reality and execution, he has become aware of the immensity of labour, of hard resolute labour to be undergone before he can incarnate his ideas into works? The unwritten poems--the unpainted pictures--the unnoted melodies are, it is often said, transcendantly superior to those poems, pictures, and melodies which artists succeed in producing. Perhaps so; but the world justly takes no account of unaccomplished promises, of unfought victories. What it applauds is the actual victory won in earnest struggle with difficulty; the heroes it crowns are those who have enriched them with trophies, not those who might have done so.

But Cecil was content to dream of victory--to "dally with the faint surmise" of beauty--to plan, to hope, to dream--but not to act. He would stand before his easel, looking at his canvass, or playing listlessly with the colours on his palette, but never boldly using his pencil; and because "ideas" did not come to him in that irresolute mood, he threw the palette down, lighted a cigar, and declared himself unfit for work that day.

He then would seat himself at the piano to try if Euterpe were more propitious. His fingers running over the keys would naturally suggest to him some melody that he liked; it was played, of course, or a fragment of it--then another fragment; then he began to sing--his voice was good, and it pleased him to hear it. In this way another hour or so would pass, and he would then take up his hat and stroll out. Day after day was this miserable farce of "awaiting inspiration" played with the same success.

Enthusiastic artists and critics will assuredly award him their esteem, and proclaim him a genuine artist--a real genius--when they hear that Cecil had a profound contempt for "mechanical fellows," who sat down to their work whether under "inspiration," or under the mere impulse to finish what they have begun. He was really eloquent in his scorn of the "drudges." Genius, in his eyes, was a divine caprice. It came and went in moments of excitement: a sort of intermittent phrenzy. Being a scholar, he entirely approved of Plato's theory to that effect, as developed in the dialogue of _Ion_. The business of an artist was consequently to await those moments, and then to set himself to work, when his soul was stung to ecstacy by overpowering visions of beauty.

There is, in the present day, an overplus of raving about genius, and its prescriptive rights of vagabondage, its irresponsibility, and its insubordination to all the laws of common sense. Common sense is so prosaic! Yet it appears from the history of art that the real men of genius did not rave about anything of the kind. They were resolute workers, not idle dreamers. They knew that their genius was not a phrenzy, not a supernatural thing at all, but simply the colossal proportions of faculties which in a lesser degree, the meanest of mankind shared with them. They knew that whatever it was, it would not enable them to accomplish with success the things they undertook, unless they devoted their whole energies to the task.

Would Michael Angelo have built St. Peter's, sculptured the Moses, and made the walls of the Vatican sacred with the presence of his gigantic pencil, had he awaited inspiration while his works were in progress. Would Rubens have dazzled all the galleries of Europe, had he allowed his brush to hesitate? would Beethoven and Mozart have poured out their souls into such abundant melodies? would Göthe have written the sixty volumes of his works,--had they not often, very often, sat down like drudges to an unwilling task, and found themselves speedily engrossed with that to which they were so averse?

"Use the pen," says a thoughtful and subtle author, "there is no magic in it; _but it keeps the mind from staggering about!_"* This is an aphorism which should be printed in letters of gold over the studio door of every artist. Use the pen or the brush; do not pause, do not trifle, have no misgivings; but keep your mind from staggering about by fixing it resolutely on the matter before you, and then all that you can do you will do: inspiration will not enable you to do more. Write or paint: act, do not hesitate. If what you have written or painted should turn out imperfect, you can correct it, and the correction will be more efficient than that correction which takes place in the shifting thoughts of hesitation. You will learn from your failures infinitely more than from the vague wandering reflections of a mind loosened from its moorings; because the failure is absolute, it is precise, it stands bodily before you, your eyes and judgment cannot be juggled with, you know whether a certain verse is harmonious, whether the rhyme is there or not there; but in the other case you not only can juggle with yourself but do so, the very indeterminateness of your thoughts makes you do so; as long as the idea is not positively clothed in its artistic form, it is impossible accurately to say what it will be. The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one object. Let your pen fall, begin to trifle with blotting-paper, look at the ceiling, bite your nails, and otherwise dally with your purpose, and you waste your time, scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous energy necessary for your task. Some men dally and dally, hesitate and trifle until the last possible moment, and when the printer's boy is knocking at the door, they begin: necessity goading them, they write with singular rapidity, and with singular success; they are astonished at themselves. What is the secret? Simply this; they have had no time to hesitate. Concentrating their powers upon the one object before them, they have done what they _could_ do.

* Essays written during the intervals of business.

Impatient reader! if I am tedious, forgive me. These lines may meet the eyes of some to whom they are specially addressed, and may awaken thoughts in their minds not unimportant to their future career.

Forgive me, if only because I have taken what is called the prosaic side! I have not flattered the shallow sophisms which would give a gloss to idleness and incapacity. I have not availed myself of the splendid tirades, so easy to write, about the glorious privileges of genius. My "preaching" may be very ineffectual, but at any rate it advocates the honest dignity of labour; let my cause excuse my tediousness.