I can enjoy feeling melancholy, and there is a good deal ofsatisfaction about being thoroughly miserable; but nobody likes a fitof the blues. Nevertheless, everybody has them; notwithstandingwhich, nobody can tell why. There is no accounting for them. You arejust as likely to have one on the day after you have come into a largefortune as on the day after you have left your new silk umbrella inthe train. Its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what wouldprobably be produced by a combined attack of toothache, indigestion,and cold in the head. You become stupid, restless, and irritable;rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends; clumsy, maudlin,and quarrelsome; a nuisance to yourself and everybody about you.
While it is on you can do nothing and think of nothing, though feelingat the time bound to do something. You can't sit still so put on yourhat and go for a walk; but before you get to the corner of the streetyou wish you hadn't come out and you turn back. You open a book andtry to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickensis dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. Youthrow the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" thecat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think youwill write your letters, but after sticking at "Dearest Auntie: I findI have five minutes to spare, and so hasten to write to you," for aquarter of an hour, without being able to think of another sentence,you tumble the paper into the desk, fling the wet pen down upon thetable-cloth, and start up with the resolution of going to see theThompsons. While pulling on your gloves, however, it occurs to youthat the Thompsons are idiots; that they never have supper; and thatyou will be expected to jump the baby. You curse the Thompsons anddecide not to go.
By this time you feel completely crushed. You bury your face in yourhands and think you would like to die and go to heaven. You pictureto yourself your own sick-bed, with all your friends and relationsstanding round you weeping. You bless them all, especially the youngand pretty ones. They will value you when you are gone, so you say toyourself, and learn too late what they have lost; and you bitterlycontrast their presumed regard for you then with their decided want ofveneration now.
These reflections make you feel a little more cheerful, but only for abrief period; for the next moment you think what a fool you must be toimagine for an instant that anybody would be sorry at anything thatmight happen to you. Who would care two straws (whatever preciseamount of care two straws may represent) whether you are blown up, orhung up, or married, or drowned? Nobody cares for you. You neverhave been properly appreciated, never met with your due deserts in anyone particular. You review the whole of your past life, and it ispainfully apparent that you have been ill-used from your cradle.
Half an hour's indulgence in these considerations works you up into astate of savage fury against everybody and everything, especiallyyourself, whom anatomical reasons alone prevent your kicking.
Bed-time at last comes, to save you from doing something rash, and youspring upstairs, throw off your clothes, leaving them strewn all overthe room, blow out the candle, and jump into bed as if you had backedyourself for a heavy wager to do the whole thing against time. Thereyou toss and tumble about for a couple of hours or so, varying themonotony by occasionally jerking the clothes off and getting out andputting them on again. At length you drop into an uneasy and fitfulslumber, have bad dreams, and wake up late the next morning.
At least, this is all we poor single men can do under thecircumstances. Married men bully their wives, grumble at the dinner,and insist on the children's going to bed. All of which, creating, asit does, a good deal of disturbance in the house, must be a greatrelief to the feelings of a man in the blues, rows being the only formof amusement in which he can take any interest.
The symptoms of the infirmity are much the same in every case, but theaffliction itself is variously termed. The poet says that "a feelingof sadness comes o'er him." 'Arry refers to the heavings of hiswayward heart by confiding to Jimee that he has "got the bloominghump." Your sister doesn't know what is the matter with her to-night.
She feels out of sorts altogether and hopes nothing is going tohappen. The every-day young man is "so awful glad to meet you, oldfellow," for he does "feel so jolly miserable this evening." As formyself, I generally say that "I have a strange, unsettled feelingto-night" and "think I'll go out."By the way, it never does come except in the evening. In thesun-time, when the world is bounding forward full of life, we cannotstay to sigh and sulk. The roar of the working day drowns the voicesof the elfin sprites that are ever singing their low-toned _miserere_in our ears. In the day we are angry, disappointed, or indignant, butnever "in the blues" and never melancholy. When things go wrong atten o'clock in the morning we--or rather you--swear and knock thefurniture about; but if the misfortune comes at ten P.M., we readpoetry or sit in the dark and think what a hollow world this is.
But, as a rule, it is not trouble that makes us melancholy. Theactuality is too stern a thing for sentiment. We linger to weep overa picture, but from the original we should quickly turn our eyes away.
There is no pathos in real misery: no luxury in real grief. We do nottoy with sharp swords nor hug a gnawing fox to our breast for choice.
When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care tokeep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a painto them. However they may have suffered from it at first, therecollection has become by then a pleasure. Many dear old ladies whodaily look at tiny shoes lying in lavender-scented drawers, and weepas they think of the tiny feet whose toddling march is done, andsweet-faced young ones who place each night beneath their pillow somelock that once curled on a boyish head that the salt waves have kissedto death, will call me a nasty cynical brute and say I'm talkingnonsense; but I believe, nevertheless, that if they will askthemselves truthfully whether they find it unpleasant to dwell thus ontheir sorrow, they will be compelled to answer "No." Tears are assweet as laughter to some natures. The proverbial Englishman, we knowfrom old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and theEnglishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadnessitself.
I am not sneering. I would not for a moment sneer at anything thathelps to keep hearts tender in this hard old world. We men are coldand common-sensed enough for all; we would not have women the same.
No, no, ladies dear, be always sentimental and soft-hearted, as youare--be the soothing butter to our coarse dry bread. Besides,sentiment is to women what fun is to us. They do not care for ourhumor, surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief. And whoshall say that their mode of enjoyment is not as sensible as ours?
Why assume that a doubled-up body, a contorted, purple face, and agaping mouth emitting a series of ear-splitting shrieks point to astate of more intelligent happiness than a pensive face reposing upona little white hand, and a pair of gentle tear-dimmed eyes lookingback through Time's dark avenue upon a fading past?
I am glad when I see Regret walked with as a friend--glad because Iknow the saltness has been washed from out the tears, and that thesting must have been plucked from the beautiful face of Sorrow ere wedare press her pale lips to ours. Time has laid his healing hand uponthe wound when we can look back upon the pain we once fainted underand no bitterness or despair rises in our hearts. The burden is nolonger heavy when we have for our past troubles only the same sweetmingling of pleasure and pity that we feel when old knight-heartedColonel Newcome answers "_adsum_" to the great roll-call, or when Tomand Maggie Tulliver, clasping hands through the mists that havedivided them, go down, locked in each other's arms, beneath theswollen waters of the Floss.
Talking of poor Tom and Maggie Tulliver brings to my mind a saying ofGeorge Eliot's in connection with this subject of melancholy. Shespeaks somewhere of the "sadness of a summer's evening." Howwonderfully true--like everything that came from that wonderfulpen--the observation is! Who has not felt the sorrowful enchantmentof those lingering sunsets? The world belongs to Melancholy then, athoughtful deep-eyed maiden who loves not the glare of day. It is nottill "light thickens and the crow wings to the rocky wood" that shesteals forth from her groves. Her palace is in twilight land. It isthere she meets us. At her shadowy gate she takes our hand in hersand walks beside us through her mystic realm. We see no form, butseem to hear the rustling of her wings.
Even in the toiling hum-drum city her spirit comes to us. There is asomber presence in each long, dull street; and the dark river creepsghostlike under the black arches, as if bearing some hidden secretbeneath its muddy waves.
In the silent country, when the trees and hedges loom dim and blurredagainst the rising night, and the bat's wing flutters in our face, andthe land-rail's cry sounds drearily across the fields, the spell sinksdeeper still into our hearts. We seem in that hour to be standing bysome unseen death-bed, and in the swaying of the elms we hear the sighof the dying day.
A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its lightour cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread andcheese--ay, and even kisses--do not seem the only things worthstriving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood inupon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome,we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round withthose dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop,but a stately temple wherein man may worship, and where at times inthe dimness his groping hands touch God's.