Some Private Views. James Payn
folks who come my way, indeed, seem to remember their physical ailments very distinctly, to judge by the way they talk of them; and are exceedingly apprehensive of their recurrence. Nay, it is curious to see how some old men will resent the compliments of their juniors on their state of health or appearance. 'Stuff and nonsense!' cried old Sam Rogers, grimly; 'I tell you there is no such thing as a fine old man.' In a humbler walk of life I remember to have heard a similar but more touching reply. It was upon the great centenarian question raised by Mr. Thorns. An old woman in a workhouse, said to be a hundred years of age, was sent for by the Board of Guardians, to decide the point by her personal testimony. One can imagine the half-dozen portly prosperous figures, and the contrast their appearance offered to that of the bent and withered crone. 'Now, Betty,' said the chairman with unctuous patronage, 'you look hale and hearty enough, yet they tell me that you are a hundred years old; is this really true?' 'God Almighty knows, sir,' was her reply, 'but I feel a thousand.'
And there are so many people nowadays who 'feel a thousand.'
It is for this reason that the gift of old age is unwished for, and the prospect of future life without encouragement. It is the modern conviction that there will be some kind of work in it; and even though what we shall be set to do may be 'wrought with tumult of acclaim,' we have had enough of work. What follows, almost as a matter of course, is that the thought of possible extinction has lost its terrors. Heaven and its glories may have still their charms for those who are not wearied out with toil in this life; but the slave draws for himself a far other picture of home. His is no passionate cry to be admitted into the eternal city; he murmurs sullenly, 'Let me rest.'
It was a favourite taunt with the sceptics of old—those Early Fathers of infidelity, who used to occupy themselves so laboriously with scraping at the rind of the Christian Faith—that until the Cross arose men were not afraid of Death. But that arrow has lost its barb. The Fear of Death, even among professing Christians, is now comparatively rare; I do not mean merely among dying men—in whom those who have had acquaintance with deathbeds tell us they see it scarcely ever—but with the quick and hale. Even with very ignorant persons, the idea that things may be a great deal worse for us hereafter than even at present is not generally entertained as respects themselves. A clergyman who was attending a sick man in his parish expressed a hope to the wife that she took occasion to remind her husband of his spiritual condition. 'Oh yes, sir,' she replied, 'many and many a time have I woke him up o' nights, and cried, "John, John, you little know the torments as is preparing for you."' But the good woman, it seems, was not disturbed by any such dire imaginings upon her own account.
Higher in the social scale, the apprehension of a Gehenna, or at all events of such a one as our forefathers almost universally believed in, is rapidly dying out. The mathematician tells us that even as a question of numbers, 'about one in ten, my good sir, by the most favourable computations,' the thing is incredible; the philanthropist inquires indignantly, 'Is the city Arab then, who grows to be thief and felon as naturally as a tree puts forth its leaves, to be damned in both worlds?' and I notice that even the clergy who come my way, and take their weak glass of negus while the coach changes horses, no longer insist upon the point, but, at the worst, 'faintly trust the larger hope.'
Notwithstanding these comparatively cheerful views upon a subject so important to all passengers on life's highway, the general feeling is, as I have said, one of profound dissatisfaction; the good old notion that whatever is is right, is fast disappearing; and in its place there is a doubt—rarely expressed except among the philosophers, with whom, as I have said, I have nothing to do—a secret, harassing, and unwelcome doubt respecting the divine government of the world. It is a question which the very philosophers are not likely to settle even among themselves, but it has become very obtrusive and important. Men raise their eyebrows and shrug their shoulders when it is alluded to, instead, as of old, of pulverising the audacious questioner on the spot, or even (as would have happened at a later date) putting him into Coventry; they have no opinion to offer upon the subject, or at all events do not wish to talk about it. But it is no longer, be it observed, 'bad form' in a general way to do so; it is only that the topic is personally distasteful.
The once famous advocate of analogy threw a bitter seed among mankind when he suggested, in all innocence, and merely for the sake of his own argument, that as the innocent suffered for the guilty in this world, so it might be in the world to come; and it is bearing bitter fruit. To feel aweary at the Midway Inn is bad enough; but to be journeying to no home, and perhaps even to some harsher school than we yet wot of, is indeed a depressing reflection.
Hence it comes, I think, or partly hence, that there is now no fun in the world. Wit we have, and an abundance of grim humour, which evokes anything but mirth. Nothing would astonish us in the Midway Inn so much as a peal of laughter. A great writer (though it must be confessed scarcely an amusing one), who has recently reached his journey's end, used to describe his animal spirits depreciatingly, as being at the best but vegetable spirits. And that is now the way with us all. When Charles Dickens died, it was confidently stated in a great literary journal that his loss, so far from affecting 'the gaiety of nations,' would scarcely be felt at all; the power of rousing tears and laughter being (I suppose the writer thought) so very common. That prophecy has been by no means fulfilled. But, what is far worse than there being no humorous writers amongst us, the faculty of appreciating even the old ones is dying out. There is no such thing as high spirits anywhere. It is observable, too, how very much public entertainments have increased of late—a tacit acknowledgment of dulness at home—while, instead of the lively, if somewhat boisterous, talk of our fathers, we have drawing-room dissertations on art, and dandy drivel about blue china.
There is one pleasure only that takes more and more root amongst us, and never seems to fail, and that is making money. To hear the passengers at the Midway Inn discourse upon this topic, you would think they were all commercial travellers. It is most curious how the desire for pecuniary gain has infected even the idlest, who of course take the shortest cut to it by way of the race-course. I see young gentlemen, blond and beardless, telling the darkest secrets to one another, affecting, one would think, the fate of Europe, but which in reality relate to the state of the fetlock of the brother to Boanerges. Their earnestness (which is reserved for this enthralling topic) is quite appalling. In their elders one has long been accustomed to it, but these young people should really know better. The interest excited in society by 'scratchings' has never been equalled since the time of the Cock Lane ghost. If men would only 'lose their money and look pleasant' without talking about it, I shouldn't mind; but they will make it a subject of conversation, as though everyone who liked his glass of wine should converse upon 'the vintages.' One looks for it in business people and forgives it; but everyone is now for business.
The reverence that used to belong to Death is now only paid to it in the case of immensely rich persons, whose wealth is spoken of with bated breath. 'He died, sir, worth two millions; a very warm man.' If you happen to say, though with all reasonable probability and even with Holy Writ to back you, 'He is probably warmer by this time,' you are looked upon as a Communist. What the man was is nothing, what he made is everything. It is the gold alone that we now value: the temple that might have sanctified the gold is of no account. This worship of mere wealth has, it is true, this advantage over the old adoration of birth, that something may possibly be got out of it; to cringe and fawn upon the people that have blue blood is manifestly futile, since the peculiarity is not communicable, but it is hoped that, by being shaken up in the same social bag with millionaires, something may be attained by what is technically called the 'sweating' process. So far as I have observed, however, the results are small, while the operation is to the last degree disagreeable.
What is very significant of this new sort of golden age is that a literature of its own has arisen, though of an anomalous kind. It is presided over by a sort of male Miss Kilmansegge, who is also a model of propriety. It is as though the dragon that guarded the apples of Hesperides should be a dragon of virtue. Under the pretence of extolling prudence and perseverance, he paints money-making as the highest good, and calls it thrift; and the popularity of this class of book is enormous. The heroes are all 'self-made' men who come to town with that proverbial half-crown which has the faculty of accumulation that used to be confined to snowballs. Like the daughters of the horse-leech, their cry is 'Give, give,' only instead of blood they want