Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West/Part First, 8
VIII
THE MOTHER OF COMMON SENSE
I ONCE knew a dreamer of golden
dreams. He was young, handsome,
robust and impecunious; and he was betrothed
to that fickle, elusive, flirtatious
and fascinating creature, Fame. He nursed
his genius in a little studio for sevral years,
setting up on a pedestal near his typewriter
an image of his Beloved, whom he secretly
and openly denounced. He
covered her with flowers of his dream at
night, and pretended in the open day to
be impervious to her wiles and charms.
They coquetted and flirted and quarrelled
for a couple of years, and were, indeed,
periodically estranged. Once he turned her
away from his door, because she doubted
the value of the dowry he offered her. A
trinket, she called it, a brummagem!
But who shall evaluate genius? Who, but Genius, is competent to say whether or not it is a fitting dowry for that elusive and fickle Mistress? And though it had stood the test-fire of sacrifice, who is qualified to pronounce it genuine or false? My friend answered these questions to his own satisfaction and went one day to the market-place. But the market-men would not listen, would not be detained. The jewellers of art shook their heads; the merciers and the milliners of literature smiled; the grocers were amused; the antiquarians were annoyed. And everywhere the little terracotta gods of the bazaar, like old Buddha himself, gazed eternally upon their navels.
The dreamer of golden dreams returned to his studio and straightway burned the image of his Beloved. And he pinned on the wall, above his typewriter, the following: I lost my faith one morning in the market-place and found it the following day in a cash register.
Even the cash register, as far as he was concerned, would not disclose the secret of the transmutation. Although he invoked it every day for several months, tried to bribe it with attractive objects from the toy-shop of Cleverness, shook before it the ivory rattle of Flippancy, there was no response,—not the least sign of favor. To him it seemed locked and sealed forever and ever. But one of the little imp-gods that guarded it, once grinned. Which decided my friend. H shook the dust of the bazaar from his feet, the dust of the studio he shook from his soul, and hied him to the solitude of the hills.
There I met him one day sitting under a tree near a running stream, still nursing, as I first supposed, his genius. He was still handsome, but neither robust, did he seem, nor impecunious. In fact, he had solved, he told me, the economic problem, and was, therefore, contemplating suicide.
—But this damned stream is not deep enough anywhere. And I have not the courage to hang myself or put a bullet through my brain. Brain? I don't think I have any left. I'm all nerves, nerves—and white corpuscles. I can't even bear the sight of flowers. And the chatter of these birds is irritating, exasperating, maddening. What brought you here? On a hike? I wish I could go with you. But my legs can't carry me anywhere beyond my own hell. The solitude of the hills is a hollow mockery—the healing influence of the forest, a fake, a sham—worse than a doctor's prescription.... And this damned stream is not deep enough anywhere.
He got up coughing, a deep, dry, racking cough, which brought the livid glow to his cheeks; and turning his back to me, he waved his hand—a silent farewell. I was, indeed, sorry, but there was nothing to be done. He was beyond the reach of any human solace. I was certain, however, that he had not the courage, even if the stream was deep enough anywhere. But the spark of genius was not extinguished in him. It scintellated in his eyes, and seemed to feed on the tuberculosis germs in his lungs. I wondered which will survive the other, or whether he himself would survive both.
Two years later—miracle of miracles!—I met him again in New York—on a subway train. He recognized me first, hailed me with an exclamation and a slap of the hand. It was the hand of a strong, robust and cheerful being. I confess I would never have recognized him as the Timon of the hills I once met. My first feeling, after the delectable surprise, was as one of irresistible curiosity. How did he do it? How, in the eternal vicissitude of fate and genius, did he become reconciled? And a strap-hanger to boot! He looked prosperous, to be sure; but there was in his face and manner an unmistakable something which the city dwellers acquire—a rigidity of expression which marks their pauses and moments of quiescence. They forget, and seem of a sudden to remember, that they are parts, more or less important, of a gigantic machine. My friend seemed eager nevertheless to tell me how he recovered his health and his faith in life.
We walked out of the Subway as hilarious as children coming out of school, and went to a cafe of his choice. The head-waiter saluted him smiling; the waiters were eager to serve him. But he chose his table with the knowingness and ease of a habitué, and ordered the drinks.
"I suppose," he said, as he laid down his glass, "you are wondering how it came about. I have made a discovery; and what is best, I was the first to profit by it. A disease of the mind is responsible more or less for all our physical ills; egotism is the most pernicious bacillus of the mind; and this bacillus feeds, not only on dreams, ambitions, illusions, but on the general unrest, the social chaos of the times. Is there a cure? There is indeed. At least for the individual. Starve the bacillus first. Find you an anchor, a job. And don't forget, the nearest port in a storm. I found mine in a newspaper office, where I am now writing editorials for the enlightenment and guidance of mankind. My ego? It is dead as far as mankind and I are concerned. But my friends in the office deny that it is; and what is more strange, it's even relishable, they say, pickled as it is in anonymity. Yes, the work is interesting, though sometimes annoying and often amusing—to myself. An editorial writer is the Keeper, you might say, of the People's Conscience. And his work, from day to day, is a picture gallery of his mind. The variety is infinite and bewildering even to himself. For if he goes through the gallery after a month or two of copy-making, he could scarcely distinguish one picture from another. And yet, they are all his own, made by his hand, after his very image! Anonymity, of course, is his salvation. It's very interesting, very amusing, indeed. And conducive, as you see, of health and cheerfulness. Let's have another drink."
The succession aroused in him a ruminating, reminiscing humor. And our little corner table, as soon as I mentioned the hills, became a confessional.
"We are made or marred," he said, "more often marred by an excess of affection, which develops in us a querulous, petulent, supersensitive nature. If our relatives and friends would be a little indifferent or even resentful, it would fare better with us. My immediate surroundings in those mountain solitudes were absurdly Christian, to say the least. My mother, my sister, and my brother, with whom I lived, idolized me, idealized even my defects and idiosyncracies. Yes, I have been made a tyrant by my own people; and had I the courage, I might have become an assassin or done violence even to myself. That stream"—this with a chuckle—"was not deep enough anywhere.
"But I too—I invoke your kind consideration—I too have been tyrannized by a principle: tolerance has always been the despot of my conduct. Even freedom has its fetters. For while everything seemed to clash, while I continually found myself out of sorts with everybody around me, I had to suffer them to do as they pleased, because it was my principle always to do as I please. And how much we have to tolerate for a principle, and from it, when we are too conscientious to be modest and sane. Oh, the tortures I have suffered in those days in suffering those who shared my home and table to have their way. You must have thought me mad, when you saw me that day, or umbrageous to a degree of madness. But I was all nerves, believe me. And nothing seemed to sooth my aching nerves as breaking something.
"And yet, when I threw a plate at the servant, because she came into the dining room in her sabots—we had a French maid from the Midi who would not for the world forgo her wooden shoes—tuk, tuk, tuk on the wooden floor is maddening in the mountain silences—it was because that French slattern, who did as she pleased in her own little way, did not go the length of her desire and throw her sabots in my face. I think, I am certain, that a sabot on the head from that servant would have cured me of my disease.
"For supersensitiveness is nothing but a disease produced by submission in your household and aggravated by fawning or by an excess of affection. Sincerity in either case did not help to extenuate their fault or mine. But my principle of tolerance would exercise its sway again, and, instead of throwing plates or smashing an earthen pitcher in a dramatic rage before a cowed audience of lovers, I would find myself nibbling at my own soul, eating my very heart in unrighteous anger. My nerves, taught and overcharged, would twitch for hours at a stretch, and I could not for days as much as put two and two together. During which time I could see nothing but evil intentions and malign purposes around me. If my mother prayed at noon, she was doing so to annoy me; if my brother came to the table in his shirt-sleeves, he was doing so to see how much I could tolerate—how true I was to my principle; if my sister had her breakfast in her room, it was not, I imagined, from a delicate regard for the Tyrant of the Establishment, who insisted on the etiquette of the table, but with malice a-forethought. And so, the days tragically dragged and palled, until I adopted the Trappist system. For a week or ten days at a time, I would go into silence, and all apparently would go well, not with me, however, but with my household. The repression accentuated my trouble, aggravated my disease. The asylum stared me in the face. But I saved myself, as you see. Indeed, only when I left my dear good people and put up again in the cold, hard solitude of the crowd in the city, where toleration is neither a principle nor an article of faith, but simply a matter of necessity, was I cured of my querulous, petulent, acerbic, atrabilious, misanthropic abominations. And cured too of my egotism and all the illusions and all the vanities it engenders. The City hath its healing balm, my friend."
And he raised his glass.
"To the Mother of Common Sense—the rest of her children don't count for much—to the great City."