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Sera tamen respexitLibertas. -- Virgil.
A Clerk I was in London gay.
-- OKEEFE.
IF peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life -- thy shining youth -- in the irksome fi of an office; to have thy prison days prolohrough middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived tet that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.
It is now six and thirty years siook my seat at the desk in Ming-lane. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from the abundant play-time, and the frequently-intervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours a-day attenda a ting-house. But time partially reciles us to anything. I gradually became tent -- doggedly tented, as wild animals in cages.
It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the musid the ballad-singers -- the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a week-day sauhrough the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful -- are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over -- No busy faces to recreate the idle man who plates them ever passing by -- the very face of business a charm by trast to his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but unhapp<var>..</var>y tenances -- or half-happy at best -- of emancipated `prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and there a servant maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour; and livelily expressing the hollowness of a days pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on that day look anything but fortable.
But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alo me up through the year, and made my duraolerable. But when the week came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me? or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent iless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome ao find out how to make the most of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, ting upon the fifty-oedious weeks that must intervene before suother snatch would e. Still the prospect of its ing threw something of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom.
Indepely of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business. This, during my latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it was visible in the lines of my tenance. My health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I should be found unequal. Besides my day-light servitude, I served ain all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my ats, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospeancipatioed itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul.
My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me uporouble legible in my tenance; but I did not know that it had raised the suspis of any of my employers, when, oh of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L----, the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I holy made fession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged tn his service. He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I remained lab uhe impression that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this mahe most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go home (it might be about eight oclock) I received an awful summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formidable back parlour. I thought, now my time is surely e, I have done for myself, I am going to he told that they have no longer occasion for me. L---- I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me, -- when to my ut<s></s>ter astonishment B---- , the eldest partner, began a formal harao me on the length of my services, my very meritorious duct during the whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? I protest I never had the fideo think as much). He went on to dest on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how my heart panted !) and asking me a few questions as to the amount of my own property, of which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of my aced salary -- a magnifit offer! I do not know what I answered between surprise and gratitude, but it was uood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went home -- for ever. This noble -- be gratitude forbids me to ceal their names -- I owe to the kindness of the most munifit firm in the world -- the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosa, and Lacy.
Esto perpetua!
For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too fused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the dition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years fi. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time iernity -- for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to their ary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are suffit; and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of my dition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old tra holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away, but I do not read in that violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but dle-light Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in by-gone winters. I walk, read or scribble (as now) just whe seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it e to me. I am like the man
----Thats born, and has his years e to him,
In some gree.
"Years," you will say! "what is this superannuated simpleton calculating upon? He has already told us, he is past fifty."
I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will fiill a young fellow. For that is the only true time, which a man properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other peoples time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My te years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preg thirty. `Tis a fair rule-of-three sum.
Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the e of my freedom, and of wbbr>9９ｌib?</abbr>hich all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the ting House. I could not ceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks, with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, been closely associated -- being suddenly removed from them -- they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friends death:
---- `Twas but just now he went away;
I have not since had time to shed a tear;
Ahe distance does the same appear
As if he had been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure iy.
To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them once or twice sio visit my old desk-fellows -- my co-brethren of the quill -- that I had left below iate militant. Not all the kindness with which they received me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old desk; the peg there I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I k must be, but I could not take it kindly. D----l take me, if I could not feel some remorse -- beast, if I had not, -- at quitting my old peers, the faithful partners of my toils for six and thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and drums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been sed then after all? or was I a coward simply ? Well, it is too late to repent; and I also know, that these suggestions are a on fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get quite reciled to the separation. Farewell, old ies, yet not for long, fain and again I will e among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell Ch----, dry, sarcastid friendly! Do----, mild, slow to move, alemanly! Pl----, officious to do, and to volunteer, good services ! -- and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion fresham or a Whittington of old, stately House of merts; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where dles for one half the year supplied the place of the suns light; uhy tributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell! In thee remain, and not in the obscure colle of some wandering bookseller, my "works!" There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful! My mantle I bequeath among ye.
A fht has passed sihe date of my first unication. At that period I roag to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was parative only. Something of the first flutter was left; an uling sense of y; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaced light. I missed my old s, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel. I oor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolutiourned upon the world. I am now as if I had never been other than my own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to do what I please. I find myself at eleven oclo the day in Bond-street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a book-stall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in a m. Was it ever otherwise? What is bee of Fish-street Hill? Where is Fenchurch-street? Stones of old Ming-lane, which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six and thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal? I ihe gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is ge time, and I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I veo pare the ge in my dition to a passing into another world. Time stands still in a mao me. I have lost all distin of season. I do not know the day of the week, or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its refereo the fn post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights sensations. The genius of each day on me distinctly during the whole of it, affeg my appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor<samp></samp> Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself -- that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it -- is melted down into a week day. I spare to go to churow, without grudging the huge tle which it used to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I visit a sick friend. I interrupt the man of much occupation when he is busiest. I insult over him with an invitation to take a days pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May-m. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poes, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and g; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round -- and what is it all for? A man ever have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him NOTHING-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life plative. Will no kindly earthquake e and swallow up those accursed ills? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down
As low as to the fiends.
I am no longer ******, clerk to the Firm of &c. I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already e to be known by my vat fad careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed paor with aled purpose. I walk about; not to and from. They tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my ood parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a neer, it is to read the state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself.
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