"Trivia", by Logan Pearsall Smith
{Logan Pearsall Smith (1865 – 1946) was an American-born British essayist and critic. Harvard and Oxford educated, he was known for his aphorisms and epigrams, and his Trivia has been highly rated. He was a literary perfectionist and could take days refining his sentences. He is now probably most remembered for his autobiography Unforgotten Years (1938). Wikipedia}
Extracts from :
Logan Pearsall Smith
Trivia
1917
To-Day
I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom — in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.
Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, I pottered, I talked, and took exercise ; and I sat punctually down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals.
*
Green Ivory
What a bore it is, waking up in the morning always the same person. I wish I were unflinching and emphatic, and had big, bushy eyebrows and a Message for the Age. I wish I were a deep Thinker, or a great Ventriloquist.
I should like to be refined-looking and melancholy, the victim of a hopeless passion; to love in the old, stilted way, with impossible Adoration and Despair under the pale-faced Moon.
I wish I could get up; I wish I were the world's greatest living Violinist. I wish I had lots of silver, and first Editions, and green ivory.
*
The Afternoon Post
The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe, and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite, is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which is coming, and word of it may reach me any day.
What it is, this strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself "Here it is !" when at night I hear wheels approaching along the road.
So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly concerned with any other interest or ambition, I live on in my quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live perhaps until the end. Is it, indeed, merely the last great summons and revelation for which I am waiting ? I do not know.
*
The Busy Bees
Sitting for hours idle in the shade of an apple tree, near the garden-hives, and under the aerial thoroughfares of those honey-merchants — sometimes when the noonday heat is loud with their minute industry, or when they fall in crowds out of the late sun to their night-long labours — I have sought instruction from the Bees, and tried to appropriate to myself the old industrious lesson.
And yet, hang it all, who by rights should be the teachers and who the learners ? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian insects, was there no lesson to be derived from the spectacle of Me ? Gazing out at me with myriad eyes from their joyless factories, might they not learn at last — might I not finally teach them — a wiser and more generous-hearted way to improve the shining hour ?
*
The Birds
But how can one toil at the great task with this hurry and tumult of birds just outside the open window ? I hear the Thrush, and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar — but what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note ?
I hurry out; the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills his sleepy song in the noonday heat; the drone of the Greenfinch lulls me into dreamy meditations. Then suddenly from his tree-trunks and forest recesses comes the Green Woodpecker, and mocks at me an impudent voice full of liberty and laughter.
Why should all the birds of the air conspire against me ? My concern is with the sad Human Species, with lapsed and erroneous Humanity, not with that inconsiderate, wandering, feather-headed race.
*
L'oiseau Bleu
What is it, I have more than once asked myself, what is it that I am looking for in my walks about London ? Sometimes it seems to me as if I were following a Bird, a bright Bird that sings sweetly as it floats about from one place to another. When I find myself however among persons of middle age and settled principles, see them moving regularly to their offices — what keeps them going ? I ask myself. And I feel ashamed of myself and my Bird.
There is though a Philosophic Doctrine — I studied it at College, and I know that many serious people believe it — which maintains that all men, in spite of appearances and pretensions, all live alike for Pleasure. This theory certainly brings portly, respected persons very near to me. Indeed with a sense of low complicity I have sometimes followed and watched a Bishop. Was he too on the hunt for Pleasure, solemnly pursuing his Bird ?
*
Daydream
In the cold and malicious society in which I live, I must never mention the Soul, nor speak of my aspirations. If I ever once let these people get a glimpse of the higher side of my nature, they would tear me in pieces.
I wish I had soulful friends — refined Maiden Ladies with ideals and long noses, who live at Hampstead or Putney, and play Chopin with passion. On sad autumn afternoons I would go and have tea with them, and talk of the spiritual meaning of Beethoven's posthumous quartettes, or discuss in the twilight the pathos of life and the Larger Hope.
*
The Quest
"We walk alone in the world," the Moralist, at the end of his essay on Ideal Friendship, writes somewhat sadly, "Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables," Yet we never quite give up the hope of finding them.
But what awful things happen to us ? what snubs, what set-downs we experience, what shames and disillusions. We can never really tell what these new unknown persons may do to us. Sometimes they seem nice, and then begin to talk like gramophones. Sometimes they grab at us with moist hands, or breathe hotly on our necks, or make awful confidences, or drench us from sentimental slop-pails. And too often, among the thoughts in the loveliest heads, we come on nests of woolly caterpillars.
And yet we brush our hats, pull on our gloves, and go out and ring door-bells.
*
Loneliness
Is there, then, no friend ? No one who hates Ibsen and problem plays, and the Supernatural, and Switzerland and Adultery as much as I do ? Must I live all my life as mute as a mackerel, companionless and uninvited, and never tell anyone what I think of my famous contemporaries ? Must I plough always a solitary furrow, and tread the winepress alone ?
*
Symptoms
"But there are certain people I simply cannot stand. A dreariness and sense of death come over me when I meet them — I really find it difficult to breathe when they are in the room, as if they had pumped all the air out of it. Wouldn't it be dreadful to produce that effect on people ! But they never seem to be aware of it. I remember once meeting a famous Bore; I really must tell you about it, it shows the unbelievable obtuseness of such people."
I told this and another story or two with great gusto, and talked on of my experiences and sensations, till suddenly I noticed, in the appearance of my charming neighbour, something — a slightly glazed look in her eyes, a just perceptible irregularity in her breathing — which turned that occasion for me into a kind of Nightmare.
*
Monotony
Oh, to be becalmed on a sea of glass all day; to listen all day to rain on the roof, or the wind in pine trees; to sit all day by a waterfall reading the 'Faërie Queene,' or exquisite, artificial, monotonous Persian poems about an oasis garden where it is always spring — where roses bloom, and lovers sigh, and nightingales lament without ceasing, and groups of white-robed figures sit by the running water and discuss all day, and day after day, the Meaning of Life.
*
Self-Analysis
"Yes, aren't they odd, the thoughts that float through one's mind for no reason ? But why not be frank — I suppose the best of us are shocked at times by the things we find ourselves thinking. Don't you agree," I went on, not noticing (until it was too late) that all other conversation had ceased, and the whole dinner-party was listening, "don't you agree that the oddest of all are the improper thoughts that come into one's head — the unspeakable words I mean, and Obscenities ?"
When I remember that remark, I hasten to enlarge my mind with ampler considerations. I think of Space, and the unimportance in its unmeasured vastness, of our toy solar system; I lose myself in speculations on the lapse of Time, reflecting how at the best our human life on this minute and perishing planet is as brief as a dream.
*
The Spider
What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind ? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse ?
No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung onv leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul.
*
My Mission
But when in modern books, reviews, and thoughtful magazines I read about the Needs of the Age, its Complex Questions, its Dismays, Doubts, and Spiritual Agonies, I feel an impulse to go out and comfort it, to still its cries, and speak earnest words of Consolation to it.