The English writer Charles Lamb (1775-1834) wrote the essay The
Superannuated Man in 1825, following thirty-six
years of service as a clerk at the East India Company,
the first great experiment in privatisation. A read may
well be an antidote to a bad day at the office. I was at
a school desk myself when I first read the memorable
line-I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood
had entered into my soul. - - Michael Hennigan, Managing Editor
Finfacts.
Sera
tamen respexit
Libertas. -- Virgil.
A
Clerk I was in London gay.
-- O'KEEFE.
IF
peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the
golden years of thy life -- thy shining youth -- in the
irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days
prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and
silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have
lived to forget 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 since I took my seat at the desk
in Mincing-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 attendance at
a counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to
anything. I gradually became content -- doggedly
contented, 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 music,
and 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 saunter through 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 contemplates them ever passing by -- the
very face of business a charm by contrast to his
temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but
unhappy countenances -- 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 day's pleasuring. The very
strollers in the fields on that day look anything but
comfortable.
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, alone kept me up through the year,
and made my durance tolerable. 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 in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a
wearisome anxiety to 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, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks
that must intervene before such another snatch would
come. Still the prospect of its coming 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.
Independently
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
countenance. 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
over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with
terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my
accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no
prospect of emancipation presented 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 upon the
trouble legible in my countenance; but I did not know
that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers,
when, on the 5th 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 honestly made confession of my infirmity, and added
that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to
resign his service. He spoke some words of course to
hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I
remained labouring under the 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 manner, the 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
o'clock) 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 come, 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 utter astonishment B---- , the eldest
partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of
my services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole
of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did he find out
that? I protest I never had the confidence to think as
much). He went on to descant 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 accustomed salary -- a magnificent
offer! I do not know what I answered between surprise and
gratitude, but it was understood 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 -- benefit gratitude forbids me to conceal
their names -- I owe to the kindness of the most
munificent firm in the world -- the house of Boldero,
Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy.
Esto
perpetua!
For the
first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could
only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste
it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and
knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a
prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a
forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself
with myself. It was like passing out of Time into
Eternity -- 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 forego their customary
employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I
feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are
sufficient; and now that those first giddy raptures have
subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness
of my condition. 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 transient 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 candle-light Time, I used to weary out my head and
eyesight in by-gone winters. I walk, read or scribble (as
now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after
pleasure; I let it come to me. I am like the man
----That's
born, and has his years come to him,
In some green desart.
"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 find me still a young fellow.
For that is the only true time, which a man can 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
people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long
or short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My
ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as
any preceding thirty. `Tis a fair rule-of-three sum.
Among the strange fantasies which
beset me at the commencement of my freedom, and of which
all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract
of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting
House. I could not conceive 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 friend's
death:
---- `Twas but just now he went away;
I have not since had time to shed a tear;
And yet the distance does the same appear
As if he had been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure in Eternity.
To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have
been fain to go among them once or twice since; to visit
my old desk-fellows -- my co-brethren of the quill --
that I had left below in the state 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 knew
it 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 compeers, the faithful
partners of my toils for six and thirty years, that
smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums the
ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged
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 common 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 reconciled to the
separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for
again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have
your leave. Farewell Ch----, dry, sarcastic, and
friendly! Do----, mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly!
Pl----, officious to do, and to volunteer, good services
! -- and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a
Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately House of
merchants; with thy labyrinthine passages, and
light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one
half the year supplied the place of the sun's light;
unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my
living, farewell! In thee remain, and not in the obscure
collection 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 fortnight has passed since the date of
my first communication. At that period I was approaching
to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a
calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of
the first flutter was left; an unsettling sense of
novelty; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I
missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some
necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian,
from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some
revolution returned 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 o'clock in 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 morning. Was it ever
otherwise? What is become of Fish-street Hill? Where is
Fenchurch-street? Stones of old Mincing-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 indent the gayer flags of
Pall Mall. It is Change time, and I am strangely among
the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ventured to
compare the change in my condition to a passing into
another world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I
have lost all distinction 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 reference to the foreign
post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the
next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday
nights' sensations. The genius of each day was upon me
distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite,
spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with the
dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor
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 can spare to go to church now, without grudging the
huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the
holyday. I have Time for everything. I can visit a sick
friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation when
he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation
to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine
May-morning. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor
drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking
and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the
same eternal round -- and what is it all for? A man can
never 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 contemplative.
Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those
accursed cotton mills? 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 come to be known by my vacant
face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed
pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to
and from. They tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that
has been buried so long with my other good parts, has
begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility
perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, 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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