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Certain Personal Matters - The Trouble of Life · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter two of Certain Personal Matters. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Lurie Wilson. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: The Trouble of Life. I do not know whether this
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  Speaker 1: will awaken a sympathetic lassitude in say, fifty percent of
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  Speaker 1: its readers, or whether my experience is unique in my
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  Speaker 1: testimony simply curious. At any rate, it is as true
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  Speaker 1: as I can make it. Whether this is a mere
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  Speaker 1: mood or a certain flagrant exhilaration my true attitude towards things,
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  Speaker 1: or this is my true attitude and the exuberant phase
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  Speaker 1: elapse from it, I cannot say. Probably it does not matter.
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  Speaker 1: The thing is that I find life an extremely troublesome affair.
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  Speaker 1: I do not want to make any railing accusations against life.
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  Speaker 1: It is to my taste neither very sad nor very horrible.
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  Speaker 1: At times it is distinctly amusing. Indeed, I know nothing
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  Speaker 1: in the same line that can quite compare with it.
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  Speaker 1: But there is a difference between general appreciation and uncritical acceptance.
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  Speaker 1: At times I find life a bother. The kind of
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  Speaker 1: thing that I object to is, as a good example,
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  Speaker 1: all the troublesome things one has to do every morning
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  Speaker 1: in getting up. There is washing. This is an age
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  Speaker 1: of unsolicited personal confidences. And I will frankly confess that
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  Speaker 1: if it were not for Euphemia, I do not think
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  Speaker 1: I should wash at all. There is a vast amount
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  Speaker 1: of humbug about washing. Vulgar people do not only profess
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  Speaker 1: a passion for the practice, but a physical horror of
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  Speaker 1: being unwashed. It is a sort of cant I can
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  Speaker 1: understand a spongebath being a novelty the first time, and
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  Speaker 1: exhilarating the second and third, but day after day, week
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  Speaker 1: after week, month after month, and nothing to show at
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  Speaker 1: the end of it all. Then there is shaving. I
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  Speaker 1: have to get shaved because Euphemia hates me with a
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  Speaker 1: blue jowl, and I will admit I hate myself. Yet
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  Speaker 1: if I were left alone, I do not think my
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  Speaker 1: personal taste would affect my decision. I will say that
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  Speaker 1: for myself. Either I hack about with a blunt razor.
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  Speaker 1: My razors are always blunt until I am a kind
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  Speaker 1: of white chapel horror, and with hair and tufts upon
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  Speaker 1: my chin like the top of a bojaman's head, or
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  Speaker 1: else I have to spend all the morning being dabbed
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  Speaker 1: about the face by a barber with damp hands. In
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  Speaker 1: either case, it is a repulsive thing to have eating
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  Speaker 1: into one's time when one might be living. And I
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  Speaker 1: have calculated that all the hair I have lost in
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  Speaker 1: this way put into it would reach to Berlin, all
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  Speaker 1: that vital energy thrown away. However thorns and bristles shall
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  Speaker 1: it bring forth to thee. I suppose it is part
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  Speaker 1: of the primal curse, and I try to stand it
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  Speaker 1: like a man. But the thing is a bobber all
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  Speaker 1: the same. Then, after shaving comes the hunt for the collar.
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  Speaker 1: Stud of all idiotic inventions, the modern collar is the worst.
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  Speaker 1: A man who has to write things for such readers
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  Speaker 1: as mine cannot think over night of where he puts
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  Speaker 1: his collar stead. He has to keep his mind at
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  Speaker 1: an altogether higher level. Consequently, he walks about the bedroom,
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  Speaker 1: thinking hard, and dropping things about here a vest in
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  Speaker 1: there a collar, and sowing a bitter harvest against the morning.
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  Speaker 1: Or he sits on the edge of the bed, jerking
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  Speaker 1: his garments this way, and that I shot a slipper
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  Speaker 1: in the air as the poet sings, and in the
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  Speaker 1: morning it turns up in the most impossible quarters, and
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  Speaker 1: where you least expect it. And talking of going to bed,
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  Speaker 1: before Euphemia took the responsibility over, I was always forgetting
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  Speaker 1: to wind my watch, but now that is one of
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  Speaker 1: the things she neglects. Then after getting up, there is breakfast.
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  Speaker 1: Altolychis of the pall Mall gazette may find heaven here,
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  Speaker 1: but I am differently constituted. There is to begin with
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  Speaker 1: the essence of the offense, the stuff that has to
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  Speaker 1: be eaten somehow. Then there is the paper, unless it
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  Speaker 1: is the face of a fashionable beauty. I know of
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  Speaker 1: nothing more absolutely uninteresting than a morning paper. You always
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  Speaker 1: expect to find something in it, and never do. It
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  Speaker 1: wasths half my morning, sometimes going over and over the
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  Speaker 1: thing and trying to find out why they publish it.
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  Speaker 1: If I edited it daily, I think I should do
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  Speaker 1: like my father does when he writes to me things
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  Speaker 1: much the same. He writes the usual fussing about the curates,
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  Speaker 1: red sox, a long letter for him the rest margin,
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  Speaker 1: and by the bye. There are letters every morning at
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  Speaker 1: breakfast too. Now I do not grumble at letters. You
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  Speaker 1: can read them instead of getting on with your breakfast.
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  Speaker 1: They are entertaining in a way, and you can tear
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  Speaker 1: them up at the end, and in that respect at
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  Speaker 1: least they are better than people who come to see you. Usually, too,
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  Speaker 1: you need not make a reply, but sometimes you. Femia
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  Speaker 1: gets hold of some still untorn and says in her
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  Speaker 1: dictatorial way that they have to be answered, and Sis
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  Speaker 1: says I must. Yet she knows nothing that fills me
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  Speaker 1: with a livelier horror than having to answer letters. It
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  Speaker 1: paralyzes me. I waste whole days, sometimes mourning over the
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  Speaker 1: time that I shall have to throw away. Presently answering
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  Speaker 1: some needless impertinence, requests for me to return books lent
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  Speaker 1: to me, reminders from the London Library that my subscription
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  Speaker 1: is overdue, for me to renew my ticket at the stores.
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  Speaker 1: Euphemia's business really invitations for me to go and be
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  Speaker 1: abashed before impertinent, distinguished people, all kinds of bothering things.
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  Speaker 1: And speaking of letters and invitations brings me round to friends.
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  Speaker 1: I dislike most people in London. They get in one's
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  Speaker 1: way in the street and fill up railway carriages and
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  Speaker 1: in the country, they stare at you. But I hate
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  Speaker 1: my friends, Yet Euphemia says, I must keep up my friends.
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  Speaker 1: They would be all very well if they were really
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  Speaker 1: true friends and respected my feelings and left me alone
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  Speaker 1: just to sit quiet. But they come wearing shiny clothes
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  Speaker 1: and mop and bow at me and expect me to
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  Speaker 1: answer their jiggerings. Polite conversation always appears to me to
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  Speaker 1: be a wicked perversion of the blessed gift of speech,
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  Speaker 1: which I take it was given us to season our lives,
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  Speaker 1: rather than to make them insipid. New friends are the
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  Speaker 1: worst in this respect. With old friends, one is more
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  Speaker 1: at home. You give them something to eat or drink
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  Speaker 1: or look at, or something whatever they seem to want,
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  Speaker 1: and just turn round and go on smoking quietly. But
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  Speaker 1: every now and then, Euphemia or destiny inflicts a new
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  Speaker 1: human being upon me. I do not mean a baby,
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  Speaker 1: though the sentence has got that turn somehow, but an introduction,
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  Speaker 1: and the wretched thing all angles and offenses keep bobbing
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  Speaker 1: about me and discovering new ways of worrying me, trying,
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  Speaker 1: I believe, to find out what topics interest me, though
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  Speaker 1: the fact is no topics interest me. Once or twice.
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  Speaker 1: Of course I have met human beings. I think I
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  Speaker 1: could have got on with very well after a time.
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  Speaker 1: But in this mood at least I doubt if any
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  Speaker 1: human being is quite worth the bother of a new acquaintance.
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  Speaker 1: These are just sample bobbers, shaving, washing, answering letters, talking
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  Speaker 1: to people. I could specify hundreds more. Indeed, am I
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  Speaker 1: sad moments? It seems to me life is all compact
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  Speaker 1: of bothers. There are the details of business, knowing the
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  Speaker 1: date approximately, an incessant anxiety and the time of day,
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  Speaker 1: then having to buy things. Euphemia does most of this,
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  Speaker 1: it is true, but she draws the line at my
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  Speaker 1: boots and gloves and hosary and tailoring, then doing up
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  Speaker 1: parcels and finding pieces of stream or envelopes or stamps,
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  Speaker 1: which Euphemia might very well manage for me. Then finding
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  Speaker 1: your way back after a quiet, thoughtful walk, Then having
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  Speaker 1: to get matches for your pipe. I sometimes dream of
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  Speaker 1: a better world where pipe, pouch and matches all keep
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  Speaker 1: together instead of being mutually negatory. But Euphemia is always
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  Speaker 1: putting everything into some hiding hole or other, which she
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  Speaker 1: calls its place. Trivial things in their way, you may say,
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  Speaker 1: Yet each loving so much toll on my brain and
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  Speaker 1: nervous system, and demanding incessant vigilance and activity. I calculated
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  Speaker 1: once that I wasted a masterpiece upon these mountainous little
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  Speaker 1: things about every three months of my life. Can I
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  Speaker 1: help thinking of them then, and asking why I suffer thus?
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  Speaker 1: And can I avoids seen at last how it is
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  Speaker 1: they hang together? For there is still one bother, a
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  Speaker 1: kind of bother botherum to tell of. Though I hesitate
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  Speaker 1: at the telling, it brings this rabble herd of worries
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  Speaker 1: into line and makes them formidable. It is so to
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  Speaker 1: speak the bother commander in chief, Well, Euphemia, I simply
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  Speaker 1: worship the ground she treads upon mind. But at the
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  Speaker 1: same time the truth is the truth. Euphemia is a bother.
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  Speaker 1: She is a brave little woman and helps me in
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  Speaker 1: every conceivable way. But I wish she would not. It
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  Speaker 1: is so obviously all her doing. She makes me get
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  Speaker 1: up of a morning I would not stand as much
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  Speaker 1: from anybody else, and keeps a sharp eye on my
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  Speaker 1: chin and collar. If it were not I could sit
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  Speaker 1: about always with no collar or tie on. In that
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  Speaker 1: old jacket she gave to the tramp and just smoke
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  Speaker 1: and grow a beard and let all the bothers slide.
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  Speaker 1: I would never wash, never shave, never answer any letters,
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  Speaker 1: never go to see any friends, never do any work,
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  Speaker 1: except perhaps an insulting postcard to a publisher now and again.
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  Speaker 1: I would just sit about. Sometimes I think this may
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  Speaker 1: be peculiar in me. At other times I fancy I'm
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  Speaker 1: giving voice to the secret feeling of every member of
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  Speaker 1: my sex. I suspect then that we would all do
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  Speaker 1: as the noble savage does, take our things off and
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  Speaker 1: lie about comfortable, if only someone had the courage to begin.
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  Speaker 1: It is these women all love and reverence to Euphemia,
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  Speaker 1: notwithstanding who make us work and bother us with things,
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  Speaker 1: they keep us decent and remind us we have a
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  Speaker 1: position to support. And really, after all, this is not
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  Speaker 1: my original discovery. There is the third chapter of Genesis,
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  Speaker 1: for instance. And then who has not read Carlyle's gloating
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  Speaker 1: over a certain historical suit of leather. It gives me
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  Speaker 1: a queer thrill of envy that quaker Fox and his
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  Speaker 1: suit of leather conceive it. If you can, one would
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  Speaker 1: never have to quell under the scrutiny of a tailor
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  Speaker 1: any more. The row too, come to think of it,
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  Speaker 1: was by way of being a prophet, a pioneer in
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  Speaker 1: his emancipation of man from bothery. Then the silent gentry
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  Speaker 1: who drew our chartrouse, what are they in retirement for?
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  Speaker 1: Looking back into history, with the glow of discovery in
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  Speaker 1: my eyes, I find records of wise men. Every one acknowledged.
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  Speaker 1: They were wise men who lived apart in every age,
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  Speaker 1: the same associate of solitude, silence, and wisdom, the holy herbits.
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  Speaker 1: I granted they profess to flee wickedness and seek after
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  Speaker 1: ritche busness. But now my impression is that they fled bothers.
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  Speaker 1: We all know they had an intense aversion to any
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  Speaker 1: savor of domesticity, and they never shaped, washed, dyed, visited,
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  Speaker 1: had new clothes holiness. Indeed, they were viviers. We have
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  Speaker 1: witnessed religion without theology, and why not an unsectarian theabo.
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  Speaker 1: I sometimes fancy it needs only one brave man to begin.
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  Speaker 1: If it were not for the fuss Euphemia would make,
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  Speaker 1: I certainly should, but I know she would come and
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  Speaker 1: worry me worse than Saint Anthony was worried until I
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  Speaker 1: put them all on again, and that keeps me from
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  Speaker 1: the attempt. I am curious whether mine is the common experience.
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  Speaker 1: I fancy, after all, I am only seen in a
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  Speaker 1: clearer way, putting into modern phrase, so to speak, an
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  Speaker 1: observation old as the Pentitude. And looking up, I read
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  Speaker 1: upon a little almanac with which Euphemia has cheered my dad.
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  Speaker 1: The world was sad ah, sweet sadness. The garden was wild,
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  Speaker 1: a picturesque wild, and manned. The hermit he made no
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  Speaker 1: complaint till the woman smiled Campbell, and very shortly after
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  Speaker 1: he had, as you know, all that bothered about the millinery.
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  Speaker 1: End of chapter two