Self and Self-Management

Part 1

WORKS BY ARNOLD BENNETT

NOVELS

A Man from the North Anna of the Five Towns Leonora A Great Man Sacred and Profane Love Whom God hath Joined Buried Alive The Old Wives’ Tale The Glimpse Helen with the High Hand Clayhanger The Card Hilda Lessways The Regent The Price of Love These Twain The Lion’s Share The Pretty Lady The Roll-Call

FANTASIAS

The Grand Babylon Hotel The Gates of Wrath Teresa of Watling Street The Loot of Cities Hugo The Ghost The City of Pleasure

SHORT STORIES

Tales of the Five Towns The Grim Smile of the Five Towns The Matador of the Five Towns

BELLES-LETTRES

How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day The Human Machine Mental Efficiency Literary Taste Friendship and Happiness Married Life Those United States Paris Nights Books and Persons

DRAMA

Polite Farces Cupid and Common Sense What the Public Wants The Honeymoon The Great Adventure The Title

SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT

SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT

ESSAYS ABOUT EXISTING

BY ARNOLD BENNETT

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO MCMXVIII

CONTENTS

PAGE

RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 3

SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 25

THE DIARY HABIT 45

A DANGEROUS LECTURE TO A YOUNG WOMAN 65

THE COMPLETE FUSSER 85

THE MEANING OF FROCKS 103

RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE

RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE

I WILL take the extreme case of the social butterfly, because it has the great advantage of simplicity. This favourite variety of the lepidopteral insects is always spoken of as female. But as the variety persists from generation to generation obviously it cannot be of one sex only. And, as a fact, there are indubitably male social butterflies, though the differences between the male and the female may be slight. I shall, however, confine myself to the case of the female social butterfly--again for the sake of simplicity.

This beautiful creature combines the habits of the butterfly with the habits of the moth. For whereas the moth flies only by night and the butterfly flies only by day, the social butterfly flies both by day and by night. She is universally despised and condemned, and almost universally envied: one of the strangest among the many strange facts of natural history. She lives with a single purpose--to be for ever in the movement--not any particular movement, but the movement, which is a grand combined tendency comprising all lesser tendencies. For the social butterfly the constituents of the movement are chiefly men, theatres, restaurants, dances, noise, and hurry. The minor constituents may and do frequently change, but the major constituents have not changed for a considerable number of years. The minor constituents of the movement are usually ‘serious,’ and hence in a minor way the social butterfly is serious. If books happen to be of the movement, she will learn the names of books and authors, and in urgent crises will even read. If music, she will learn to distinguish from all other sounds the sounds which are of the movement, the sounds at which she must shut her eyes in ecstasy and sigh. If social reform, she will at once be ready to reform everybody and everything except herself and her existence. If charity or mercifulness, she will be charitable or merciful according to the latest devices and in the latest frocks. Yes, and if war happens to be of the movement, she will be serious about the war.

Part 2

You observe how sarcastic I am about the social butterfly. It is necessary to be so. The social butterfly never has since the earliest times been mentioned in print without sarcasm or pity, and she never will be. She is greatly to be pitied. What is her aim? Her aim, like the aim of most people except the very poor (whose aim is simply to keep alive), is happiness. But the unfortunate creature, as you and I can so clearly see, has confused happiness with pleasure. She runs day and night after pleasure--that is to say, after distraction: eating, drinking, posing, seeing, being seen, laughing, jostling, and the singular delight of continual imitation. She is only alive in public, and the whole of her days and nights are spent in being in public, or in preparing to be in public, or in recovering from the effects of being in public. Habit drives her on from one excitement to another. She flies eternally from something mysterious and sinister which is eternally overtaking her. You and I know that she is never happy--she is only intoxicated or narcotised by a drug that she calls pleasure. And her youth is going; her figure is going; her complexion is practically gone. She is laying up naught for the future save disappointment, dissatisfaction, disillusion, and no doubt rheumatism. And all this inordinate, incredible folly springs from a wrong and childish interpretation of the true significance of happiness.

How much wiser, you say, and indeed we all say, is that other young woman who has chosen the part of content. She has come to terms with the universe. She is not for ever gadding about in search of something which she has not got, and which not one person in a hundred round about her has got. She has said: ‘The universe is stronger than I am. I will accommodate myself to the universe.’

And she acts accordingly. She makes the best of her lot. She treats her body in a sane manner, and she treats her mind in a sane manner. She has perceived the futility of what is known as pleasure in circles where they play bridge and organise charity fêtes on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. She has frankly admitted that youth is fleeting, and that part of it must be spent in making preparations against the rigours of old age. She seeks her pleasure in literature and the arts because such pleasure strengthens instead of weakening the mind, and never palls. She is prudent. She is aware that there can be no happiness where duty has been left undone, and that loving-kindness is a main source of felicity. Hence she is attentive to duty, and she practises the altruism which is at once the cause and the result of loving-kindness. She deliberately cultivates cheerfulness and resignation; she discourages discontent as gardeners discourage a weed. She has duly noted that the kingdom of heaven is ‘within you,’ not near the band at the expensive restaurant, nor in the trying-on room of the fashionable dressmaker’s next door to the expensive restaurant, nor in the salons of the well-advertised great. Her life is reflected in her face, which is a much better face than the face of the social butterfly. Whatever may occur--within reason--she is armed against destiny, married or single.

III

What can there be in common between these two types? Well, the point I am coming to is that they may have one tragic similarity which vitiates their lives equally, or almost equally. One may be vastly more admirable than the other, and in many matters vastly more sensible. And yet they may both have made the same stupendous mistake: the misinterpretation of the significance of the word happiness. Towards the close of existence, and even throughout existence, the second, in spite of all her precautions, may suffer the secret and hidden pangs of unhappiness just as acutely as the first; and her career may in the end present itself to her as just as much a sham.

And for the same reason. The social butterfly was running after something absurd, and the other woman knew that it was absurd and left it alone. But the root of the matter was more profound. The social butterfly’s chief error was not that she was running after something, but that she was running away from something--something which I have described as mysterious and sinister. And the other woman also may be--and as a fact frequently is--running away from just that mysterious and sinister something. And that something is neither more nor less than life itself in its every essence. Both may be afraid of life and may have to pay an equal price for their cowardice. Both may have refused to listen to the voice within them, and will suffer equally for the wilful shutting of the ear.

(It is true that the other woman may just possibly have a true vocation for a career of resignation and altruism, and the spreading of a sort of content in a thin layer over the entire length of existence. If so, well and good. But it is also true that the social butterfly may have a true vocation for being a social butterfly, and the thick squandering of a sort of pleasure on the earlier part of existence, to the deprivation of the latter part. Then neither the one nor the other will have been guilty of the cowardice of running away from life.)

My point is that you may take refuge in good works or you may take refuge in bad works, but that the supreme offence against life lies in taking refuge from it, and that if you commit this offence you will miss the only authentic happiness--which springs no more from content and resignation than it springs from mere pleasure. It is indisputable that the conscience can be, and is constantly narcotised as much by relatively good deeds as by relatively bad deeds. Nevertheless, to dope the conscience is always a crime, and is always punished by the ultimate waking up of the conscience.

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