| | | | | THERE are few things which show a more candid mind than | a frank confession of dulness. It is an admission of occasional | vacuity, of self-insufficiency, which very few can bring | themselves to make, and which, when made, is not always | received with the humanity and tenderness such | ingenuousness deserves. People who never feel weary of their | own company have a contempt for those who do, and often a | very ill-founded contempt; for, in the first place, the | difference may be one only of circumstances ~~ some people | are much more exposed to dulness than others; and, in the | next, satisfaction with our own company is wise or foolish | according to the grounds on which it is founded. To be ever | dull is, no doubt, a mark of human infirmity. For this | exquisite mechanism of mind, thought, intelligence, ever to | collapse, to lose spring and vigour, to suffer cold obstruction, | should be a check to our pride of reason. But it is only felt to | be so when our solitude is thus visited. To profess one's self | dull in society | | where others are amused is a piece of pretension, a sort of boast, as | implying a tacit superiority. But, in fact, this too argues deficiency and | absence of power, often as great as the other. True vigour of mind and | body is never dull, and can turn all painless conditions of being to an | element of delight. If people are prone to feel dull, the scene of, their | dulness is more an affair of temperament, or at most of training, than of | intellect. | | We need not explain that the dulness we speak of is not any inherent | quality of the mind, but a matter of feeling. It indeed implies a certain | quickness of apprehension always to know when we are dull. There are | existences so void of interesting, elevating, or inspiring circumstances, | that only a dull head and a dull heart could reconcile themselves to | them; but the leaders of such lives make them what they are, would not | change them if they could, are content with them, and value themselves | on that content. Supposed immunity from dulness, then, may proceed | from all sorts of causes, creditable or the reverse. It may arise from | activity of mind, fulness of thought, an uninterrupted stream of | occupation ~~ which is always the assumed cause, ~~ or from slowness, | apathy, and a dead sterile imagination. Thus, a man may never be dull | because he contains everything within himself, or because his heavy | intelligence is on an exact level with his monotonous existence. Certain | it is that there are many who avow themselves perfectly satisfied with | their own company whose company gives others very little satisfaction | ~~ who, if they are not dull, for anything we can | | see, ought to be. It is an extremely happy thing in such cases that there | is this just balance; for the fact is, it is only very lively or engaging | people who can own themselves dull with impunity ~~ who can find | sympathy, or even toleration, for their infirmity; and this for the obvious | reason that in their case alone society is the gainer by it. Persons who | are dull in both senses of the word at once are just the heaviest load | social life can be burdened with. But charming people are the more | charming because they are not independent of their fellow-creatures ~~ | cannot pretend to the pride of seclusion ~~ and are thus driven as well | as led by their nature to show their best, conscious of some hidden | far-off bugbear which haunts the long hours of uncongenial solitude, | brightening the social scene by the contrast of its gloom. No doubt | much may be done by practice and self-discipline to overcome this | weakness, and everyone, if he is wise, will struggle against it. But there | is, all the same, an inherent difference between man and man which no | effort can do away, and the man who wants companionship will always | stand in a different relation to the world from the man who is | independent of it. What we argue is, that it may be incompleteness, not | inferiority: for, wherever the affections predominate, men will be dull | when they cannot exercise them; and wherever the mind and intellect | are worked by fits and starts, as some people are obliged to work them | ~~ effort alternating with the indolence of reaction ~~ these intervals | will be subject to conscious dulness. | | | We use the word dulness because our language has no other, but it is a | vast deal easier to feel dull than to know what dulness is so far as to | define it. Our classical writers all treat dulness as a quality. Men are | dull, and are loathed by the wits accordingly. We do not for a moment | assume any of our readers to be dull ~~ it is as | much as we dare suppose, in this active-minded age, that any of them | even feel dull under the ignominious condition | of not being absolutely all in all, each to himself. Johnson recognises the | word in our sense, but he is obliged to depart from his rule and furnish | his own example: ~~ | But this does not get at the bottom of the thing. Dull | work, dull leisure, dull company, dull solitude ~~ what is the common | element in them all? Theologians tell us that our nature shrinks from | absolute disembodiment ~~ that the spiritual part of us recoils from the | idea of bare exposure of its essence, of being turned into space | shivering, houseless, homeless. If we analyse dulness, there is | something of this recoil about it. It is not otherwise easy to understand | the horror with which men look forward to a threatened period of simple | dulness. The protests, lamentations, self-pity expended on a brief season | of dulness, are called morbid, wrong, ridiculous, by the people who say | they are never dull. The feeling expressed is so utterly incommensurate | with the occasion ~~ taking into account the absence of positive pain, | and the brief duration of whatever suffering there is ~~ that the whole | thing is to | | them affected, unreal, preposterous. It is as if, | like fretful children, these | clamourers wanted something to cry for; and certainly, if it only meant | not being diverted or exhilarated, dulness would be a weak subject of | dread. But it is more. There is a foretaste, a threatening of something | worse, a touch of undefined spiritual terrors in all dulness. A day of | simple vacuity, of not being amused, has no analogy with the dulness | our active imagination realises. Everybody is now and then neither | doing anything nor wanting to do anything ~~ unamused, and not | wanting to be amused. Everybody is vacant sometimes, and does not | dislike the sensation; but what has all this to do with dulness? A man is | dull, it may be, to other people, but not dull to himself. Wordsworth | prefers this state far before what he calls personal talk ~~ that is, gossip | ~~ the relaxation of half the world. | | | This is a picture of comfort, this is being at home with our household | gods about us. Here the lazy unoccupied spirit misses nothing. When | people feel dull, there is a sense of deprivation and exposure. We are | without something that answers to the mind for what clothing and | shelter are to the body. We are weak, open to aggression; we have lost | something; our completeness, our organisation is affected. Time ceases | to | | flow in this state, and prolongs itself into an uncertain sort of eternity | which we are incapable of measuring. Immersed in dulness, even the | future is too far off to excite hope; for dulness has in its very nature a | touch of perpetuity. If we find ourselves, for example, in for four hours' | perfectly dull talk, from which there is no escape, what good does it do | to say, It is only four hours, What are four hours compared to a lifetime? | and so on. We are not in a state to estimate the difference. Life itself | will end, and we accept this truth more readily than | that these four hours will end, which nothing seems to shorten. Solitary | dulness is, no doubt, a more awful and more mysterious infliction than | social dulness can ever be, but the majority of mankind are not exposed | to this extreme pressure on mind and nerve ~~ they are not thrown for | long periods utterly upon themselves. Dulness comes to most of us in | the form of uncongenial company and occupation. Whenever the mind | suffers from a suspense of its voluntary processes too long, we are dull, | as in protracted or mistimed instruction or amusement. We are dull in | scenes which make demands on our interest and intelligence that we | cannot meet. We are dull when our mind, or one side of our mind, is | defenceless, has lost its usual and necessary support, whether that | support be habit ~~ a word in itself conveying all our meaning ~~ or the | intervention of fresh ideas from without, for the want of which a painful | void is felt. We are dull, whether we miss the familiar scenes, faces, | voices, views of things on which we are wont to lean, | | or are shut out from that current of external life and thought through | which the mind derives its sustenance. | | Habit, in a sense, is the great resource against dulness. If we live long | enough, we are never dull in doing what we are accustomed to do, and | hence arises the little sympathy that age often shows to youth in this | matter. Youth has acquired no confirmed habits. It is not desirable that a | boy should be content always to spend one day like another ~~ to find | his book all-sufficient, or his work or play all-sufficient. His mind, if | healthy, has a clamorous appetite for change. His resource is variety of | occupation, acquirement, and amusement, it is never mere resting in | himself. He is not doing the best for himself if he is not occasionally | some trouble to his friends in finding him fitting change and diversion, | troublesome like the kicking, struggling, vivacious baby in arms which | will not allow itself to be forgotten. But parents who are proud of this | infantine restlessness are often little lenient to the sufferings of dulness | at an older stage proceeding from precisely the same cause. Unques- | tionably it is very convenient to others, and in a degree a sign of | strength in the boy himself, to be sufficient for his own amusement, to | have contracted habits of some sort early; but those who play the most | active and stirring part in the world ~~ practical men, men of action ~~ | have needed variety in their youth, and have been dull without it, | conspicuously and energetically dull, not | like the worn poet in | | the same case, but powerful to fill the abhorred void by some congenial | solace. | | But habit ~~ the panacea, the refuge, the protector ~~ is so entirely | dependent on circumstances that there is no dulness so pitiable or so | incurable as that which proceeds from the breaking-up of an accustomed | course of life, the dulness which proceeds from change, whether | self-chosen or inevitable. Poor Charles Lamb, always ingenuous, how frank | is he in the confession of his own delusions on this point! he who fretted | over his compulsory monotonous life of thirty-five years of work, | defied the chains of habit, and proclaimed that | and had his wish of idleness granted to him. If any | man, he certainly had a right to trust to his resources, with his wit, his | fulness of thought, aptitude for study, and felicity of expression. But | these only helped him to feel, and aided him in portraying, the | sufferings of his desolate unhoused spirit. He had worked in the heart of | London amid "familiar faces," and changed it for the country with only | strangers about him. How finely he insults the rural green, the varying | seasons, the summer sun himself in the dulness of his new life! | | | Such dulness | is but home-sickness, the languishing of a sensitive nature for its native | air and the shelter of old associations. | | Though we say that confessions of dulness seldom meet with sympathy, | unless relieved by wit and humour, yet all artistic pictures of dulness | make a deep impression. This was the point of Mde. D' Arblay's | Memoirs. The frightful dulness and vacuity to which her life was | suddenly reduced, appalled and fascinated every reader; and those who | heard Mr Thackeray's lecture on George III. will not forget those | evenings spent all alike in dancing three hours to one tune, and going | supperless to bed. It would have been better for himself and for his sons | if the poor King had realised that this was dull work; and there is a great | deal of dulness in the world, not confined to courts, that passes for | virtue and turns into habit, which it is well should be now and then | exposed. A sense of dulness might thus become a spur stimulating to | higher and better satisfactions. The world is too often unfeeling on this | point, yet it needs only to enter into another's dulness to pity it. We have | heard somewhere of the inhabitants of a country town who, in their own | way, were never dull. They had found out one remedy, the more | | effectual because they had never conceived of any other | ~~ one and all played cards. At length a stranger arrived | among them who could not take a hand at whist, who did | not, in fact, know one card from another. He had to | confess his ignorance before a large company. The circle | heard in silent amazement. At length his host, realising the | joyless blank, the utter dulness, of such an existence, | exclaimed in terms which alone could convey the intensity | of his sympathy ~~ |