Part 10 (1/2)
Close your ears to his slanders whenever and wherever you meet him.
”Lend not your ears,” says an old writer, ”to those who go about with tales and whispers; whose idle business it is to tell news of this man and the other: for if these kind of flies can but blow in your ears, the worms will certainly creep out at your mouth. For all discourse is kept up by exchange; and if he bring thee one story, thou wilt think it incivility not to repay him with another for it; and so they chat over the whole neighbourhood; accuse this man, and condemn another, and suspect a third, and speak evil of all.”
XII.
_THE VALETUDINARIAN._
”Some men employ their health, an ugly trick, In making known how oft they have been sick; And give us, in recitals of disease, A doctor's trouble, but without his fees.”
COWPER.
This is a talker who may very properly occupy a place in our sketches.
It may not be necessary to give a description of his person. And were it necessary, it would be difficult, on account of the frequent changes to which he is subject. It is not, however, with his bodily appearance that we have to do. He cannot perhaps be held responsible for this altogether. But the fault of his tongue is undoubtedly a habit of his own formation, and may therefore be described, with a view to its amendment and cure.
The Valetudinarian is a man subject to some affliction, imaginary or real, or it may be both. Whatever may be its nature, it loses nothing by neglect on his part, for he is its devoted nurse and friend. Night and day, alone and in company, he is most faithful in his attentions. He keeps a mental diary of his complaints in their changing symptoms, and of his general experience in connection with them. Whenever you meet him, you find him well informed in a knowledge of the numerous variations of his ”complicated, long-continued, and unknown afflictions.”
Mr. Round was a man who will serve as an ill.u.s.tration of this talker. He was formerly a merchant in the city of London. During the period of his business career he was remarkably active and diligent in the acc.u.mulation of this world's goods. He was successful; and upon the gains of his prosperous merchandise he retired into the country to live on his ”means.” The sudden change from stirring city life into the retirement and inactivity of a rural home soon began to affect his health; and not being a man of much education and intelligence, his mind brooded over himself, until he became nervous and, as he thought, feeble and delicate. His nervousness failed not to do its duty in his imagination and fancy; so that, with the two in active working, a ”combination of diseases” gradually took hold of him, and ”told seriously upon his const.i.tution.”
Mr. Round, having given up his business in the city, now had a business with his afflictions in the country. He studied them thoroughly, in their internal symptoms and external signs. He could have written a volume of experience as to how he suffered in the head, the nerves, the stomach, the liver, the lungs, the heart, etc.; how he suffered when awake and when asleep; how he suffered from taking a particular kind of food or drink; and how he did not suffer when he did not take a particular kind of food and drink; how he thought he should have died a thousand times, under certain circ.u.mstances which he would not name.
These things he could have pictured in a most affecting manner to his reader. But it was not in writing that Mr. Round described his mult.i.tudinous ailments. It was in _talking_. This to him was great relief. A description of his case to any one who was patient enough to hear him through did him more good than all the pills and mixtures sent him by Doctor Green, his medical attendant. This habit of talking about his sickness became as chronic as the sickness itself. He seemed to know little of any other subject than the real and imaginary complaints of his body; at least, he talked about little else. If in conversation he happened to commence in the spirit, he soon entered into the flesh, and there he ended. If by an effort of his hearer his attention was diverted from himself, it would with all the quickness of an elastic bow rebound to his favourite theme. Out of the sphere of his own ”poor body,” as he used to call it, he was no more at home in conversation than a fish wriggling on the sea-beach.
Mrs. Blunt invited a few friends to spend an evening at her house. The company was composed mostly of young persons, in whom the flow of life was strong and buoyant. The beginning of the evening pa.s.sed off amid much innocent enjoyment from conversation, singing, music, and reading.
In the midst of this social pleasure, who should make his appearance but Mr. Round, accompanied by Mrs. Blunt? She introduced him to the company, and to be polite, as he thought, he shook hands with every one in the room. This performance took up the best part of half an hour, as he gave each one a brief epitome of his imaginary disorders. As he was speaking first to one and then another, the whole party might have heard his melancholy voice giving an account of some particular item of his affliction. One could hear the responses at intervals to his statements,--”Oh”--”Ah”--”A pity you are so sick”--”Why, I never”--”Dear me”--”Is it possible?”--”Why, how can you live so?”--”I wonder how you survived that,”--coming from various parts of the room. Not only on entering, but during his stay, he talked about his symptoms, his fears, his hopes, his dangers, in respect to his ”dreadful sickness.”
Occasionally he would point to his eyes, observing ”how sunken and bedimmed!” then to his cheeks, saying ”how pale and deathly they seem!”
Then again, he would call attention to the thinness of his hands and arms, saying, ”He was not near the man he used to be, and he feared he never should be again. Although he was out that evening, he ought not to have been, and he expected to suffer severely through the night for it.
If he had the health he once had, or the health of his friend next him, there was nothing he would enjoy more than that evening; but now he was past it. His doctor had been visiting him for years; but he didn't seem to get any better, and he thought he should have to give him up, or lose all the money he had. O dear! the room was too warm, he could not breathe; that door must be opened; that singing distracted him; he loved the piano once--now his nerves could not stand it. He thought it became young people to be very serious and devout in the prospect of an affliction which might be as melancholy as his was. But he could not remain any longer; he was afraid of stopping out nights, and therefore he must wish them good-bye and retire.”
This was about the substance of all he said during his visit. He was like an iceberg rolled into the genial temperature of the social atmosphere. What did those young people care to know about his health, excepting the usual compliments at such times? The room was not an hospital, and the company a collection of inquiring, medical students.
He was no worse that evening than he had been months before. But as he had not seen most of them until now he probably thought that would be an interesting opportunity to entertain them with a full and particular account of ”his complicated and long-continued afflictions.”
As soon as Mr. Round had gone from the room a general rallying was the result.
”The bore is gone, the valetudinarian has made his exit,” exclaimed Master Thompson, rather excited.
”O how pleased I am that he has left!” said Miss Young.
”So am I,” responded Mr. Baker, ”for he is one of the greatest plagues that ever came near me. He is enough to give one the horrors, in hearing so much of his sick talk.”
”He was not satisfied in simply telling us that he was not very well; but he must enter into a long and tedious detail of all his sicknesses,”
observed Mr. Wales.
”Well, poor man, he is to be pitied, after all. He suffers a great deal more in his imagination from his sickness than we have in reality by hearing him tell of it,” said Miss Swaithe, a little sympathetically.