A NEEDED ETIQUETTE.
THERE are plenty of Etiquettes in the world—too many, most reasonable folk would say—but yet we feel inclined to suggest an addition to the number. We want it to be made an etiquette that a man who announces that he is seeking rest should be let alone. Nobody questions that in the hurry and strain of modern intellectual life, a necessity has arisen for periodic rest, such as our grandfathers, whose lives were slower, never felt. The handicraftsm'an has reduced his stint of labour on the average by two hours a day, but the class which uses its brains works as it never yet worked, and is harassed as it never was harassed before, till physicians are recognising " overwork" as a specific cause of disease, and a few of them are making the effects of over-cerebration, under a hundred names, a distinct specialty. There are, we believe, at least three first-class doctors in London whose incomes flow almost entirely from men with brains which are overworn, but not shattered, who seldom know what is the matter with them, but who one and all confess that their nerves are "over-strung," or "under- strung," or "gone to pieces," or "so excited" that they can neither sleep, nor work, nor remain quiet. They do not say, with Mrs. Gamp, "which fiddle-strings is weakness to expredge my nerves this night !"—but that is their permanent condition. In this last Parliamentary Recess, the public attention has been called to half-a-dozen such eases, the Head of her Majesty's Government, the Leader of Opposition, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the President of the Local Government Board, and two or three other well-known men, having been ill with ill- nesses of different kinds and degrees all traceable in one way or another to overstrain. They are but samples, and poor samples, of thousands more—English Ministers being almost invariably men of exceptional vitality—from studying whose complaints the specialists have become abnormally dis- cerning. They can tell almost at a glance where anxiety has been the cause of disease, and where, as sometimes, though seldom, happens, it must be sought in actual over-work ; where drugs or alcohol have assisted the decay of nervous force, and where asceticism, tried as a remedy, has seriously injured the resisting power, diminishing the fuel, till every day threatens to empty the store. They differ considerably, we are told, in their practice, some having a lingering faith in the milder narcotics, which others have lost; and some in sleep by itself, which others think is only perfectly recuperative when it comes unsought— the phenomena of sleep, and especially the differences in the quality of sleep, are not half investigated—but they all agree recommending perfect "rest." Their patients, who have instinct to guide them, and some memories of quick recovery during accidental or incidental lulls in life, always agree with them, but always start in reply the question how the rest is to be obtained. It is, as Society is now constituted, the most diffi- cult thing in the world to get, as difficult as "the silence that is in the starry skies" is to secure in London. The professional classes have managed, with much more difficulty and expense than is always suspected, to beat the remain- der of the world into allowing them a few weeks' holiday in the year, seldom more than six, during which they may be absent without affronting constituents, or clients, or patients, or business connections; and if the holiday can be made to fit the momentary need, one condition of rest has been obtained. Very often, however, it will not fit, and then rest is nearly hopeless. The pecuniary sacrifice of going away wholly during the busy season is often too heavy to be borne, and rest at home is unobtainable. The work to be done flows in, the world has none of the pity for coming illness which it has for actual illness or for grief, it is impossible to seal up the house— except by persistent lying—and the unhappy man, who feels as if his head were going from weariness, who would be let alone if he had a fever, or spared all intrusion if his wife wore dead, is harassed by all around him without remorse, and, indeed, with the feeling that they are conferring favours. If the sufferers are eminent, the case is even worse. The obscure can, if driven desperate, get away, and once away, can lose themselves, out of reach of letters or telegrams ; but the great have not that -power. For them, there is but one retreat from the storm of c ammunications,—the deck of a yacht, which, once on the open water, is such a refuge, so charming a retreat from the troubles of the world and the pestering of a too perfect Post, that Sir Stafford Northcote, though he is no Viking, or lover of Kings- ley's "Wind of God," wisely sought it even in midwinter, and with the dreaded Bay to cross. He was, we believe, quite right ; and, as luxury and common-sense advance, we shall yet see hospital steamers in the Mediterranean,
–and yachts advertised with captains who are "thoroughly -experienced in avoiding letters, suppressing telegrams, -and prohibiting communications with the outside world." ' But everybody cannot go to sea. Half of the over- • tasked detest blue water, and the noises, and the smells; while of the remaining moiety, eighty per cent. want their wives or • ' daughters to be with them, and will not inflict on patient nurses the purgatory of a chopping sea. Nothing exhilarates those who enjoy it like the water, and nothing so rapidly lowers those 'who detest its unrest or its noise. For the majority, the sea is no refuge; and in England, or near England, where is • there one for those whom the world watches ? Sark has not been made, as it should be, the retreat of the weary. Hardly even on the Mediterranean is there rest, for not
• to mention the followers of the god Dynamite, who roam .22 widely as the servants of the Sheikh of the Moun- tains did in the middle ages, and are far more terrible —for, after all, you could defeat a dagger, and are always at the mercy of dynamite—the Mediterranean retreats are as open -gas London to the post and to the wire. Their infatuated in- --habitants are as proud of many deliveries as of infrequent main drains. The letters and the messages are always pouring in, and even if they are stopped by faithful secretaries or loving friends, there is always the thought, absent on board ship, that something disagreeable which you ought to know is being kept back from you in mercy. A grave face means a hidden telegram with a death in it. Then there are dhe callers, all anxious to compliment ; and the officials, all eager to be attentive; and the public, all crazy with an imbecile
• cariosity, or with the natural desire to see what a great man is like. Continentals do not crowd, but they do stare. Mr. Glad- stone has had the training of a quarter of a century, but, except to a King or a great statesman, what a horrible burden, when • one is brain-weary, those platoons of eyes must be ! Let a theatre look at you suddenly, and see; and in the case supposed, that -you are great, that you are weary, and that you need air, every road, every hill-side, every wood is but a theatre the more. There
• is no escape, save at night, and even then the thought must come that you are living under a microscope, and that over a Sundred wires are speeding messages telling mankind all you have done, and said, and eaten and left nntasted, what you wear, -what you do, to whom you speak, and what it may at all events be imagined that you said. If a Prince comes, he brings a secret message ; if a Pretender calls, he is asking permission for a Revolution. The room of the sick American statesman -,Gwarms with interviewers, but they can only be just a shade worse than the bulletin-makers, who will not let Mr. Gladstone lnok down from a balcony on a Carnival without recounting how showers of confelli—nasty comfits, part plaster, part flour, and part dyes—only excited him to boyish glee.
Now, why should not the Doctors, and the leaders of fashion, .and the journalists, among them establish an etiquette binding the world, when once a man has announced that he is seeking Test and is in retreat from his fellow-men, to leave him tem- porarily alone ? Could not they make it a social outrage to call .on a Quietist—there must be a word, and as the sect is extinct, that will do—to send a letter to him without imperative neces- sity, to stare at him as he passes, or to record his movements more than once a day, or with the smallest particularity ? A -dozen men in London, if they only agreed, could shut up the cgreat microscope whenever a Quietist came within its field ; -and a few physicians, a few great ladies, and a few Club
men could soon secure the remainder of the required im- munities. They are secured very fairly well for men who are in grief. No one insists on seeing a man whose daughter is dying or wife dead, or writes to a man known to be in deep sorrow, or feels affronted because he is avoided on the day of the funeral of a dear relative. Suppose we extend that pity to the brain-weary, and regard the announcement that "Master is Quiet till the 10th," as a sufficient reason for our friend's temporary disappearance from the world ? Let us make it a Miss to pester the avowedly tired, and "bad form" to intrude, even by a letter, on a time of retreat. He might get rest then, even at home, which is sometimes the best place, without the distracting thought that in seeking rest he is insuring enmity, and that his sleep of a fort- night will be blamed as a fortnight of neglected duty. The etiquette would be no more burdensome to the public than the etiquette which in Catholic countries—are there any left P—once compelled respect for a "retreat," or than the often discreditable fear which secures to a patient with scarlet-fever or diphtheria such admirable immunity from the visits of his closest friends. It would hurt nobody, while it would greatly help to secure to invalids, whose lives are usually valuable, a chance of con- valescence, even when they cannot rush to a Mediterranean island, or pay for a steam yacht for themselves. The perfect sanatorium for the weary man would be Roraima: suppose we barricade his dwelling with Etiquettes.
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