DESPAIR AND ITS CAUSES.
A N able and thoughtful contemporary, in writing the other day on the diary of the suicide Samuel Howard, who drowned himself by leaping from a bridge into the Eden near Carlisle last week, makes the very questionable remark, in reference to the last- entry in that diary, that "no sane person could, on the brink of: death, stop to write out a description of an ordinary country inn.. A man able to realize the awful nature of this sudden shutting-out of life would not stay to be interested in a cat which he finds able• to open a door with its paws. The theory that every man who commits suicide must be insane is of doubtful value;. but we need scarcely hesitate in forming an opinion about the mental condition of a man who, knowing that he is about to com- mit self-destruction, actually spends the last moments of his life ia describing his visit to an inn and in arranging for the transference to the police of memoranda in which he mora- lizes over the weaknesses of humanity in general." We do not think that in these lines the writer has at all. accurately seized the real significance of the unhappy suicide's. diary, which contains not a mere description of a country inn, nor a general moralizing over the weaknesses of humanity in general, but remarks the whole drift of which from beginning to end is to show that the world is altogether out of joint ; that life's only end is dissolution ; that " everything looks not worth living for "; that he (the suicide) especially cannot be sociable, though he wishes it ; and that when a man becomes " dissatisfied with everything," life,, which is at best "only waiting to be dissolved," ought to wait no longer for circumstances, but should be extinguished by an act of. volition. Taken in connection with reflections of this kind, the. description of the last morning's visit to a village inn has plenty of significance :—" Six minutes to eleven,—I called in here. A little brandy to warm tue before I get cold ; and here I saw an old dame, lame; a cat with his tail cut off lifting himself upon his hind logs to open the door with his paws ; a girl with clogs clatters all over the house ; a humpbacked woman says the wather ' will be hot in a minute. Here she is. She looks as if she had been dragged through a sick hospital. This is the Crown Hotel." It. would not, of course, be hard to express with greater power that contemptuous sense of the moral chaos at the heart of life which pervades this description, for as Mr. Howard grotesquely said of himself, he was not " intellectually adapted,"—meaning that he was not an intellectual mau,—and was hardly up to the task of expressing his own despair. But for all that, his eye seizes eagerly, almost triumphantly, on the superficial symptoms of the unmeaning dreariness of life,—the lame woman, the sick hump-backed woman, the girl with her senseless clattering, the ugly, crippled cat, with its gleam of intelligence,—and dwells on them as his last apology for quitting this confused and trivial world himself. In deep inward emotion of any kind, where the key to a man's own mental condition is within his own heart, the outer world at its best is apt to look like a bewildering assortment of caprices, and the slightest movement in it strikes the mind with a vivacity of contrast that leaves on the memory an impression as lasting as that of the emotion itself with which it is brought into connection. But in Samuel Howard's case there was not merely this whirl of emotion with- in, and consequently keen perception of the (to him) un- meaning commonplaceness of the world without, there was in addition, no doubt, a keen desire to seize on confirmatory evidence to justify his own despair,—to discern once more in. the world that dreary incoherence of littlenesses, that multipli- city of monotonous evil, which would justify him afresh iu refusing to " wait" any longer " for dissolution."
The minuteness of Samuel Howard's description of the village inn with its various signs of the out-of-joint conditionof the universe, certainly, then, does not indicate any absence of the strong emotion natural to the state of mind of an intending suicide ; on the con- trary, it seems to us to express that emotion most clearly. On the other hand, it as certainly does not indicate anything of that over- powering concentration of the mind on one morbid train of thought which suggests madness. Despair may indicate madness when it is the despair of remorse,—the despair which makes the mind dash itself against an inexorable past of its own making, till the thought of that past becomes a sort of possession which renders
the mind proof against admitting, or reflecting upon, any other.
Such despair is, no doubt, a sort of madness, an over- ness of such human interests as are really strongest amongst and-by-East of the altar. The periwigs are falling off the coachmen,
men, befits the posterity of monkeys, and may be a warning to and though beadles still look grand, we question if twenty years himself not to try to share such interests. We should call this hence a footman in livery will be a possibility. He will want state of mind very nearly the opposite of that of true insanity,— the pins thrust into his calves to be too much " considered " in his though no doubt, as in many other cases, so in this, extremes meet wages. The idea, nevertheless, which penetrated the sumptuary in their practical result,—a weariness due to the want of alt in- laws, the notion that there is a standard of dress which befits terests and stimulus, instead of due to the excess of any,—a con- each station, and which ought to be enforced somehow, if not by
dition of extreme relaxation, instead of extreme tension. law then by opinion, still retains some influence, still, for instance, And this condition of mind is the more formidable that, should induces journalists all over England to republish a statement that the present decay of religious faith go on, we should expect simple some unmarried lady unknown out of her own county is going to want of interest in life to become one of the most prolific causes found a Guild to promote simplicity, modesty, and inexpensive- of suicide,—as with h some Oriental nations it probably already is, nose of Dross.
The failure of the belief in Providence,—the loss of the con- We suppose the idea of this proposal is that a knot of women, viction that the circumstances of life are really adapted the more highly placed the better, should form themselves into by an omniscient love to the discipline of our minds,— a society, and should favour all wearers of plain costume, involves of itself an enormous loss of moral interest. There should resolutely appear in dresses of Quakerish demureness, are plenty of men who neither have nor can have much should defy the Lord Chamberlain, for example, by appearing faith in themselves, in their own power to create for themselves at Court in gowns of drab silk close up to the chili, and brave the interests worthy of laborious efforts and struggle. If they cannot glances of their sex by attending church in cheap bonnets and believe that such interests are provided for them, and that so long dull merinos. They are to put down extravagance by cheapness, as they are faithful to themselves, what seems to be want and loss vulgarity by taste in plain materials, and immodesty by corsages is really the opportunity of higher gain, it is impossible but that less stiff than stocks, but quite as impervious to the eye. They life should seem to them, as it seemed to Howard, to consist in a would not, of course, as they would sorrowfully admit, be able to multitude of uninteresting and repulsive details, in disfigured and enforce their laws, to flue Lady Dashaway for wearing point lace at suffering human forms flitting about wearily on errands of no 100 guineas the tunic, to make Miss Rapid put on calico covered with moment, in senseless noise, and misplaced intelligence, and capri- priutedsprigs, or to paint Miss Chudleigh's neck with nitrate of silver ; oious pain,—all exciting no emotion except one of dreary ennui but they may, they think, create an opinion, as the Peace Society, and desire to hasten the moment of dissolution. The binding and the Suppression of Vico Society, and other similar societies power of religious faith, its power to give a real salvation even to have succeeded, or think they have succeeded, in doing. They the intellect, by fixing it on the invisible ends and ties which ren- would, they think, set up a standard, and a standard, as we all know, der life something more than it seems to he, can hardly be exag- is even in vicious times a help to virtue. It is a most excellent gerated. Without its—in a world of such inere " phenomena" as programme, of course, and one to which every right-feeling man is some philosophies suppose it to be,—we are satisfied that the terri- bound to give his support, particularly by eulogizing it when his ble commonplaceuess of the superficial appearance of things might wife's bills come in, but there seems a little difficulty in its way in easily become a still greater danger to human society than even those the absence of precise definitions. What is simplicity of costume ? Of stronger evil passions themselves of which there is such a whole- course, if the Guild is going to insist on a uniform all will be easy, some fear, and which it is justly said that only a deep religious and if it is very simple, say grey corded silk " fit to stand alone" faith can adequately restrain. Doubtless in a world without at thirty guineas the dress, no trimming except a little silver fringe faith, if such could be imagined, there would be a superabundance and a few pearls—real, of course—in the hair, it may find imitators ; of lawless passion ; but there could also, we should fear, be a still and though the milliners' bills will make husbands and fathers greater superabundance of dreary and passionless ennui such as swear, we shall be able to recognize at a glance all those who seems to have been the destruction of Samuel Howard. For our consider their neighbours over-dressed. Failing a uniform, however, own parts, we should dread the latter more than the former. Even it will be difficult to fix on a standard other than this,—that dress evil passion is a powerful interest ; it stirs up all the force of shall not be extravagant according to the station and means of the better life against it, and the struggle is one in which the noblest wearer, and the Guild comes at once right athwart all the condi- natures live most vividly. Bat simple inability to endure the tions of modern society. What is station 2 Who is to settle when commonness of life,—a result to which loss of spiritual faith and a woman dresses beyond her rank ? The Fashion Academy we hope is exceedingly likely to lead,—an overpowering illusion recommended some months since might settle it, and then, in order making the world seem blanker than it is, spreading a false veil to got its decrees obeyed, would have to overturn modern society, of pallor and poorness over existence, would rot society far to succeed in the task which all kings and aristocrats and grandees sooner. It will not come, because in the long run reality always generally have been attempting for the last thirty years in vain. asserts itself against illusion of any kind ; but we can conceive no Madame de Metternicli has not the power, either over opinion or illusion more dangerous and paralyzing, if it were ever to spread anything else, to undress Madame Thiess. Station has come to far, especially in the more miserable layers of society, than that depend too completely on the public appreciation of station, which resolves human society into its loose visible show, and while as to extravagance, no definition can be so much melts away the cohesive power of trust iu God. as attempted. Mrs. 131ank's husband is making five thou-
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