Certain Personal Matters | Page 5

Euphemia is
always putting everything into some hiding-hole or other, which she
calls its "place." Trivial things in their way, you may say, yet each
levying so much toll on my brain and nervous system, and demanding
incessant vigilance and activity. I calculated once that I wasted a
masterpiece upon these mountainous little things about every three
months of my life. Can I help thinking of them, then, and asking why I
suffer thus? And can I avoid seeing at last how it is they hang together?
For there is still one other bother, a kind of bother botherum, to tell of,
though I hesitate at the telling. It brings this rabble herd of worries into
line and makes them formidable; it is, so to speak, the Bother
Commander-in-Chief. Well! Euphemia. I simply worship the ground
she treads upon, mind, but at the same time the truth is the truth.
Euphemia is a bother. She is a brave little woman, and helps me in
every conceivable way. But I wish she would not. It is so obviously all
her doing. She makes me get up of a morning--I would not stand as
much from anybody else--and keeps a sharp eye on my chin and collar.
If it were not for her I could sit about always with no collar or tie on in
that old jacket she gave to the tramp, and just smoke and grow a beard
and let all the bothers slide. I would never wash, never shave, never
answer any letters, never go to see any friends, never do any
work--except, perhaps, an insulting postcard to a publisher now and
again. I would just sit about.
Sometimes I think this may be peculiar in me. At other times I fancy I
am giving voice to the secret feeling of every member of my sex. I
suspect, then, that we would all do as the noble savage does, take our
things off and lie about comfortable, if only someone had the courage
to begin. It is these women--all love and reverence to Euphemia
notwithstanding--who make us work and bother us with Things. They

keep us decent, and remind us we have a position to support. And
really, after all, this is not my original discovery! There is the third
chapter of Genesis, for instance. And then who has not read Carlyle's
gloating over a certain historical suit of leather? It gives me a queer
thrill of envy, that Quaker Fox and his suit of leather. Conceive it, if
you can! One would never have to quail under the scrutiny of a tailor
any more. Thoreau, too, come to think of it, was, by way of being a
prophet, a pioneer in this Emancipation of Man from Bothery.
Then the silent gentry who brew our Chartreuse; what are they in
retirement for? Looking back into history, with the glow of discovery
in my eyes, I find records of wise men--everyone acknowledged they
were wise men--who lived apart. In every age the same associate of
solitude, silence, and wisdom. The holy hermits!... I grant it, they
professed to flee wickedness and seek after righteousness, but now my
impression is that they fled bothers. We all know they had an intense
aversion to any savour of domesticity, and they never shaved, washed,
dined, visited, had new clothes. Holiness, indeed! They were viveurs....
We have witnessed Religion without Theology, and why not an
Unsectarian Thebaid? I sometimes fancy it needs only one brave man
to begin.... If it were not for the fuss Euphemia would make I certainly
should. But I know she would come and worry me worse than St.
Anthony was worried until I put them all on again, and that keeps me
from the attempt.
I am curious whether mine is the common experience. I fancy, after all,
I am only seeing in a clearer way, putting into modern phrase, so to
speak, an observation old as the Pentateuch. And looking up I read
upon a little almanac with which Euphemia has cheered my desk:--
"The world was sad" (sweet sadness!) "The garden was a wild" (a
picturesque wild) "And man the hermit" (he made no complaint) "Till
the woman smiled."--CAMPBELL.
[And very shortly after he had, as you know, all that bother about the
millinery.]

ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE
Wife-choosing is an unending business. This sounds immoral, but what
I mean will be clearer in the context. People have lived--innumerable
people--exhausted experience, and yet other people keep on coming to
hand, none the wiser, none the better. It is like a waterfall more than
anything else in the world. Every year one has to turn to and warn
another batch about these stale old things. Yet it is one's duty--the last
thing that remains to a man. And