THE DISTASTE FOR LEISURE.
ALL Americans agree, we think, in believing that their country is pervaded by a distaste for leisure. Some of them describe it, like the acute Frenchman, M. Paul de Rousiers, whom we reviewed last week, as a passion for "climbing," others as a craving for "intense" life, and others, again, as a contempt for idleness ; but all admit the impeach- ment. We have cross-examined many on the point, and they are unanimous in their consent that no born American of any grade ever " retires," or avowedly gives himself up, in America at least, to a life without definite, and in a sense compulsory, occupation. He may actually do but little, but unless he is seriously sick, he pretends to himself and the world that he
is doing something, and usually is doing it. There are, it is true, a few idle or contemplative men of means ; but when they desire to indulge their tastes, they " go to Europe," and there are a few literary men or collectors who do not do much ; but they are all supposed, if it be only through courtesy, to be preparing to do. No American acknowledges himself to belong to the leisured classes, even if he has no motive for exertion.
The popular politician works till he has a stroke, or is able to say that his doctor fears one ; the professional in request keeps on taking all the fees he can get until death overtakes him ; the successful man of business enlarges his transactions until he is able to bequeath them to his son, wbo again recommences the same eternal climb. The success of the father, indeed, seems to act as a stimulus on the son, until there is a large class of families in the American cities which seem, like the Roths- childs, to regard the pursuit of wealth through business as a hereditary duty which will be obligatory on them till the world cools, or till there is nothing left in it which will yield even a fractional per-tentage of interest. Scores of Americans have achieved all the business triumphs they desire, are so full of money that the surplus yields them neither pleasure nor excitement, nor soothing ; but still they go on unresting, and are often tempted by a kind of satiety into larger and larger undertakings. The universal desire of Europe for a period of contented calm seems to have no place in their hearts ; they do not care to make room for the young, even if they are their own sons ; and as to leaving the arena clear for their rivals, they would regard the suggestion as an insipid jest.
They are hypochondriacs almost to a man, sometimes to a degree which makes the doctors they trust look very grave indeed ; but they dislike holidays, and, when pressed, declare that they are more anxious when outside the track, than when they are pulling with the team. They are not always unaware that they are spending irreplaceable energy, and if genuinely religions men, as is not unfrequently the case, have fits of " concern " about their worldliness, usually removed by lavish gifts ; but they fail to see any connection between leisure and unworldliness, or hold that, as idle men, they would be even greater sinners. They lament the strain, but stand the strain, until some fine morning some one of the many diseases described as " heart," or " nerves," or " strokes," finishes the contest by either prostrating them, or killing them outright. The old English feeling that a man ought to be tranquil in the evening of his days, is as far from them as the Italian feeling that life would be too happy were it not for work, or the French feeling that hard industry is honourable from thirty to fifty-five, but before that a waste of youth, and after that something of a voluntary humiliation. They feel, in fact, or, at least, act on, a positive distaste for leisure.
This is a remarkable accompaniment of civilisation, and the ordinary explanations do not, we confess, seem to us satisfac- tory. It is often attributed to climate, and, no doubt, the clearer air of the United States tends to increase excitement ; but then, excitement should all the sooner produce weariness of the exhausting contest, and it does not. Moreover, there are a good many climates within the United States, and we do not learn that any one of them ever produced in any of the native Indians the restlessness of the Whites ; rather it developed in them an apathetic calm, and an aversion to all work not of an especially honorific kind, like the work of war, or of the chase. A Red Indian is as disinclined to monotonous toil as an English squire. Again, it is said in many books, written by many observers, that in America work is forced upon the rich by democratic jealousy, that " opinion" will not bear to see a man live in luxury without his visibly trying to add to the wealth of the community. There is such a feeling everywhere, and it may be specially strong in America, where the tradition of " improvement " is so power- ful; but we suspect the rich, if they strongly desired leisure, could live the feeling down, or at worst could render it innocuous by paying blackmail in the shape of perpetually repeated but limited benevolences, which would suggest that the wealthy idle were at least as useful as any other reservoirs. Nor can we find, either in American books or American talk, that the dislike to the idle is in any way confined to the rich. On the contrary, the man of small means who idles, yet can buy his dinner, is rather roughly condemned as a man " of no account" as "a good-for-nothing," or even described by that terrible term of opprobrium, " a loafer." The social compulsion, too, would hardly affect the old, or those who could justly call
themselves invalids ; yet it is precisely these, whose per- sistence in working on when work is no longer needful, draws the attention (admiring or reproving), not only of foreigners, but of all Americans who profess to analyse their own society. We take it that there are three reasons for the social habit, any one of which operates more strongly than those usually assigned. One is, that in America money is desired, not as it is in England, for the freedom or pleasure or luxury it brings with it, but as a test of success, a standard of comparison, an equivalent of rank in Europe. An English politician hardly ever gives up voluntarily till he dies, but pur- sues his ambition, be it the Garter, or high office, or power, into far old age; and to the American, his " pile," or his in- come is, from the circumstances of the country, the equivalent of all those things. To cease to work is to give up ambition, and for that " last infirmity " no one is too old. You never can get quite to the top on that ladder, or, at least, it is difficult to keep there; and to slip back is, even to the moderate, always a painful operation. The chance of a fall is apt to seem so near. Then, in America, the interests of men outside their work are not usually absorbing. The rich have no estates to govern, or to fancy they are governing; they cannot found families ; and they do not often care to be actively philanthropic; indeed, if they were, their leisure would be as limited as before. Business men usually fail to acquire the habit of studying special subjects, and we think we note—though here we are open to correction from greater experts—that while average Americans read more than average Englishmen, they much more seldom enjoy reading, or take to books as at once an amuse- ment and a satisfying occupation. A few read omnivorously, as a few do in France, but we imagine the man who is always sure to be content if there are books accessible, is in America a rarity. And thirdly, there is the chain of habit. The American is a business man from a boy ; he has never known what it is to be free from business, unless he is travelling— and travelling arrests, without altering, strong habits—and he feels, if he is out of business, uneasy, dispirited, and at angles with his life. He is like a dram-drinker with no whisky, or— for the simile is a better one—like a smoker who has been forbidden tobacco on account of the state of his throat, that is, he is without an indulgence which has become constitu- tional, which is an occupation as well as a pleasure, and which produces no moral qualms. He goes on with business, be it what it may, as an old hunter goes after the hounds, because somehow he must, even if his muscles are failing till he can hardly keep his place, and pants with every exertion as if in pain. Men dread the insipidity of life, even in old age, as they dread nothing else, and to the man who has once grown to regard his work as the end of his existence, life without it is too insipid to be voluntarily endured. If he is ill, he ceases to care ; but to be well, and not be able, as the soap-boiler said, to be present on melting-days, is intolerably vexations, or rather, he fears it will be.
We place the more confidence in this last explanation, because we have noted for some years past a distinct increase among Englishmen of the American feeling. Professional men and business men are more reluctant to give up than they were. This is due, no doubt, in part to the increased difficulty of saving, owing to the reduction in the rate of interest which has marked the last half of the century, and which has so greatly decreased the mental comfort of the middle class, but it is, in part, due also to another cause. The habit of working has bitten deeper. Work itself has become more interesting with the greater complexity of life, with increased competition, and with the keener sense of what work means ; it has become more necessary, and it has filled a larger space in all the incidents of life. The old leisurely ways have died out, the old wastings of time, and, in a great number of men, usually the successful men, the old addiction to hobbies wholly disconnected with the work of the day. The work, no matter what it is, has filled the mind more, and the habit of doing it, from a mere clothing has become a skin, which it seems impossible to tear off without actual suffering. The reluctance to go " has become morbid,—that is, like a habit indulged for a generation, has nearly passed beyond the control of the will. Men, as any great physician will tell you, constantly die of " retiring," and of no other disease. That Nessus shirt of habit bites savagely even here, and if we strengthen its poison, as in America, by exposing it to the action at once of opinion, of a specialised ambition, and of an hereditary proclivity, we shall recognise how alarming the very idea of tearing it from the flesh must perforce become. It is almost from an instinct of self-defence, like that which closes the eyelid to the glare of light, that an American shrinks from abandoning business, and goes on till he dies adding to millions which give him practically nothing, and which, if the influence of habit ceased, he would give away, or throw away, more recklessly than any man in the world. He does it, even now, very often when he makes a " donation," or portions a daughter, or gives an Aladdin entertainment ; but, then, each of those operations, though unproductive, strikes him as business, too. To him it is only leisure which is not business, and, therefore, a harassing waste of valuable time.
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