" CHEERY STOICISM."
THE thing that has most struck us about Mr. Ernest Benzon's autobiography is a certain admission made by all, or nearly all, his reviewers. The book itself has little in
it not contained in its author's evidence before the Courts of Law, and that little consists mainly of statistics. It is in- teresting in a way to be assured that the vague stories which
float about society of enormous gambling losses are, in one instance at least, well founded, and that a man in our day can,
if he pleases, lose £25,000 in a night at presumably honest "play." A fancy existed that these stories were legends, and that a wealthy man must play for years to attain to utter rain ; but Mr. Benzon's evidence on that point is decisive.
Still, except their scale, there is nothing special about Mr. Benzon's losses. He was robbed by money-lenders, plundered by sharpers (possibly sharpers who only used superior know- ledge and experience), and defeated by bookmakers, just like any other of the hundred young idiots who in every succeeding season pass through his experiences in a smaller way. He was exceptional, perhaps, in the degree to which he enjoyed the excitement of risking money, for in the majority of his rivals there is, as a rule, an intermittent con- sciousness alike of fear and pain, of which Mr. Benzon appears to have been wholly devoid. He had no more con- science about gambling than a Chinaman, and without .
conscience there is no real mental pain. This difference between him and his fellows is, however, too slight to call for more than a passing notice, and, as we said, we are more interested in a particular admission of his reviewers. They write from many stand-points, the most usual being the Philistine but sensible one, that a man must be a fool to part with so much to gain so little—the fact of loss striking them much more than the appetite for risk—but they all, however severe, throw one kind word to the object of their censures, and it is always of the same sort. They all think he must have good in him, because he does not whine. The praise is quite deserved, so far as the book can be accepted as evidence ; "cheery stoicism," as Carlyle called it, being the one strong point in an otherwise exceedingly weak and rashly impulsive character. Mr. Benzon blames no one, unless it be his guardian for keeping him in ignorance of his coming fortunes,—an error of judgment which was once, as most old solicitors know, exceedingly common, and con- sidered to indicate unusual thoughtfulness, the idea being that a lad who expected wealth was certain to learn nothing,—and the tradesmen, who after most profitable transactions, " milled " him for trumpery sums. He has no quarrel with the bookmakers, he never abuses the sharpers, and he is positively kindly to the money-lenders, retaining, apparently, an odd sense of gratitude because of the exceeding promptness, so different from the slow- ness of family solicitors, with which they met his wants.
He invents no excuses for himself, does not malign his friends, and treats his tumble in life, over which many men would bemoan themselves from youth to old age, as he might a bad tumble from a horse which he had ridden a little too fast. We entirely agree with the reviewers in their recognition of this quality in Mr. Benzon as a redeeming one ; but then, we want to know why, if they admire cheery stoicism in this case so much, they do not in any other. If journalists and newspaper correspondents are any guides to opinion, the world is not only ceasing to think whining discreditable, but is determined to develop the practice by every means in its power. Everybody who suffers, or thinks he suffers, is encouraged to consider him- self " a case," to moan over his wrongs, and to accuse either individuals or society at large as the " relentless " causes of them. It is a " woe " to be a criminal, or a drunkard, or an unsuccessful man; and if the unemployed, or the sot, or the convict will only howl at some one as the cause of that woe, the Press is ready to pity and relieve him. The " martyr" now is not the man who endures in silence, or who faces the consequences of his own acts, but the man who descants upon his pains, who exaggerates every unpleasant incident, who calls most successfully upon the world for what it calls its " sympathy," which means very often its own enjoyment of an emotional condition of its nerves. The poor man who bears his poverty gets nothing ; but the poor man who will beg, who shows or even invents his sores, who parades his suffering wife and carries about his pinched children, is overwhelmed with charity. His whining, whether justified or not, is counted
as a grace to him, and if he can do it in pathetic words, it is a grace covering all sins. Mrs. Maybrick described herself as " friendless and alone," and produced quite a thrill of emotion, though she had, and those who thrilled knew she had, a husband who had paid her debts, a devoted mother, and a lover who spent thousands on her defence. So appreciative has the public become of whining, that if a parricide nowadays repeated the grim French joke, and prayed his Judges to be " merciful to an orphan," thousands would repeat his prayer in a petition to the Home Secretary for his free pardon, and not see in the least that they were making themselves ridiculous. Ridiculous,' they would say; 'why, the man is an orphan ; and to orphans the great heart of the community instinctively goes out.' Mr. Benzon's proper course, if he wanted public petting, would have been to cast all his failure on his guardian, to denounce those who won his money as grasping blood- suckers, to declare Mr. Matthews answerable for the existence of money-lenders, and to ask, as a man ruined by the
Satanic callousness " of " society," for a subscription sufficient to enable him to begin " punting " again. Then, indeed, the new journalism would have taken him to its bosom, and the thousand correspondents to whom it gives space would have wept in slipshod English over the miseries of the gamester who, under " our foul system of Society," when he loses, pays. Whining is old, we admit, the earliest recorded whine being Adam's ; but it was never esteemed admirable till this generation arose.
There will be a result shortly, from all this indulgence in false pity, and it will take one of three forms. It is quite possible that " emotion " will wear itself out, and that a jaded generation will become pitiless, as humane men do in Spain if they indulge themselves too much in the spectacles of the arena. They come to thirst for emotion so strongly that pity either for the beasts or the men dies out, and they would tolerate anything if only it promised a new movement of the nerves. It was a generation bred on Rousseau, that king among whining litterateurs, which sanc- tioned or endured the Terror ; and though Englishmen are not Frenchmen, they share with them a common human nature. It is those, we notice, even now, who whine most who threaten most; and the double tone of the beggar—his readi- ness to whine or to curse—is part of universal human ex- perience. Or there will be a fierce intellectual reaction, marked among the sceptical cultivated by a sudden and strong recrudescence of the old Stoic philosophy. Society likes to be Pagan, and we can quite well imagine it boasting that external things are nothing to the philosopher, who should find suffi- cient occupation in controlling his own mind, and more especially its spasms of emotion. The noble side of that philosophy would tempt many fine minds, as indulgence in the passion of pity tempts them now, and they would throw their shield over the thousands who would confuse stoicism with callousness, and would ask in innumerable letters why any one should do anything for anybody else. There is a vein in the English character, for all its tendency both to true kindliness and to maudliness—if ever a word was wanted that word is to- day—which would respond very readily to the rougher kind of stoicism, and would find in "Enlightened Indifference" a fertile source of personal content. Or—for reactions produce good as well as evil, and the treasures brought by the flow of the tide are found only during its ebb—we shall by-and-bye see among the ordinarily religious, who in England, as in America, are still an immense majority, a strong revival of consciousness that there is a hard side to Christianity,—that the Master taught about crime, and contracts, and personal responsibility, other lessons than those which for the moment are mastering, and in their division from their correctives appear to be partially disorganising, the world. There was a second thief when the first was pardoned ; and Society, in its determination to pardon both, and, indeed, to prefer the reviler, is at least not imitating Christ. The hard side of our faith has come to the front at intervals a good many times, always to the rebracing of the national fibre ; and if ever a reaction towards it could be produced by a sway too far towards the other aide, it is most assuredly now. For the moment, how- ever, public schoolboys, who instinctively hate whining, seem to have a monopoly of manliness; and to find journalists praising a man for bearing self-inflicted losses without cries of rage and an outpouring of self-pity, is an incident so unusual as to deserve a separate record.
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