On Pleasure-seeking

The denunciation of pleasure-seeking is rightly suspect, because it is itself so often the seeking of the very basest of pleasures. I mean, of course, the pleasure of being pained 5 I mean, the pleasure of being shocked, the pleasure of being censorious — in a word, the pleasure of scandal. But there are criticisms of modern pleasure-seeking which are not merely the scandal-mongering of old women, which is a permanent temptation to men as they grow old. There are criticisms that rest on reasonable and eternal principles. And one of them, I think, is this — that so many modern pleasures aim at indiscriminate and incongruous combination. They are colours that kill each other j they are like the action of a musician who should try to express his universality by listening to five tunes at once.

For instance, it is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is greedy to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time. I say trying to enjoy them, for it is the mark of this sort of complex enjoyment that it is not enjoyed. The fashion of having very loud music during meals in restaurants and hotels seems to me a perfect example of this chaotic attempt to have everything at once and do everything at once. Eating and drinking and talking have gone together by a tradition as old as the world 5 but the entrance of this fourth factor only spoils the other three. It is an ingenious scheme for combining music to which nobody will listen with conversation that nobody can hear. Recall some of the great conversations of history and literature j imagine some of the great and graceful impromptus, some of the spontaneous epigrams of the wits of the past j and then imagine each of them shouted through the deafening uproar of a brass band. It seems to me an intolerable insult to a musical artist that people should treat his art as an adjunct to a refined gluttony. It seems a yet more subtle insult to the musician that people should require to be fortified with food and drink at intervals, to strengthen them to endure his music. I say nothing of the deeper and darker insult to that other artist, the cook, in the suggestion that men require to be inspired and rallied with drums and trumpets to attack the dangers of his dinner, as if it were a fortress bristling with engines of death. But in any case it is the combination of the two pleasures that is unpleasant. When people are listening to a good concert they do not ostentatiously produce large porkpies and bottles of beer to enable them to get through it somehow. And if they do not bring their meals to their music, why should they bring their music to their meals?

I have noticed many other examples of this kind of luxury in the wrong place. I mean, the elaboration of enjoyments in such a way that they cannot be enjoyed. A little while ago I happened to be dining in the train j and I am very fond of dining in the train — or, indeed, anywhere else. I know that people sometimes write to the papers, or even make scenes in the railway-carriage, complaining of the railway dinner service j but my complaint is quite different — and, indeed, quite contrary. I do not complain of the dinner because it was too bad, but because it was too good. The pleasure of eating in trains is akin to the pleasure of picnics, and should have a character adapted to its abnormal and almost adventurous conditions. This dinner was what is called a good dinner — that is, it was about twice as long as any normal person would want in his own home, and a great deal longer than he would want even in an ordinary restaurant. The train was also what is called a good train — that is, it was a train that swayed wildly from side to side in hurtling through England like a thunderbolt. Nobody who really wanted to enjoy a long and luxurious dinner would dream of sitting down to it under those conditions. Nobody would desire the restaurant tables to be shot round and round the restaurant like a giddy-go-round.

Anybody would see in the abstract that it is foolish to attempt to possess simultaneously the advantage of luxury and leisure with the other advantage of speed. It is merely paying for a luxury and purchasing an inconvenience. Add to this the fact that, though the dinner was long, the time given for it was short. For there were other eager epicures waiting to be flung against windows while balancing asparagus or dissecting sardines. Other happy gourmets were to have the opportunity of spilling their soup and upsetting their coffee on that careering vehicle. Everybody concerned in that trainload of banqueters was in as much of a hurry as the train.

As a fact, these combinations are simply conventions. It is not that anybody, left to his own intelligence, would prefer to enjoy a concert in a restaurant, or a dinner in a railway-carriage. It is that some rather vulgar people do not think a restaurant is conventionally complete without a programme of music, or a dinner without a catalogue of courses. These conventions are in their result quite cold and uncomfortable. They entirely neglect the art of pleasure-seeking, in the only intelligent sense of seeking pleasure where it is to be found. It is generally to be found much more in isolation, in distinction, and even in contrast. There was some Oriental sage or other who said, "If you have two pence, buy« with one a loaf and the other a flower." I would myself venture to substitute for the flower a cigar or a glass of wine, only that it would be rather ascetical to consume these things at the price. But I am sure it is a sound principle to have one luxury accompanied by plainer things, like a jewel in a simple setting. This is not identical — indeed, it is inconsistent— with what is commonly called the Simple Life, which generally means a monotonous mediocrity of experience, w^ithout either luxury or austerity. The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt. And any sort of crowding together of more or less contradictory pleasures, in contempt of this principle, is not so much pleasure-seeking as pleasure-spoiling. Those who allow the colours of enjoyment thus to kill each other can with strict propriety be called kill-joys.

There is another moral which I have more than once noted, though it is not generally understood. The sort of ceremony that the world complains of as antiquated and artificial is really much more fresh and simple than the ceremonies of the world. The old pageantry of heralds or priests was really more elementary, almost in the sense of elemental, than the pomps and vanities of the modern world 5 it was more elemental because it dealt more directly with elements. That sort of ritualism might almost be called a rule for keeping ritual simple. Left to itself, in our secular and social life, it becomes extravagantly complex. The old systems had much more sense of the necessity of doing one thing at a time. They had much more of the rational notion of knowing what they were doing.

Thus one of the old Parliaments or Church Councils might have many formalities j but there was nothing corresponding to the noisy band in the crowded restaurant. They did not bang drums and blow bassoons while they argued with their enemies as the others do while they talk to their friends. An ecclesiastical ceremony, like the assumption by a bishop of his mitre and pastoral staff, may seem to some elaborate or extravagant j but there is nothing in it comparable to the elaborate and extravagant city banquet served on an express train. The bishop seldom prides himself on putting on his mitre in a motor-car travelling at any number of miles an hour. What is the matter with the modern ceremonies is that they have not only become elaborate but become entangled. We have the complication of two complicated things caught and hooked in each other, like two gigantic clocks wrestling. Moreover, there is the further complication produced by rapid change combined with rigid discipline. The old customs were at least old enough to become second nature. But a fashion is always sufficiently new to be unnatural. We may think it a meaningless pomposity that a judge should assume a black cap or a cardinal be presented with a red hat. But the judge does not have to change his cap every season, and there is no necessity for the red hat to be a stylish hat. The combination between the rigidity and the rapidity of fashions leads to a mobilization of an almost military type; and, compared with that, the things that were more old-fashioned were also more free.