Life in a Bustle E-Book

Various

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 79

Beschreibung

A book helping us cope with the pace of life at the turn of the (nineteenth) century, celebrating the 175th anniversary of The London Library Every age has its own special difficulties and dangers. The disease which specially threatens this generation is restlessness, distraction, dissipation of intellectual and moral power. Its consequence is exhaustion and nervous collapse. And its symptom is Hurry At the turn of the (last) century, the world was changing rapidly. Trains were faster, cheaper and more comfortable than ever before. The new craze of bicycling had given men and women unprecedented independence. And the modernisation of telegraphy and the recent invention of the telephone meant that information could be exchanged over huge distances in a mere matter of minutes. And so a disgruntled and discarded older generation took to pamphlets, leaflets and speeches to pass on their wisdom before it was too late. Alarmed but good-natured, didactic but profound, the resulting 'advice to youth' is valuable guidance for anyone troubled by the rush and bustle of the early century's information overload. Life in a Bustle is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

Leseprobe

PUSHKIN PRESS — THE LONDON LIBRARY

At the turn of the (last) century, the world was changing rapidly. Trains were faster, cheaper and more comfortable than ever before. The new craze of bicycling had given men and women unprecedented independence. And the modernisation of telegraphy and the recent invention of the telephone meant that information could be exchanged over huge distances in a mere matter of minutes.

And so a frazzled and harried world was ready for the pioneers in thinking, education and imagination to advise and instruct on the perilous “Age of Hurry”. Passionate thinkers, committed campaigners, they give invaluable guidance for anyone troubled by the rush and bustle of the early century’s information overload.

 

The books in “Found on the Shelves” have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over seventeen miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

From essays on dieting in the 1860s to instructions for gentlewomen on trout-fishing, from advice on the ill health caused by the “modern” craze of bicycling to travelogues from Norway, they are as readable and relevant today as they were more than a century ago—even if the exhortation to “never drink beer or spirits” has been widely disregarded!

LIFEin aBUSTLE

Advice to Youth

Contents

Title PageBustleThe Little Book Of Health and CourtesyOn Keeping Young and Growing OldAbout the PublisherCopyright

BUSTLE

Delivered to the Students of the Froebel Educational Institute on January 21, 1897

BY SIR ALFRED MILNER, K.C.B.

SIR ALFRED MILNER’S busy life as a barrister, a journalist, a private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, a High Commissioner for South Africa, a Member of the War Cabinet, a Secretary of State for War, a Fellow of New College, Oxford, a member of The London Library and a writer of history and advice on over-achievement lasted from 1854 to 1925.

 

I am not going to address you on the subject of Education. If that is very wrong of me, I hope you will forgive it, and, above all, that you will realize that I am not personally to blame. For my presence here to-day is due to my friend, Mr. Montefiore. He invited me to address you, and as he knows me very well, and as it is impossible to know me without being aware that I am quite unqualified to speak on any educational topic, I must assume that in asking me he intended that, whatever might be the subject of my remarks, they should not be connected with Education. And if so, I am not sure that he was not right. Nine out of ten annual addresses delivered here are likely to deal with one or other of the innumerable aspects of that great subject, which must necessarily always hold the place of honour in an institution such as this. It may be as well that now and again a casual ignoramus like myself should speak about something different, if only to serve as a foil to his predecessors and his successors. It was easy enough to see what I was not competent to talk about, but that did not take me very far. A much greater difficulty arose, when I came to ask myself about what I was competent to talk. It is perfectly clear that no man or woman has any right to stand up and lecture his or her fellow-creatures, whether in large or small numbers, on any subject on which he or she is not, in some sense, an authority. “On what subject,” I said to myself, “am I an authority?” The self-examination thus set on foot was not an agreeable process. I ran over rapidly in my mind a large number of themes of common human interest in the most various fields of intellectual activity, Literature, Science, Art, Invention. It did not take me long to recognize that, despite my advanced age, I had not the faintest claim to speak with authority on any of them. This was a little daunting, but my self-respect rose to the occasion and supplied me with an excuse. “You do not pretend,” it said to me, “to be a student, a man of letters, or an artist. You cannot be expected to excel in Literature, Art, or Science. Your life is one of practical business. You belong to the world of affairs.” I took the hint at once, with a great feeling of relief, and began to recall to mind the numerous pies in which I have had my finger, if perchance one of these might be fit to be dished up for your information or amusement. First I tried to count up my achievements; but, alas! there was not one of them big enough to hang a sentence upon, much less a lecture. Then, in a moment of inspiration, I began to think of my mistakes. At once an illimitable field opened before me. My difficulty now became simply one of selection.

But here I was not without a clue to guide me. In questions of practical conduct no counsel is of much avail which is not based on personal experience. But the experience must not be merely individual. The errors which a man commits owing to his personal idiosyncrasy, or to circumstances peculiar to himself, are not worth his discussing with others, except possibly with very intimate friends, and then only on rare occasions. He must get over them as best he can for himself, but he had better not talk about them. To do so is mere egotism. It is almost as ill-bred to call attention to your personal defects as it is to make a parade of what you imagine to be your excellences. But the matter is different the moment the failing of which you are conscious is one which you cannot help seeing is a very general one. If the mistake you know you have made is being made all around you, it is no longer egotistical to dwell upon it, always provided you have something useful to say. If the personal experience of the most ordinary man can be made to contribute to the diagnosis of a common ailment, then it possesses an importance which the merely individual failing, even of a Napoleon, does not possess.

Now there is one mistake which I am always making, and which I can see plainly is being made by innumerable people of my acquaintance, including some of those, whether men or women, whom I most admire—yes, by women, allow me to say with all respect, every bit as much as by men. It is, I feel no doubt whatever, a failing peculiarly characteristic of our own time. The mistake I refer to is that of being in a hurry, or rather, perhaps I ought to say, of allowing oneself to be hurried. It is not so much the mere act of hurrying, as the sense of hurry, the feeling that you haven’t got time, that you ought to be doing things faster, or doing more things, than, as a matter of fact, you can do. This feeling, with all its attendant evils—constant discomfort, scamped work, moral and physical wear and tear—is an endemic disease amongst us in the present age. It is not a sin. It is not a vice. But it is a very great piece of mismanagement, and we all know that mismanagement, if it is only sufficiently gross and extensive, may do much more harm than murder.

Every successive epoch of history, as we look back upon it from a distance, seems to have some dominant moral characteristic. Our own age, when our great-great-grand-children come to pass judgement upon it, will be known as the Age of Bustle. And they will note with sarcastic interest—if there is any philosophy left in those days and the excessive scurry of the previous generations has not resulted in universal shallow-headedness—that the Age of Bustle immediately succeeded, and indeed in a sense resulted from, a period of unprecedented fertility of invention, and, above all, of great time-saving inventions. Men can do now, as a rule, incomparably more things in a given time than they could a hundred years ago. They can travel to India and the Cape as quickly as their ancestors could to Rome or Vienna. They can send a message to the other end of the world in less time than it took to send one to the next county. And over and above such great discoveries as the railway and the telegraph, there are innumerable minor inventions which economize time—shorthand, lifts, pneumatic tubes, the electric light, the bicycle, the motorcar, and a hundred others. Yet the result of all this is, not that we have more time, but that we have less. You can hardly take up a paper without reading how somebody has fallen down dead with heart-disease running to catch a train, when there was another train going in ten minutes. Who ever died of heart-disease running to catch a stage-coach, though there might not be another for twenty-four hours? But then, of course, heart-disease, as well as all the nervous disorders, which are due to excitement and to rush, are almost as much on the increase nowadays as consumption and the infectious diseases, which result from want of air and insanitary conditions generally, are on the decline.