Arnold Bennett - The Plain Man and His Wife

The plain man on a plain day wakes up, slowly or quickly according tohis temperament, and greets the day in a mental posture which might bethus expressed in words:

"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!"

If you ask me whom I mean by the plain man, my reply is that I meanalmost every man. I mean you. I certainly mean me. I mean the rich andthe poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, the idle and thediligent, the luxurious and the austere. For, what with the limits ofdigestion, the practical impossibility of wearing two neckties atonce, the insecurity of investments, the responsibilities of wealthand of success, the exhaustingness of the search for pleasure, and thecheapness of travelthe real differences between one sort of plainman and another are slight in these times. (And indeed they alwayswere slight.)

The plain man has a lot to do before he may have his breakfastand hemust do it. The tyrannic routine begins instantly he is out of bed. Tolave limbs, to shave the jaw, to select clothes and assume themthesethings are naught. He must exercise his musclesall his musclesequally and scientificallywith the aid of a text-book and ofdiagrams on a large card; which card he often hides if he is expectingvisitors in his chamber, for he will not always confess to theseexercises; he would have you believe that he alone, in a world ofsimpletons, is above the faddism of the hour; he is as ashamed ofthese exercises as of a good resolution, and when his wife happens toburst in on them he will pretend to be doing some common act, such aswalking across the room or examining a mole in the small of his back.And yet he will not abandon them. They have an empire over him. Todrop them would be to be craven, inefficient. The text-book assertsthat they will form one of the pleasantest parts of the day, and thathe will learn to look forward to them. He soon learns to look forwardto them, but not with glee. He is relieved and proud when they areover for the day.

He would enjoy his breakfast, thanks to the strenuous imitation ofdiagrams, were it not that, in addition to being generally in a hurry,he is preoccupied. He is preoccupied by the sense of doom, by thesense that he has set out on the appointed path and dare not strayfrom it. The train or the tram-car or the automobile (same thing) iswaiting for him, irrevocable, undeniable, inevitable. He wrencheshimself away. He goes forth to his fate, as to the dentist. And justas he would enjoy his breakfast in the home, so he would enjoy hisnewspaper and cigarette in the vehicle, were it not for thatever-present sense of doom. The idea of business grips him. It mattersnot what the business is. Business is everything, and everything isbusiness. He reaches his officewhatever his office is. He is in hisoffice. He must plungehe plunges. The day has genuinely begun now.The appointed path stretches straight in front of him, for five, six,seven, eight hours.

Oh! but he chose his vocation. He likes it. It satisfies hisinstincts. It is his life. (So you say.) Well, does he like it? Doesit satisfy his instincts? Is it his life? If truly the answer isaffirmative, he is at any rate not conscious of the fact. He is awareof no ecstasy. What is the use of being happy unless he knows he ishappy? Some men know that they are happy in the hours of business, butthey are few. The majority are not, and the bulk of the majority donot even pretend to be. The whole attitude of the average plain man tobusiness implies that business is a nuisance, scarcely mitigated. Withwhat secret satisfaction he anticipates that visit to the barber's inthe middle of the morning! With what gusto he hails the arrival of anunexpected interrupting friend! With what easement he decides that hemay lawfully put off some task till the morrow! Let him hear a band ora fire-engine in the street, and he will go to the window with theeagerness of a child or of a girl-clerk. If he were working at golfthe bands of all the regiments of Hohenzollern would not make him turnhis head, nor the multitudinous blazing of fireproof skyscrapers. No!Let us be honest. Business constitutes the steepest, roughest leagueof the appointed path. Were it otherwise, business would not beuniversally regarded as a means to an end.

Moreover, when the plain man gets home again, does his wife's face sayto him: "I know that your real life is now over for the day, and Iregret for your sake that you have to return here. I know that thepowerful interest of your life is gone. But I am glad that you havehad five, six, seven, or eight hours of passionate pleasure"? Not abit! His wife's face says to him: "I commiserate with you on all thatyou have been through. It is a great shame that you should becompelled to toil thus painfully. But I will try to make it up to you.I will soothe you. I will humour you. Forget anxiety and fatigue in mysmiles." She does not fetch his comfortable slippers for him, partlybecause, in this century, wives do not do such things, and partlybecause comfortable slippers are no longer worn. But she does theequivalentwhatever the equivalent may happen to be in thatparticular household. And he expects the commiseration and the solacein her face. He would be very hurt did he not find it there.

And even yet he is not relaxed. Even yet the appointed path stretchesinexorably in front, and he cannot wander. For now he feels the cogsand cranks of the highly complex domestic machine. At breakfast hedeclined to hear them; they were shut off from him; he was too busy tobe bothered with them. At evening he must be bothered with them. Wasit not he who created the machine? He discovers, often to hisastonishment, that his wife has an existence of her own, full offactors foreign to him, and he has to project himself, not only intohis wife's existence, but into the existences of other minorpersonages. His daughter, for example, will persist in growing up. Notfor a single day will she pause. He arrives one night and perceivesthat she is a woman and that he must treat her as a woman. He had notbargained for this. Peace, ease, relaxation in a home vibrating to thewhir of such astounding phenomena? Impossible dream! These phenomenawere originally meant by him to be the ornamentation of his career,but they are threatening to be the sole reason of his career. If hiswife lives for him, it is certain that he lives just as much for hiswife; and as for his daughter, while she emphatically does not livefor him, he is bound to admit that he has just got to live forherand she knows it!

To gain money was exhausting; to spend it is precisely as exhausting.He cannot quit the appointed path nor lift the doom. Dinner isfinished ere he has begun to recover from the varied shock of home.Then his daughter may negligently throw him a few moments of charmingcajolery. He may gossip in simple idleness with his wife. He maygambol like any infant with the dog. A yawn. The shadow of the nextday is upon him. He must not stay up too late, lest the vigourdemanded by the next day should be impaired. Besides, he does not wantto stay up. Naught is quite interesting enough to keep him up. Andbed, too, is part of the appointed, unescapable path. To bed he goes,carrying ten million preoccupations. And of his state of mind thekindest that can be said is that he is philosophic enough to hope forthe best.