On Failure

I

If I remember aright, Mr. E. C. Bentley concluded, one of his inimitable "biographies in little"–that on Lord Clive–with the lines:

"There is a lot to be said
For being dead."

Naturally, I am not in a position either to endorse or to refute that statement. For one thing, I am not dead yet, I am not half-dead, for that matter, as Mr. A. G. Gardiner lamented once about himself. Why, I have not even had the toothache up to now, or varicose veins, or blood-pressure, or the liver-complaint: my only suffering, so far, has been from that strange disease called life. I am, no doubt, capable, as Keats puts it, of

".…..solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven."

But my conception stops short there, it does not actually penetrate that bourne: which, consequently, cannot be said in any way to be a decided improvement on the previous state of affairs. Then, again, I am, by temperament, averse from indulging in peeps into the future: I have been so often, and so tragically, wrong even in my judgments as regards the present. If I may put a literal interpretation on the words, a primrose by the river’s brim has been, to me, aught else but a primrose by the river’s brim; and, not once but on innumerable occasions. I have jeopardised my interests by construing the nature of the interior from the appearance of its facade. I dare not calculate the number of times I have been deceived by first impressions and face-values and self-recommendations. It is true that Shakespeare has told us that "a man may smile and smile and be a villain." It is further true that where Shakespeare is "in the case" I am as thorough as my next-door neighbour–always saving and excepting your scholars "to the manner born." I cannot, for instance, write a thesis on Shakespeare’s favourite dishes, or on whether he was a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian, or on why he left but his second-best bed to Anne Hathaway, or on the identity of "W. H." "the onlie begetter" of the immortal Sonnets. For an "onlie begetter" that gentleman has had several aliases, if literary criticism is criterion. By the Way, what incomparable poetry there is in those Sonnets!If I were a good memoriser I should convert my mind into a veritable storehouse of Shakespearean bits and snatches of song: the difficulty then would be as to where to begin and where to end.

II

Coming to my point, though this sentence of matchless wisdom-namely, "a man may smile and smile and be a villain"–never did altogether escape my attention, it was invariably after the event, so to speak, that I began to be dimly conscious of it; and by then, of course, the mischief was past repair. Life has no more bitter lesson to teach one than this, that the fellow who has been beaming at one all along may quite likely be the fellow who hates one from the depth of his being–a sort of Iago and Iachimo rolled into one compact and homogeneous whole. That kind of person has ever beaten me hollow–and ever will, till the last syllable of recorded time. When I go "ga-ga" to such an extent about the living, with what heart dare I pontificate on whether there is, or is not, a lot to be said for the dead? But I am pretty sure of one thing, however, and that is that there is a lot to be said for failure. Without doubt, there is a lot to be said against it also. Take it all in all, in this world it is more comfortable to be a success than to be a failure. The successful man’s path is miraculously smoothened for him in regard to everything. Gradually, he becomes accustomed to play the role of Sir Oracle and, like Cato, to dispense his "little Senate laws." He may even don the robe of perfection and dogmatize on

"…..providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate
Fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute."

This is the tribute that society pays to him. It may be noted, in passing, that it is not strictly necessary that the success should be of the genuine variety. My readers may remember that it was poor Martin who invented the plans for the grammar school and that it was Pecksniff who got all the kudos for it. Why, he was invited to help in the laying down of the first stone of a new and splendid building, and, looking over his shoulder, Martin found out that the designs for that, which Pecksniff unrolled before the distinguished assembly, were his own (discarded) ones anent that grammar school. It was a holiday task that the great man had set for Martin during his prentice days with him, and, as was his wont, Pecksniff put it by for just such an occasion as this–he was, like Autolycus, a "snapper up of unconsidered trifles." It is related deliciously in the 35th Chapter of Martin Chuzzlewit. Poor Martin could only murtnur: "My grammar school. I invented it. I did it all. He has only put four windows in it, the villain, and spoilt it."

Comment, as they say, is superfluous.

III

I submit that to be a failure need not in itself be a calamity. There may be a worse fate in store for one than that. The truly philosophical, of course, disdain to recognise these differences. In their eyes all are equally failures before the supreme godhead. "Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards." That is but another way of saying that to fail is almost his birthright. In this matter the Hindu religion is the truest guide. It uses a broad brush. It is no respecter of persons. It is fundamentally democratic–in the sense that it flattens out everyone’s conceit, irrespective of the (purely temporary) advantage that this or that man may hold, due to this or that accident. It makes absolutely no distinction between the pariah and the potentate, between the lord of millions and he who is poorer than poverty. It enunciates the principle that Shakespeare immortalised in the words:

"..….We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Only, in that sleep there are such mysterious revelations that mere mortals cannot get an inkling of them, however much they may speculate. It is only fair to add, though, that speculation is by no means barred on that account. We may, indeed, speculate to our heart’s content. We may speculate till we become crazy. In fact, speculation is even encouraged. The significant truth that emerges from all this speculation is that we are lesser than the littlest of atomies. Where are your failures and successes then? What did South say? "Aristotle is but the rubbish of an atom and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise." That is as regards the highest. What, then, is to be said as regards the lowest? Well, not much, except it be that, in face of such profundities, it would be as idle to calculate the niceties of difference between the two as it would be to argue that there are, in the late Mr. C. E. Montague’s phrase, qualities of nullity, and degrees of skill, in keeping mind and head blank: or that the void is not all one, nor zero a level. There is scarcely any room for vanity before philosophical magnoperations of this order: terms lose their value, and familiar grooves of thought vanish into the middle distance. Failures and successes? There is not a proton to choose between them!

IV

Failure, then is the badge of our tribe. It is our common heritage. The best of us must be satisfied with that which has been destined to be our portion–even as the dyer’s hand is subdued to that it works in. The pity of it is that we are loth to admit it. We are mighty fine fellows and aspire after the unattainable:

"Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade."

We somehow find it hard to renounce the belief that by taking thought we can add several cubits to our stature. I do not deny that there is a sense in which we can. Science teaches us that with perseverance’s key many doors can be unlocked. Try hard enough, and the world’s glittering prizes will be yours. The labourer is worthy of his hire. And so on and so forth. The point is that some of these vaunted successes can be proved, on further analysis, to be not successes at all; while some others can be shown to be extremely shortlived. And even where they are of the genuine variety, philosophers can tell you that, in the ultimate sense, they do not count, that they are like the crackling of thorns under the pot. Is it riches that you are after? Riches have been known to take wings unto themselves and fly reputation" that holds you in thrall? Why even more evanescent still. Somewhere or other there is bound to be someone who has greater reputation than yourself–and in your own chosen field, too: moreover, you may be building that reputation on totally wrong foundations all the time. Charles Darwin’s was a name to conjure with-way at the fag end of the nineteenth century. How much of his doctrine of evolution via natural selection and variation–very minute variation, mind you–survives today? De Vries and Mendel, between them, shattered the variational hypothesis to smithereens; and, as though this were not enough, Weismann came forward with his theory of germ-plasm and destroyed Darwin’s pet notions re "pangenesis." Here is fame for you! In every department of human thought this is continually happening. Knowledge is an ever-widening circle: or, as Tennyson makes Ulysses say:

"Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move."

V

It is the truly great that are thoroughly conscious of "what phantoms we are and what phantoms we pursue." They are never vain; and they walk the world, not on stilts, but with rare modesty. They do not babble, neither do they put on airs; and they are strangers to any kind of aloofness. The half-baked and the partially successful amongst us carry banners about with them that proclaim their, what I may call, "touch-me-not-ness." O, the endless care they take not to notice you! Congreve has these lines on "Amoret":

"Careless she is with artful care,
Affecting to seem unaffected."

They describe the half-baked and the partially successful pretty well. These gentry disdain to be their natural selves and are fond of attitudinising always. But not so the fully-baked and the completely successful. They are unaware of their ripeness; and are never more angry than when any reference is made to it. Socrates was the wisest of men, but on what did he base his wisdom? On this, namely, that he was the only fool that knew himself to be such. These noble souls are essentially simple at heart and would not be guilty of conceit "for all the world that lifeof a rainbow"-to paraphrase Jeannie english. They are incessantly alive to the futility of things and to the sorrow that is the universal portion.

VI

Take literature. What is the finest literature extant? Tragedies, Or, as Shelley would put it:

"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." Failure is writ large in the pages of that part of literature which is truly immortal. What is there to rival King Lear and Hamlet? Of what do Donne’s poems and sermons fervently preach? Even Falstaff’s career had to end in an eclipse. What grandeur there is in King Richard II? The Prince of Denmark endears himself to us only through his monumental failure. He had a mission–to avenge the dastardly "bumbing off" of his father. It was a comparatively simple mission. A C₃ man would have finished the job in no time. But Hamlet was an A₁ individual, and precisely because of his being an A₁ individual, not only delayed it so unconscionably but, when at last he did come to grips with it, botched it as no Dillingers of this world would have done: he, in a manner of speaking, threw away the baby with the bath-water. It was no part of Hamlet Senior’s injunction that his son should suffer while going about his business of avenging. But, then, what can we expect of one to whom "to be, or not to be" was a perpetual question?

It is Hamlet’s pre-ordained disposition towards failure that, ultimately, saves him and the play and ourselves. Is not, for instance, Antony’s failure nobler than Octavius Caesar’s success?

And what about Christ’s Crucifixion? If the "Son of Man’s" lite had not ended like that, would he have been able to found a religion? Tennyson, in In Memoriam, sums up my case succinctly:

"I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That man may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
"But who shall so forecast the years
To find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?"