THE HAPPINESS OF BEING NEARSIGHTED
When Dr. St. George Mivart contributed to a well-known English periodical his article, “The Happiness In—Ahem!”—the title naturally attracted immediate attention and won for the paper a consideration which led to the universal discussion that immediately followed. No one wished or expected to go to the place concerning which he set forth some of the particulars, and even some of the secrets; but as everybody had friends who were in danger of such a fate, and enemies who were certain of it, there was naturally no little curiosity to learn from the writings of the early Fathers and later learned ecclesiastics whom Dr. Mivart quoted how these persons would fare there. To the general surprise, he disclosed that even in that dismal abode, with an eternal summer of a temperature the height of which no thermometer known to earthly science could measure, there was yet to be expected at times a certain degree of felicity. Christmas and Easter, it may be remembered, were days off, when holiday existed, the fires were banked and comparative coolness prevailed.
To the man or woman of acute sight, who sees everything far or near without the necessity of optical aids, and to whom all surroundings are definite and clear, and who recalls the fellow-being who must either wear glasses or grope and stumble and be uncertain of environment, it would appear nonsense to say that there is a happiness in being nearsighted. And yet in a certain form of nearsightedness there are sources of delight which even the man of perfect sight never knows. There are scientific distinctions which the oculist who examines your eyes and the optician who is anxious to sell you a pair of glasses will explain between the nearsightedness which compels you to pore over a book, holding it close to your eyes, and the other form which enables you to read the finest print without glasses, and yet debars you from recognizing your wife or mother-in-law half way across the street. There is certainly not much happiness in the former, because, although it may give the impression that you are a close student and a man of deep erudition to go about with a book or newspaperdirectly at the end of your nose, the appearance you present is not heroic or graceful, and the young ladies seeing you are apt to smile; and being regarded as a book-worm and pedant you can never hope to create much of a figure in society.
It is only the nearsighted man who can not distinguish things very well at a distance, and who, therefore, gets a strictly impressionist view of life, who really enjoys existence. He can do without his glasses, if necessary, or if he does not think them becoming, and yet experience almost perfect comfort. For him, indeed, the world never loses its illusions, and years, far from robbing him of this boon, only adds to the glamour of enchantment in which he lives. There are those who maintain that the really great men of history have always been short—not in funds, but in stature—and they instance Socrates, Napoleon, Edmund Kean, Victor Hugo and a multitude of others; but, in point of fact it may be still more conclusively shown that the majority of great men have been short-sighted. Much of the romantic view of existence taken by the ancients we may ascribe to the fact that many of them were near-sighted and had not the use of spectacles, which did not come into vogue until the Thirteenth Century, although the Chinese, it is said, had them for some time before that. Nothing but nearsightedness could have so stimulated the imagination of Shakespeare and idealized everything about him, although, indeed, it is true that we have no portraits or busts in which he is shown to have worn glasses. Still, there are so many references in his writings to “thickness of sight” and difficulties of vision, and there are such exquisite descriptions of color effects, that we can not doubt him to have been the victim of what the doctors would call optical infirmity, although it is quite the reverse.
The fact that many of our famous modern poets did not wear glasses is no proof that for definite seeking they did not require them. Byron, Shelley or Keates, we may be sure, never would have worn glasses in any circumstances, as such appurtenances would have been out of character. There was not in their time the great variety of the pince-nez that we have at present, rimless and almost invisible; but there was the very fashionable single eyeglass, rather larger than the monocle in use at present, and that Beau Brummel himself, and later Count D’Orsay, did not disdain. The Duke of Wellington used a single eyeglass, tied to a black ribbon, which hung about his neck, habitually, and through it saw the Battle of Waterloo, and, before the engagement was over, Blücher’s columns coming up.
But to enjoy the happiness of being nearsighted the eyeglasses and spectacles should be dispensed with and life viewed through the natural organs alone. Then it is, as already remarked, that we get the impressionist effect, which is the only one worth having. The man with what are called good eyes perceives all the details, and consequently all the coarse and ugly particulars of the life, still and in motion, about him, and all its faults and shortcomings. After all, what we want is feeling; the thousand intricacies of form we do not need or desire; give us the general effects and our spirit transfigures them. Give us figures, incidents and scenes in vague and poetic mass, and the most delightful and thrilling emotions are aroused.
These are the results obtained by the nearsighted man. To him there is very little that is ugly in life, and especially is it true that all women are beautiful. As I go through the streets I meet at every turn the most exquisite girls, of whose features, indeed, I know little in detail, but there comes to me a general effect of brilliant eyes, lovely complexions and entrancing hair. Every figure is elegant and each walks with the step of a goddess. There are some old women, but none middle-aged or faded; I know not that most distressing of mortal wrecks, the woman “well preserved.” I catch a swift glimpse of a face at a window, or one flashes from a carriage—it is always fair; in the crowded thoroughfares of the shopping districts the tall and picturesque hats, covered with flowers; the soft gowns, the ribbons of myriad colors flit by, giving me but a glimpse, and ravish me. Still more enchanting are these graceful beings at night by the electric light, or vaguely disclosed in the wan beams of the moon.
Natural scenery has a charm which the unhappy man who is not nearsighted can never know. Everything looks uncertain, dim, hazy and very often mystical; colors affect the eye with a delicious softness; there are no keen and cruel contrasts; distant woods and skies, with the multitude of intermingled hues in summer, and the browns and grays of autumn and winter, fall tenderly upon the vision. The changes of light upon the mountain side, and, still more vividly, the seashore, early in the morning or at sunset, stir the deepest sources of sentiment. The nearsighted eye is never photographic; the lines and colors are everywhere mingled and confused, and in both rest and action there is a delicious complexity and indefiniteness.
One can imagine no more interesting scene of movement than that in the evening at the height of the season on the esplanade at Atlantic City. I never witness it without thinking of two of the dreams of De Quincey, which he describes in some detail—the one of the crowd moving by in endless procession, like the figures on a frieze, on and on forever, the other of the innumerable faces of his vision revealed in the incessant convulsions of the ocean. At about half-past eight o’clock in the evening toward the end of July, when the season is at its climax, this impressive throng, in two lines, moving to the right and to the left, is most numerous. There is, so far as I am aware, nothing precisely like it anywhere else in the world—so variegated, so well-dressed, so lively and so complicated. To enjoy it perfectly there must be the vagueness of a veiled vision, and then, in addition to the passing faces, you catch the soft, dreamy effects of the costumes—whites and pinks, sometimes even the bold Mephistophelean red; the dim azures, the pale greens subsiding into yellow. In the two tides goes this strange army, slow in motion, laughing, volatile, the silvery tinkle of feminine laughter and the deeper murmur of conversation. To observe this throng has an absorbing fascination, but if at times you rest, it is to look over the railing of the esplanade at the darkness of the ocean and watch the waves rushing in, like sheeted women with outstretched and affrighted arms.
Summing up, if I were asked to define the special enjoyment derived from nearsightedness, I should say that it arises from two sources—the serenity of the scenes disclosed by the sight, the absence of harshness in sky, landscape or environment anywhere; the fusing of mean details into an agreeable mass. And even stranger and pleasanter than this is the mystical effect; the softness and dreaminess of atmosphere and distances; the indolent, abstracted and slightly melancholy tone of mind produced; the beguiling idealization of existence.
—Walter Edgar M’Cann.