A prolific essayist, journalist, and editor, E.V. Lucas acquired much of his education working at a bookshop in Brighton, England. He wrote frequently for the weekly humor magazine Punch and produced the standard editions of Charles Lamb's essays and letters.
In "The Perfect Holiday," Lucas imagines joining the circus for a fortnight to play the role of "a great man"--Pimpo, the clown.
The Perfect Holiday (A Letter)
by E.V. Lucas
Great men are few in any case, and we are so much too apt to look for them in the wrong places--in Parliament for example--that we are in danger of missing some of those that do exist. Not only did I find a great man, but I discovered a great secret too. I discovered how to spend a holiday.
The secret is that our holidays should rest not only our minds and bodies but our characters too. Take, for example, a good man. His goodness wants a holiday as much as his poor weary head or his exhausted body. I wonder if he should not rest it by becoming for three weeks a bad man. Instead of sitting quietly on the pier, as he now does, he might pick a pocket or two. On returning from a sail in a boat he could furtively bore a hole in it. In his hotel he could mix up the boots, turn out the electric light, and decamp without paying his bill. Such expenditure as his holiday involved might be met with a forged cheque. On returning to town all the errors of the three weeks could be rectified; the handkerchiefs and purses returned to his victims on the pier; provision made for the survivors of those who had been drowned when the boat filled and sank; and so forth. But that is not the point. The point is that he would have had a complete holiday. Similarly a wicked man should rest his wickedness and devote his month at Brighton to good works.
I do not, I must confess, see, in England, any period of prosperity for my plan; but it is sound, none the less. Perhaps the nearest practicable advice to it that one dares to give is that on a holiday we should endeavor to change the conditions of our life in every way as completely as possible. Only thus can a holiday be, for those of us who are active and restless in mind, a genuine rest. For it is not idleness that such require, but a change of employment.
For myself, who am neither good nor bad, and therefore have neither goodness nor badness to rest, the best holiday would be some occupation in the open air of an exciting or continually engrossing character, as utterly opposed to the ordinary routine of driving a pen as could be devised. And I think I have found it. I believe that a perfect holiday would be to join a traveling circus for a week or so as a utility man.
This discovery came upon me in a flash at Southampton as I watched the performance. During one turn--it was that hoary bare-backed jockey act in which the rider sits on the horse's tail and rocks his arms, and of which I tired permanently thirty years ago--I read in the programme the announcement of the circus's immediate intentions, and it was then that the desirability of such a life made itself felt--desirability at any rate to a weary literary hack who wished to forget himself and his trade in a certain absorbing Bohemian strenuousness. For on the next day there were to be two performances and a grand procession at Winchester; and the next day at Basingstoke; and the next day at Farnham, and so forth--always the two performances and always (weather permitting) the grand procession of triumphal cars through the principal streets at noon.
What a life! Everything in it but sleep, so far as I can see. Popularity, applause, naphtha lamps, might and muscle; the contiguity of wild beasts; tigers, tigers, burning bright in the watches of the night; acquaintance with clowns; proximity to dazzling equestriennes--all inspiring reverence and wonder in small boys. What a life! And wages, too, honestly earned, and perhaps now and then some food and drink. Perhaps a word from Lord John himself: not necessarily friendly, but a word from a lord.
Concluded on page two
