Sunbonnet Soliloquy: Troubles

Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

Troubles

How would you like to cram all your troubles into a bag, tie a good hard knot in the top, and then throw the whole caboodle away?

If this idea appeals to you, go to the nearest public library and ask for the writings of Joseph Addison, the brilliant English essayist and poet who lived from 1672 to 1719.

One of Addison’s essays, titled “Discontent,” has in it some thoughts on troubles that are well worth considering -- even in this fast paced 20th Century of ours.

Addison wrote his trouble piece as an allegory and as a dream. His characters include the whole race of mankind; Jupiter, the highest of the gods in Greek and Roman mythology; a phantom named Fancy, who had “something wild and distracted in her looks” and a goddess “serious but cheerful,” named Patience.

“As I was...seated in my elbowchair, I insensibly fell asleep,” begins Addison, “when, on a sudden, methought there was a proclamation made by Jupiter, that every mortal should bring in his griefs and calamities, and throw them together in a heap. There was a large plain appointed for this purpose...”

Fancy, a “certain lady of a thin airy shape,” came floating down to earth, gowned in a loose flowing robe “embroidered with figures of fiends and specters.” She went from mortal to mortal, helping each one to make up his pack of troubles. Then she assisted each in getting his bundle up on his shoulders and showed him the road to the dumping place selected by Jupiter.

Soon the dumping ground was covered with a mountain of human calamities that rose above the clouds. Still more and more people came, bringing more and more sacks of troubles.

The dreamer watched with much interest to see what fell out of some of the bundles.

One package, carefully wrapped in a faded and patched embroidered cloak, turned out to be poverty. Another, brought in by a cunning looking man who was huffing and puffing and yet laughing uproariously, contained the man’s wife.

And, writes the dreamer, “I saw multitudes of old women throw down their wrinkles, and several young ones who stripped themselves of a tawny skin. There were very great heaps of red noses, large lips...”

One crooked fellow came loaded with his crimes, but he threw away his memory, not his guilt. Another worthless rogue “flung away his modesty instead of his ignorance.”

As the mound of miseries grew higher and higher, the vast multitude of people milled around, looking at each other and at the trouble pile. Many saw in the heap what they “thought pleasures and blessings of life, and wondered how the owners of them ever came to look upon them ever came to look upon them as burdens and greivances.”

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Suddenly Jupiter issued a second proclamation, to the effect that everyone was now at liberty to exchange his bundle trouble with another person and then to go home.

Bedlam broke loose. People snatched and grabbed, screamed and fought.

One old gentleman who had brought in the gout tried to trade it for an heir to his estate, but when he dragged out an undutiful son that had been thrown into the pile by an irate father, the kid began pulling the old man’s beard.

A fat short man with bandy legs struck up a trade with a skinny tall man with legs like stilts; but after the exchange was made, neither man could walk.

Two old ladies argued for hours before one agreed that she would swap her short waist for the other’s pair of rounded shoulders.

Bargain after bargain was made; yet nobody was happy. Each person seemed to think his new bundle of trouble more disagreeable than the old one. Murmurs turned to complaints. Complaints became curses. And groans filled the air as the men and women staggered and fell under the weight of their new burdens.

Jupiter, exasperated, ordered that each man lay down his newly acquired pack of troubles and pick up what he had brought to the Mount of Sorrows. He commanded Fancy to disappear and called down Patience, “a goddess of quite different figure.”

“Patience,” ordered Jupiter, “help each of these mortals to find his own proper calamity and teach each how to carry his burden so that it will not be so painful!”

Patience did as she was told, and one by one the people “marched off...contentedly, (each) very well pleased that he had not been left to his own choice as to the kind of evil which fell to his lot.”

What a 20th Century reader can get out of Addison’s 17th Century dream depends on the reader. Addison seems to be saying that every man has griefs and calamities in this life, and we delude ourselves if we “Fancy” that we can sack them up and throw them away or trade them off.