A PLEA FOR UNTIDINESS

Evening Star, Issue 25470, 28 April 1945, Page 10

A PLEA FOR UNTIDINESS

[Written by Mary Scott; for tkft ' Evening Star.']

Some virtues are over-praised and some are neglected. In making claims for our particular fancy amongst the good qualities, we are apt to overlook the most important of all—moderation in all things. After all, an unbridled virtue is a very unpleasant thing and can sometimes degenerate into a vice. For example, we admire strongmindedness, omitting to note that, if this quality is given free rein, it may become obstinacy. Strong principles and unimpeachable integrity are universally applauded, but they lie perilously close to the border across which lurks intolerance. Youth adores " a sport," but forgets that sometimes a man or woman who is. pre-eftiinently " a sport " feels no necessity, nor indeed has the time, to be anything else. Housewifery is an excellent and seemly virtue, but occasionally your perfect housewife confuses! the means with the end and makes the; lives of all about her a burden. That she sacrifices her own also is no excuse, since it is her deliberate choice.

In the same way, you can be too tidy. Possibly my view of m'any virtues may be jaundiced because I am not possessed of them in any high degree; nor am I a naturally orderly person. Not that anyone with .any sense likes to live in a muddle. Such an existence is ugly, and must needs end in more work than one. conducted .with intelligence and some attention to order. I mean only that I have never been able to regard a certain limited untidiness as one of the.deadly sins. Provided it is not allowed to become a nuisance to other people, 1 feel, in my most secret heart, a certain sympathy with the sinner. To be perfectly honest, I am one of those deplorable people who occasionally prefer to throw my hat'upon a chair when I come in, rather than place it in its own receptacle. But at least I have the sense to use a chair in my own bedroom, where the hat will not annoy other people. >. . _ Even within carefully observed limits, this private vice of rqine complicates life, since it provides a certain secret battleground on which one's natural inclination does battle with one's cultivated and cherished sense of fitness. Your baser nature says, "Leave the hat there ; what harm does it do ? Put it away later on." while your higher self says sternly, " Chairs were not .meant for hats. Sooner or later you will have to put it away, since you don't keep a maid. Do it now." (1 have always thought "Do it now-" quite one "of the nastiest of mixims. and in\my youth changed my boardinghouse because "Do it now " was emblazoned as a sort of motto in all the bedrooms.') Common sense usually wins the day, and I rise drearily and put my hat away as the mistress of a house should do. But there are some abandoned days when my lower self makes a face at the hat and leaves it there till next morning. I feel all the better for it. I know .then that I am mistress of my fate, Or rather, of my own room. Not beyond, since a kindly but inscrutable fate has bestowed orderly .daughters upon me. I suppose that is merely tlio law of Nature, just as a selfish mother always hrfs unselfish children. Of a humble little woman is overshadowed by arrogant and self-assertive daughters. Or else perhaps they have,had to make a virtue of tidiness'in selfdefence—an unpleasant thought. However that may be, they belong-tri the type that can " put their hand oh it in a minute," can go into a dark room and produce a pair of gloves from the leftside of the right-hand top drawer. Therefore I have had to confine my secret vice to' my own room. Here I am allowed a certain license. Tf T am reading a book that bores me, 1 do not immediately return it to the bookcase, but throw it on the table and perhaps leave it there for days until 1 feel in the mood to try it again.: Tf I am interrupted in my- sewing, I do hot replace the whole pile in the cupboard, but leave it on top q^the,bookcase until the spirit moves ,nie to continue. I like to have things, at hand; if there is a certain air of disorder in my room, it offends no eye but my

own. In one other matter I assert myself. 1 refuse to be tidy about books. This does not arise from carelessness, but from genuine conviction, i. Books were never meant to be dragooned into perfect orderliness. I don't believe the real book lover ever has a perfectly tidy book case. On the other hand, my cousin Ellen invariably spends, tlie first morning of her visit tq.me in tidying all my books. She ,d° es arrange them according to autlioror to subject; her method is the simple one of putting red books together on one shelf and green ones on another j She even goes further than that—the books are divided again according; to.size. It looks most peculiar but entirely symmetrical, and causes her great satisfaction during the fortnight she. spends J with me. When she has been' gone for three days the books are. all. happily muddled up again. .' '! ; \ For who wants books arranged'm order? I am aware that it saves a certain amount of time to be able "to put your hand" on the bopk.yoii want without a moment's delay: "But you miss so much. You miss all the. fun of rummaging; the delight; of. finding that little book of sonnets : that t has been lost for months; the illicit pleasure of peeping into them; the endless jov of browsing. Then, when,'eventually you find the book you have been seeking, there is all the excitement.' of discovery, the necessity of glancing through it to be sure you were right in that quotation. All this you would miss if you kept your books arranged in proper order. Indeed, when I see a library so disposed, I feel -...that" the owner must be like my cousin-Ellen—-someone who never opens a book. : My other dreadful secret vice is the untidiness of mv own desk.: Fortunately, the desk locks, so that no one need ever know quite what its interior is like. Here I am ready to confess my folly, for if there is one place where order is essential, it is in a desk. It saves so much time. You for,a business letter, and it has vanished; eventually you run it to earth amongst the celluloid rings intended for the pullets' legs; your benzine coupons unaccountably desert you as vou ieaye for town—and appear mysteriouslv in the'packet of mantels for the benzine lamp. I don't defend this sort of thinrr- but I do find it a splendid subject for. good resolutions—and, for a whole week after one of my frantic tidyings, I keep those resolutions. But. when I think of untidiness, a vision always rises before me. I have a friend who is witty and ■ wise,, the most brilliant person I know. But she was never intended for a housewife. Luckily, she lives alone, but such is her charm' that, despite the appalling muddle, you will often find a partv of friends somewhat obscured by the keneral cloud of dust that hangs over everything The first time I called on her—at fl a.m.—l found a very distinguished professor breakfasting—in Ins pyjamas—from the top of her grand

piano. But that was the only time when the piano could possibly have been used as a table; usually it was snowed under by the collections of weeks. Even so, at the bottom of that well is truth—but one has to have strong eyesight to find it. •-■'