The Quiet Expansion Within
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| Where the world narrows, something within begins to open |
Can you visualize a man whose circumstances are bleak—marked by loss, disgrace, and confinement—yet whose instinct is not withdrawal or complaint, but to turn outward? A man who, even while imprisoned, tries to create a certain moral warmth around him.
This is Dr. Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith.
In one of the prison scenes, surrounded by fellow inmates, he reflects on how he chooses to respond:
“I endeavoured to comfort them, and spoke of the advantages of patience and resignation; and though I could not avoid feeling for my own situation, I resolved to make others happy.”
He does not deny suffering. But he quietly suggests that even in reduced circumstances, one can arrange one’s inner life with a certain grace. It is not heroic in the usual sense. It is something quieter—and perhaps more difficult.
To place this in context, we must go back to an earlier moment in the story, before misfortune arrives. Dr. Primrose reflects on his family life—his home, his children, and the small satisfactions of an ordered existence.
He says:
“We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fire-side, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown.”
There is something deceptively simple here. No drama, no grand statement. Yet in these few lines, life is small in scale, but not diminished; movement is trivial, yet described with quiet humour; and security lies not in wealth, but in familiarity.
The phrase “…migrations from the blue bed to the brown” may strike one as unusual. In modest 18th-century homes, beds or their coverings were often described by colour. So these “migrations” are nothing more than moving from one bed to another, perhaps from one room to another. Goldsmith uses a grand word for something entirely small and domestic—and in that contrast lies a gentle humour.
What is important is that he does not present this life as lacking. The family’s world is contained, but it is not diminished. Their happiness rests in routine, affection, and familiarity.
Later, when adversity strikes—loss of fortune, social humiliation, and even imprisonment—Dr. Primrose responds not with bitterness, but with composure. The scale of life remains small, but something within it deepens.
What we begin to see is a quiet movement:
as the outer world shrinks—from home, to room, to confinement—the inner world expands.
Goldsmith does not turn suffering into spectacle. He brings it into the same moral space as everyday life. The warmth we sense comes from this refusal to dramatize misery. The family is not heroic in any grand sense; they are held together by affection, habit, and a certain quiet faith in order.
It is interesting to read this against Goldsmith’s own life. He lived much of it in financial difficulty—not the romantic suffering often associated with artists, but a more ordinary and persistent struggle. He was frequently in debt, even briefly arrested. The Vicar of Wakefield itself was written under such pressure. Though he achieved some recognition before his death in 1774, he died heavily in debt.
And yet, none of this produces bitterness in his writing. What we find instead is a deep sympathy for ordinary lives. The struggles of a modest family are treated not as tragedy, but with warmth and dignity.
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Raj, this short piece rekindled my memory of visiting Freemantle prison, the only heritage site near Perth, WA. The prison is now maintained like a museum and has a guided tour that lasts for almost 2 hours. The main idea is to introduce outsiders to the prison world way back in the 1900s. The start of the tour is very dramatic. After presenting your tickets, you are escorted into a large alley surrounded by prison cells. Once the last entry is made, the doors shut with a loud bang and a jailor appears with a thunderous command: PRISONERS! STAND IN A LINE ALONG THE HALLWAY. It almost makes everyone present get that sinking feeling.
ReplyDeleteThen starts the usual enrolment that each new prisoner had to go through including stripping and changing to prison clothes. For us, the visitors, this was watered down to only put on a ID band around the neck "VISITOR". As they walked us through the facilities, some horrific inhuman aspects of the era, inside a prison comes forth.
Then, the resistance, breaking point and mental issues. That's exactly where your article stirred my memory.
In there is a cell. Nicely painted all over from top to bottom, with beautiful murals, almost like a professional artist. It seems the prisoner was brought in to serve life term. He was a frail young man bullied by the honchos of the prison, known to be abusive to meek ones to satiate their carnal desires. The man was horrified and broken and each day he used to go into a shell part by part. He used to dream of his life in a distant land (England), growing up, village life, orchards, birds, FREEDOM. But soon in the harsh surroundings of the Western Australian prison, his hope and longing started to die bit by bit.
This is when a prison priest, who used to appear on Sundays from the local church, suggested him to paint. He started with bits and pieces of charcoal and rough pebbles on his prison cell. Then, one of the prison guards convinced the jailor to provide him some paints, but only bristles and no brush (sharp ends, could be weaponised). So he used his fingers and those bristles bunched up like mini dusters to dab paint on the walls.
What he created allover his cell walls were his memories and longing for his past life. He used to remain inclusve in creating them, yet express for others to see his world, without speaking a word. At night he used to sleep peacefully, as if cradled in his home way back in England.
Years passed, decades passed and he kept on creating paintstakingly a collage of events on those walls.
As he had almost shut off himself from others and immersed completely into his own self, he was calmer and quieter. Two essential qualities that did earn him consistent "good conduct" from each jailor who commanded this dreadful place.
He was rewarded with a pardon and early release, but refused to leave. He didn't have a world outside his prison cell and had no contact with his home and family far far away. He had nowhere to go. He wanted to live in his current home, that by then has been a world for him, created bit by bit.
The prison authorities finally made a wise decision. They allowed him to stay, but never locked his cell. He was free to move around the prison. This is why we, the tourists are escorted on foot to his cell, which has open doors, while we passby all closed prison doors and then asked "why do you think this is OPEN?" It is at that point, we are told the story and allowed to go in, two to four at a time to actually see the paintings on the wall. Sure indeed, they were typical English village scenes, rain, rivulets, glens and valleys, swans, pigs, goats, even a village well.
He died within the prison walls and is buried at one end of the prison compund.
What a lovely, moving story - it seems to echo the the same quiet movement from confinement to an inner world. It is serendipity at its best, for a story to be retold after 16 years!
DeleteStrength of character often stems in soul power. Something that's more innate than cultivated over a period of one's lifetime. I resonate with Goldsmith 🙂
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts. The subject is moving and relevant at many levels. Goldsmith’s circumstances and dignity in adversity is actually a comment on most of us living under circumstances life throws at us.
ReplyDeleteLiterature like this is best understood and felt when we rise above our petty concerns and see the wider picture, with all the human frailties and compulsions. When seen not with indulgence, but understanding and compassion, we can raise ourselves to understand our own lives better.