The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
by Jerome K. Jerome · English · Gutenberg #1915 · 371,675 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
Author: Jerome K. Jerome
Release date: October 1, 1999 [eBook #1915]
Most recently updated: May 20, 2015
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1915
Credits: This etext was prepared by Les Bowler from the 1899 Hurst and Blackett edition
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECOND THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW ***
This etext was prepared by Les Bowler from the 1899 Hurst and Blackett
edition.
[Picture: Book cover]
The Second Thoughts
of
An Idle Fellow
* * * * *
BY
JEROME K. JEROME
AUTHOR OF
‘THREE MEN IN A BOAT,’ ‘IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW,’
‘STAGELAND,’ ‘JOHN INGERFIELD,’ ETC.
* * * * *
LONDON
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET
1899
_All rights reserved_
* * * * *
First printing published August 17, 1898.
Second printing published September 2, 1898.
Third printing published November 1, 1898.
Fourth printing published January 1, 1899.
* * * * *
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNGAY.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PAGE
ON THE ART OF MAKING UP ONE’S MIND 1
ON THE DISADVANTAGE OF NOT GETTING WHAT ONE WANTS 29
ON THE EXCEPTIONAL MERIT ATTACHING TO THE THINGS WE MEANT 53
TO DO
ON THE PREPARATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF LOVE PHILTRES 91
ON THE DELIGHTS AND BENEFITS OF SLAVERY 119
ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN 149
ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS 175
ON THE TIME WASTED IN LOOKING BEFORE ONE LEAPS 215
ON THE NOBILITY OF OURSELVES 245
ON THE MOTHERLINESS OF MAN 271
ON THE INADVISABILITY OF FOLLOWING ADVICE 301
ON THE PLAYING OF MARCHES AT THE FUNERALS OF MARIONETTES 335
ON THE ART OF MAKING UP ONE’S MIND
“NOW, which would you advise, dear? You see, with the red I shan’t be
able to wear my magenta hat.”
“Well then, why not have the grey?”
“Yes—yes, I think the grey will be _more useful_.”
“It’s a good material.”
“Yes, and it’s a _pretty_ grey. You know what I mean, dear; not a
_common_ grey. Of course grey is always an _uninteresting_ colour.”
“It’s quiet.”
“And then again, what I feel about the red is that it is so warm-looking.
Red makes you _feel_ warm even when you’re _not_ warm. You know what I
mean, dear!”
“Well then, why not have the red? It suits you—red.”
“No; do you really think so?”
“Well, when you’ve got a colour, I mean, of course!”
“Yes, that is the drawback to red. No, I think, on the whole, the grey
is _safer_.”
“Then you will take the grey, madam?”
“Yes, I think I’d better; don’t you, dear?”
“I like it myself very much.”
“And it is good wearing stuff. I shall have it trimmed with— Oh! you
haven’t cut it off, have you?”
“I was just about to, madam.”
“Well, don’t for a moment. Just let me have another look at the red.
You see, dear, it has just occurred to me—that chinchilla would look so
well on the red!”
“So it would, dear!”
“And, you see, I’ve _got_ the chinchilla.”
“Then have the red. Why not?”
“Well, there is the hat I’m thinking of.”
“You haven’t anything else you could wear with that?”
“Nothing at all, and it would go so _beautifully_ with the grey.—Yes, I
think I’ll have the grey. It’s always a safe colour—grey.”
“Fourteen yards I think you said, madam?”
“Yes, fourteen yards will be enough; because I shall mix it with—One
minute. You see, dear, if I take the grey I shall have nothing to wear
with my black jacket.”
“Won’t it go with grey?”
“Not well—not so well as with red.”
“I should have the red then. You evidently fancy it yourself.”
“No, personally I prefer the grey. But then one must think of
_everything_, and—Good gracious! that’s surely not the right time?”
“No, madam, it’s ten minutes slow. We always keep our clocks a little
slow!”
“And we were too have been at Madame Jannaway’s at a quarter past twelve.
How long shopping does take! Why, whatever time did we start?”
“About eleven, wasn’t it?”
“Half-past ten. I remember now; because, you know, we said we’d start at
half-past nine. We’ve been two hours already!”
“And we don’t seem to have done much, do we?”
“Done literally nothing, and I meant to have done so much. I _must_ go
to Madame Jannaway’s. Have you got my purse, dear? Oh, it’s all right,
I’ve got it.”
“Well, now you haven’t decided whether you’re going to have the grey or
the red.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what I _do_ want now. I had made up my mind a
minute ago, and now it’s all gone again—oh yes, I remember, the red.
Yes, I’ll have the red. No, I don’t mean the red, I mean the grey.”
“You were talking about the red last time, if you remember, dear.”
“Oh, so I was, you’re quite right. That’s the worst of shopping. Do you
know I get quite confused sometimes.”
“Then you will decide on the red, madam?”
“Yes—yes, I shan’t do any better, shall I, dear? What do _you_ think?
You haven’t got any other shades of red, have you? This is such an
_ugly_ red.”
The shopman reminds her that she has seen all the other reds, and that
this is the particular shade she selected and admired.
“Oh, very well,” she replies, with the air of one from whom all earthly
cares are falling, “I must take that then, I suppose. I can’t be worried
about it any longer. I’ve wasted half the morning already.”
Outside she recollects three insuperable objections to the red, and four
unanswerable arguments why she should have selected the grey. She
wonders would they change it, if she went back and asked to see the
shop-walker? Her friend, who wants her lunch, thinks not.
“That is what I hate about shopping,” she says. “One never has time to
really _think_.”
She says she shan’t go to that shop again.
We laugh at her, but are we so very much better? Come, my superior male
friend, have you never stood, amid your wardrobe, undecided whether, in
her eyes, you would appear more imposing, clad in the rough tweed suit
that so admirably displays your broad shoulders; or in the orthodox black
frock, that, after all, is perhaps more suitable to the figure of a man
approaching—let us say, the nine-and-twenties? Or, better still, why not
riding costume? Did we not hear her say how well Jones looked in his
top-boots and breeches, and, “hang it all,” we have a better leg than
Jones. What a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is
it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women
have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more and more
reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, the tight-fitting pantaloons,
the neat kneebreeches of our forefathers impossible to-day? Are we grown
more modest—or has there come about a falling off, rendering concealment
advisable?
I can never understand, myself, why women love us. It must be our honest
worth, our sterling merit, that attracts them—certainly not our
appearance, in a pair of tweed “dittos,” black angora coat and vest,
stand-up collar, and chimney-pot hat! No, it must be our sheer force of
character that compels their admiration.
What a good time our ancestors must have had was borne in upon me when,
on one occasion, I appeared in character at a fancy dress ball. What I
represented I am unable to say, and I don’t particularly care. I only
know it was something military. I also remember that the costume was two
sizes too small for me in the chest, and thereabouts; and three sizes too
large for me in the hat. I padded the hat, and dined in the middle of
the day off a chop and half a glass of soda-water. I have gained prizes
as a boy for mathematics, also for scripture history—not often, but I
have done it. A literary critic, now dead, once praised a book of mine.
I know there have been occasions when my conduct has won the approbation
of good men; but never—never in my whole life, have I felt more proud,
more satisfied with myself than on that evening when, the last hook
fastened, I gazed at my full-length Self in the cheval glass. I was a
dream. I say it who should not; but I am not the only one who said it.
I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red, trimmed with gold
braid wherever there was room for gold braid; and where there was no more
possible room for gold braid there hung gold cords, and tassels, and
straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened me, gold embroidered belts and
sashes caressed me, white horse-hair plumes waved o’er me. I am not sure
that everything was in its proper place, but I managed to get everything
on somehow, and I looked well. It suited me. My success was a
revelation to me of female human nature. Girls who had hitherto been
cold and distant gathered round me, timidly solicitous of notice. Girls
on whom I smiled lost their heads and gave themselves airs. Girls who
were not introduced to me sulked and were rude to girls that had been.
For one poor child, with whom I sat out two dances (at least she sat,
while I stood gracefully beside her—I had been advised, by the costumier,
_not_ to sit), I was sorry. He was a worthy young fellow, the son of a
cotton broker, and he would have made her a good husband, I feel sure.
But he was foolish to come as a beer-bottle.
Perhaps, after all, it is as well those old fashions have gone out. A
week in that suit might have impaired my natural modesty.
One wonders that fancy dress balls are not more popular in this grey age
of ours. The childish instinct to “dress up,” to “make believe,” is with
us all. We grow so tired of being always ourselves. A tea-table
discussion, at which I once assisted, fell into this:—Would any one of
us, when it came to the point, change with anybody else, the poor man
with the millionaire, the governess with the princess—change not only
outward circumstances and surroundings, but health and temperament,
heart, brain, and soul; so that not one mental or physical particle of
one’s original self one would retain, save only memory? The general
opinion was that we would not, but one lady maintained the affirmative.
“Oh no, you wouldn’t really, dear,” argued a friend; “you _think_ you
would.”
“Yes, I would,” persisted the first lady; “I am tired of myself. I’d
even be you, for a change.”
In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was—What sort of man
shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at
thirty-nine we say, “I wish Fate hadn’t made me this sort of man.”
In those days I was a reader of much well-meant advice to young men, and
I gathered that, whether I should become a Sir Lancelot, a Herr
Teufelsdrockh, or an Iago was a matter for my own individual choice.
Whether I should go through life gaily or gravely was a question the pros
and cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I turned to
books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made up our minds to
be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary with the world, and prone to
soliloquy. I determined to join them.
For a month I rarely smiled, or, when I did, it was with a weary, bitter
smile, concealing a broken heart—at least that was the intention.
Shallow-minded observers misunderstood.
“I know exactly how it feels,” they would say, looking at me
sympathetically, “I often have it myself. It’s the sudden change in the
weather, I think;” and they would press neat brandy upon me, and suggest
ginger.
Again, it is distressing to the young man, busy burying his secret sorrow
under a mound of silence, to be slapped on the back by commonplace people
and asked—“Well, how’s ‘the hump’ this morning?” and to hear his mood of
dignified melancholy referred to, by those who should know better, as
“the sulks.”
There are practical difficulties also in the way of him who would play
the Byronic young gentleman. He must be supernaturally wicked—or rather
must _have been_; only, alas! in the unliterary grammar of life, where
the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the
indefinite, but from the present indicative, “to have been” is “to be”;
and to be wicked on a small income is impossible. The ruin of even the
simplest of maidens costs money. In the Courts of Love one cannot sue in
_formâ pauperis_; nor would it be the Byronic method.
“To drown remembrance in the cup” sounds well, but then the “cup,” to be
fitting, should be of some expensive brand. To drink deep of old Tokay
or Asti is poetical; but when one’s purse necessitates that the draught,
if it is to be deep enough to drown anything, should be of thin beer at
five-and-nine the four and a half gallon cask, or something similar in
price, sin is robbed of its flavour.
Possibly also—let me think it—the conviction may have been within me that
Vice, even at its daintiest, is but an ugly, sordid thing, repulsive in
the sunlight; that though—as rags and dirt to art—it may afford
picturesque material to Literature, it is an evil-smelling garment to the
wearer; one that a good man, by reason of poverty of will, may come down
to, but one to be avoided with all one’s effort, discarded with returning
mental prosperity.
Be this as it may, I grew weary of training for a saturnine young man;
and, in the midst of my doubt, I chanced upon a book the hero of which
was a debonnaire young buck, own cousin to Tom and Jerry. He attended
fights, both of cocks and men, flirted with actresses, wrenched off
door-knockers, extinguished street lamps, played many a merry jest upon
many an unappreciative night watch-man. For all the which he was much
beloved by the women of the book. Why should not I flirt with actresses,
put out street lamps, play pranks on policemen, and be beloved? London
life was changed since the days of my hero, but much remained, and the
heart of woman is eternal. If no longer prizefighting was to be had, at
least there were boxing competitions, so called, in dingy back parlours
out Whitechapel way. Though cockfighting was a lost sport, were there
not damp cellars near the river where for twopence a gentleman might back
mongrel terriers to kill rats against time, and feel himself indeed a
sportsman? True, the atmosphere of reckless gaiety, always surrounding
my hero, I missed myself from these scenes, finding in its place an
atmosphere more suggestive of gin, stale tobacco, and nervous
apprehension of the police; but the essentials must have been the same,
and the next morning I could exclaim in the very words of my
prototype—“Odds crickets, but I feel as though the devil himself were in
my head. Peste take me for a fool.”
But in this direction likewise my fatal lack of means opposed me. (It
affords much food to the philosophic mind, this influence of income upon
character.) Even fifth-rate “boxing competitions,” organized by
“friendly leads,” and ratting contests in Rotherhithe slums, become
expensive, when you happen to be the only gentleman present possessed of
a collar, and are expected to do the honours of your class in dog’s-nose.
True, climbing lamp-posts and putting out the gas is fairly cheap,
providing always you are not caught in the act, but as a recreation it
lacks variety. Nor is the modern London lamp-post adapted to sport.
Anything more difficult to grip—anything with less “give” in it—I have
rarely clasped. The disgraceful amount of dirt allowed to accumulate
upon it is another drawback from the climber’s point of view. By the
time you have swarmed up your third post a positive distaste for “gaiety”
steals over you. Your desire is towards arnica and a bath.
Nor in jokes at the expense of policemen is the fun entirely on your
side. Maybe I did not proceed with judgment. It occurs to me now,
looking back, that the neighbourhoods of Covent Garden and Great
Marlborough Street were ill-chosen for sport of this nature. To bonnet a
fat policeman is excellent fooling. While he is struggling with his
helmet you can ask him comic questions, and by the time he has got his
head free you are out of sight. But the game should be played in a
district where there is not an average of three constables to every dozen
square yards. When two other policemen, who have had their eye on you
for the past ten minutes, are watching the proceedings from just round
the next corner, you have little or no leisure for due enjoyment of the
situation. By the time you have run the whole length of Great Titchfield
Street and twice round Oxford Market, you are of opinion that a joke
should never be prolonged beyond the point at which there is danger of
its becoming wearisome; and that the time has now arrived for home and
friends. The “Law,” on the other hand, now raised by reinforcements to a
strength of six or seven men, is just beginning to enjoy the chase. You
picture to yourself, while doing Hanover Square, the scene in Court the
next morning. You will be accused of being drunk and disorderly. It
will be idle for you to explain to the magistrate (or to your relations
afterwards) that you were only trying to live up to a man who did this
sort of thing in a book and was admired for it. You will be fined the
usual forty shillings; and on the next occasion of your calling at the
Mayfields’ the girls will be out, and Mrs. Mayfield, an excellent lady,
who has always taken a motherly interest in you, will talk seriously to
you and urge you to sign the pledge.
Thanks to your youth and constitution you shake off the pursuit at
Notting Hill; and, to avoid any chance of unpleasant _contretemps_ on the
return journey, walk home to Bloomsbury by way of Camden Town and
Islington.
I abandoned sportive tendencies as the result of a vow made by myself to
Providence, during the early hours of a certain Sunday morning, while
clinging to the waterspout of an unpretentious house situate in a side
street off Soho. I put it to Providence as man to man. “Let me only get
out of this,” I think were the muttered words I used, “and no more
‘sport’ for me.” Providence closed on the offer, and did let me get out
of it. True, it was a complicated “get out,” involving a broken skylight
and three gas globes, two hours in a coal cellar, and a sovereign to a
potman for the loan of an ulster; and when at last, secure in my chamber,
I took stock of myself—what was left of me,—I could not but reflect that
Providence might have done the job neater. Yet I experienced no desire
to escape the terms of the covenant; my inclining for the future was
towards a life of simplicity.
Accordingly, I cast about for a new character, and found one to suit me.
The German professor was becoming popular as a hero about this period.
He wore his hair long and was otherwise untidy, but he had “a heart of
steel,” occasionally of gold. The majority of folks in the book, judging
him from his exterior together with his conversation—in broken English,
dealing chiefly with his dead mother and his little sister Lisa,—dubbed
him uninteresting, but then they did not know about the heart. His chief
possession was a lame dog which he had rescued from a brutal mob; and
when he was not talking broken English he was nursing this dog.
But his speciality was stopping runaway horses, thereby saving the
heroine’s life. This, combined with the broken English and the dog,
rendered him irresistible.
He seemed a peaceful, amiable sort of creature, and I decided to try him.
I could not of course be a German professor, but I could, and did, wear
my hair long in spite of much public advice to the contrary, voiced
chiefly by small boys. I endeavoured to obtain possession of a lame dog,
but failed. A one-eyed dealer in Seven Dials, to whom, as a last
resource, I applied, offered to lame one for me for an extra five
shillings, but this suggestion I declined. I came across an
uncanny-looking mongrel late one night. He was not lame, but he seemed
pretty sick; and, feeling I was not robbing anybody of anything very
valuable, I lured him home and nursed him. I fancy I must have
over-nursed him. He got so healthy in the end, there was no doing
anything with him. He was an ill-conditioned cur, and he was too old to
be taught. He became the curse of the neighbourhood. His idea of sport
was killing chickens and sneaking rabbits from outside poulterers’ shops.
For recreation he killed cats and frightened small children by yelping
round their legs. There were times when I could have lamed him myself,
if only I could have got hold of him. I made nothing by running that
dog—nothing whatever. People, instead of admiring me for nursing him
back to life, called me a fool, and said that if I didn’t drown the brute
they would. He spoilt my character utterly—I mean my character at this
period. It is difficult to pose as a young man with a heart of gold,
when discovered in the middle of the road throwing stones at your own
dog. And stones were the only things that would reach and influence him.
I was also hampered by a scarcity in runaway horses. The horse of our
suburb was not that type of horse. Once and only once did an opportunity
offer itself for practice. It was a good opportunity, inasmuch as he was
not running away very greatly. Indeed, I doubt if he knew himself that
he was running away. It transpired afterwards that it was a habit of
his, after waiting for his driver outside the Rose and Crown for what he
considered to be a reasonable period, to trot home on his own account.
He passed me going about seven miles an hour, with the reins dragging
conveniently beside him. He was the very thing for a beginner, and I
prepared myself. At the critical moment, however, a couple of officious
policemen pushed me aside and did it themselves.
There was nothing for me to regret, as the matter turned out. I should
only have rescued a bald-headed commercial traveller, very drunk, who
swore horribly, and pelted the crowd with empty collar-boxes.
From the window of a very high flat I once watched three men, resolved to
stop a runaway horse. Each man marched deliberately into the middle of
the road and took up his stand. My window was too far away for me to see
their faces, but their attitude suggested heroism unto death. The first
man, as the horse came charging towards him, faced it with his arms
spread out. He never flinched until the horse was within about twenty
yards of him. Then, as the animal was evidently determined to continue
its wild career, there was nothing left for him to do but to retire again
to the kerb, where he stood looking after it with evident sorrow, as
though saying to himself—“Oh, well, if you are going to be headstrong I
have done with you.”
The second man, on the catastrophe being thus left clear for him, without
a moment’s hesitation, walked up a bye street and disappeared. The third
man stood his ground, and, as the horse passed him, yelled at it. I
could not hear what he said. I have not the slightest doubt it was
excellent advice, but the animal was apparently too excited even to
listen. The first and the third man met afterwards, and discussed the
matter sympathetically. I judged they were regretting the pig-headedness
of runaway horses in general, and hoping that nobody had been hurt.
I forget the other characters I assumed about this period. One, I know,
that got me into a good deal of trouble was that of a downright, honest,
hearty, outspoken young man who always said what he meant.
I never knew but one man who made a real success of speaking his mind. I
have heard him slap the table with his open hand and exclaim—
“You want me to flatter you—to stuff you up with a pack of lies. That’s
not me, that’s not Jim Compton. But if you care for my honest opinion,
all I can say is, that child is the most marvellous performer on the
piano I’ve ever heard. I don’t say she is a genius, but I have heard
Liszt and Metzler and all the crack players, and I prefer _her_. That’s
my opinion. I speak my mind, and I can’t help it if you’re offended.”
“How refreshing,” the parents would say, “to come across a man who is not
afraid to say what he really thinks. Why are we not all outspoken?”
The last character I attempted I thought would be easy to assume. It was
that of a much admired and beloved young man, whose great charm lay in
the fact that he was always just—himself. Other people posed and acted.
He never made any effort to be anything but his own natural, simple self.
I thought I also would be my own natural, simple self. But then the
question arose—What was my own natural, simple self?
That was the preliminary problem I had to solve; I have not solved it to
this day. What am I? I am a great gentleman, walking through the world
with dauntless heart and head erect, scornful of all meanness, impatient
of all littleness. I am a mean-thinking, little-daring man—the type of
man that I of the dauntless heart and the erect head despise
greatly—crawling to a poor end by devious ways, cringing to the strong,
timid of all pain. I—but, dear reader, I will not sadden your sensitive
ears with details I could give you, showing how contemptible a creature
this wretched I happens to be. Nor would you understand me. You would
only be astonished, discovering that such disreputable specimens of
humanity contrive to exist in this age. It is best, my dear sir, or
madam, you should remain ignorant of these evil persons. Let me not
trouble you with knowledge.
I am a philosopher, greeting alike the thunder and the sunshine with
frolic welcome. Only now and then, when all things do not fall exactly
as I wish them, when foolish, wicked people will persist in doing
foolish, wicked acts, affecting my comfort and happiness, I rage and fret
a goodish deal.
As Heine said of himself, I am knight, too, of the Holy Grail, valiant
for the Truth, reverent of all women, honouring all men, eager to yield
life to the service of my great Captain.
And next moment, I find myself in the enemy’s lines, fighting under the
black banner. (It must be confusing to these opposing Generals, all
their soldiers being deserters from both armies.) What are women but
men’s playthings! Shall there be no more cakes and ale for me because
thou art virtuous! What are men but hungry dogs, contending each against
each for a limited supply of bones! Do others lest thou be done. What
is the Truth but an unexploded lie!
I am a lover of all living things. You, my poor sister, struggling with
your heavy burden on your lonely way, I would kiss the tears from your
worn cheeks, lighten with my love the darkness around your feet. You, my
patient brother, breathing hard as round and round you tramp the trodden
path, like some poor half-blind gin-horse, stripes your only
encouragement, scanty store of dry chaff in your manger! I would jog
beside you, taking the strain a little from your aching shoulders; and we
would walk nodding, our heads side by side, and you, remembering, should
tell me of the fields where long ago you played, of the gallant races
that you ran and won. And you, little pinched brats, with wondering
eyes, looking from dirt-encrusted faces, I would take you in my arms and
tell you fairy stories. Into the sweet land of make-believe we would
wander, leaving the sad old world behind us for a time, and you should be
Princes and Princesses, and know Love.
But again, a selfish, greedy man comes often, and sits in my clothes. A
man who frets away his life, planning how to get more money—more food,
more clothes, more pleasures for himself; a man so busy thinking of the
many things he needs he has no time to dwell upon the needs of others.
He deems himself the centre of the universe. You would imagine, hearing
him grumbling, that the world had been created and got ready against the
time when he should come to take his pleasure in it. He would push and
trample, heedless, reaching towards these many desires of his; and when,
grabbing, he misses, he curses Heaven for its injustice, and men and
women for getting in his path. He is not a nice man, in any way. I
wish, as I say, he would not come so often and sit in my clothes. He
persists that he is I, and that I am only a sentimental fool, spoiling
his chances. Sometimes, for a while, I get rid of him, but he always
comes back; and then he gets rid of me and I become him. It is very
confusing. Sometimes I wonder if I really am myself.
ON THE DISADVANTAGE OF NOT GETTING WHAT ONE WANTS
LONG, long ago, when you and I, dear Reader, were young, when the fairies
dwelt in the hearts of the roses, when the moonbeams bent each night
beneath the weight of angels’ feet, there lived a good, wise man. Or
rather, I should say, there had lived, for at the time of which I speak
the poor old gentleman lay dying. Waiting each moment the dread summons,
he fell a-musing on the life that stretched far back behind him. How
full it seemed to him at that moment of follies and mistakes, bringing
bitter tears not to himself alone but to others also. How much brighter
a road might it have been, had he been wiser, had he known!
“Ah, me!” said the good old gentleman, “if only I could live my life
again in the light of experience.”
Now as he spoke these words he felt the drawing near to him of a
Presence, and thinking it was the One whom he expected, raising himself a
little from his bed, he feebly cried,
“I am ready.”
But a hand forced him gently back, a voice saying, “Not yet; I bring
life, not death. Your wish shall be granted. You shall live your life
again, and the knowledge of the past shall be with you to guide you. See
you use it. I will come again.”
Then a sleep fell upon the good man, and when he awoke, he was again a
little child, lying in his mother’s arms; but, locked within his brain
was the knowledge of the life that he had lived already.
So once more he lived and loved and laboured. So a second time he lay an
old, worn man with life behind him. And the angel stood again beside his
bed; and the voice said,
“Well, are you content now?”
“I am well content,” said the old gentleman. “Let Death come.”
“And have you understood?” asked the angel.
“I think so,” was the answer; “that experience is but as of the memory of
the pathways he has trod to a traveller journeying ever onward into an
unknown land. I have been wise only to reap the reward of folly.
Knowledge has ofttimes kept me from my good. I have avoided my old
mistakes only to fall into others that I knew not of. I have reached the
old errors by new roads. Where I have escaped sorrow I have lost joy.
Where I have grasped happiness I have plucked pain also. Now let me go
with Death that I may learn..”
Which was so like the angel of that period, the giving of a gift,
bringing to a man only more trouble. Maybe I am overrating my coolness
of judgment under somewhat startling circumstances, but I am inclined to
think that, had I lived in those days, and had a fairy or an angel come
to me, wanting to give me something—my soul’s desire, or the sum of my
ambition, or any trifle of that kind I should have been short with him.
“You pack up that precious bag of tricks of yours,” I should have said to
him (it would have been rude, but that is how I should have felt), “and
get outside with it. I’m not taking anything in your line to-day. I
don’t require any supernatural aid to get me into trouble. All the worry
I want I can get down here, so it’s no good your calling. You take that
little joke of yours,—I don’t know what it is, but I know enough not to
want to know,—and run it off on some other idiot. I’m not priggish. I
have no objection to an innocent game of ‘catch-questions’ in the
ordinary way, and when I get a turn myself. But if I’ve got to pay every
time, and the stakes are to be my earthly happiness plus my future
existence—why, I don’t play. There was the case of Midas; a nice, shabby
trick you fellows played off upon him! making pretence you did not
understand him, twisting round the poor old fellow’s words, just for all
the world as though you were a pack of Old Bailey lawyers, trying to trip
up a witness; I’m ashamed of the lot of you, and I tell you so—coming
down here, fooling poor unsuspecting mortals with your nonsense, as
though we had not enough to harry us as it was. Then there was that
other case of the poor old peasant couple to whom you promised three
wishes, the whole thing ending in a black pudding. And they never got
even that. You thought that funny, I suppose. That was your fairy
humour! A pity, I say, you have not, all of you, something better to do
with your time. As I said before, you take that celestial ‘Joe Miller’
of yours and work it off on somebody else. I have read my fairy lore,
and I have read my mythology, and I don’t want any of your blessings.
And what’s more, I’m not going to have them. When I want blessings I
will put up with the usual sort we are accustomed to down here. You know
the ones I mean, the disguised brand—the blessings that no human being
would think were blessings, if he were not told; the blessings that don’t
look like blessings, that don’t feel like blessings; that, as a matter of
fact, are not blessings, practically speaking; the blessings that other
people think are blessings for us and that we don’t. They’ve got their
drawbacks, but they are better than yours, at any rate, and they are
sooner over. I don’t want your blessings at any price. If you leave one
here I shall simply throw it out after you.”
I feel confident I should have answered in that strain, and I feel it
would have done good. Somebody ought to have spoken plainly, because
with fairies and angels of that sort fooling about, no one was ever safe
for a moment. Children could hardly have been allowed outside the door.
One never could have told what silly trick some would-be funny fairy
might be waiting to play off on them. The poor child would not know, and
would think it was getting something worth having. The wonder to me is
that some of those angels didn’t get tarred and feathered.
I am doubtful whether even Cinderella’s luck was quite as satisfying as
we are led to believe. After the carpetless kitchen and the black
beetles, how beautiful the palace must have seemed—for the first year,
perhaps for the first two. And the Prince! how loving, how gallant, how
tender—for the first year, perhaps for the first two. And after? You
see he was a Prince, brought up in a Court, the atmosphere of which is
not conducive to the development of the domestic virtues; and she—was
Cinderella. And then the marriage altogether was rather a hurried
affair. Oh yes, she is a good, loving little woman; but perhaps our
Royal Highness-ship did act too much on the impulse of the moment. It
was her dear, dainty feet that danced their way into our heart. How they
flashed and twinkled, eased in those fairy slippers. How like a lily
among tulips she moved that night amid the over-gorgeous Court dames.
She was so sweet, so fresh, so different to all the others whom we knew
so well. How happy she looked as she put her trembling little hand in
ours. What possibilities might lie behind those drooping lashes. And we
were in amorous mood that night, the music in our feet, the flash and
glitter in our eyes. And then, to pique us further, she disappeared as
suddenly and strangely as she had come. Who was she? Whence came she?
What was the mystery surrounding her? Was she only a delicious dream, a
haunting phantasy that we should never look upon again, never clasp again
within our longing arms? Was our heart to be for ever hungry, haunted by
the memory of—No, by heavens, she is real, and a woman. Here is her dear
slipper, made surely to be kissed. Of a size too that a man may well
wear within the breast of his doublet. Had any woman—nay, fairy, angel,
such dear feet! Search the whole kingdom through, but find her, find
her. The gods have heard our prayers, and given us this clue. “Suppose
she be not all she seemed. Suppose she be not of birth fit to mate with
our noble house!” Out upon thee, for an earth-bound, blind curmudgeon of
a Lord High Chancellor. How could a woman, whom such slipper fitted, be
but of the noblest and the best, as far above us, mere Princelet that we
are, as the stars in heaven are brighter than thy dull old eyes! Go,
search the kingdom, we tell thee, from east to west, from north to south,
and see to it that thou findest her, or it shall go hard with thee. By
Venus, be she a swineherd’s daughter, she shall be our Queen—an she deign
to accept of us, and of our kingdom.
Ah well, of course, it was not a wise piece of business, that goes
without saying; but we were young, and Princes are only human. Poor
child, she could not help her education, or rather her lack of it. Dear
little thing, the wonder is that she has contrived to be no more ignorant
than she is, dragged up as she was, neglected and overworked. Nor does
life in a kitchen, amid the companionship of peasants and menials, tend
to foster the intellect. Who can blame her for being shy and somewhat
dull of thought? not we, generous-minded, kind-hearted Prince that we
are. And she is very affectionate. The family are trying, certainly;
father-in-law not a bad sort, though a little prosy when upon the subject
of his domestic troubles, and a little too fond of his glass;
mamma-in-law, and those two ugly, ill-mannered sisters, decidedly a
nuisance about the palace. Yet what can we do? they are our relations
now, and they do not forget to let us know it. Well, well, we had to
expect that, and things might have been worse. Anyhow she is not
jealous—thank goodness.
So the day comes when poor little Cinderella sits alone of a night in the
beautiful palace. The courtiers have gone home in their carriages. The
Lord High Chancellor has bowed himself out backwards. The
Gold-Stick-in-Waiting and the Grooms of the Chamber have gone to their
beds. The Maids of Honour have said “Good-night,” and drifted out of the
door, laughing and whispering among themselves. The clock strikes
twelve—one—two, and still no footstep creaks upon the stair. Once it
followed swiftly upon the “good-night” of the maids, who did not laugh or
whisper then.
At last the door opens, and the Prince enters, none too pleased at
finding Cinderella still awake. “So sorry I’m late, my love—detained on
affairs of state. Foreign policy very complicated, dear. Have only just
this moment left the Council Chamber.”
And little Cinderella, while the Prince sleeps, lies sobbing out her poor
sad heart into the beautiful royal pillow, embroidered with the royal
arms and edged with the royal monogram in lace. “Why did he ever marry
me? I should have been happier in the old kitchen. The black beetles
did frighten me a little, but there was always the dear old cat; and
sometimes, when mother and the girls were out, papa would call softly
down the kitchen stairs for me to come up, and we would have such a merry
evening together, and sup off sausages: dear old dad, I hardly ever see
him now. And then, when my work was done, how pleasant it was to sit in
front of the fire, and dream of the wonderful things that would come to
me some day. I was always going to be a Princess, even in my dreams, and
live in a palace, but it was so different to this. Oh, how I hate it,
this beastly palace where everybody sneers at me—I know they do, though
they bow and scrape, and pretend to be so polite. And I’m not clever and
smart as they are. I hate them. I hate these bold-faced women who are
always here. That is the worst of a palace, everybody can come in. Oh,
I hate everybody and everything. Oh, god-mamma, god-mamma, come and take
me away. Take me back to my old kitchen. Give me back my old poor
frock. Let me dance again with the fire-tongs for a partner, and be
happy, dreaming.”
Poor little Cinderella, perhaps it would have been better had god-mamma
been less ambitious for you, dear; had you married some good, honest
yeoman, who would never have known that you were not brilliant, who would
have loved you because you were just amiable and pretty; had your kingdom
been only a farmhouse, where your knowledge of domestic economy, gained
so hardly, would have been useful; where you would have shone instead of
being overshadowed; where Papa would have dropped in of an evening to
smoke his pipe and escape from his domestic wrangles; where you would
have been _real_ Queen.
But then you know, dear, you would not have been content. Ah yes, with
your present experience—now you know that Queens as well as little
drudges have their troubles; but _without_ that experience? You would
have looked in the glass when you were alone; you would have looked at
your shapely hands and feet, and the shadows would have crossed your
pretty face. “Yes,” you would have said to yourself—“John is a dear,
kind fellow, and I love him very much, and all that, but—” and the old
dreams, dreamt in the old low-ceilinged kitchen before the dying fire,
would have come back to you, and you would have been discontented then as
now, only in a different way. Oh yes, you would, Cinderella, though you
gravely shake your gold-crowned head. And let me tell you why. It is
because you are a woman, and the fate of all us, men and women alike, is
to be for ever wanting what we have not, and to be finding, when we have
it, that it is not what we wanted. That is the law of life, dear. Do
you think as you lie upon the floor with your head upon your arms, that
you are the only woman whose tears are soaking into the hearthrug at that
moment? My dear Princess, if you could creep unseen about your City,
peeping at will through the curtain-shielded windows, you would come to
think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of
crying children with none to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer
it sweetly squeaks in answer to our pressure, “I love you, kiss me.” The
drum lies silent with the drumstick inside; no longer do we make a brave
noise in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put our
foot upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged
stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the
wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy cannon has exploded and burnt
our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will try and mend
things to-morrow.
And after all, Cinderella dear, you do live in a fine palace, and you
have jewels and grand dresses and—No, no, do not be indignant with _me_.
Did not you dream of these things _as well as_ of love? Come now, be
honest. It was always a prince, was it not, or, at the least, an
exceedingly well-to-do party, that handsome young gentleman who bowed to
you so gallantly from the red embers? He was never a virtuous young
commercial traveller, or cultured clerk, earning a salary of three pounds
a week, was he, Cinderella? Yet there are many charming commercial
travellers, many delightful clerks with limited incomes, quite
sufficient, however, to a sensible man and woman desiring but each
other’s love. Why was it always a prince, Cinderella? Had the palace
and the liveried servants, and the carriages and horses, and the jewels
and the dresses, _nothing_ to do with the dream?
No, Cinderella, you were human, that is all. The artist, shivering in
his conventional attic, dreaming of Fame!—do you think he is not hoping
she will come to his loving arms in the form Jove came to Danae? Do you
think he is not reckoning also upon the good dinners and the big cigars,
the fur coat and the diamond studs, that her visits will enable him to
purchase?
There is a certain picture very popular just now. You may see it,
Cinderella, in many of the shop-windows of the town. It is called “The
Dream of Love,” and it represents a beautiful young girl, sleeping in a
very beautiful but somewhat disarranged bed. Indeed, one hopes, for the
sleeper’s sake, that the night is warm, and that the room is fairly free
from draughts. A ladder of light streams down from the sky into the
room, and upon this ladder crowd and jostle one another a small army of
plump Cupids, each one laden with some pledge of love. Two of the Imps
are emptying a sack of jewels upon the floor. Four others are bearing,
well displayed, a magnificent dress (a “confection,” I believe, is the
proper term) cut somewhat low, but making up in train what is lacking
elsewhere. Others bear bonnet boxes from which peep stylish toques and
bewitching hoods. Some, representing evidently wholesale houses, stagger
under silks and satins in the piece. Cupids are there from the
shoemakers with the daintiest of _bottines_. Stockings, garters, and
even less mentionable articles, are not forgotten. Caskets, mirrors,
twelve-buttoned gloves, scent-bottles and handkerchiefs, hair-pins, and
the gayest of parasols, has the God of Love piled into the arms of his
messengers. Really a most practical, up-to-date God of Love, moving with
the times! One feels that the modern Temple of Love must be a sort of
Swan and Edgar’s; the god himself a kind of celestial shop-walker; while
his mother, Venus, no doubt superintends the costume department. Quite
an Olympian Whiteley, this latter-day Eros; he has forgotten nothing,
for, at the back of the picture, I notice one Cupid carrying a rather fat
heart at the end of a string.
You, Cinderella, could give good counsel to that sleeping child. You
would say to her—“Awake from such dreams. The contents of a pawnbroker’s
store-room will not bring you happiness. Dream of love if you will; that
is a wise dream, even if it remain ever a dream. But these coloured
beads, these Manchester goods! are you then—you, heiress of all the
ages—still at heart only as some poor savage maiden but little removed
above the monkeys that share the primeval forest with her? Will you sell
your gold to the first trader that brings you _this_ barter? These
things, child, will only dazzle your eyes for a few days. Do you think
the Burlington Arcade is the gate of Heaven?”
Ah, yes, I too could talk like that—I, writer of books, to the young lad,
sick of his office stool, dreaming of a literary career leading to fame
and fortune. “And do you think, lad, that by that road you will reach
Happiness sooner than by another? Do you think interviews with yourself
in penny weeklies will bring you any satisfaction after the first
halfdozen? Do you think the gushing female who has read all your books,
and who wonders what it must feel like to be so clever, will be welcome
to you the tenth time you meet her? Do you think press cuttings will
always consist of wondering admiration of your genius, of paragraphs
about your charming personal appearance under the heading, ‘Our
Celebrities’? Have you thought of the Uncomplimentary criticisms, of the
spiteful paragraphs, of the everlasting fear of slipping a few inches
down the greasy pole called ‘popular taste,’ to which you are condemned
to cling for life, as some lesser criminal to his weary tread-mill,
struggling with no hope but not to fall! Make a home, lad, for the woman
who loves you; gather one or two friends about you; work, think, and
play, that will bring you happiness. Shun this roaring gingerbread fair
that calls itself, forsooth, the ‘World of art and letters.’ Let its
clowns and its contortionists fight among themselves for the plaudits and
the halfpence of the mob. Let it be with its shouting and its surging,
its blare and its cheap flare. Come away, the summer’s night is just the
other side of the hedge, with its silence and its stars.”
You and I, Cinderella, are experienced people, and can therefore offer
good advice, but do you think we should be listened to?
“Ah, no, my Prince is not as yours. Mine will love me always, and I am
peculiarly fitted for the life of a palace. I have the instinct and the
ability for it. I am sure I was made for a princess. Thank you,
Cinderella, for your well-meant counsel, but there is much difference
between you and me.”
That is the answer you would receive, Cinderella; and my young friend
would say to me, “Yes, I can understand _your_ finding disappointment in
the literary career; but then, you see, our cases are not quite similar.
_I_ am not likely to find much trouble in keeping my position. _I_ shall
not fear reading what the critics say of _me_. No doubt there are
disadvantages, when you are among the ruck, but there is always plenty of
room at the top. So thank you, and goodbye.”
Besides, Cinderella dear, we should not quite mean it—this excellent
advice. We have grown accustomed to these gew-gaws, and we should miss
them in spite of our knowledge of their trashiness: you, your palace and
your little gold crown; I, my mountebank’s cap, and the answering laugh
that goes up from the crowd when I shake my bells. We want everything.
All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing.
Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited
beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only
everything, and we will be content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have
had your day. Some little dogs never get theirs. You must not be
greedy. You have _known_ happiness. The palace was Paradise for those
few months, and the Prince’s arms were about you, Cinderella, the
Prince’s kisses on your lips; the gods themselves cannot take _that_ from
you.
The cake cannot last for ever if we will eat of it so greedily. There
must come the day when we have picked hungrily the last crumb—when we sit
staring at the empty board, nothing left of the feast, Cinderella, but
the pain that comes of feasting.
It is a naïve confession, poor Human Nature has made to itself, in
choosing, as it has, this story of Cinderella for its leading moral:—Be
good, little girl. Be meek under your many trials. Be gentle and kind,
in spite of your hard lot, and one day—you shall marry a prince and ride
in your own carriage. Be brave and true, little boy. Work hard and wait
with patience, and in the end, with God’s blessing, you shall earn riches
enough to come back to London town and marry your master’s daughter.
You and I, gentle Reader, could teach these young folks a truer lesson,
an we would. We know, alas! that the road of all the virtues does not
lead to wealth, rather the contrary; else how explain our limited
incomes? But would it be well, think you, to tell them bluntly the
truth—that honesty is the most expensive luxury a man can indulge in;
that virtue, if persisted in, leads, generally speaking, to a six-roomed
house in an outlying suburb? Maybe the world is wise: the fiction has
its uses.
I am acquainted with a fairly intelligent young lady. She can read and
write, knows her tables up to six times, and can argue. I regard her as
representative of average Humanity in its attitude towards Fate; and this
is a dialogue I lately overheard between her and an older lady who is
good enough to occasionally impart to her the wisdom of the world—
“I’ve been good this morning, haven’t I?”
“Yes—oh yes, fairly good, for you.”
“You think Papa _will_ take me to the circus to-night?”
“Yes, if you keep good. If you don’t get naughty this afternoon.”
A pause.
“I was good on Monday, you may remember, nurse.”
“Tolerably good.”
“_Very_ good, you said, nurse.”
“Well, yes, you weren’t bad.”
“And I was to have gone to the pantomime, and I didn’t.”
“Well, that was because your aunt came up suddenly, and your Papa
couldn’t get another seat. Poor auntie wouldn’t have gone at all if she
hadn’t gone then.”
“Oh, wouldn’t she?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“Do you think she’ll come up suddenly to-day?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so.”
“No, I hope she doesn’t. I want to go to the circus to-night. Because,
you see, nurse, if I don’t it will discourage me.”
* * * * *
So, perhaps the world is wise in promising us the circus. We believe her
at first. But after a while, I fear, we grow discouraged.
ON THE EXCEPTIONAL MERIT ATTACHING TO THE THINGS WE MEANT TO DO
I CAN remember—but then I can remember a long time ago. You, gentle
Reader, just entering upon the prime of life, that age by thoughtless
youth called middle, I cannot, of course, expect to follow me—when there
was in great demand a certain periodical ycleped _The Amateur_. Its aim
was noble. It sought to teach the beautiful lesson of independence, to
inculcate the fine doctrine of self-help. One chapter explained to a man
how he might make flower-pots out of Australian meat cans; another how he
might turn butter-tubs into music-stools; a third how he might utilize
old bonnet boxes for Venetian blinds: that was the principle of the whole
scheme, you made everything from something not intended for it, and as
ill-suited to the purpose as possible.
Two pages, I distinctly recollect, were devoted to the encouragement of
the manufacture of umbrella stands out of old gaspiping. Anything less
adapted to the receipt of hats and umbrellas than gas-piping I cannot
myself conceive: had there been, I feel sure the author would have
thought of it, and would have recommended it.
Picture-frames you fashioned out of ginger-beer corks. You saved your
ginger-beer corks, you found a picture—and the thing was complete. How
much ginger-beer it would be necessary to drink, preparatory to the
making of each frame; and the effect of it upon the frame-maker’s
physical, mental and moral well-being, did not concern _The Amateur_. I
calculate that for a fair-sized picture sixteen dozen bottles might
suffice. Whether, after sixteen dozen of ginger-beer, a man would take
any interest in framing a picture—whether he would retain any pride in
the picture itself, is doubtful. But this, of course, was not the point.
One young gentleman of my acquaintance—the son of the gardener of my
sister, as friend Ollendorff would have described him—did succeed in
getting through sufficient ginger-beer to frame his grandfather, but the
result was not encouraging. Indeed, the gardener’s wife herself was but
ill satisfied.
“What’s all them corks round father?” was her first question.
“Can’t you see,” was the somewhat indignant reply, “that’s the frame.”
“Oh! but why corks?”
“Well, the book said corks.”
Still the old lady remained unimpressed.
“Somehow it don’t look like father now,” she sighed.
Her eldest born grew irritable: none of us appreciate criticism!
“What does it look like, then?” he growled.
“Well, I dunno. Seems to me to look like nothing but corks.”
The old lady’s view was correct. Certain schools of art possibly lend
themselves to this method of framing. I myself have seen a funeral card
improved by it; but, generally speaking, the consequence was a
predominance of frame at the expense of the thing framed. The more
honest and tasteful of the framemakers would admit as much themselves.
“Yes, it is ugly when you look at it,” said one to me, as we stood
surveying it from the centre of the room. “But what one feels about it
is that one has done it oneself.”
Which reflection, I have noticed, reconciles us to many other things
beside cork frames.
Another young gentleman friend of mine—for I am bound to admit it was
youth that profited most by the advice and counsel of _The Amateur_: I
suppose as one grows older one grows less daring, less industrious—made a
rocking-chair, according to the instructions of this book, out of a
couple of beer barrels. From every practical point of view it was a bad
rocking-chair. It rocked too much, and it rocked in too many directions
at one and the same time. I take it, a man sitting on a rocking-chair
does not want to be continually rocking. There comes a time when he says
to himself—“Now I have rocked sufficiently for the present; now I will
sit still for a while, lest a worse thing befall me.” But this was one
of those headstrong rocking-chairs that are a danger to humanity, and a
nuisance to themselves. Its notion was that it was made to rock, and
that when it was not rocking, it was wasting its time. Once started
nothing could stop it—nothing ever did stop it, until it found itself
topsy turvy on its own occupant. That was the only thing that ever
sobered it.
I had called, and had been shown into the empty drawing-room. The
rocking-chair nodded invitingly at me. I never guessed it was an amateur
rocking-chair. I was young in those days, with faith in human nature,
and I imagined that, whatever else a man might attempt without knowledge
or experience, no one would be fool enough to experiment upon a
rocking-chair.
I threw myself into it lightly and carelessly. I immediately noticed the
ceiling. I made an instinctive movement forward. The window and a
momentary glimpse of the wooded hills beyond shot upwards and
disappeared. The carpet flashed across my eyes, and I caught sight of my
own boots vanishing beneath me at the rate of about two hundred miles an
hour. I made a convulsive effort to recover them. I suppose I over-did
it. I saw the whole of the room at once, the four walls, the ceiling,
and the floor at the same moment. It was a sort of vision. I saw the
cottage piano upside down, and I again saw my own boots flash past me,
this time over my head, soles uppermost. Never before had I been in a
position where my own boots had seemed so all-pervading. The next moment
I lost my boots, and stopped the carpet with my head just as it was
rushing past me. At the same instant something hit me violently in the
small of the back. Reason, when recovered, suggested that my assailant
must be the rocking-chair.
Investigation proved the surmise correct. Fortunately I was still alone,
and in consequence was able, a few minutes later, to meet my hostess with
calm and dignity. I said nothing about the rocking-chair. As a matter
of fact, I was hoping to have the pleasure, before I went, of seeing some
other guest arrive and sample it: I had purposely replaced it in the most
prominent and convenient position. But though I felt capable of
schooling myself to silence, I found myself unable to agree with my
hostess when she called for my admiration of the thing. My recent
experiences had too deeply embittered me.
“Willie made it himself,” explained the fond mother. “Don’t you think it
was very clever of him?”
“Oh yes, it was clever,” I replied, “I am willing to admit that.”
“He made it out of some old beer barrels,” she continued; she seemed
proud of it.
My resentment, though I tried to keep it under control, was mounting
higher.
“Oh! did he?” I said; “I should have thought he might have found
something better to do with them.”
“What?” she asked.
“Oh! well, many things,” I retorted. “He might have filled them again
with beer.”
My hostess looked at me astonished. I felt some reason for my tone was
expected.
“You see,” I explained, “it is not a well-made chair. These rockers are
too short, and they are too curved, and one of them, if you notice, is
higher than the other and of a smaller radius; the back is at too obtuse
an angle. When it is occupied the centre of gravity becomes—”
My hostess interrupted me.
“You have been sitting on it,” she said.
“Not for long,” I assured her.
Her tone changed. She became apologetic.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “It looks all right.”
“It does,” I agreed; “that is where the dear lad’s cleverness displays
itself. Its appearance disarms suspicion. With judgment that chair
might be made to serve a really useful purpose. There are mutual
acquaintances of ours—I mention no names, you will know them—pompous,
self-satisfied, superior persons who would be improved by that chair. If
I were Willie I should disguise the mechanism with some artistic drapery,
bait the thing with a couple of exceptionally inviting cushions, and
employ it to inculcate modesty and diffidence. I defy any human being to
get out of that chair, feeling as important as when he got into it. What
the dear boy has done has been to construct an automatic exponent of the
transitory nature of human greatness. As a moral agency that chair
should prove a blessing in disguise.”
My hostess smiled feebly; more, I fear, from politeness than genuine
enjoyment.
“I think you are too severe,” she said. “When you remember that the boy
has never tried his hand at anything of the kind before, that he has no
knowledge and no experience, it really is not so bad.”
Considering the matter from that point of view I was bound to concur. I
did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon a difficult task
it would be better for young men to _acquire_ knowledge and experience:
that is so unpopular a theory.
But the thing that _The Amateur_ put in the front and foremost of its
propaganda was the manufacture of household furniture out of egg-boxes.
Why egg-boxes I have never been able to understand, but egg-boxes,
according to the prescription of _The Amateur_, formed the foundation of
household existence. With a sufficient supply of egg-boxes, and what
_The Amateur_ termed a “natural deftness,” no young couple need hesitate
to face the furnishing problem. Three egg-boxes made a writing-table; on
another egg-box you sat to write; your books were ranged in egg-boxes
around you—and there was your study, complete.
For the dining-room two egg-boxes made an overmantel; four egg-boxes and
a piece of looking-glass a sideboard; while six egg-boxes, with some
wadding and a yard or so of cretonne, constituted a so-called “cosy
corner.” About the “corner” there could be no possible doubt. You sat
on a corner, you leant against a corner; whichever way you moved you
struck a fresh corner. The “cosiness,” however, I deny. Egg-boxes I
admit can be made useful; I am even prepared to imagine them ornamental;
but “cosy,” no. I have sampled egg-boxes in many shapes. I speak of
years ago, when the world and we were younger, when our fortune was the
Future; secure in which, we hesitated not to set up house upon incomes
folks with lesser expectations might have deemed insufficient. Under
such circumstances, the sole alternative to the egg-box, or similar
school of furniture, would have been the strictly classical, consisting
of a doorway joined to architectural proportions.
I have from Saturday to Monday, as honoured guest, hung my clothes in
egg-boxes.
I have sat on an egg-box at an egg-box to take my dish of tea. I have
made love on egg-boxes.—Aye, and to feel again the blood running through
my veins as then it ran, I would be content to sit only on egg-boxes till
the time should come when I could be buried in an egg-box, with an
egg-box reared above me as tombstone.—I have spent many an evening on an
egg-box; I have gone to bed in egg-boxes. They have their points—I am
intending no pun—but to claim for them cosiness would be but to deceive.
How quaint they were, those home-made rooms! They rise out of the
shadows and shape themselves again before my eyes. I see the knobbly
sofa; the easy-chairs that might have been designed by the Grand
Inquisitor himself; the dented settle that was a bed by night; the few
blue plates, purchased in the slums off Wardour Street; the enamelled
stool to which one always stuck; the mirror framed in silk; the two
Japanese fans crossed beneath each cheap engraving; the piano cloth
embroidered in peacock’s feathers by Annie’s sister; the tea-cloth worked
by Cousin Jenny. We dreamt, sitting on those egg-boxes—for we were young
ladies and gentlemen with artistic taste—of the days when we would eat in
Chippendale dining-rooms; sip our coffee in Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms;
and be happy. Well, we have got on, some of us, since then, as Mr.
Bumpus used to say; and I notice, when on visits, that some of us have
contrived so that we do sit on Chippendale chairs, at Sheraton
dining-tables, and are warmed from Adam’s fireplaces; but, ah me, where
are the dreams, the hopes, the enthusiasms that clung like the scent of a
March morning about those gim-crack second floors? In the dustbin, I
fear, with the cretonne-covered egg-boxes and the penny fans. Fate is so
terribly even-handed. As she gives she ever takes away. She flung us a
few shillings and hope, where now she doles us out pounds and fears. Why
did not we know how happy we were, sitting crowned with sweet conceit
upon our egg-box thrones?
Yes, Dick, you have climbed well. You edit a great newspaper. You
spread abroad the message—well, the message that Sir Joseph Goldbug, your
proprietor, instructs you to spread abroad. You teach mankind the
lessons that Sir Joseph Goldbug wishes them to learn. They say he is to
have a peerage next year. I am sure he has earned it; and perhaps there
may be a knighthood for you, Dick.
Tom, you are getting on now. You have abandoned those unsaleable
allegories. What rich art patron cares to be told continually by his own
walls that Midas had ass’s ears; that Lazarus sits ever at the gate? You
paint portraits now, and everybody tells me you are the coming man. That
“Impression” of old Lady Jezebel was really wonderful. The woman looks
quite handsome, and yet it is her ladyship. Your touch is truly
marvellous.
But into your success, Tom—Dick, old friend, do not there creep moments
when you would that we could fish up those old egg-boxes from the past,
refurnish with them the dingy rooms in Camden Town, and find there our
youth, our loves, and our beliefs?
An incident brought back to my mind, the other day, the thought of all
these things. I called for the first time upon a man, an actor, who had
asked me to come and see him in the little home where he lives with his
old father. To my astonishment—for the craze, I believe, has long since
died out—I found the house half furnished out of packing cases, butter
tubs, and egg-boxes. My friend earns his twenty pounds a week, but it
was the old father’s hobby, so he explained to me, the making of these
monstrosities; and of them he was as proud as though they were specimen
furniture out of the South Kensington Museum.
He took me into the dining-room to show me the latest outrage—a new
book-case. A greater disfigurement to the room, which was otherwise
prettily furnished, could hardly be imagined. There was no need for him
to assure me, as he did, that it had been made out of nothing but
egg-boxes. One could see at a glance that it was made out of egg-boxes,
and badly constructed egg-boxes at that—egg-boxes that were a disgrace to
the firm that had turned them out; egg-boxes not worthy the storage of
“shop ’uns” at eighteen the shilling.
We went upstairs to my friend’s bedroom. He opened the door as a man
might open the door of a museum of gems.
“The old boy,” he said, as he stood with his hand upon the door-knob,
“made everything you see here, everything,” and we entered. He drew my
attention to the wardrobe. “Now I will hold it up,” he said, “while you
pull the door open; I think the floor must be a bit uneven, it wobbles if
you are not careful.” It wobbled notwithstanding, but by coaxing and
humouring we succeeded without mishap. I was surprised to notice a very
small supply of clothes within, although my friend is a dressy man.
“You see,” he explained, “I dare not use it more than I can help. I am a
clumsy chap, and as likely as not, if I happened to be in a hurry, I’d
have the whole thing over:” which seemed probable.
I asked him how he contrived. “I dress in the bath-room as a rule,” he
replied; “I keep most of my things there. Of course the old boy doesn’t
know.”
He showed me a chest of drawers. One drawer stood half open.
“I’m bound to leave that drawer open,” he said; “I keep the things I use
in that. They don’t shut quite easily, these drawers; or rather, they
shut all right, but then they won’t open. It is the weather, I think.
They will open and shut all right in the summer, I dare say.” He is of a
hopeful disposition.
But the pride of the room was the washstand.
“What do you think of this?” cried he enthusiastically, “real marble
top—”
He did not expatiate further. In his excitement he had laid his hand
upon the thing, with the natural result that it collapsed. More by
accident than design I caught the jug in my arms. I also caught the
water it contained. The basin rolled on its edge and little damage was
done, except to me and the soap-box.
I could not pump up much admiration for this washstand; I was feeling too
wet.
“What do you do when you want to wash?” I asked, as together we reset the
trap.
There fell upon him the manner of a conspirator revealing secrets. He
glanced guiltily round the room; then, creeping on tip-toe, he opened a
cupboard behind the bed. Within was a tin basin and a small can.
“Don’t tell the old boy,” he said. “I keep these things here, and wash
on the floor.”
That was the best thing I myself ever got out of egg-boxes—that picture
of a deceitful son stealthily washing himself upon the floor behind the
bed, trembling at every footstep lest it might be the “old boy” coming to
the door.
One wonders whether the Ten Commandments are so all-sufficient as we good
folk deem them—whether the eleventh is not worth the whole pack of them:
“that ye love one another” with just a common-place, human, practical
love. Could not the other ten be comfortably stowed away into a corner
of that! One is inclined, in one’s anarchic moments, to agree with Louis
Stevenson, that to be amiable and cheerful is a good religion for a
work-a-day world. We are so busy _not_ killing, _not_ stealing, _not_
coveting our neighbour’s wife, we have not time to be even just to one
another for the little while we are together here. Need we be so
cocksure that our present list of virtues and vices is the only possibly
correct and complete one? Is the kind, unselfish man necessarily a
villain because he does not always succeed in suppressing his natural
instincts? Is the narrow-hearted, sour-souled man, incapable of a
generous thought or act, necessarily a saint because he has none? Have
we not—we unco guid—arrived at a wrong method of estimating our frailer
brothers and sisters? We judge them, as critics judge books, not by the
good that is in them, but by their faults. Poor King David! What would
the local Vigilance Society have had to say to him? Noah, according to
our plan, would be denounced from every teetotal platform in the country,
and Ham would head the Local Vestry poll as a reward for having exposed
him. And St. Peter! weak, frail St. Peter, how lucky for him that his
fellow-disciples and their Master were not as strict in their notions of
virtue as are we to-day.
Have we not forgotten the meaning of the word “virtue”? Once it stood
for the good that was in a man, irrespective of the evil that might lie
there also, as tares among the wheat. We have abolished virtue, and for
it substituted virtues. Not the hero—he was too full of faults—but the
blameless valet; not the man who does any good, but the man who has not
been found out in any evil, is our modern ideal. The most virtuous thing
in nature, according to this new theory, should be the oyster. He is
always at home, and always sober. He is not noisy. He gives no trouble
to the police. I cannot think of a single one of the Ten Commandments
that he ever breaks. He never enjoys himself, and he never, so long as
he lives, gives a moment’s pleasure to any other living thing.
I can imagine the oyster lecturing a lion on the subject of morality.
“You never hear me,” the oyster might say, “howling round camps and
villages, making night hideous, frightening quiet folk out of their
lives. Why don’t you go to bed early, as I do? I never prowl round the
oyster-bed, fighting other gentlemen oysters, making love to lady oysters
already married. I never kill antelopes or missionaries. Why can’t you
live as I do on salt water and germs, or whatever it is that I do live
on? Why don’t you try to be more like me?”
An oyster has no evil passions, therefore we say he is a virtuous fish.
We never ask ourselves—“Has he any good passions?” A lion’s behaviour is
often such as no just man could condone. Has he not his good points
also?
Will the fat, sleek, “virtuous” man be as Welcome at the gate of heaven
as he supposes?
“Well,” St. Peter may say to him, opening the door a little way and
looking him up and down, “what is it now?”
“It’s me,” the virtuous man will reply, with an oily, self-satisfied
smile; “I should say, I—I’ve come.”
“Yes, I see you have come; but what is your claim to admittance? What
have you done with your three score years and ten?”
“Done!” the virtuous man will answer, “I have done nothing, I assure
you.”
“Nothing!”
“Nothing; that is my strong point; that is why I am here. I have never
done any wrong.”
“And what good have you done?”
“What good!”
“Aye, what good? Do not you even know the meaning of the word? What
human creature is the better for your having eaten and drunk and slept
these years? You have done no harm—no harm to yourself. Perhaps, if you
had you might have done some good with it; the two are generally to be
found together down below, I remember. What good have you done that you
should enter here? This is no mummy chamber; this is the place of men
and women who have lived, who have wrought good—and evil also, alas!—for
the sinners who fight for the right, not the righteous who run with their
souls from the fight.”
It was not, however, to speak of these things that I remembered _The
Amateur_ and its lessons. My intention was but to lead up to the story
of a certain small boy, who in the doing of tasks not required of him was
exceedingly clever. I wish to tell you his story, because, as do most
true tales, it possesses a moral, and stories without a moral I deem to
be but foolish literature, resembling roads that lead to nowhere, such as
sick folk tramp for exercise.
I have known this little boy to take an expensive eight-day clock to
pieces, and make of it a toy steamboat. True, it was not, when made,
very much of a steamboat; but taking into consideration all the
difficulties—the inadaptability of eight-day clock machinery to steamboat
requirements, the necessity of getting the work accomplished quickly,
before conservatively-minded people with no enthusiasm for science could
interfere—a good enough steamboat. With merely an ironing-board and a
few dozen meat-skewers, he would—provided the ironing-board was not
missed in time—turn out quite a practicable rabbit-hutch. He could make
a gun out of an umbrella and a gas-bracket, which, if not so accurate as
a Martini-Henry, was, at all events, more deadly. With half the
garden-hose, a copper scalding-pan out of the dairy, and a few Dresden
china ornaments off the drawing-room mantelpiece, he would build a
fountain for the garden. He could make bookshelves out of kitchen
tables, and crossbows out of crinolines. He could dam you a stream so
that all the water would flow over the croquet lawn. He knew how to make
red paint and oxygen gas, together with many other suchlike commodities
handy to have about a house. Among other things he learned how to make
fireworks, and after a few explosions of an unimportant character, came
to make them very well indeed. The boy who can play a good game of
cricket is liked. The boy who can fight well is respected. The boy who
can cheek a master is loved. But the boy who can make fireworks is
revered above all others as a boy belonging to a superior order of
beings. The fifth of November was at hand, and with the consent of an
indulgent mother, he determined to give to the world a proof of his
powers. A large party of friends, relatives, and school-mates was
invited, and for a fortnight beforehand the scullery was converted into a
manufactory for fireworks. The female servants went about in hourly
terror of their lives, and the villa, did we judge exclusively by smell,
one might have imagined had been taken over by Satan, his main premises
being inconveniently crowded, as an annex. By the evening of the fourth
all was in readiness, and samples were tested to make sure that no
contretemps should occur the following night. All was found to be
perfect.
The rockets rushed heavenward and descended in stars, the Roman candles
tossed their fiery balls into the darkness, the Catherine wheels sparkled
and whirled, the crackers cracked, and the squibs banged. That night he
went to bed a proud and happy boy, and dreamed of fame. He stood
surrounded by blazing fireworks, and the vast crowd cheered him. His
relations, most of whom, he knew, regarded him as the coming idiot of the
family, were there to witness his triumph; so too was Dickey Bowles, who
laughed at him because he could not throw straight. The girl at the
bun-shop, she also was there, and saw that he was clever.
The night of the festival arrived, and with it the guests. They sat,
wrapped up in shawls and cloaks, outside the hall door—uncles, cousins,
aunts, little boys and big boys, little girls and big girls, with, as the
theatre posters say, villagers and retainers, some forty of them in all,
and waited.
But the fireworks did not go off. Why they did not go off I cannot
explain; nobody ever _could_ explain. The laws of nature seemed to be
suspended for that night only. The rockets fell down and died where they
stood. No human agency seemed able to ignite the squibs. The crackers
gave one bang and collapsed. The Roman candles might have been English
rushlights. The Catherine wheels became mere revolving glow-worms. The
fiery serpents could not collect among them the spirit of a tortoise.
The set piece, a ship at sea, showed one mast and the captain, and then
went out. One or two items did their duty, but this only served to
render the foolishness of the whole more striking. The little girls
giggled, the little boys chaffed, the aunts and cousins said it was
beautiful, the uncles inquired if it was all over, and talked about
supper and trains, the “villagers and retainers” dispersed laughing, the
indulgent mother said “never mind,” and explained how well everything had
gone off yesterday; the clever little boy crept upstairs to his room, and
blubbered his heart out in the dark.
Hours later, when the crowd had forgotten him, he stole out again into
the garden. He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and wondered what
could have caused the fiasco. Still puzzled, he drew from his pocket a
box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to the seared end of a
rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago. It smouldered for
an instant, then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred
points of fire. He tried another and another with the same result. He
made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece. Point by point the whole
picture—minus the captain and one mast—came out of the night, and stood
revealed in all the majesty of flame. Its sparks fell upon the piled-up
heap of candles, wheels, and rockets that a little while before had
obstinately refused to burn, and that, one after another, had been thrown
aside as useless. Now with the night frost upon them, they leaped to
light in one grand volcanic eruption. And in front of the gorgeous
spectacle he stood with only one consolation—his mother’s hand in his.
The whole thing was a mystery to him at the time, but, as he learned to
know life better, he came to understand that it was only one example of a
solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human affairs—_your fireworks
won’t go off while the crowd is around_.
Our brilliant repartees do not occur to us till the door is closed upon
us and we are alone in the street, or, as the French would say, are
coming down the stairs. Our after-dinner oratory, that sounded so
telling as we delivered it before the looking-glass, falls strangely flat
amidst the clinking of the glasses. The passionate torrent of words we
meant to pour into her ear becomes a halting rigmarole, at which—small
blame to her—she only laughs.
I would, gentle Reader, you could hear the stories that I meant to tell
you. You judge me, of course, by the stories of mine that you have
read—by this sort of thing, perhaps; but that is not just to me. The
stories I have not told you, that I am going to tell you one day, I would
that you judge me by those.
They are so beautiful; you will say so; over them, you will laugh and cry
with me.
They come into my brain unbidden, they clamour to be written, yet when I
take my pen in hand they are gone. It is as though they were shy of
publicity, as though they would say to me—“You alone, you shall read us,
but you must not write us; we are too real, too true. We are like the
thoughts you cannot speak. Perhaps a little later, when you know more of
life, then you shall tell us.”
Next to these in merit I would place, were I writing a critical essay on
myself, the stories I have begun to write and that remain unfinished, why
I cannot explain to myself. They are good stories, most of them; better
far than the stories I have accomplished. Another time, perhaps, if you
care to listen, I will tell you the beginning of one or two and you shall
judge. Strangely enough, for I have always regarded myself as a
practical, commonsensed man, so many of these still-born children of my
mind I find, on looking through the cupboard where their thin bodies lie,
are ghost stories. I suppose the hope of ghosts is with us all. The
world grows somewhat interesting to us heirs of all the ages. Year by
year, Science with broom and duster tears down the moth-worn tapestry,
forces the doors of the locked chambers, lets light into the secret
stairways, cleans out the dungeons, explores the hidden passages—finding
everywhere only dust. This echoing old castle, the world, so full of
mystery in the days when we were children, is losing somewhat its charm
for us as we grow older. The king sleeps no longer in the hollow of the
hills. We have tunnelled through his mountain chamber. We have shivered
his beard with our pick. We have driven the gods from Olympus. No
wanderer through the moonlit groves now fears or hopes the sweet,
death-giving gleam of Aphrodite’s face. Thor’s hammer echoes not among
the peaks—’tis but the thunder of the excursion train. We have swept the
woods of the fairies. We have filtered the sea of its nymphs. Even the
ghosts are leaving us, chased by the Psychical Research Society.
Perhaps of all, they are the least, however, to be regretted. They were
dull old fellows, clanking their rusty chains and groaning and sighing.
Let them go.
And yet how interesting they might be, if only they would. The old
gentleman in the coat of mail, who lived in King John’s reign, who was
murdered, so they say, on the outskirts of the very wood I can see from
my window as I write—stabbed in the back, poor gentleman, as he was
riding home, his body flung into the moat that to this day is called
Tor’s tomb. Dry enough it is now, and the primroses love its steep
banks; but a gloomy enough place in those days, no doubt, with its twenty
feet of stagnant water. Why does he haunt the forest paths at night, as
they tell me he does, frightening the children out of their wits,
blanching the faces and stilling the laughter of the peasant lads and
lasses, slouching home from the village dance? Instead, why does he not
come up here and talk to me? He should have my easy-chair and welcome,
would he only be cheerful and companionable.
What brave tales could he not tell me. He fought in the first Crusade,
heard the clarion voice of Peter, met the great Godfrey face to face,
stood, hand on sword-hilt, at Runny-mede, perhaps. Better than a whole
library of historical novels would an evening’s chat be with such a
ghost. What has he done with his eight hundred years of death? where has
he been? what has he seen? Maybe he has visited Mars; has spoken to the
strange spirits who can live in the liquid fires of Jupiter. What has he
learned of the great secret? Has he found the truth? or is he, even as
I, a wanderer still seeking the unknown?
You, poor, pale, grey nun—they tell me that of midnights one may see your
white face peering from the ruined belfry window, hear the clash of sword
and shield among the cedar-trees beneath.
It was very sad, I quite understand, my dear lady. Your lovers both were
killed, and you retired to a convent. Believe me, I am sincerely sorry
for you, but why waste every night renewing the whole painful experience?
Would it not be better forgotten? Good Heavens, madam, suppose we living
folk were to spend our lives wailing and wringing our hands because of
the wrongs done to us when we were children? It is all over now. Had he
lived, and had you married him, you might not have been happy. I do not
wish to say anything unkind, but marriages founded upon the sincerest
mutual love have sometimes turned out unfortunately, as you must surely
know.
Do take my advice. Talk the matter over with the young men themselves.
Persuade them to shake hands and be friends. Come in, all of you, out of
the cold, and let us have some reasonable talk.
Why seek you to trouble us, you poor pale ghosts? Are we not your
children? Be our wise friends. Tell me, how loved the young men in your
young days? how answered the maidens? Has the world changed much, do you
think? Had you not new women even then? girls who hated the everlasting
tapestry frame and spinning-wheel? Your father’s servants, were they so
much worse off than the freemen who live in our East-end slums and sew
slippers for fourteen hours a day at a wage of nine shillings a week? Do
you think Society much improved during the last thousand years? Is it
worse? is it better? or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that we
call things by other names? Tell me, what have _you_ learned?
Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.
One has had a tiring day’s shooting. One is looking forward to one’s
bed. As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes from behind
the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what is in store for
one: a two or three hours’ talk with rowdy old Sir Lanval—he of the
lance. We know all his tales by heart, and he will shout them. Suppose
our aunt, from whom we have expectations, and who sleeps in the next
room, should wake and overhear! They were fit and proper enough stories,
no doubt, for the Round Table, but we feel sure our aunt would not
appreciate them:—that story about Sir Agravain and the cooper’s wife! and
he always will tell that story.
Or imagine the maid entering after dinner to say—
“Oh, if you please, sir, here is the veiled lady.”
“What, again!” says your wife, looking up from her work.
“Yes, ma’am; shall I show her up into the bedroom?”
“You had better ask your master,” is the reply. The tone is suggestive
of an unpleasant five minutes so soon as the girl shall have withdrawn,
but what are you to do?
“Yes, yes, show her up,” you say, and the girl goes out, closing the
door.
Your wife gathers her work together, and rises.
“Where are you going?” you ask.
“To sleep with the children,” is the frigid answer.
“It will look so rude,” you urge. “We must be civil to the poor thing;
and you see it really is her room, as one might say. She has always
haunted it.”
“It is very curious,” returns the wife of your bosom, still more icily,
“that she never haunts it except when you are down here. Where she goes
when you are in town I’m sure I don’t know.”
This is unjust. You cannot restrain your indignation.
“What nonsense you talk, Elizabeth,” you reply; “I am only barely polite
to her.”
“Some men have such curious notions of politeness,” returns Elizabeth.
“But pray do not let us quarrel. I am only anxious not to disturb you.
Two are company, you know. I don’t choose to be the third, that’s all.”
With which she goes out.
And the veiled lady is still waiting for you up-stairs. You wonder how
long she will stop, also what will happen after she is gone.
I fear there is no room for you, ghosts, in this our world. You remember
how they came to Hiawatha—the ghosts of the departed loved ones. He had
prayed to them that they would come back to him to comfort him, so one
day they crept into his wigwam, sat in silence round his fireside,
chilled the air for Hiawatha, froze the smiles of Laughing Water.
There is no room for you, oh you poor pale ghosts, in this our world. Do
not trouble us. Let us forget. You, stout elderly matron, your thin
locks turning grey, your eyes grown weak, your chin more ample, your
voice harsh with much scolding and complaining, needful, alas! to
household management, I pray you leave me. I loved you while you lived.
How sweet, how beautiful you were. I see you now in your white frock
among the apple-blossom. But you are dead, and your ghost disturbs my
dreams. I would it haunted me not.
You, dull old fellow, looking out at me from the glass at which I shave,
why do you haunt me? You are the ghost of a bright lad I once knew well.
He might have done much, had he lived. I always had faith in him. Why
do you haunt me? I would rather think of him as I remember him. I never
imagined he would make such a poor ghost.
ON THE PREPARATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF LOVE PHILTRES
OCCASIONALLY a friend will ask me some such question as this, Do you
prefer dark women or fair? Another will say, Do you like tall women or
short? A third, Do you think light-hearted women, or serious, the more
agreeable company? I find myself in the position that, once upon a time,
overtook a certain charming young lady of taste who was asked by an
anxious parent, the years mounting, and the family expenditure not
decreasing, which of the numerous and eligible young men, then paying
court to her, she liked the best. She replied, that was her difficulty.
She could not make up her mind which she liked the best. They were all
so nice. She could not possibly select one to the exclusion of all the
others. What she would have liked would have been to marry the lot, but
that, she presumed, was impracticable.
I feel I resemble that young lady, not so much, perhaps, in charm and
beauty as indecision of mind, when questions such as the above are put to
me. It is as if one were asked one’s favourite food. There are times
when one fancies an egg with one’s tea. On other occasions one dreams of
a kipper. To-day one clamours for lobsters. To-morrow one feels one
never wishes to see a lobster again; one determines to settle down, for a
time, to a diet of bread and milk and rice-pudding. Asked suddenly to
say whether I preferred ices to soup, or beefsteaks to caviare, I should
be nonplussed.
I like tall women and short, dark women and fair, merry women and grave.
Do not blame me, Ladies, the fault lies with you. Every right-thinking
man is an universal lover; how could it be otherwise? You are so
diverse, yet each so charming of your kind; and a man’s heart is large.
You have no idea, fair Reader, how large a man’s heart is: that is his
trouble—sometimes yours.
May I not admire the daring tulip, because I love also the modest lily?
May I not press a kiss upon the sweet violet, because the scent of the
queenly rose is precious to me?
“Certainly not,” I hear the Rose reply. “If you can see anything in her,
you shall have nothing to do with me.”
“If you care for that bold creature,” says the Lily, trembling, “you are
not the man I took you for. Good-bye.”
“Go to your baby-faced Violet,” cries the Tulip, with a toss of her
haughty head. “You are just fitted for each other.”
And when I return to the Lily, she tells me that she cannot trust me.
She has watched me with those others. She knows me for a gad-about. Her
gentle face is full of pain.
So I must live unloved merely because I love too much.
My wonder is that young men ever marry. The difficulty of selection must
be appalling. I walked the other evening in Hyde Park. The band of the
Life Guards played heart-lifting music, and the vast crowd were basking
in a sweet enjoyment such as rarely woos the English toiler. I strolled
among them, and my attention was chiefly drawn towards the women. The
great majority of them were, I suppose, shop-girls, milliners, and others
belonging to the lower middle-class. They had put on their best frocks,
their bonniest hats, their newest gloves. They sat or walked in twos and
threes, chattering and preening, as happy as young sparrows on a clothes
line. And what a handsome crowd they made! I have seen German crowds, I
have seen French crowds, I have seen Italian crowds; but nowhere do you
find such a proportion of pretty women as among the English middle-class.
Three women out of every four were worth looking at, every other woman
was pretty, while every fourth, one might say without exaggeration, was
beautiful. As I passed to and fro the idea occurred to me: suppose I
were an unprejudiced young bachelor, free from predilection, looking for
a wife; and let me suppose—it is only a fancy—that all these girls were
ready and willing to accept me. I have only to choose! I grew
bewildered. There were fair girls, to look at whom was fatal; dark girls
that set one’s heart aflame; girls with red gold hair and grave grey
eyes, whom one would follow to the confines of the universe; baby-faced
girls that one longed to love and cherish; girls with noble faces, whom a
man might worship; laughing girls, with whom one could dance through life
gaily; serious girls, with whom life would be sweet and good,
domestic-looking girls—one felt such would make delightful wives; they
would cook, and sew, and make of home a pleasant, peaceful place. Then
wicked-looking girls came by, at the stab of whose bold eyes all orthodox
thoughts were put to a flight, whose laughter turned the world into a mad
carnival; girls one could mould; girls from whom one could learn; sad
girls one wanted to comfort; merry girls who would cheer one; little
girls, big girls, queenly girls, fairy-like girls.
Suppose a young man had to select his wife in this fashion from some
twenty or thirty thousand; or that a girl were suddenly confronted with
eighteen thousand eligible young bachelors, and told to take the one she
wanted and be quick about it? Neither boy nor girl would ever marry.
Fate is kinder to us. She understands, and assists us. In the hall of a
Paris hotel I once overheard one lady asking another to recommend her a
milliner’s shop.
“Go to the Maison Nouvelle,” advised the questioned lady, with
enthusiasm. “They have the largest selection there of any place in
Paris.”
“I know they have,” replied the first lady, “that is just why I don’t
mean to go there. It confuses me. If I see six bonnets I can tell the
one I want in five minutes. If I see six hundred I come away without any
bonnet at all. Don’t you know a little shop?”
Fate takes the young man or the young woman aside.
“Come into this village, my dear,” says Fate; “into this by-street of
this salubrious suburb, into this social circle, into this church, into
this chapel. Now, my dear boy, out of these seventeen young ladies,
which will you have?—out of these thirteen young men, which would you
like for your very own, my dear?”
“No, miss, I am sorry, but I am not able to show you our up-stairs
department to-day, the lift is not working. But I am sure we shall be
able to find something in this room to suit you. Just look round, my
dear, perhaps you will see something.”
“No, sir, I cannot show you the stock in the next room, we never take
that out except for our very special customers. We keep our most
expensive goods in that room. (Draw that curtain, Miss Circumstance,
please. I have told you of that before.) Now, sir, wouldn’t you like
this one? This colour is quite the rage this season; we are getting rid
of quite a lot of these.”
“_No_, sir! Well, of course, it would not do for every one’s taste to be
the same. Perhaps something dark would suit you better. Bring out those
two brunettes, Miss Circumstance. Charming girls both of them, don’t you
think so, sir? I should say the taller one for you, sir. Just one
moment, sir, allow me. Now, what do you think of that, sir? might have
been made to fit you, I’m sure. _You prefer the shorter one_.
Certainly, sir, no difference to us at all. Both are the same price.
There’s nothing like having one’s own fancy, I always say. _No_, sir, I
cannot put her aside for you, we never do that. Indeed, there’s rather a
run on brunettes just at present. I had a gentleman in only this
morning, looking at this particular one, and he is going to call again
to-night. Indeed, I am not at all sure—Oh, of course, sir, if you like
to settle on this one now, that ends the matter. (Put those others away,
Miss Circumstance, please, and mark this one sold.) I feel sure you’ll
like her, sir, when you get her home. Thank _you_, sir. Good-morning!”
“Now, miss, have _you_ seen anything you fancy? _Yes_, miss, this is all
we have at anything near your price. (Shut those other cupboards, Miss
Circumstance; never show more stock than you are obliged to, it only
confuses customers. How often am I to tell you that?) _Yes_, miss, you
are quite right, there _is_ a slight blemish. They all have some slight
flaw. The makers say they can’t help it—it’s in the material. It’s not
once in a season we get a perfect specimen; and when we do ladies don’t
seem to care for it. Most of our customers prefer a little faultiness.
They say it gives character. Now, look at this, miss. This sort of
thing wears very well, warm and quiet. You’d like one with more colour
in it? Certainly. Miss Circumstance, reach me down the art patterns.
_No_, miss, we don’t guarantee any of them over the year, so much depends
on how you use them. _Oh yes_, miss, they’ll stand a fair amount of
wear. People do tell you the quieter patterns last longer; but my
experience is that one is much the same as another. There’s really no
telling any of them until you come to try them. We never recommend one
more than another. There’s a lot of chance about these goods, it’s in
the nature of them. What I always say to ladies is—‘Please yourself,
it’s you who have got to wear it; and it’s no good having an article you
start by not liking.’ _Yes_, miss, it _is_ pretty and it looks well
against you: it does indeed. Thank you, miss. Put that one aside, Miss
Circumstance, please. See that it doesn’t get mixed up with the unsold
stock.”
It is a useful philtre, the juice of that small western flower, that
Oberon drops upon our eyelids as we sleep. It solves all difficulties in
a trice. Why of course Helena is the fairer. Compare her with Hermia!
Compare the raven with the dove! How could we ever have doubted for a
moment? Bottom is an angel, Bottom is as wise as he is handsome. Oh,
Oberon, we thank you for that drug. Matilda Jane is a goddess; Matilda
Jane is a queen; no woman ever born of Eve was like Matilda Jane. The
little pimple on her nose—her little, sweet, tip-tilted nose—how
beautiful it is. Her bright eyes flash with temper now and then; how
piquant is a temper in a woman. William is a dear old stupid, how
lovable stupid men can be—especially when wise enough to love us.
William does not shine in conversation; how we hate a magpie of a man.
William’s chin is what is called receding, just the sort of chin a beard
looks well on. Bless you, Oberon darling, for that drug; rub it on our
eyelids once again. Better let us have a bottle, Oberon, to keep by us.
Oberon, Oberon, what are you thinking of? You have given the bottle to
Puck. Take it away from him, quick. Lord help us all if that Imp has
the bottle. Lord save us from Puck while we sleep.
Or may we, fairy Oberon, regard your lotion as an eye-opener, rather than
as an eye-closer? You remember the story the storks told the children,
of the little girl who was a toad by day, only her sweet dark eyes being
left to her. But at night, when the Prince clasped her close to his
breast, lo! again she became the king’s daughter, fairest and fondest of
women. There be many royal ladies in Marshland, with bad complexion and
thin straight hair, and the silly princes sneer and ride away to woo some
kitchen wench decked out in queen’s apparel. Lucky the prince upon whose
eyelids Oberon has dropped the magic philtre.
In the gallery of a minor Continental town I have forgotten, hangs a
picture that lives with me. The painting I cannot recall, whether good
or bad; artists must forgive me for remembering only the subject. It
shows a man, crucified by the roadside. No martyr he. If ever a man
deserved hanging it was this one. So much the artist has made clear.
The face, even under its mask of agony, is an evil, treacherous face. A
peasant girl clings to the cross; she stands tip-toe upon a patient
donkey, straining her face upward for the half-dead man to stoop and kiss
her lips.
Thief, coward, blackguard, they are stamped upon his face, but _under_
the face, under the evil outside? Is there no remnant of manhood—nothing
tender, nothing, true? A woman has crept to the cross to kiss him: no
evidence in his favour, my Lord? Love is blind-aye, to our faults.
Heaven help us all; Love’s eyes would be sore indeed if it were not so.
But for the good that is in us her eyes are keen. You, crucified
blackguard, stand forth. A hundred witnesses have given their evidence
against you. Are there none to give evidence for him? A woman, great
Judge, who loved him. Let her speak.
But I am wandering far from Hyde Park and its show of girls.
They passed and re-passed me, laughing, smiling, talking. Their eyes
were bright with merry thoughts; their voices soft and musical. They
were pleased, and they wanted to please. Some were married, some had
evidently reasonable expectations of being married; the rest hoped to be.
And we, myself, and some ten thousand other young men. I repeat
it—myself and some ten thousand other young men; for who among us ever
thinks of himself but as a young man? It is the world that ages, not we.
The children cease their playing and grow grave, the lasses’ eyes are
dimmer. The hills are a little steeper, the milestones, surely, further
apart. The songs the young men sing are less merry than the songs we
used to sing. The days have grown a little colder, the wind a little
keener. The wine has lost its flavour somewhat; the new humour is not
like the old. The other boys are becoming dull and prosy; but we are not
changed. It is the world that is growing old. Therefore, I brave your
thoughtless laughter, youthful Reader, and repeat that we, myself and
some ten thousand other young men, walked among these sweet girls; and,
using our boyish eyes, were fascinated, charmed, and captivated. How
delightful to spend our lives with them, to do little services for them
that would call up these bright smiles. How pleasant to jest with them,
and hear their flute-like laughter, to console them and read their
grateful eyes. Really life is a pleasant thing, and the idea of marriage
undoubtedly originated in the brain of a kindly Providence.
We smiled back at them, and we made way for them; we rose from our chairs
with a polite, “Allow me, miss,” “Don’t mention it, I prefer standing.”
“It is a delightful evening, is it not?” And perhaps—for what harm was
there?—we dropped into conversation with these chance fellow-passengers
upon the stream of life. There were those among us—bold daring
spirits—who even went to the length of mild flirtation. Some of us knew
some of them, and in such happy case there followed interchange of pretty
pleasantries. Your English middle-class young man and woman are not
adepts at the game of flirtation. I will confess that our methods were,
perhaps, elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle noisy as the
evening wore on. But we meant no evil; we did but our best to enjoy
ourselves, to give enjoyment, to make the too brief time, pass gaily.
And then my thoughts travelled to small homes in distant suburbs, and
these bright lads and lasses round me came to look older and more
careworn. But what of that? Are not old faces sweet when looked at by
old eyes a little dimmed by love, and are not care and toil but the
parents of peace and joy?
But as I drew nearer, I saw that many of the faces were seared with sour
and angry looks, and the voices that rose round me sounded surly and
captious. The pretty compliment and praise had changed to sneers and
scoldings. The dimpled smile had wrinkled to a frown. There seemed so
little desire to please, so great a determination not to be pleased.
And the flirtations! Ah me, they had forgotten how to flirt! Oh, the
pity of it! All the jests were bitter, all the little services were
given grudgingly. The air seemed to have grown chilly. A darkness had
come over all things.
And then I awoke to reality, and found I had been sitting in my chair
longer than I had intended. The band-stand was empty, the sun had set; I
rose and made my way home through the scattered crowd.
Nature is so callous. The Dame irritates one at times by her devotion to
her one idea, the propagation of the species.
“Multiply and be fruitful; let my world be ever more and more peopled.”
For this she trains and fashions her young girls, models them with
cunning hand, paints them with her wonderful red and white, crowns them
with her glorious hair, teaches them to smile and laugh, trains their
voices into music, sends them out into the world to captivate, to enslave
us.
“See how beautiful she is, my lad,” says the cunning old woman. “Take
her; build your little nest with her in your pretty suburb; work for her
and live for her; enable her to keep the little ones that I will send.”
And to her, old hundred-breasted Artemis whispers, “Is he not a bonny
lad? See how he loves you, how devoted he is to you! He will work for
you and make you happy; he will build your home for you. You will be the
mother of his children.”
So we take each other by the hand, full of hope and love, and from that
hour Mother Nature has done with us. Let the wrinkles come; let our
voices grow harsh; let the fire she lighted in our hearts die out; let
the foolish selfishness we both thought we had put behind us for ever
creep back to us, bringing unkindness and indifference, angry thoughts
and cruel words into our lives. What cares she? She has caught us, and
chained us to her work. She is our universal mother-in-law. She has
done the match-making; for the rest, she leaves it to ourselves. We can
love or we can fight; it is all one to her, confound her.
I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught. In business we
use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another. The
shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and affability, he
might put up his shutters were he otherwise. The commercial gent, no
doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass, but refrains from telling
him so. Hasty tempers are banished from the City. Can we not see that
it is just as much to our interest to banish them from Tooting and
Hampstead?
The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he wrapped
the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside him. And
when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily he sprang from
his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he was very comfortable
where he was. And she! She had laughed at his jokes; they were not very
clever jokes, they were not very new. She had probably read them herself
months before in her own particular weekly journal. Yet the harmless
humbug made him happy. I wonder if ten years hence she will laugh at
such old humour, if ten years hence he will take such clumsy pains to put
her cape about her. Experience shakes her head, and is amused at my
question.
I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married
couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of pupils.
The husbands would recommend their wives to attend, generously offering
to pay the fee as a birthday present. The wife would be indignant at the
suggestion of good money being thus wasted. “No, John, dear,” she would
unselfishly reply, “you need the lessons more than I do. It would be a
shame for me to take them away from you,” and they would wrangle upon the
subject for the rest of the day.
Oh! the folly of it. We pack our hamper for life’s picnic with such
pains. We spend so much, we work so hard. We make choice pies, we cook
prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix with loving
hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with every delicacy we can
think of. Everything to make the picnic a success is there except the
salt. Ah! woe is me, we forget the salt. We slave at our desks, in our
workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our pleasures, we
give up our rest. We toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we
render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha’porth of salt—for want
of a soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a
touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy.
Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till
twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a
woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating. Her
rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children so well
dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so uninviting.
Everything about her is in apple-pie order, and everybody wretched.
My good Madam, you polish your tables, you scour your kettles, but the
most valuable piece of furniture in the whole house you are letting to
rack and ruin for want of a little pains. You will find it in your own
room, my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror. It is getting shabby
and dingy, old-looking before its time; the polish is rubbed off it,
Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm. Do you remember when he
first brought it home, how proud he was of it? Do you think you have
used it well, knowing how he valued it? A little less care of your pots
and your pans, Madam, a little more of yourself were wiser. Polish
yourself up, Madam; you had a pretty wit once, a pleasant laugh, a
conversation that was not confined exclusively to the short-comings of
servants, the wrong-doings of tradesmen. My dear Madam, we do not live
on spotless linen, and crumbless carpets. Hunt out that bundle of old
letters you keep tied up in faded ribbon at the back of your bureau
drawer—a pity you don’t read them oftener. He did not enthuse about your
cuffs and collars, gush over the neatness of your darning. It was your
tangled hair he raved about, your sunny smile (we have not seen it for
some years, Madam—the fault of the Cook and the Butcher, I presume), your
little hands, your rosebud mouth—it has lost its shape, Madam, of late.
Try a little less scolding of Mary Ann, and practise a laugh once a day:
you might get back the dainty curves. It would be worth trying. It was
a pretty mouth once.
Who invented that mischievous falsehood that the way to a man’s heart was
through his stomach? How many a silly woman, taking it for truth, has
let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy in the kitchen. Of
course, if you were foolish enough to marry a pig, I suppose you must be
content to devote your life to the preparation of hog’s-wash. But are
you sure that he _is_ a pig? If by any chance he be not?—then, Madam,
you are making a grievous mistake. My dear Lady, you are too modest. If
I may say so without making you unduly conceited, even at the
dinner-table itself, you are of much more importance than the mutton.
Courage, Madam, be not afraid to tilt a lance even with your own cook.
You can be more piquant than the sauce _à la Tartare_, more soothing
surely than the melted butter. There was a time when he would not have
known whether he was eating beef or pork with you the other side of the
table. Whose fault is it? Don’t think so poorly of us. We are not
ascetics, neither are we all gourmets: most of us plain men, fond of our
dinner, as a healthy man should be, but fonder still of our sweethearts
and wives, let us hope. Try us. A moderately-cooked dinner—let us even
say a not-too-well-cooked dinner, with you looking your best, laughing
and talking gaily and cleverly—as you can, you know—makes a pleasanter
meal for us, after the day’s work is done, than that same dinner, cooked
to perfection, with you silent, jaded, and anxious, your pretty hair
untidy, your pretty face wrinkled with care concerning the sole, with
anxiety regarding the omelette.
My poor Martha, be not troubled about so many things. _You_ are the one
thing needful—if the bricks and mortar are to be a home. See to it that
_you_ are well served up, that _you_ are done to perfection, that _you_
are tender and satisfying, that _you_ are worth sitting down to. We
wanted a wife, a comrade, a friend; not a cook and a nurse on the cheap.
But of what use is it to talk? the world will ever follow its own folly.
When I think of all the good advice that I have given it, and of the
small result achieved, I confess I grow discouraged. I was giving good
advice to a lady only the other day. I was instructing her as to the
proper treatment of aunts. She was sucking a lead-pencil, a thing I am
always telling her not to do. She took it out of her mouth to speak.
“I suppose you know how everybody ought to do everything,” she said.
There are times when it is necessary to sacrifice one’s modesty to one’s
duty.
“Of course I do,” I replied.
“And does Mama know how everybody ought to do everything?” was the second
question.
My conviction on this point was by no means so strong, but for domestic
reasons I again sacrificed myself to expediency.
“Certainly,” I answered; “and take that pencil out of your mouth. I’ve
told you of that before. You’ll swallow it one day, and then you’ll get
perichondritis and die.”
She appeared to be solving a problem.
“All grown-up people seem to know everything,” she summarized.
There are times when I doubt if children are as simple as they look. If
it be sheer stupidity that prompts them to make remarks of this
character, one should pity them, and seek to improve them. But if it be
not stupidity? well then, one should still seek to improve them, but by a
different method.
The other morning I overheard the nurse talking to this particular
specimen. The woman is a most worthy creature, and she was imparting to
the child some really sound advice. She was in the middle of an
unexceptional exhortation concerning the virtue of silence, when Dorothea
interrupted her with—
“Oh, do be quiet, Nurse. I never get a moment’s peace from your
chatter.”
Such an interruption discourages a woman who is trying to do her duty.
Last Tuesday evening she was unhappy. Myself, I think that rhubarb
should never be eaten before April, and then never with lemonade. Her
mother read her a homily upon the subject of pain. It was impressed upon
her that we must be patient, that we must put up with the trouble that
God sends us. Dorothea would descend to details, as children will.
“Must we put up with the cod-liver oil that God sends us?”
“Yes, decidedly.”
“And with the nurses that God sends us?”
“Certainly; and be thankful that you’ve got them, some little girls
haven’t any nurse. And don’t talk so much.”
On Friday I found the mother in tears.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” was the answer; “only Baby. She’s such a strange child.
I can’t make her out at all.”
“What has she been up to now?”
“Oh, she will argue, you know.”
She has that failing. I don’t know where she gets it from, but she’s got
it.
“Well?”
“Well, she made me cross; and, to punish her, I told her she shouldn’t
take her doll’s perambulator out with her.”
“Yes?”
“Well, she didn’t say anything then, but so soon as I was outside the
door, I heard her talking to herself—you know her way?”
“Yes?”
“She said—”
“Yes, she said?”
“She said, ‘I must be patient. I must put up with the mother God has
sent me.’”
She lunches down-stairs on Sundays. We have her with us once a week to
give her the opportunity of studying manners and behaviour. Milson had
dropped in, and we were discussing politics. I was interested, and,
pushing my plate aside, leant forward with my elbows on the table.
Dorothea has a habit of talking to herself in a high-pitched whisper
capable of being heard above an Adelphi love scene. I heard her say—
“I must sit up straight. I mustn’t sprawl with my elbows on the table.
It is only common, vulgar people behave that way.”
I looked across at her; she was sitting most correctly, and appeared to
be contemplating something a thousand miles away. We had all of us been
lounging! We sat up stiffly, and conversation flagged.
Of course we made a joke of it after the child was gone. But somehow it
didn’t seem to be _our_ joke.
I wish I could recollect my childhood. I should so like to know if
children are as simple as they can look.
ON THE DELIGHTS AND BENEFITS OF SLAVERY
MY study window looks down upon Hyde Park, and often, to quote the
familiar promise of each new magazine, it amuses and instructs me to
watch from my tower the epitome of human life that passes to and fro
beneath. At the opening of the gates, creeps in the woman of the
streets. Her pitiful work for the time being is over. Shivering in the
chill dawn, she passes to her brief rest. Poor Slave! Lured to the
galley’s lowest deck, then chained there. Civilization, tricked fool,
they say has need of such. You serve as the dogs of Eastern towns. But
at least, it seems to me, we need not spit on you. Home to your kennel!
Perchance, if the Gods be kind, they may send you dreams of a cleanly
hearth, where you lie with a silver collar round your neck.
Next comes the labourer—the hewer of wood, the drawer of water—slouching
wearily to his toil; sleep clinging still about his leaden eyes, his
pittance of food carried tied up in a dish-clout. The first stroke of
the hour clangs from Big Ben. Haste thee, fellow-slave, lest the
overseer’s whip, “Out, we will have no lie-a-beds here,” descend upon thy
patient back.
Later, the artisan, with his bag of tools across his shoulder. He, too,
listens fearfully to the chiming of the bells. For him also there hangs
ready the whip.
After him, the shop boy and the shop girl, making love as they walk, not
to waste time. And after these the slaves of the desk and of the
warehouse, employers and employed, clerks and tradesmen, office boys and
merchants. To your places, slaves of all ranks. Get you unto your
burdens.
Now, laughing and shouting as they run, the children, the sons and
daughters of the slaves. Be industrious, little children, and learn your
lessons, that when the time comes you may be ready to take from our hands
the creaking oar, to slip into our seat at the roaring loom. For we
shall not be slaves for ever, little children. It is the good law of the
land. So many years in the galleys, so many years in the fields; then we
can claim our freedom. Then we shall go, little children, back to the
land of our birth. And you we must leave behind us to take up the tale
of our work. So, off to your schools, little children, and learn to be
good little slaves.
Next, pompous and sleek, come the educated slaves—journalists, doctors,
judges, and poets; the attorney, the artist, the player, the priest.
They likewise scurry across the Park, looking anxiously from time to time
at their watches, lest they be late for their appointments; thinking of
the rates and taxes to be earned, of the bonnets to be paid for, the
bills to be met. The best scourged, perhaps, of all, these slaves. The
cat reserved for them has fifty tails in place of merely two or three.
Work, you higher middle-class slave, or you shall come down to the
smoking of twopenny cigars; harder yet, or you shall drink shilling
claret; harder, or you shall lose your carriage and ride in a penny bus;
your wife’s frocks shall be of last year’s fashion; your trousers shall
bag at the knees; from Kensington you shall be banished to Kilburn, if
the tale of your bricks run short. Oh, a many-thonged whip is yours, my
genteel brother.
The slaves of fashion are the next to pass beneath me in review. They
are dressed and curled with infinite pains. The liveried, pampered
footman these, kept more for show than use; but their senseless tasks
none the less labour to them. Here must they come every day, merry or
sad. By this gravel path and no other must they walk; these phrases
shall they use when they speak to one another. For an hour they must go
slowly up and down upon a bicycle from Hyde Park Corner to the Magazine
and back. And these clothes must they wear; their gloves of this colour,
their neck-ties of this pattern. In the afternoon they must return
again, this time in a carriage, dressed in another livery, and for an
hour they must pass slowly to and fro in foolish procession. For dinner
they must don yet another livery, and after dinner they must stand about
at dreary social functions till with weariness and boredom their heads
feel dropping from their shoulders.
With the evening come the slaves back from their work: barristers,
thinking out their eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their dog-eared
grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of motley,
cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to please their
master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as, together, they plod
homeward; the artisan; the labourer. Two or three hours you shall have
to yourselves, slaves, to think and love and play, if you be not too
tired to think, or love, or play. Then to your litter, that you may be
ready for the morrow’s task.
The twilight deepens into dark; there comes back the woman of the
streets. As the shadows, she rounds the City’s day. Work strikes its
tent. Evil creeps from its peering place.
So we labour, driven by the whip of necessity, an army of slaves. If we
do not our work, the whip descends upon us; only the pain we feel in our
stomach instead of on our back. And because of that, we call ourselves
free men.
Some few among us bravely struggle to be really free: they are our tramps
and outcasts. We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for the wages of
freedom in this world are vermin and starvation. We can live lives worth
living only by placing the collar round our neck.
There are times when one asks oneself: Why this endless labour? Why this
building of houses, this cooking of food, this making of clothes? Is the
ant so much more to be envied than the grasshopper, because she spends
her life in grubbing and storing, and can spare no time for singing? Why
this complex instinct, driving us to a thousand labours to satisfy a
thousand desires? We have turned the world into a workshop to provide
ourselves with toys. To purchase luxury we have sold our ease.
Oh, Children of Israel! why were ye not content in your wilderness? It
seems to have been a pattern wilderness. For you, a simple wholesome
food, ready cooked, was provided. You took no thought for rent and
taxes; you had no poor among you—no poor-rate collectors. You suffered
not from indigestion, nor the hundred ills that follow over-feeding; an
omer for every man was your portion, neither more nor less. You knew not
you had a liver. Doctors wearied you not with their theories, their
physics, and their bills. You were neither landowners nor leaseholders,
neither shareholders nor debenture holders. The weather and the market
reports troubled you not. The lawyer was unknown to you; you wanted no
advice; you had nought to quarrel about with your neighbour. No riches
were yours for the moth and rust to damage. Your yearly income and
expenditure you knew would balance to a fraction. Your wife and children
were provided for. Your old age caused you no anxiety; you knew you
would always have enough to live upon in comfort. Your funeral, a simple
and tasteful affair, would be furnished by the tribe. And yet, poor,
foolish child, fresh from the Egyptian brickfield, you could not rest
satisfied. You hungered for the fleshpots, knowing well what flesh-pots
entail: the cleaning of the flesh-pots, the forging of the flesh-pots,
the hewing of wood to make the fires for the boiling of the flesh-pots,
the breeding of beasts to fill the pots, the growing of fodder to feed
the beasts to fill the pots.
All the labour of our life is centred round our flesh-pots. On the altar
of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind. For a mess
of pottage we sell our birthright.
Oh! Children of Israel, saw you not the long punishment you were
preparing for yourselves, when in your wilderness you set up the image of
the Calf, and fell before it, crying—“This shall be our God.”
You would have veal. Thought you never of the price man pays for Veal?
The servants of the Golden Calf! I see them, stretched before my eyes, a
weary, endless throng. I see them toiling in the mines, the black sweat
on their faces. I see them in sunless cities, silent, and grimy, and
bent. I see them, ague-twisted, in the rain-soaked fields. I see them,
panting by the furnace doors. I see them, in loin-cloth and necklace,
the load upon their head. I see them in blue coats and red coats,
marching to pour their blood as an offering on the altar of the Calf. I
see them in homespun and broadcloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I
see them in cap and apron, the servants of the Calf. They swarm on the
land and they dot the sea. They are chained to the anvil and counter;
they are chained to the bench and the desk. They make ready the soil,
they till the fields where the Golden Calf is born. They build the ship,
and they sail the ship that carries the Golden Calf. They fashion the
pots, they mould the pans, they carve the tables, they turn the chairs,
they dream of the sauces, they dig for the salt, they weave the damask,
they mould the dish to serve the Golden Calf.
The work of the world is to this end, that we eat of the Calf. War and
Commerce, Science and Law! what are they but the four pillars supporting
the Golden Calf? He is our God. It is on his back that we have
journeyed from the primeval forest, where our ancestors ate nuts and
fruit. He is our God. His temple is in every street. His blue-robed
priest stands ever at the door, calling to the people to worship. Hark!
his voice rises on the gas-tainted air—“Now’s your time! Now’s your
time! Buy! Buy! ye people. Bring hither the sweat of your brow, the
sweat of your brain, the ache of your heart, buy Veal with it. Bring me
the best years of your life. Bring me your thoughts, your hopes, your
loves; ye shall have Veal for them. Now’s your time! Now’s your time!
Buy! Buy!”
Oh! Children of Israel, was Veal, even with all its trimmings, quite
worth the price?
And we! what wisdom have we learned, during the centuries? I talked with
a rich man only the other evening. He calls himself a Financier,
whatever that may mean. He leaves his beautiful house, some twenty miles
out of London, at a quarter to eight, summer and winter, after a hurried
breakfast by himself, while his guests still sleep, and he gets back just
in time to dress for an elaborate dinner he himself is too weary or too
preoccupied to more than touch. If ever he is persuaded to give himself
a holiday it is for a fortnight in Ostend, when it is most crowded and
uncomfortable. He takes his secretary with him, receives and despatches
a hundred telegrams a day, and has a private telephone, through which he
can speak direct to London, brought up into his bedroom.
I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention. Business men tell
me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs without it.
My own wonder always is, how any human being with the ordinary passions
of his race can conduct his business, or even himself, creditably, within
a hundred yards of the invention. I can imagine Job, or Griselda, or
Socrates liking to have a telephone about them as exercise. Socrates, in
particular, would have made quite a reputation for himself out of a three
months’ subscription to a telephone. Myself, I am, perhaps, too
sensitive. I once lived for a month in an office with a telephone, if
one could call it life. I was told that if I had stuck to the thing for
two or three months longer, I should have got used to it. I know friends
of mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front of
their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so much
as answer it back. They tell me that at first they used to swear and
shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed. That is what
happens: you either break the telephone, or the telephone breaks you.
You want to see a man two streets off. You might put on your hat, and be
round at his office in five minutes. You are on the point of starting
when the telephone catches your eye. You think you will ring him up to
make sure he is in. You commence by ringing up some half-dozen times
before anybody takes any notice of you whatever. You are burning with
indignation at this neglect, and have left the instrument to sit down and
pen a stinging letter of complaint to the Company when the ring-back
re-calls you. You seize the ear trumpets, and shout—
“How is it that I can never get an answer when I ring? Here have I been
ringing for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty times.” (This is a
falsehood. You have rung only six times, and the “half-hour” is an
absurd exaggeration; but you feel the mere truth would not be adequate to
the occasion.) “I think it disgraceful,” you continue, “and I shall
complain to the Company. What is the use of my having a telephone if I
can’t get any answer when I ring? Here I pay a large sum for having this
thing, and I can’t get any notice taken. I’ve been ringing all the
morning. Why is it?”
Then you wait for the answer.
“What—what do you say? I can’t hear what you say.”
“I say I’ve been ringing here for over an hour, and I can’t get any
reply,” you call back. “I shall complain to the Company.”
“You want what? Don’t stand so near the tube. I can’t hear what you
say. What number?”
“Bother the number; I say why is it I don’t get an answer when I ring?”
“Eight hundred and what?”
You can’t argue any more, after that. The machine would give way under
the language you want to make use of. Half of what you feel would
probably cause an explosion at some point where the wire was weak.
Indeed, mere language of any kind would fall short of the requirements of
the case. A hatchet and a gun are the only intermediaries through which
you could convey your meaning by this time. So you give up all attempt
to answer back, and meekly mention that you want to be put in
communication with four-five-seven-six.
“Four-nine-seven-six?” says the girl.
“No; four-five-seven-six.”
“Did you say seven-six or six-seven?”
“Six-seven—no! I mean seven-six: no—wait a minute. I don’t know what I
do mean now.”
“Well, I wish you’d find out,” says the young lady severely. “You are
keeping me here all the morning.”
So you look up the number in the book again, and at last she tells you
that you are in connection; and then, ramming the trumpet tight against
your ear, you stand waiting.
And if there is one thing more than another likely to make a man feel
ridiculous it is standing on tip-toe in a corner, holding a machine to
his head, and listening intently to nothing. Your back aches and your
head aches, your very hair aches. You hear the door open behind you and
somebody enter the room. You can’t turn your head. You swear at them,
and hear the door close with a bang. It immediately occurs to you that
in all probability it was Henrietta. She promised to call for you at
half-past twelve: you were to take her to lunch. It was twelve o’clock
when you were fool enough to mix yourself up with this infernal machine,
and it probably is half-past twelve by now. Your past life rises before
you, accompanied by dim memories of your grandmother. You are wondering
how much longer you can bear the strain of this attitude, and whether
after all you do really want to see the man in the next street but two,
when the girl in the exchange-room calls up to know if you’re done.
“Done!” you retort bitterly; “why, I haven’t begun yet.”
“Well, be quick,” she says, “because you’re wasting time.”
Thus admonished, you attack the thing again. “_Are_ you there?” you cry
in tones that ought to move the heart of a Charity Commissioner; and
then, oh joy! oh rapture! you hear a faint human voice replying—
“Yes, what is it?”
“Oh! Are you four-five-seven-six?”
“What?”
“Are you four-five-seven-six, Williamson?”
“What! who are you?”
“Eight-one-nine, Jones.”
“Bones?”
“No, _J_ones. Are you four-five-seven-six?”
“Yes; what is it?”
“Is Mr. Williamson in?”
“Will I what—who are you?”
“Jones! Is Mr. Williamson in?”
“Who?”
“Williamson. Will-i-am-son!”
“You’re the son of what? I can’t hear what you say.”
Then you gather yourself for one final effort, and succeed, by superhuman
patience, in getting the fool to understand that you wish to know if Mr.
Williamson is in, and he says, so it sounds to you, “Be in all the
morning.”
So you snatch up your hat and run round.
“Oh, I’ve come to see Mr. Williamson,” you say.
“Very sorry, sir,” is the polite reply, “but he’s out.”
“Out? Why, you just now told me through the telephone that he’d be in
all the morning.”
“No, I said, he ‘_won’t_ be in all the morning.’”
You go back to the office, and sit down in front of that telephone and
look at it. There it hangs, calm and imperturbable. Were it an ordinary
instrument, that would be its last hour. You would go straight
down-stairs, get the coal-hammer and the kitchen-poker, and divide it
into sufficient pieces to give a bit to every man in London. But you
feel nervous of these electrical affairs, and there is a something about
that telephone, with its black hole and curly wires, that cows you. You
have a notion that if you don’t handle it properly something may come and
shock you, and then there will be an inquest, and bother of that sort, so
you only curse it.
That is what happens when you want to use the telephone from your end.
But that is not the worst that the telephone can do. A sensible man,
after a little experience, can learn to leave the thing alone. Your
worst troubles are not of your own making. You are working against time;
you have given instructions not to be disturbed. Perhaps it is after
lunch, and you are thinking with your eyes closed, so that your thoughts
shall not be distracted by the objects about the room. In either case
you are anxious not to leave your chair, when off goes that telephone
bell and you spring from your chair, uncertain, for the moment, whether
you have been shot, or blown up with dynamite. It occurs to you in your
weakness that if you persist in taking no notice, they will get tired,
and leave you alone. But that is not their method. The bell rings
violently at ten-second intervals. You have nothing to wrap your head up
in. You think it will be better to get this business over and done with.
You go to your fate and call back savagely—
“What is it? What do you want?”
No answer, only a confused murmur, prominent out of which come the voices
of two men swearing at one another. The language they are making use of
is disgraceful. The telephone seems peculiarly adapted for the
conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary language sounds indistinct through it;
but every word those two men are saying can be heard by all the telephone
subscribers in London.
It is useless attempting to listen till they have done. When they are
exhausted, you apply to the tube again. No answer is obtainable. You
get mad, and become sarcastic; only being sarcastic when you are not sure
that anybody is at the other end to hear you is unsatisfying.
At last, after a quarter of an hour or so of saying, “Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” “Well?” the young lady at the Exchange asks what you
want.
“I don’t want anything,” you reply.
“Then why do you keep talking?” she retorts; “you mustn’t play with the
thing.”
This renders you speechless with indignation for a while, upon recovering
from which you explain that somebody rang you up.
“_Who_ rang you up?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“I wish you did,” she observes.
Generally disgusted, you slam the trumpet up and return to your chair.
The instant you are seated the bell clangs again; and you fly up and
demand to know what the thunder they want, and who the thunder they are.
“Don’t speak so loud, we can’t hear you. What do you want?” is the
answer.
“I don’t want anything. What do you want? Why do you ring me up, and
then not answer me? Do leave me alone, if you can!”
“We can’t get Hong Kongs at seventy-four.”
“Well, I don’t care if you can’t.”
“Would you like Zulus?”
“What are you talking about?” you reply; “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Would you like Zulus—Zulus at seventy-three and a half?”
“I wouldn’t have ’em at six a penny. What are you talking about?”
“Hong Kongs—we can’t get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute” (the
half-a-minute passes). “Are you there?”
“Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man.”
“We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights.”
“Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the
wrong man. I’ve told you once.”
“Once what?”
“Why, that I am the wrong man—I mean that you are talking to the wrong
man.”
“Who are you?”
“Eight-one-nine, Jones.”
“Oh, aren’t you one-nine-eight?”
“No.”
“Oh, good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the European
crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another indictment against
the telephone. I was engaged in an argument, which, if not in itself
serious, was at least concerned with a serious enough subject, the
unsatisfactory nature of human riches; and from that highly moral
discussion have I been lured, by the accidental sight of the word
“telephone,” into the writing of matter which can have the effect only of
exciting to frenzy all critics of the New Humour into whose hands, for
their sins, this book may come. Let me forget my transgression and
return to my sermon, or rather to the sermon of my millionaire
acquaintance.
It was one day after dinner, we sat together in his magnificently
furnished dining-room. We had lighted our cigars at the silver lamp.
The butler had withdrawn.
“These cigars we are smoking,” my friend suddenly remarked, _à propos_
apparently of nothing, “they cost me five shillings apiece, taking them
by the thousand.”
“I can quite believe it,” I answered; “they are worth it.”
“Yes, to you,” he replied, almost savagely. “What do you usually pay for
your cigars?”
We had known each other years ago. When I first met him his offices
consisted of a back room up three flights of stairs in a dingy by-street
off the Strand, which has since disappeared. We occasionally dined
together, in those days, at a restaurant in Great Portland Street, for
one and nine. Our acquaintanceship was of sufficient standing to allow
of such a question.
“Threepence,” I answered. “They work out at about twopence
three-farthings by the box.”
“Just so,” he growled; “and your twopenny-three-farthing weed gives you
precisely the same amount of satisfaction that this five shilling cigar
affords me. That means four and ninepence farthing wasted every time I
smoke. I pay my cook two hundred a year. I don’t enjoy my dinner as
much as when it cost me four shillings, including a quarter flask of
Chianti. What is the difference, personally, to me whether I drive to my
office in a carriage and pair, or in an omnibus? I often do ride in a
bus: it saves trouble. It is absurd wasting time looking for one’s
coachman, when the conductor of an omnibus that passes one’s door is
hailing one a few yards off. Before I could afford even buses—when I
used to walk every morning to the office from Hammersmith—I was
healthier. It irritates me to think how hard I work for no earthly
benefit to myself. My money pleases a lot of people I don’t care two
straws about, and who are only my friends in the hope of making something
out of me. If I could eat a hundred-guinea dinner myself every night,
and enjoy it four hundred times as much as I used to enjoy a
five-shilling dinner, there would be some sense in it. Why do I do it?”
I had never heard him talk like this before. In his excitement he rose
from the table, and commenced pacing the room.
“Why don’t I invest my money in the two and a half per cents?” he
continued. “At the very worst I should be safe for five thousand a year.
What, in the name of common sense, does a man want with more? I am
always saying to myself, I’ll do it; why don’t I?
“Well, why not?” I echoed.
“That’s what I want you to tell me,” he returned. “You set up for
understanding human nature, it’s a mystery to me. In my place, you would
do as I do; you know that. If somebody left you a hundred thousand
pounds to-morrow, you would start a newspaper, or build a theatre—some
damn-fool trick for getting rid of the money and giving yourself
seventeen hours’ anxiety a day; you know you would.”
I hung my head in shame. I felt the justice of the accusation. It has
always been my dream to run a newspaper and own a theatre.
“If we worked only for what we could spend,” he went on, “the City might
put up its shutters to-morrow morning. What I want to get at the bottom
of is this instinct that drives us to work apparently for work’s own
sake. What is this strange thing that gets upon our back and spurs us?”
A servant entered at that moment with a cablegram from the manager of one
of his Austrian mines, and he had to leave me for his study. But,
walking home, I fell to pondering on his words. _Why_ this endless work?
Why each morning do we get up and wash and dress ourselves, to undress
ourselves at night and go to bed again? Why do we work merely to earn
money to buy food; and eat food so as to gain strength that we may work?
Why do we live, merely in the end to say good-bye to one another? Why do
we labour to bring children into the world that they may die and be
buried?
Of what use our mad striving, our passionate desire? Will it matter to
the ages whether, once upon a time, the Union Jack or the Tricolour
floated over the battlements of Badajoz? Yet we poured our blood into
its ditches to decide the question. Will it matter, in the days when the
glacial period shall have come again, to clothe the earth with silence,
whose foot first trod the Pole? Yet, generation after generation, we
mile its roadway with our whitening bones. So very soon the worms come
to us; does it matter whether we love, or hate? Yet the hot blood rushes
through our veins, we wear out heart and brain for shadowy hopes that
ever fade as we press forward.
The flower struggles up from seed-pod, draws the sweet sap from the
ground, folds its petals each night, and sleeps. Then love comes to it
in a strange form, and it longs to mingle its pollen with the pollen of
some other flower. So it puts forth its gay blossoms, and the wandering
insect bears the message from seed-pod to seed-pod. And the seasons
pass, bringing with them the sunshine and the rain, till the flower
withers, never having known the real purpose for which it lived, thinking
the garden was made for it, not it for the garden. The coral insect
dreams in its small soul, which is possibly its small stomach, of home
and food. So it works and strives deep down in the dark waters, never
knowing of the continents it is fashioning.
But the question still remains: for what purpose is it all? Science
explains it to us. By ages of strife and effort we improve the race;
from ether, through the monkey, man is born. So, through the labour of
the coming ages, he will free himself still further from the brute.
Through sorrow and through struggle, by the sweat of brain and brow, he
will lift himself towards the angels. He will come into his kingdom.
But why the building? Why the passing of the countless ages? Why should
he not have been born the god he is to be, imbued at birth with all the
capabilities his ancestors have died acquiring? Why the Pict and Hun
that _I_ may be? Why _I_, that a descendant of my own, to whom I shall
seem a savage, shall come after me? Why, if the universe be ordered by a
Creator to whom all things are possible, the protoplasmic cell? Why not
the man that is to be? Shall all the generations be so much human waste
that he may live? Am I but another layer of the soil preparing for him?
Or, if our future be in other spheres, then why the need of this planet?
Are we labouring at some Work too vast for us to perceive? Are our
passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of which we are
driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought that all our
eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless prison crank.
Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the
past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept
aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be
mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of
fraternity, drowned in blood by a Napoleon. What is left to us, but the
hope that the work itself, not the result, is the real monument? Maybe,
we are as children, asking, “Of what use are these lessons? What good
will they ever be to us?” But there comes a day when the lad understands
why he learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for
him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into the
wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up, we too may
begin to understand the reason for our living.
ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN
I TALKED to a woman once on the subject of honeymoons. I said, “Would
you recommend a long honeymoon, or a Saturday to Monday somewhere?” A
silence fell upon her. I gathered she was looking back rather than
forward to her answer.
“I would advise a long honeymoon,” she replied at length, “the
old-fashioned month.”
“Why,” I persisted, “I thought the tendency of the age was to cut these
things shorter and shorter.”
“It is the tendency of the age,” she answered, “to seek escape from many
things it would be wiser to face. I think myself that, for good or evil,
the sooner it is over—the sooner both the man and the woman know—the
better.”
“The sooner what is over?” I asked.
If she had a fault, this woman, about which I am not sure, it was an
inclination towards enigma.
She crossed to the window and stood there, looking out.
“Was there not a custom,” she said, still gazing down into the wet,
glistening street, “among one of the ancient peoples, I forget which,
ordaining that when a man and woman, loving one another, or thinking that
they loved, had been joined together, they should go down upon their
wedding night to the temple? And into the dark recesses of the temple,
through many winding passages, the priest led them until they came to the
great chamber where dwelt the voice of their god. There the priest left
them, clanging-to the massive door behind him, and there, alone in
silence, they made their sacrifice; and in the night the Voice spoke to
them, showing them their future life—whether they had chosen well;
whether their love would live or die. And in the morning the priest
returned and led them back into the day; and they dwelt among their
fellows. But no one was permitted to question them, nor they to answer
should any do so. Well, do you know, our nineteenth-century honeymoon at
Brighton, Switzerland, or Ramsgate, as the choice or necessity may be,
always seems to me merely another form of that night spent alone in the
temple before the altar of that forgotten god. Our young men and women
marry, and we kiss them and congratulate them; and, standing on the
doorstep, throw rice and old slippers, and shout good wishes after them;
and he waves his gloved hand to us, and she flutters her little
handkerchief from the carriage window; and we watch their smiling faces
and hear their laughter until the corner hides them from our view. Then
we go about our own business, and a short time passes by; and one day we
meet them again, and their faces have grown older and graver; and I
always wonder what the Voice has told them during that little while that
they have been absent from our sight. But of course it would not do to
ask them. Nor would they answer truly if we did.”
My friend laughed, and, leaving the window, took her place beside the
tea-things, and other callers dropping in, we fell to talk of pictures,
plays, and people.
But I felt it would be unwise to act on her sole advice, much as I have
always valued her opinion.
A woman takes life too seriously. It is a serious affair to most of us,
the Lord knows. That is why it is well not to take it more seriously
than need be.
Little Jack and little Jill fall down the hill, hurting their little
knees, and their little noses, spilling the hard-earned water. We are
very philosophical.
“Oh, don’t cry!” we tell them, “that is babyish. Little boys and little
girls must learn to bear pain. Up you get, fill the pail again, and try
once more.”
Little Jack and little Jill rub their dirty knuckles into their little
eyes, looking ruefully at their bloody little knees, and trot back with
the pail. We laugh at them, but not ill-naturedly.
“Poor little souls,” we say; “how they did hullabaloo. One might have
thought they were half-killed. And it was only a broken crown, after
all. What a fuss children make!” We bear with much stoicism the fall of
little Jack and little Jill.
But when _we_—grown-up Jack with moustache turning grey; grown-up Jill
with the first faint “crow’s feet” showing—when _we_ tumble down the
hill, and _our_ pail is spilt. Ye Heavens! what a tragedy has happened.
Put out the stars, turn off the sun, suspend the laws of nature. Mr.
Jack and Mrs. Jill, coming down the hill—what they were doing on the hill
we will not inquire—have slipped over a stone, placed there surely by the
evil powers of the universe. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have bumped their
silly heads. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have hurt their little hearts, and
stand marvelling that the world can go about its business in the face of
such disaster.
Don’t take the matter quite so seriously, Jack and Jill. You have
spilled your happiness, you must toil up the hill again and refill the
pail. Carry it more carefully next time. What were you doing? Playing
some fool’s trick, I’ll be bound.
A laugh and a sigh, a kiss and good-bye, is our life. Is it worth so
much fretting? It is a merry life on the whole. Courage, comrade. A
campaign cannot be all drum and fife and stirrup-cup. The marching and
the fighting must come into it somewhere. There are pleasant bivouacs
among the vineyards, merry nights around the camp fires. White hands
wave a welcome to us; bright eyes dim at our going. Would you run from
the battle-music? What have you to complain of? Forward: the medal to
some, the surgeon’s knife to others; to all of us, sooner or later, six
feet of mother earth. What are you afraid of? Courage, comrade.
There is a mean between basking through life with the smiling contentment
of the alligator, and shivering through it with the aggressive
sensibility of the Lama determined to die at every cross word. To bear
it as a man we must also feel it as a man. My philosophic friend, seek
not to comfort a brother standing by the coffin of his child with the
cheery suggestion that it will be all the same a hundred years hence,
because, for one thing, the observation is not true: the man is changed
for all eternity—possibly for the better, but don’t add that. A soldier
with a bullet in his neck is never quite the man he was. But he can
laugh and he can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse. Now and again,
towards evening, when the weather is trying, the sickness will come upon
him. You will find him on a couch in a dark corner.
“Hallo! old fellow, anything up?”
“Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you know. I will be better in a
little while.”
Shut the door of the dark room quietly. I should not stay even to
sympathize with him if I were you. The men will be coming to screw the
coffin down soon. I think he would like to be alone with it till then.
Let us leave him. He will come back to the club later on in the season.
For a while we may have to give him another ten points or so, but he will
soon get back his old form. Now and again, when he meets the other
fellows’ boys shouting on the towing-path; when Brown rushes up the
drive, paper in hand, to tell him how that young scapegrace Jim has won
his Cross; when he is congratulating Jones’s eldest on having passed with
honours, the old wound may give him a nasty twinge. But the pain will
pass away. He will laugh at our stories and tell us his own; eat his
dinner, play his rubber. It is only a wound.
Tommy can never be ours, Jenny does not love us. We cannot afford
claret, so we will have to drink beer. Well, what would you have us do?
Yes, let us curse Fate by all means—some one to curse is always useful.
Let us cry and wring our hands—for how long? The dinner-bell will ring
soon, and the Smiths are coming. We shall have to talk about the opera
and the picture-galleries. Quick, where is the eau-de-Cologne? where are
the curling-tongs? Or would you we committed suicide? Is it worth
while? Only a few more years—perhaps to-morrow, by aid of a piece of
orange peel or a broken chimney-pot—and Fate will save us all that
trouble.
Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day after day? We are a
broken-hearted little Jack—little Jill. We will never smile again; we
will pine away and die, and be buried in the spring. The world is sad,
and life so cruel, and heaven so cold. Oh dear! oh dear! we have hurt
ourselves.
We whimper and whine at every pain. In old strong days men faced real
dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry. Death and
disaster stood ever at the door. Men were contemptuous of them. Now in
each snug protected villa we set to work to make wounds out of scratches.
Every head-ache becomes an agony, every heart-ache a tragedy. It took a
murdered father, a drowned sweetheart, a dishonoured mother, a ghost, and
a slaughtered Prime Minister to produce the emotions in Hamlet that a
modern minor poet obtains from a chorus girl’s frown, or a temporary
slump on the Stock Exchange. Like Mrs. Gummidge, we feel it more. The
lighter and easier life gets the more seriously we go out to meet it.
The boatmen of Ulysses faced the thunder and the sunshine alike with
frolic welcome. We modern sailors have grown more sensitive. The
sunshine scorches us, the rain chills us. We meet both with loud
self-pity.
Thinking these thoughts, I sought a second friend—a man whose breezy
common-sense has often helped me, and him likewise I questioned on this
subject of honeymoons.
“My dear boy,” he replied; “take my advice, if ever you get married,
arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it be a
bustling week into the bargain. Take a Cook’s circular tour. Get
married on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that
foolishness, and catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris. Take
her up the Eiffel Tower on Sunday. Lunch at Fontainebleau. Dine at the
Maison Doree, and show her the Moulin Rouge in the evening. Take the
night train for Lucerne. Devote Monday and Tuesday to doing Switzerland,
and get into Rome by Thursday morning, taking the Italian lakes _en
route_. On Friday cross to Marseilles, and from there push along to
Monte Carlo. Let her have a flutter at the tables. Start early Saturday
morning for Spain, cross the Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on
Sunday. Get back to Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the
opera), and on Tuesday evening you will be at home, and glad to get
there. Don’t give her time to criticize you until she has got used to
you. No man will bear unprotected exposure to a young girl’s eyes. The
honeymoon is the matrimonial microscope. Wobble it. Confuse it with
many objects. Cloud it with other interests. Don’t sit still to be
examined. Besides, remember that a man always appears at his best when
active, and a woman at her worst. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her: I
don’t care who she may be. Give her plenty of luggage to look after;
make her catch trains. Let her see the average husband sprawling
comfortably over the railway cushions, while his wife has to sit bolt
upright in the corner left to her. Let her hear how other men swear.
Let her smell other men’s tobacco. Hurry up, and get her accustomed
quickly to the sight of mankind. Then she will be less surprised and
shocked as she grows to know you. One of the best fellows I ever knew
spoilt his married life beyond repair by a long quiet honeymoon. They
went off for a month to a lonely cottage in some heaven-forsaken spot,
where never a soul came near them, and never a thing happened but
morning, afternoon, and night. There for thirty days she overhauled him.
When he yawned—and he yawned pretty often, I guess, during that month—she
thought of the size of his mouth, and when he put his heels upon the
fender she sat and brooded upon the shape of his feet. At meal-time, not
feeling hungry herself, having nothing to do to make her hungry, she
would occupy herself with watching him eat; and at night, not feeling
sleepy for the same reason, she would lie awake and listen to his
snoring. After the first day or two he grew tired of talking nonsense,
and she of listening to it (it sounded nonsense now they could speak it
aloud; they had fancied it poetry when they had had to whisper it); and
having no other subject, as yet, of common interest, they would sit and
stare in front of them in silence. One day some trifle irritated him and
he swore. On a busy railway platform, or in a crowded hotel, she would
have said, ‘Oh!’ and they would both have laughed. From that echoing
desert the silly words rose up in widening circles towards the sky, and
that night she cried herself to sleep. Bustle them, my dear boy, bustle
them. We all like each other better the less we think about one another,
and the honeymoon is an exceptionally critical time. Bustle her, my dear
boy, bustle her.”
My very worst honeymoon experience took place in the South of England in
eighteen hundred and—well, never mind the exact date, let us say a few
years ago. I was a shy young man at that time. Many complain of my
reserve to this day, but then some girls expect too much from a man. We
all have our shortcomings. Even then, however, I was not so shy as she.
We had to travel from Lyndhurst in the New Forest to Ventnor, an awkward
bit of cross-country work in those days.
“It’s so fortunate you are going too,” said her aunt to me on the
Tuesday; “Minnie is always nervous travelling alone. You will be able to
look after her, and I shan’t be anxious.”
I said it would be a pleasure, and at the time I honestly thought it. On
the Wednesday I went down to the coach office, and booked two places for
Lymington, from where we took the steamer. I had not a suspicion of
trouble.
The booking-clerk was an elderly man. He said—
“I’ve got the box seat, and the end place on the back bench.”
I said—
“Oh, can’t I have two together?”
He was a kindly-looking old fellow. He winked at me. I wondered all the
way home why he had winked at me. He said—
“I’ll manage it somehow.”
I said—
“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder. He struck me as familiar, but
well-intentioned. He said—
“We have all of us been there.”
I thought he was alluding to the Isle of Wight. I said—
“And this is the best time of the year for it, so I’m told.” It was
early summer time.
He said—“It’s all right in summer, and it’s good enough in winter—_while
it lasts_. You make the most of it, young ’un;” and he slapped me on the
back and laughed.
He would have irritated me in another minute. I paid for the seats and
left him.
At half-past eight the next morning Minnie and I started for the
coach-office. I call her Minnie, not with any wish to be impertinent,
but because I have forgotten her surname. It must be ten years since I
last saw her. She was a pretty girl, too, with those brown eyes that
always cloud before they laugh. Her aunt did not drive down with us as
she had intended, in consequence of a headache. She was good enough to
say she felt every confidence in me.
The old booking-clerk caught sight of us when we were about a quarter of
a mile away, and drew to us the attention of the coachman, who
communicated the fact of our approach to the gathered passengers.
Everybody left off talking, and waited for us. The boots seized his
horn, and blew—one could hardly call it a blast; it would be difficult to
say what he blew. He put his heart into it, but not sufficient wind. I
think his intention was to welcome us, but it suggested rather a feeble
curse. We learnt subsequently that he was a beginner on the instrument.
In some mysterious way the whole affair appeared to be our party. The
booking-clerk bustled up and helped Minnie from the cart. I feared, for
a moment, he was going to kiss her. The coachman grinned when I said
good-morning to him. The passengers grinned, the boots grinned. Two
chamber-maids and a waiter came out from the hotel, and they grinned. I
drew Minnie aside, and whispered to her. I said—
“There’s something funny about us. All these people are grinning.”
She walked round me, and I walked round her, but we could neither of us
discover anything amusing about the other. The booking-clerk said—
“It’s all right. I’ve got you young people two places just behind the
box-seat. We’ll have to put five of you on that seat. You won’t mind
sitting a bit close, will you?”
The booking-clerk winked at the coachman, the coachman winked at the
passengers, the passengers winked at one another—those of them who could
wink—and everybody laughed. The two chamber-maids became hysterical, and
had to cling to each other for support. With the exception of Minnie and
myself, it seemed to be the merriest coach party ever assembled at
Lyndhurst.
We had taken our places, and I was still busy trying to fathom the joke,
when a stout lady appeared on the scene, and demanded to know her place.
The clerk explained to her that it was in the middle behind the driver.
“We’ve had to put five of you on that seat,” added the clerk.
The stout lady looked at the seat.
“Five of us can’t squeeze into that,” she said.
Five of her certainly could not. Four ordinary sized people with her
would find it tight.
“Very well then,” said the clerk, “you can have the end place on the back
seat.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said the stout lady. “I booked my seat on Monday,
and you told me any of the front places were vacant.
“_I’ll_ take the back place,” I said, “I don’t mind it.
“You stop where you are, young ’un,” said the clerk, firmly, “and don’t
be a fool. I’ll fix _her_.”
I objected to his language, but his tone was kindness itself.
“Oh, let _me_ have the back seat,” said Minnie, rising, “I’d so like it.”
For answer the coachman put both his hands on her shoulders. He was a
heavy man, and she sat down again.
“Now then, mum,” said the clerk, addressing the stout lady, “are you
going up there in the middle, or are you coming up here at the back?”
“But why not let one of them take the back seat?” demanded the stout
lady, pointing her reticule at Minnie and myself; “they say they’d like
it. Let them have it.”
The coachman rose, and addressed his remarks generally.
“Put her up at the back, or leave her behind,” he directed. “Man and
wife have never been separated on this coach since I started running it
fifteen year ago, and they ain’t going to be now.”
A general cheer greeted this sentiment. The stout lady, now regarded as
a would-be blighter of love’s young dream, was hustled into the back
seat, the whip cracked, and away we rolled.
So here was the explanation. We were in a honeymoon district, in
June—the most popular month in the whole year for marriage. Every two
out of three couples found wandering about the New Forest in June are
honeymoon couples; the third are going to be. When they travel anywhere
it is to the Isle of Wight. We both had on new clothes. Our bags
happened to be new. By some evil chance our very umbrellas were new.
Our united ages were thirty-seven. The wonder would have been had we
_not_ been mistaken for a young married couple.
A day of greater misery I have rarely passed. To Minnie, so her aunt
informed me afterwards, the journey was the most terrible experience of
her life, but then her experience, up to that time, had been limited.
She was engaged, and devotedly attached, to a young clergyman; I was
madly in love with a somewhat plump girl named Cecilia who lived with her
mother at Hampstead. I am positive as to her living at Hampstead. I
remember so distinctly my weekly walk down the hill from Church Row to
the Swiss Cottage station. When walking down a steep hill all the weight
of the body is forced into the toe of the boot, and when the boot is two
sizes too small for you, and you have been living in it since the early
afternoon, you remember a thing like that. But all my recollections of
Cecilia are painful, and it is needless to pursue them.
Our coach-load was a homely party, and some of the jokes were
broad—harmless enough in themselves, had Minnie and I really been the
married couple we were supposed to be, but even in that case unnecessary.
I can only hope that Minnie did not understand them. Anyhow, she looked
as if she didn’t.
I forget where we stopped for lunch, but I remember that lamb and mint
sauce was on the table, and that the circumstance afforded the greatest
delight to all the party, with the exception of the stout lady, who was
still indignant, Minnie and myself. About my behaviour as a bridegroom
opinion appeared to be divided. “He’s a bit standoffish with her,” I
overheard one lady remark to her husband; “I like to see ’em a bit
kittenish myself.” A young waitress, on the other hand, I am happy to
say, showed more sense of natural reserve. “Well, I respect him for it,”
she was saying to the barmaid, as we passed through the hall; “I’d just
hate to be fuzzled over with everybody looking on.” Nobody took the
trouble to drop their voices for our benefit. We might have been a pair
of prize love birds on exhibition, the way we were openly discussed. By
the majority we were clearly regarded as a sulky young couple who would
not go through their tricks.
I have often wondered since how a real married couple would have faced
the situation. Possibly, had we consented to give a short display of
marital affection, “by desire,” we might have been left in peace for the
remainder of the journey.
Our reputation preceded us on to the steamboat. Minnie begged and prayed
me to let it be known we were not married. How I was to let it be known,
except by requesting the captain to summon the whole ship’s company on
deck, and then making them a short speech, I could not think. Minnie
said she could not bear it any longer, and retired to the ladies’ cabin.
She went off crying. Her trouble was attributed by crew and passengers
to my coldness. One fool planted himself opposite me with his legs
apart, and shook his head at me.
“Go down and comfort her,” he began. “Take an old man’s advice. Put
your arms around her.” (He was one of those sentimental idiots.) “Tell
her that you love her.”
I told him to go and hang himself, with so much vigour that he all but
fell overboard. He was saved by a poultry crate: I had no luck that day.
At Ryde the guard, by superhuman effort, contrived to keep us a carriage
to ourselves. I gave him a shilling, because I did not know what else to
do. I would have made it half-a-sovereign if he had put eight other
passengers in with us. At every station people came to the window to
look in at us.
I handed Minnie over to her father on Ventnor platform; and I took the
first train the next morning, to London. I felt I did not want to see
her again for a little while; and I felt convinced she could do without a
visit from me. Our next meeting took place the week before her marriage.
“Where are you going to spend your honeymoon?” I asked her; “in the New
Forest?”
“No,” she replied; “nor in the Isle of Wight.”
To enjoy the humour of an incident one must be at some distance from it
either in time or relationship. I remember watching an amusing scene in
Whitefield Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, one winter’s Saturday
night. A woman—a rather respectable looking woman, had her hat only been
on straight—had just been shot out of a public-house. She was very
dignified, and very drunk. A policeman requested her to move on. She
called him “Fellow,” and demanded to know of him if he considered that
was the proper tone in which to address a lady. She threatened to report
him to her cousin, the Lord Chancellor.
“Yes; this way to the Lord Chancellor,” retorted the policeman. “You
come along with me;” and he caught hold of her by the arm.
She gave a lurch, and nearly fell. To save her the man put his arm round
her waist. She clasped him round the neck, and together they spun round
two or three times; while at the very moment a piano-organ at the
opposite corner struck up a waltz.
“Choose your partners, gentlemen, for the next dance,” shouted a wag, and
the crowd roared.
I was laughing myself, for the situation was undeniably comical, the
constable’s expression of disgust being quite Hogarthian, when the sight
of a child’s face beneath the gas-lamp stayed me. Her look was so full
of terror that I tried to comfort her.
“It’s only a drunken woman,” I said; “he’s not going to hurt her.”
“Please, sir,” was the answer, “it’s my mother.”
Our joke is generally another’s pain. The man who sits down on the
tin-tack rarely joins in the laugh.
ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS
I WALKED one bright September morning in the Strand. I love London best
in the autumn. Then only can one see the gleam of its white pavements,
the bold, unbroken outline of its streets. I love the cool vistas one
comes across of mornings in the parks, the soft twilights that linger in
the empty bye-streets. In June the restaurant manager is off-hand with
me; I feel I am but in his way. In August he spreads for me the table by
the window, pours out for me my wine with his own fat hands. I cannot
doubt his regard for me: my foolish jealousies are stilled. Do I care
for a drive after dinner through the caressing night air, I can climb the
omnibus stair without a preliminary fight upon the curb, can sit with
easy conscience and unsquashed body, not feeling I have deprived some
hot, tired woman of a seat. Do I desire the play, no harsh, forbidding
“House full” board repels me from the door. During her season, London, a
harassed hostess, has no time for us, her intimates. Her rooms are
overcrowded, her servants overworked, her dinners hurriedly cooked, her
tone insincere. In the spring, to be truthful, the great lady
condescends to be somewhat vulgar—noisy and ostentatious. Not till the
guests are departed is she herself again, the London that we, her
children, love.
Have you, gentle Reader, ever seen London—not the London of the waking
day, coated with crawling life, as a blossom with blight, but the London
of the morning, freed from her rags, the patient city, clad in mists?
Get you up with the dawn one Sunday in summer time. Wake none else, but
creep down stealthily into the kitchen, and make your own tea and toast.
Be careful you stumble not over the cat. She will worm herself
insidiously between your legs. It is her way; she means it in
friendship. Neither bark your shins against the coal-box. Why the
kitchen coal-box has its fixed place in the direct line between the
kitchen door and the gas-bracket I cannot say. I merely know it as an
universal law; and I would that you escaped that coal-box, lest the frame
of mind I desire for you on this Sabbath morning be dissipated.
A spoon to stir your tea, I fear you must dispense with. Knives and
forks you will discover in plenty; blacking brushes you will put your
hand upon in every drawer; of emery paper, did one require it, there are
reams; but it is a point with every housekeeper that the spoons be hidden
in a different place each night. If anybody excepting herself can find
them in the morning, it is a slur upon her. No matter, a stick of
firewood, sharpened at one end, makes an excellent substitute.
Your breakfast done, turn out the gas, remount the stairs quietly, open
gently the front door and slip out. You will find yourself in an unknown
land. A strange city grown round you in the night.
The sweet long streets lie silent in sunlight. Not a living thing is to
be seen save some lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast as you
approach. From some tree there will sound perhaps a fretful chirp: but
the London sparrow is no early riser; he is but talking in his sleep.
The slow tramp of unseen policeman draws near or dies away. The clatter
of your own footsteps goes with you, troubling you. You find yourself
trying to walk softly, as one does in echoing cathedrals. A voice is
everywhere about you whispering to you “Hush.” Is this million-breasted
City then some tender Artemis, seeking to keep her babes asleep? “Hush,
you careless wayfarer; do not waken them. Walk lighter; they are so
tired, these myriad children of mine, sleeping in my thousand arms. They
are over-worked and over-worried; so many of them are sick, so many
fretful, many of them, alas, so full of naughtiness. But all of them so
tired. Hush! they worry me with their noise and riot when they are
awake. They are so good now they are asleep. Walk lightly, let them
rest.”
Where the ebbing tide flows softly through worn arches to the sea, you
may hear the stone-faced City talking to the restless waters: “Why will
you never stay with me? Why come but to go?”
“I cannot say, I do not understand. From the deep sea I come, but only
as a bird loosed from a child’s hand with a cord. When she calls I must
return.”
“It is so with these children of mine. They come to me, I know not
whence. I nurse them for a little while, till a hand I do not see plucks
them back. And others take their place.”
Through the still air there passes a ripple of sound. The sleeping City
stirs with a faint sigh. A distant milk-cart rattling by raises a
thousand echoes; it is the vanguard of a yoked army. Soon from every
street there rises the soothing cry, “Mee’hilk—mee’hilk.”
London like some Gargantuan babe, is awake, crying for its milk. These
be the white-smocked nurses hastening with its morning nourishment. The
early church bells ring. “You have had your milk, little London. Now
come and say your prayers. Another week has just begun, baby London.
God knows what will happen, say your prayers.”
One by one the little creatures creep from behind the blinds into the
streets. The brooding tenderness is vanished from the City’s face. The
fretful noises of the day have come again. Silence, her lover of the
night, kisses her stone lips, and steals away. And you, gentle Reader,
return home, garlanded with the self-sufficiency of the early riser.
But it was of a certain week-day morning, in the Strand that I was
thinking. I was standing outside Gatti’s Restaurant, where I had just
breakfasted, listening leisurely to an argument between an indignant lady
passenger, presumably of Irish extraction, and an omnibus conductor.
“For what d’ye want thin to paint Putney on ye’r bus, if ye don’t _go_ to
Putney?” said the lady.
“We _do_ go to Putney,” said the conductor.
“Thin why did ye put me out here?”
“I didn’t put you out, yer got out.”
“Shure, didn’t the gintleman in the corner tell me I was comin’ further
away from Putney ivery minit?”
“Wal, and so yer was.”
“Thin whoy didn’t you tell me?”
“How was I to know yer wanted to go to Putney? Yer sings out Putney, and
I stops and in yer jumps.”
“And for what d’ye think I called out Putney thin?”
“’Cause it’s my name, or rayther the bus’s name. This ’ere _is_ a
Putney.”
“How can it be a Putney whin it isn’t goin’ to Putney, ye gomerhawk?”
“Ain’t you an Hirishwoman?” retorted the conductor. “Course yer are.
But yer aren’t always goin’ to Ireland. We’re goin’ to Putney in time,
only we’re a-going to Liverpool Street fust. ’Igher up, Jim.”
The bus moved on, and I was about cross the road, when a man, muttering
savagely to himself, walked into me. He would have swept past me had I
not, recognizing him, arrested him. It was my friend B—, a busy editor
of magazines and journals. It was some seconds before he appeared able
to struggle out of his abstraction, and remember himself. “Halloo,” he
then said, “who would have thought of seeing _you_ here?”
“To judge by the way you were walking,” I replied, “one would imagine the
Strand the last place in which you expected to see any human being. Do
you ever walk into a short-tempered, muscular man?”
“Did I walk into you?” he asked surprised.
“Well, not right in,” I answered, “I if we are to be literal. You walked
on to me; if I had not stopped you, I suppose you would have walked over
me.”
“It is this confounded Christmas business,” he explained. “It drives me
off my head.”
“I have heard Christmas advanced as an excuse for many things,” I
replied, “but not early in September.”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” he answered, “we are in the middle of our
Christmas number. I am working day and night upon it. By the bye,” he
added, “that puts me in mind. I am arranging a symposium, and I want you
to join. ‘Should Christmas,’”—I interrupted him.
“My dear fellow,” I said, “I commenced my journalistic career when I was
eighteen, and I have continued it at intervals ever since. I have
written about Christmas from the sentimental point of view; I have
analyzed it from the philosophical point of view; and I have scarified it
from the sarcastic standpoint. I have treated Christmas humorously for
the Comics, and sympathetically for the Provincial Weeklies. I have said
all that is worth saying on the subject of Christmas—maybe a trifle more.
I have told the new-fashioned Christmas story—you know the sort of thing:
your heroine tries to understand herself, and, failing, runs off with the
man who began as the hero; your good woman turns out to be really bad
when one comes to know her; while the villain, the only decent person in
the story, dies with an enigmatic sentence on his lips that looks as if
it meant something, but which you yourself would be sorry to have to
explain. I have also written the old-fashioned Christmas story—you know
that also: you begin with a good old-fashioned snowstorm; you have a good
old-fashioned squire, and he lives in a good old-fashioned Hall; you work
in a good old-fashioned murder; and end up with a good old-fashioned
Christmas dinner. I have gathered Christmas guests together round the
crackling logs to tell ghost stories to each other on Christmas Eve,
while without the wind howled, as it always does on these occasions, at
its proper cue. I have sent children to Heaven on Christmas Eve—it must
be quite a busy time for St. Peter, Christmas morning, so many good
children die on Christmas Eve. It has always been a popular night with
them.—I have revivified dead lovers and brought them back well and jolly,
just in time to sit down to the Christmas dinner. I am not ashamed of
having done these things. At the time I thought them good. I once loved
currant wine and girls with towzley hair. One’s views change as one
grows older. I have discussed Christmas as a religious festival. I have
arraigned it as a social incubus. If there be any joke connected with
Christmas that I have not already made I should be glad to hear it. I
have trotted out the indigestion jokes till the sight of one of them
gives me indigestion myself. I have ridiculed the family gathering. I
have scoffed at the Christmas present. I have made witty use of
paterfamilias and his bills. I have—”
“Did I ever show you,” I broke off to ask as we were crossing the
Haymarket, “that little parody of mine on Poe’s poem of ‘The Bells’? It
begins—” He interrupted me in his turn—
“Bills, bills, bills,” he repeated.
“You are quite right,” I admitted. “I forgot I ever showed it to you.”
“You never did,” he replied.
“Then how do you know how it begins?” I asked.
“I don’t know for certain,” he admitted, “but I get, on an average,
sixty-five a year submitted to me, and they all begin that way. I
thought, perhaps, yours did also.”
“I don’t see how else it could begin,” I retorted. He had rather annoyed
me. “Besides, it doesn’t matter how a poem begins, it is how it goes on
that is the important thing and anyhow, I’m not going to write you
anything about Christmas. Ask me to make you a new joke about a plumber;
suggest my inventing something original and not too shocking for a child
to say about heaven; propose my running you off a dog story that can be
believed by a man of average determination and we may come to terms. But
on the subject of Christmas I am taking a rest.”
By this time we had reached Piccadilly Circus.
“I don’t blame you,” he said, “if you are as sick of the subject as I am.
So soon as these Christmas numbers are off my mind, and Christmas is over
till next June at the office, I shall begin it at home. The housekeeping
is gone up a pound a week already. I know what that means. The dear
little woman is saving up to give me an expensive present that I don’t
want. I think the presents are the worst part of Christmas. Emma will
give me a water-colour that she has painted herself. She always does.
There would be no harm in that if she did not expect me to hang it in the
drawing room. Have you ever seen my cousin Emma’s water-colours?” he
asked.
“I think I have,” I replied.
“There’s no thinking about it,” he retorted angrily. “They’re not the
sort of water-colours you forget.”
He apostrophized the Circus generally.
“Why do people do these things?” he demanded. “Even an amateur artist
must have _some_ sense. Can’t they see what is happening? There’s that
thing of hers hanging in the passage. I put it in the passage because
there’s not much light in the passage. She’s labelled it Reverie. If
she had called it Influenza I could have understood it. I asked her
where she got the idea from, and she said she saw the sky like that one
evening in Norfolk. Great Heavens! then why didn’t she shut her eyes or
go home and hide behind the bed-curtains? If I had seen a sky like that
in Norfolk I should have taken the first train back to London. I suppose
the poor girl can’t help seeing these things, but why paint them?”
I said, “I suppose painting is a necessity to some natures.”
“But why give the things to me?” he pleaded.
I could offer him no adequate reason.
“The idiotic presents that people give you!” he continued. “I said I’d
like Tennyson’s poems one year. They had worried me to know what I did
want. I didn’t want anything really; that was the only thing I could
think of that I wasn’t dead sure I didn’t want. Well, they clubbed
together, four of them, and gave me Tennyson in twelve volumes,
illustrated with coloured photographs. They meant kindly, of course. If
you suggest a tobacco-pouch they give you a blue velvet bag capable of
holding about a pound, embroidered with flowers, life-size. The only way
one could use it would be to put a strap to it and wear it as a satchel.
Would you believe it, I have got a velvet smoking-jacket, ornamented with
forget-me-nots and butterflies in coloured silk; I’m not joking. And
they ask me why I never wear it. I’ll bring it down to the Club one of
these nights and wake the place up a bit: it needs it.”
We had arrived by this at the steps of the ‘Devonshire.’
“And I’m just as bad,” he went on, “when I give presents. I never give
them what they want. I never hit upon anything that is of any use to
anybody. If I give Jane a chinchilla tippet, you may be certain
chinchilla is the most out-of-date fur that any woman could wear. ‘Oh!
that is nice of you,’ she says; ‘now that is just the very thing I
wanted. I will keep it by me till chinchilla comes in again.’ I give
the girls watch-chains when nobody is wearing watch-chains. When
watch-chains are all the rage I give them ear-rings, and they thank me,
and suggest my taking them to a fancy-dress ball, that being their only
chance to wear the confounded things. I waste money on white gloves with
black backs, to find that white gloves with black backs stamp a woman as
suburban. I believe all the shop-keepers in London save their old stock
to palm it off on me at Christmas time. And why does it always take
half-a-dozen people to serve you with a pair of gloves, I’d like to know?
Only last week Jane asked me to get her some gloves for that last Mansion
House affair. I was feeling amiable, and I thought I would do the thing
handsomely. I hate going into a draper’s shop; everybody stares at a man
as if he were forcing his way into the ladies’ department of a Turkish
bath. One of those marionette sort of men came up to me and said it was
a fine morning. What the devil did I want to talk about the morning to
him for? I said I wanted some gloves. I described them to the best of
my recollection. I said, ‘I want them four buttons, but they are not to
be button-gloves; the buttons are in the middle and they reach up to the
elbow, if you know what I mean.’ He bowed, and said he understood
exactly what I meant, which was a damned sight more than I did. I told
him I wanted three pair cream and three pair fawn-coloured, and the
fawn-coloured were to be swedes. He corrected me. He said I meant
‘Suede.’ I dare say he was right, but the interruption put me off, and I
had to begin over again. He listened attentively until I had finished.
I guess I was about five minutes standing with him there close to the
door. He said, ‘Is that all you require, sir, this morning?’ I said it
was.
“‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied. ‘This way, please, sir.’
“He took me into another room, and there we met a man named Jansen, to
whom he briefly introduced me as a gentleman who ‘desired gloves.’ ‘Yes,
sir,’ said Mr. Jansen; and what sort of gloves do you desire?’
“I told him I wanted six pairs altogether—three suede, fawn-coloured, and
three cream-coloured—kids.
“He said, ‘Do you mean kid gloves, sir, or gloves for children?’
“He made me angry by that. I told him I was not in the habit of using
slang. Nor am I when buying gloves. He said he was sorry. I explained
to him about the buttons, so far as I could understand it myself, and
about the length. I asked him to see to it that the buttons were sewn on
firmly, and that the stitching everywhere was perfect, adding that the
last gloves my wife had had of his firm had been most unsatisfactory.
Jane had impressed upon me to add that. She said it would make them more
careful.
“He listened to me in rapt ecstacy. I might have been music.
“‘And what size, sir?’ he asked.
“I had forgotten that. ‘Oh, sixes,’ I answered, ‘unless they are very
stretchy indeed, in which case they had better be five and
three-quarter.’
“‘Oh, and the stitching on the cream is to be black,’ I added. That was
another thing I had forgotten.
“‘Thank you very much,’ said Mr. Jansen; ‘is there anything else that you
require this morning?’
“‘No, thank you,’ I replied, ‘not this morning.’ I was beginning to like
the man.
“He took me for quite a walk, and wherever we went everybody left off
what they were doing to stare at me. I was getting tired when we reached
the glove department. He marched me up to a young man who was sticking
pins into himself. He said ‘Gloves,’ and disappeared through a curtain.
The young man left off sticking pins into himself, and leant across the
counter.
“‘Ladies’ gloves or gentlemen’s gloves?’ he said.
“Well, I was pretty mad by this time, as you can guess. It is funny when
you come to think of it afterwards, but the wonder then was that I didn’t
punch his head.
“I said, ‘Are you ever busy in this shop? Does there ever come a time
when you feel you would like to get your work done, instead of lingering
over it and spinning it out for pure love of the thing?’
“He did not appear to understand me. I said, ‘I met a man at your door a
quarter of an hour ago, and we talked about these gloves that I want, and
I told him all my ideas on the subject. He took me to your Mr. Jansen,
and Mr. Jansen and I went over the whole business again. Now Mr. Jansen
leaves it with you—you who do not even know whether I want ladies’ or
gentlemen’s gloves. Before I go over this story for the third time, I
want to know whether you are the man who is going to serve me, or whether
you are merely a listener, because personally I am tired of the subject?’
“Well, this was the right man at last, and I got my gloves from him. But
what is the explanation—what is the idea? I was in that shop from first
to last five-and-thirty minutes. And then a fool took me out the wrong
way to show me a special line in sleeping-socks. I told him I was not
requiring any. He said he didn’t want me to buy, he only wanted me to
see them. No wonder the drapers have had to start luncheon and
tea-rooms. They’ll fix up small furnished flats soon, where a woman can
live for a week.”
I said it was very trying, shopping. I also said, as he invited me, and
as he appeared determined to go on talking, that I would have a
brandy-and-soda. We were in the smoke-room by this time.
“There ought to be an association,” he continued, “a kind of
clearing-house for the collection and distribution of Christmas presents.
One would give them a list of the people from whom to collect presents,
and of the people to whom to send. Suppose they collected on my account
twenty Christmas presents, value, say, ten pounds, while on the other
hand they sent out for me thirty presents at a cost of fifteen pounds.
They would debit me with the balance of five pounds, together with a
small commission. I should pay it cheerfully, and there would be no
further trouble. Perhaps one might even make a profit. The idea might
include birthdays and weddings. A firm would do the business thoroughly.
They would see that all your friends paid up—I mean sent presents; and
they would not forget to send to your most important relative. There is
only one member of our family capable of leaving a shilling; and of
course if I forget to send to any one it is to him. When I remember him
I generally make a muddle of the business. Two years ago I gave him a
bath—I don’t mean I washed him—an india-rubber thing, that he could pack
in his portmanteau. I thought he would find it useful for travelling.
Would you believe it, he took it as a personal affront, and wouldn’t
speak to me for a month, the snuffy old idiot.”
“I suppose the children enjoy it,” I said.
“Enjoy what?” he asked.
“Why, Christmas,” I explained.
“I don’t believe they do,” he snapped; “nobody enjoys it. We excite them
for three weeks beforehand, telling them what a good time they are going
to have, over-feed them for two or three days, take them to something
they do not want to see, but which we do, and then bully them for a
fortnight to get them back into their normal condition. I was always
taken to the Crystal Palace and Madame Tussaud’s when I was a child, I
remember. How I did hate that Crystal Palace! Aunt used to superintend.
It was always a bitterly cold day, and we always got into the wrong
train, and travelled half the day before we got there. We never had any
dinner. It never occurs to a woman that anybody can want their meals
while away from home. She seems to think that nature is in suspense from
the time you leave the house till the time you get back to it. A bun and
a glass of milk was her idea of lunch for a school-boy. Half her time
was taken up in losing us, and the other half in slapping us when she had
found us. The only thing we really enjoyed was the row with the cabman
coming home.”
I rose to go.
“Then you won’t join that symposium?” said B—. “It would be an easy
enough thing to knock off—‘Why Christmas should be abolished.’”
“It sounds simple,” I answered. “But how do you propose to abolish it?”
The lady editor of an “advanced” American magazine once set the
discussion—“Should sex be abolished?” and eleven ladies and gentlemen
seriously argued the question.
“Leave it to die of inanition,” said B—; “the first step is to arouse
public opinion. Convince the public that it should be abolished.”
“But why should it be abolished?” I asked.
“Great Scott! man,” he exclaimed; “don’t you want it abolished?”
“I’m not sure that I do,” I replied.
“Not sure,” he retorted; “you call yourself a journalist, and admit there
is a subject under Heaven of which you are not sure!”
“It has come over me of late years,” I replied. “It used not to be my
failing, as you know.”
He glanced round to make sure we were out of earshot, then sunk his voice
to a whisper.
“Between ourselves,” he said, “I’m not so sure of everything myself as I
used to be. Why is it?”
“Perhaps we are getting older,” I suggested.
He said—“I started golf last year, and the first time I took the club in
my hand I sent the ball a furlong. ‘It seems an easy game,’ I said to
the man who was teaching me. ‘Yes, most people find it easy at the
beginning,’ he replied dryly. He was an old golfer himself; I thought he
was jealous. I stuck well to the game, and for about three weeks I was
immensely pleased with myself. Then, gradually, I began to find out the
difficulties. I feel I shall never make a good player. Have you ever
gone through that experience?”
“Yes,” I replied; “I suppose that is the explanation. The game seems so
easy at the beginning.”
I left him to his lunch, and strolled westward, musing on the time when I
should have answered that question of his about Christmas, or any other
question, off-hand. That good youth time when I knew everything, when
life presented no problems, dangled no doubts before me!
In those days, wishful to give the world the benefit of my wisdom, and
seeking for a candle-stick wherefrom my brilliancy might be visible and
helpful unto men, I arrived before a dingy portal in Chequers Street, St.
Luke’s, behind which a conclave of young men, together with a few old
enough to have known better, met every Friday evening for the purpose of
discussing and arranging the affairs of the universe. “Speaking members”
were charged ten-and-sixpence per annum, which must have worked out at an
extremely moderate rate per word; and “gentlemen whose subscriptions were
more than three months in arrear,” became, by Rule seven, powerless for
good or evil. We called ourselves “The Stormy Petrels,” and, under the
sympathetic shadow of those wings, I laboured two seasons towards the
reformation of the human race; until, indeed, our treasurer, an earnest
young man, and a tireless foe of all that was conventional, departed for
the East, leaving behind him a balance sheet, showing that the club owed
forty-two pounds fifteen and fourpence, and that the subscriptions for
the current year, amounting to a little over thirty-eight pounds, had
been “carried forward,” but as to where, the report afforded no
indication. Whereupon our landlord, a man utterly without ideals, seized
our furniture, offering to sell it back to us for fifteen pounds. We
pointed out to him that this was an extravagant price, and tendered him
five.
The negotiations terminated with ungentlemanly language on his part, and
“The Stormy Petrels” scattered, never to be foregathered together again
above the troubled waters of humanity. Now-a-days, listening to the
feeble plans of modern reformers, I cannot help but smile, remembering
what was done in Chequers Street, St. Luke’s, in an age when Mrs. Grundy
still gave the law to literature, while yet the British matron was the
guide to British art. I am informed that there is abroad the question of
abolishing the House of Lords! Why, “The Stormy Petrels” abolished the
aristocracy and the Crown in one evening, and then only adjourned for the
purpose of appointing a committee to draw up and have ready a Republican
Constitution by the following Friday evening. They talk of Empire
lounges! We closed the doors of every music-hall in London eighteen
years ago by twenty-nine votes to seventeen. They had a patient hearing,
and were ably defended; but we found that the tendency of such amusements
was anti-progressive, and against the best interests of an intellectually
advancing democracy. I met the mover of the condemnatory resolution at
the old “Pav” the following evening, and we continued the discussion over
a bottle of Bass. He strengthened his argument by persuading me to sit
out the whole of the three songs sung by the “Lion Comique”; but I
subsequently retorted successfully, by bringing under his notice the
dancing of a lady in blue tights and flaxen hair. I forget her name but
never shall I cease to remember her exquisite charm and beauty. Ah, me!
how charming and how beautiful “artistes” were in those golden days!
Whence have they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and flaxen hair dance
before my eyes to-day, but move me not, unless it be towards boredom.
Where be the tripping witches of twenty years ago, whom to see once wa
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