The Angel and the Author and others
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Jerome K. Jerome >> The Angel and the Author and others
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My friend H. G. Wells wrote a book, "The Island of Dr. Moreau." I
read it in MS. one winter evening in a lonely country house upon the
hills, wind screaming to wind in the dark without. The story has
haunted me ever since. I hear the wind's shrill laughter. The
doctor had taken the beasts of the forest, apes, tigers, strange
creatures from the deep, had fashioned them with hideous cruelty into
the shapes of men, had given them souls, had taught to them the law.
In all things else were they human, but their original instincts
their creator's skill had failed to eliminate. All their lives were
one long torture. The Law said, "We are men and women; this we shall
do, this we shall not do." But the ape and tiger still cried aloud
within them.
Civilization lays her laws upon us; they are the laws of gods--of the
men that one day, perhaps, shall come. But the primeval creature of
the cave still cries within us.
[A few rules for Married Happiness.]
The wonder is that not being gods--being mere men and women--marriage
works out as well as it does. We take two creatures with the
instincts of the ape still stirring within them; two creatures
fashioned on the law of selfishness; two self-centred creatures of
opposite appetites, of desires opposed to one another, of differing
moods and fancies; two creatures not yet taught the lesson of self-
control, of self-renunciation, and bind them together for life in an
union so close that one cannot snore o'nights without disturbing the
other's rest; that one cannot, without risk to happiness, have a
single taste unshared by the other; that neither, without danger of
upsetting the whole applecart, so to speak, can have an opinion with
which the other does not heartedly agree.
Could two angels exist together on such terms without ever
quarrelling? I doubt it. To make marriage the ideal we love to
picture it in romance, the elimination of human nature is the first
essential. Supreme unselfishness, perfect patience, changeless
amiability, we should have to start with, and continue with, until
the end.
[The real Darby and Joan.]
I do not believe in the "Darby and Joan" of the song. They belong to
song-land. To accept them I need a piano, a sympathetic contralto
voice, a firelight effect, and that sentimental mood in myself, the
foundation of which is a good dinner well digested. But there are
Darbys and Joans of real flesh and blood to be met with--God bless
them, and send more for our example--wholesome living men and women,
brave, struggling, souls with common-sense. Ah, yes! they have
quarrelled; had their dark house of bitterness, of hate, when he
wished to heaven he had never met her, and told her so. How could he
have guessed those sweet lips could utter such cruel words; those
tender eyes, he loved to kiss, flash with scorn and anger?
And she, had she known what lay behind; those days when he knelt
before her, swore that his only dream was to save her from all pain.
Passion lies dead; it is a flame that burns out quickly. The most
beautiful face in the world grows indifferent to us when we have sat
opposite it every morning at breakfast, every evening at supper, for
a brief year or two. Passion is the seed. Love grows from it, a
tender sapling, beautiful to look upon, but wondrous frail, easily
broken, easily trampled on during those first years of wedded life.
Only by much nursing, by long caring-for, watered with tears, shall
it grow into a sturdy tree, defiant of the winds, 'neath which Darby
and Joan shall sit sheltered in old age.
They had commonsense, brave hearts. Darby had expected too much.
Darby had not made allowance for human nature which he ought to have
done, seeing how much he had of it himself. Joan knows he did not
mean it. Joan has a nasty temper; she admits it. Joan will try,
Darby will try. They kiss again with tears. It is a workaday world;
Darby and Joan will take it as it is, will do their best. A little
kindness, a little clasping of the hands before night comes.
[Many ways of Love]
Youth deems it heresy, but I sometimes wonder if our English speaking
way is quite the best. I discussed the subject once with an old
French lady. The English reader forms his idea of French life from
the French novel; it leads to mistaken notions. There are French
Darbys, French Joans, many thousands of them.
"Believe me," said my old French friend, "your English way is wrong;
our way is not perfect, but it is the better, I am sure. You leave
it entirely to the young people. What do they know of life, of
themselves, even. He falls in love with a pretty face. She--he
danced so well! he was so agreeable that day of the picnic! If
marriage were only for a month or so; could be ended without harm
when the passion was burnt out. Ah, yes! then perhaps you would be
right. I loved at eighteen, madly--nearly broke my heart. I meet
him occasionally now. My dear"--her hair was silvery white, and I
was only thirty-five; she always called me "my dear"; it is pleasant
at thirty-five to be talked to as a child. "He was a perfect brute,
handsome he had been, yes, but all that was changed. He was as
stupid as an ox. I never see his poor frightened-looking wife
without shuddering thinking of what I have escaped. They told me all
that, but I looked only at his face, and did not believe them. They
forced me into marriage with the kindest man that ever lived. I did
not love him then, but I loved him for thirty years; was it not
better?"
"But, my dear friend," I answered; "that poor, frightened-looking
wife of your first love! Her marriage also was, I take it, the
result of parental choosing. The love marriage, I admit, as often as
not turns out sadly. The children choose ill. Parents also choose
ill. I fear there is no sure receipt for the happy marriage."
"You are arguing from bad examples," answered my silver-haired
friend; "it is the system that I am defending. A young girl is no
judge of character. She is easily deceived, is wishful to be
deceived. As I have said, she does not even know herself. She
imagines the mood of the moment will remain with her. Only those who
have watched over her with loving insight from her infancy know her
real temperament.
"The young man is blinded by his passion. Nature knows nothing of
marriage, of companionship. She has only one aim. That
accomplished, she is indifferent to the future of those she has
joined together. I would have parents think only of their children's
happiness, giving to worldly considerations their true value, but
nothing beyond, choosing for their children with loving care, with
sense of their great responsibility."
[Which is it?]
"I fear our young people would not be contented with our choosing," I
suggested.
"Are they so contented with their own, the honeymoon over?" she
responded with a smile.
We agreed it was a difficult problem viewed from any point.
But I still think it would be better were we to heap less ridicule
upon the institution. Matrimony cannot be "holy" and ridiculous at
the same time. We have been familiar with it long enough to make up
our minds in which light to regard it.
CHAPTER XIX
[Man and his Tailor.]
What's wrong with the "Made-up Tie"? I gather from the fashionable
novelist that no man can wear a made-up tie and be a gentleman. He
may be a worthy man, clever, well-to-do, eligible from every other
point of view; but She, the refined heroine, can never get over the
fact that he wears a made-up tie. It causes a shudder down her high-
bred spine whenever she thinks of it. There is nothing else to be
said against him. There is nothing worse about him than this--he
wears a made-up tie. It is all sufficient. No true woman could ever
care for him, no really classy society ever open its doors to him.
I am worried about this thing because, to confess the horrid truth, I
wear a made-up tie myself. On foggy afternoons I steal out of the
house disguised. They ask me where I am going in a hat that comes
down over my ears, and why I am wearing blue spectacles and a false
beard, but I will not tell them. I creep along the wall till I find
a common hosier's shop, and then, in an assumed voice, I tell the man
what it is I want. They come to fourpence halfpenny each; by taking
the half-dozen I get them for a trifle less. They are put on in a
moment, and, to my vulgar eye, look neat and tasteful.
Of course, I know I am not a gentleman. I have given up hopes of
ever being one. Years ago, when life presented possibilities, I
thought that with pains and intelligence I might become one. I never
succeeded. It all depends on being able to tie a bow. Round the
bed-post, or the neck of the water-jug, I could tie the wretched
thing to perfection. If only the bed-post or the water-jug could
have taken my place and gone to the party instead of me, life would
have been simpler. The bed-post and the water-jug, in its neat white
bow, looked like a gentleman--the fashionable novelist's idea of a
gentleman. Upon myself the result was otherwise, suggesting always a
feeble attempt at suicide by strangulation. I could never understand
how it was done. There were moments when it flashed across me that
the secret lay in being able to turn one's self inside out, coming up
with one's arms and legs the other way round. Standing on one's head
might have surmounted the difficulty; but the higher gymnastics
Nature has denied to me. "The Boneless Wonder" or the "Man Serpent"
could, I felt, be a gentleman so easily. To one to whom has been
given only the common ordinary joints gentlemanliness is apparently
an impossible ideal.
It is not only the tie. I never read the fashionable novel without
misgiving. Some hopeless bounder is being described:
"If you want to know what he is like," says the Peer of the Realm,
throwing himself back in his deep easy-chair, and puffing lazily at
his cigar of delicate aroma, "he is the sort of man that wears three
studs in his shirt."
[The difficulty of being a Gentleman.]
Merciful heavens! I myself wear three studs in my shirt. I also am
a hopeless bounder, and I never knew it. It comes upon me like a
thunderbolt. I thought three studs were fashionable. The idiot at
the shop told me three studs were all the rage, and I ordered two
dozen. I can't afford to throw them away. Till these two dozen
shirts are worn out, I shall have to remain a hopeless bounder.
Why have we not a Minister of the Fine Arts? Why does not a paternal
Government fix notices at the street corners, telling the would-be
gentleman how many studs he ought to wear, what style of necktie now
distinguishes the noble-minded man from the base-hearted? They are
prompt enough with their police regulations, their vaccination
orders--the higher things of life they neglect.
I select at random another masterpiece of English literature.
"My dear," says Lady Montresor, with her light aristocratic laugh,
"you surely cannot seriously think of marrying a man who wears socks
with yellow spots?"
Lady Emmelina sighs.
"He is very nice," she murmurs, "but I suppose you are right. I
suppose that sort of man does get on your nerves after a time."
"My dear child," says Lady Montresor, "he is impossible."
In a cold sweat I rush upstairs into my bedroom.
I thought so: I am always wrong. All my best socks have yellow
spots. I rather fancied them. They were expensive, too, now I come
to think of it.
What am I to do? If I sacrifice them and get red spots, then red
spots, for all I know, may be wrong. I have no instinct. The
fashionable novelist never helps one. He tells us what is wrong, but
he does not tell us what is right. It is creative criticism that I
feel the need of. Why does not the Lady Montresor go on? Tell me
what sort of socks the ideal lover ought to wear. There are so many
varieties of socks. What is a would-be-gentleman to do? Would it be
of any use writing to the fashionable novelist:-
[How we might, all of us, be Gentlemen.]
"Dear Mr. Fashionable Novelist (or should it be Miss?),--Before going
to my tailor, I venture to write to you on a subject of some
importance. I am fairly well educated, of good family and address,
and, so my friends tell me, of passable appearance. I yearn to
become a gentleman. If it is not troubling you too much, would you
mind telling me how to set about the business? What socks and ties
ought I to wear? Do I wear a flower in my button-hole, or is that a
sign of a coarse mind? How many buttons on a morning coat show a
beautiful nature? Does a stand-up collar with a tennis shirt prove
that you are of noble descent, or, on the contrary, stamp you as a
parvenu? If answering these questions imposes too great a tax on
your time, perhaps you would not mind telling me how you yourself
know these things. Who is your authority, and when is he at home? I
should apologize for writing to you but that I feel you will
sympathize with my appeal. It seems a pity there should be so many
vulgar, ill-bred people in the world when a little knowledge on these
trivial points would enable us all to become gentlemen. Thanking you
in anticipation, I remain . . . "
Would he or she tell us? Or would the fashionable novelist reply as
I once overheard a harassed mother retort upon one of her inquiring
children. Most of the afternoon she had been rushing out into the
garden, where games were in progress, to tell the children what they
must not do: --"Tommy, you know you must not do that. Haven't you
got any sense at all?" "Johnny, you wicked boy, how dare you do
that; how many more times do you want me to tell you?" "Jane, if you
do that again you will go straight to bed, my girl!" and so on.
At length the door was opened from without, and a little face peeped
in: "Mother!"
"Now, what is it? can't I ever get a moment's peace?"
"Mother, please would you mind telling us something we might do?"
The lady almost fell back on the floor in her astonishment. The idea
had never occurred to her.
"What may you do! Don't ask me. I am tired enough of telling you
what not to do."
[Things a Gentleman should never do.]
I remember when a young man, wishful to conform to the rules of good
society, I bought a book of etiquette for gentlemen. Its fault was
just this. It told me through many pages what not to do. Beyond
that it seemed to have no idea. I made a list of things it said a
gentleman should NEVER do: it was a lengthy list.
Determined to do the job completely while I was about it, I bought
other books of etiquette and added on their list of "Nevers." What
one book left out another supplied. There did not seem much left for
a gentleman to do.
I concluded by the time I had come to the end of my books, that to be
a true gentleman my safest course would be to stop in bed for the
rest of my life. By this means only could I hope to avoid every
possible faux pas, every solecism. I should have lived and died a
gentleman. I could have had it engraved upon my tombstone:
"He never in his life committed a single act unbecoming to a
gentleman."
To be a gentleman is not so easy, perhaps, as a fashionable novelist
imagines. One is forced to the conclusion that it is not a question
entirely for the outfitter. My attention was attracted once by a
notice in the window of a West-End emporium, "Gentlemen supplied."
It is to such like Universal Providers that the fashionable novelist
goes for his gentleman. The gentleman is supplied to him complete in
every detail. If the reader be not satisfied, that is the reader's
fault. He is one of those tiresome, discontented customers who does
not know a good article when he has got it.
I was told the other day of the writer of a musical farce (or is it
comedy?) who was most desirous that his leading character should be a
perfect gentleman. During the dress rehearsal, the actor
representing the part had to open his cigarette case and request
another perfect gentleman to help himself. The actor drew forth his
case. It caught the critical eye of the author.
"Good heavens!" he cried, "what do you call that?"
"A cigarette case," answered the actor.
"But, my dear boy," exclaimed the author, "surely it is silver?"
"I know," admitted the actor, "it does perhaps suggest that I am
living beyond my means, but the truth is I picked it up cheap."
The author turned to the manager.
"This won't do," he explained, "a real gentleman always carries a
gold cigarette case. He must be a gentleman, or there's no point in
the plot."
"Don't let us endanger any point the plot may happen to possess, for
goodness sake," agreed the manager, "let him by all means have a gold
cigarette case."
[How one may know the perfect Gentleman.]
So, regardless of expense, a gold cigarette case was obtained and put
down to expenses. And yet on the first night of that musical play,
when that leading personage smashed a tray over a waiter's head, and,
after a row with the police, came home drunk to his wife, even that
gold cigarette case failed to convince one that the man was a
gentleman beyond all doubt.
The old writers appear to have been singularly unaware of the
importance attaching to these socks, and ties, and cigarette-cases.
They told us merely what the man felt and thought. What reliance can
we place upon them? How could they possibly have known what sort of
man he was underneath his clothes? Tweed or broadcloth is not
transparent. Even could they have got rid of his clothes there would
have remained his flesh and bones. It was pure guess-work. They did
not observe.
The modern writer goes to work scientifically. He tells us that the
creature wore a made-up tie. From that we know he was not a
gentleman; it follows as the night the day. The fashionable novelist
notices the young man's socks. It reveals to us whether the marriage
would have been successful or a failure. It is necessary to convince
us that the hero is a perfect gentleman: the author gives him a gold
cigarette case.
A well-known dramatist has left it on record that comedy cannot exist
nowadays, for the simple reason that gentlemen have given up taking
snuff and wearing swords. How can one have comedy in company with
frock-coats--without its "Las" and its "Odds Bobs."
The sword may have been helpful. I have been told that at levees
City men, unaccustomed to the thing, have, with its help, provided
comedy for the rest of the company.
But I take it this is not the comedy our dramatist had in mind.
[Why not an Exhibition of Gentlemen?]
It seems a pity that comedy should disappear from among us. If it
depend entirely on swords and snuff-boxes, would it not be worth the
while of the Society of Authors to keep a few gentlemen specially
trained? Maybe some sympathetic theatrical manager would lend us
costumes of the eighteenth century. We might provide them with
swords and snuff-boxes. They might meet, say, once a week, in a
Queen Anne drawing-room, especially prepared by Gillow, and go
through their tricks. Authors seeking high-class comedy might be
admitted to a gallery.
Perhaps this explains why old-fashioned readers complain that we do
not give them human nature. How can we? Ladies and gentlemen
nowadays don't wear the proper clothes. Evidently it all depends
upon the clothes.
CHAPTER XX
[Woman and her behaviour.]
Should women smoke?
The question, in four-inch letters, exhibited on a placard outside a
small newsvendor's shop, caught recently my eye. The wanderer
through London streets is familiar with such-like appeals to his
decision: "Should short men marry tall wives?" "Ought we to cut our
hair?" "Should second cousins kiss?" Life's problems appear to be
endless.
Personally, I am not worrying myself whether women should smoke or
not. It seems to me a question for the individual woman to decide
for herself. I like women who smoke; I can see no objection to their
smoking. Smoking soothes the nerves. Women's nerves occasionally
want soothing. The tiresome idiot who argues that smoking is
unwomanly denounces the drinking of tea as unmanly. He is a wooden-
headed person who derives all his ideas from cheap fiction. The
manly man of cheap fiction smokes a pipe and drinks whisky. That is
how we know he is a man. The womanly woman--well, I always feel I
could make a better woman myself out of an old clothes shop and a
hair-dresser's block.
But, as I have said, the question does not impress me as one
demanding my particular attention. I also like the woman who does
not smoke. I have met in my time some very charming women who do not
smoke. It may be a sign of degeneracy, but I am prepared to abdicate
my position of woman's god, leaving her free to lead her own life.
[Woman's God.]
Candidly, the responsibility of feeling myself answerable for all a
woman does or does not do would weigh upon me. There are men who are
willing to take this burden upon themselves, and a large number of
women are still anxious that they should continue to bear it. I
spoke quite seriously to a young lady not long ago on the subject of
tight lacing; undoubtedly she was injuring her health. She admitted
it herself.
"I know all you can say," she wailed; "I daresay a lot of it is true.
Those awful pictures where one sees--well, all the things one does
not want to think about. If they are correct, it must be bad,
squeezing it all up together."
"Then why continue to do so?" I argued.
"Oh, it's easy enough to talk," she explained; "a few old fogies like
you"--I had been speaking very plainly to her, and she was cross with
me--"may pretend you don't like small waists, but the average man
does."
Poor girl! She was quite prepared to injure herself for life, to
damage her children's future, to be uncomfortable for fifteen hours a
day, all to oblige the average man.
It is a compliment to our sex. What man would suffer injury and
torture to please the average woman? This frenzied desire of woman
to conform to our ideals is touching. A few daring spirits of late
years have exhibited a tendency to seek for other gods--for ideals of
their own. We call them the unsexed women. The womanly women lift
up their hands in horror of such blasphemy.
When I was a boy no womanly woman rode a bicycle--tricycles were
permitted. On three wheels you could still be womanly, but on two
you were "a creature"! The womanly woman, seeing her approach, would
draw down the parlour blind with a jerk, lest the children looking
out might catch a glimpse of her, and their young souls be smirched
for all eternity.
No womanly woman rode inside a hansom or outside a 'bus. I remember
the day my own dear mother climbed outside a 'bus for the first time
in her life. She was excited, and cried a little; but nobody--heaven
be praised!--saw us--that is, nobody of importance. And afterwards
she confessed the air was pleasant.
"Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay
the old aside," is a safe rule for those who would always retain the
good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent,
incubus, "the average person," but the pioneer, the guide, is
necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward.
The freedom-loving girl of to-day, who can enjoy a walk by herself
without losing her reputation, who can ride down the street on her
"bike" without being hooted at, who can play a mixed double at tennis
without being compelled by public opinion to marry her partner, who
can, in short, lead a human creature's life, and not that of a lap-
dog led about at the end of a string, might pause to think what she
owes to the "unsexed creatures" who fought her battle for her fifty
years ago.
[Those unsexed Creatures]
Can the working woman of to-day, who may earn her own living, if she
will, without loss of the elementary rights of womanhood, think of
the bachelor girl of a short generation ago without admiration of her
pluck? There were ladies in those day too "unwomanly" to remain
helpless burdens on overworked fathers and mothers, too "unsexed" to
marry the first man that came along for the sake of their bread and
butter. They fought their way into journalism, into the office, into
the shop. The reformer is not always the pleasantest man to invite
to a tea-party. Maybe these women who went forward with the flag
were not the most charming of their sex. The "Dora Copperfield" type
will for some time remain the young man's ideal, the model the young
girl puts before herself. Myself, I think Dora Copperfield charming,
but a world of Dora Copperfields!
The working woman is a new development in sociology. She has many
lessons to learn, but one has hopes of her. It is said that she is
unfitting herself to be a wife and mother. If the ideal helpmeet for
a man be an animated Dresden china shepherdess--something that looks
pretty on the table, something to be shown round to one's friends,
something that can be locked up safely in a cupboard, that asks no
questions, and, therefore, need be told no lies--then a woman who has
learnt something of the world, who has formed ideas of her own, will
not be the ideal wife.
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