The Angel and the Author and others

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Maybe it is Society that is to blame. There comes a luminous moment
when it is suddenly revealed to the Heroine of the Problem Play that
it is Society that is at the bottom of this thing. She has felt all
along there was something the matter. Why has she never thought of
it before? Here all these years has she been going about blaming her
poor old father; her mother for dying too soon; the remarkable
circumstances attending her girlhood; that dear old stupid husband
she thought was hers; and all the while the really culpable party has
been existing unsuspected under her very nose. She clears away the
furniture a bit, and tells Society exactly what she thinks of it--she
is always good at that, telling people what she thinks of them.
Other people's failings do not escape her, not for long. If Society
would only step out for a moment, and look at itself with her eyes,
something might be done. If Society, now that the thing has been
pointed out to it, has still any lingering desire to live, let it
look at her. This, that she is, Society has made her! Let Society
have a walk round her, and then go home and reflect.

[Could she--herself--have been to blame?]

It lifts a load from us, fixing the blame on Society. There were
periods in the play when we hardly knew what to think. The
scientific father, the dead mother, the early husband! it was
difficult to grasp the fact that they alone were to blame. One felt
there was something to be said for even them. Ugly thoughts would
cross our mind that perhaps the Heroine herself was not altogether
irreproachable--that possibly there would have been less Problem, if,
thinking a little less about her clothes, yearning a little less to
do nothing all day long and be perfectly happy, she had pulled
herself together, told herself that the world was not built
exclusively for her, and settled down to the existence of an ordinary
decent woman.

Looking at the thing all round, that is perhaps the best solution of
the Problem: it is Society that is to blame. We had better keep to
that.

CHAPTER IX

[Civilization and the Unemployed.]

Where Civilization fails is in not providing men and women with
sufficient work. In the Stone Age man was, one imagines, kept busy.
When he was not looking for his dinner, or eating his dinner, or
sleeping off the effects of his dinner, he was hard at work with a
club, clearing the neighbourhood of what one doubts not he would have
described as aliens. The healthy Palaeolithic man would have had a
contempt for Cobden rivalling that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. He
did not take the incursion of the foreigner "lying down." One
pictures him in the mind's eye: unscientific, perhaps, but active to
a degree difficult to conceive in these degenerate days. Now up a
tree hurling cocoa-nuts, the next moment on the ground flinging roots
and rocks. Both having tolerably hard heads, the argument would of
necessity be long and heated. Phrases that have since come to be
meaningless had, in those days, a real significance.

When a Palaeolithic politician claimed to have "crushed his critic,"
he meant that he had succeeded in dropping a tree or a ton of earth
upon him. When it was said that one bright and intelligent member of
that early sociology had "annihilated his opponent," that opponent's
friends and relations took no further interest in him. It meant that
he was actually annihilated. Bits of him might be found, but the
most of him would be hopelessly scattered. When the adherents of any
particular Cave Dweller remarked that their man was wiping the floor
with his rival, it did not mean that he was talking himself red in
the face to a bored audience of sixteen friends and a reporter. It
meant that he was dragging that rival by the legs round the enclosure
and making the place damp and untidy with him.

[Early instances of "Dumping."]

Maybe the Cave Dweller, finding nuts in his own neighbourhood growing
scarce, would emigrate himself: for even in that age the politician
was not always logical. Thus roles became reversed. The defender of
his country became the alien, dumping himself where he was not
wanted. The charm of those early political arguments lay in their
simplicity. A child could have followed every point. There could
never have been a moment's doubt, even among his own followers, as to
what a Palaeolithic statesman really meant to convey. At the close
of the contest the party who considered it had won the moral victory
would be cleared away, or buried neatly on the spot, according to
taste: and the discussion, until the arrival of the next generation,
was voted closed.

All this must have been harassing, but it did serve to pass away the
time. Civilization has brought into being a section of the community
with little else to do but to amuse itself. For youth to play is
natural; the young barbarian plays, the kitten plays, the colt
gambols, the lamb skips. But man is the only animal that gambols and
jumps and skips after it has reached maturity. Were we to meet an
elderly bearded goat, springing about in the air and behaving,
generally speaking, like a kid, we should say it had gone mad. Yet
we throng in our thousands to watch elderly ladies and gentlemen
jumping about after a ball, twisting themselves into strange shapes,
rushing, racing, falling over one another; and present them with
silver-backed hair-brushes and gold-handled umbrellas as a reward to
them for doing so.

Imagine some scientific inhabitant of one of the larger fixed stars
examining us through a magnifying-glass as we examine ants. Our
amusements would puzzle him. The ball of all sorts and sizes, from
the marble to the pushball, would lead to endless scientific
argument.

"What is it? Why are these men and women always knocking it about,
seizing it wherever and whenever they find it and worrying it?"

The observer from that fixed star would argue that the Ball must be
some malignant creature of fiendish power, the great enemy of the
human race. Watching our cricket-fields, our tennis-courts, our golf
links, he would conclude that a certain section of mankind had been
told off to do battle with the "Ball" on behalf of mankind in
general.

"As a rule," so he would report, "it is a superior class of insect to
which this special duty has been assigned. They are a friskier,
gaudier species than their fellows.

[Cricket, as viewed from the fixed Stars.]

"For this one purpose they appear to be kept and fed. They do no
other work, so far as I have been able to ascertain. Carefully
selected and trained, their mission is to go about the world looking
for Balls. Whenever they find a Ball they set to work to kill it.
But the vitality of these Balls is extraordinary. There is a medium-
sized, reddish species that, on an average, takes three days to kill.
When one of these is discovered, specially trained champions are
summoned from every corner of the country. They arrive in hot haste,
eager for the battle, which takes place in the presence of the entire
neighbourhood. The number of champions for some reason or another is
limited to twenty-two. Each one seizing in turn a large piece of
wood, rushes at the Ball as it flies along the ground, or through the
air, and strikes at it with all his force. When, exhausted, he can
strike no longer, he throws down his weapon and retires into a tent,
where he is restored to strength by copious draughts of a drug the
nature of which I have been unable to discover. Meanwhile, another
has picked up the fallen weapon, and the contest is continued without
a moment's interruption. The Ball makes frantic efforts to escape
from its tormentors, but every time it is captured and flung back.
So far as can be observed, it makes no attempt at retaliation, its
only object being to get away; though, occasionally--whether by
design or accident--it succeeds in inflicting injury upon one or
other of its executioners, or more often upon one of the spectators,
striking him either on the head or about the region of the waist,
which, judging by results, would appear, from the Ball's point of
view, to be the better selection. These small reddish Balls are
quickened into life evidently by the heat of the sun; in the cold
season they disappear, and their place is taken by a much larger
Ball. This Ball the champions kill by striking it with their feet
and with their heads. But sometimes they will attempt to suffocate
it by falling on it, some dozen of them at a time.

"Another of these seemingly harmless enemies of the human race is a
small white Ball of great cunning and resource. It frequents sandy
districts by the sea coast and open spaces near the large towns. It
is pursued with extraordinary animosity by a florid-faced insect of
fierce aspect and rotundity of figure. The weapon he employs is a
long stick loaded with metal. With one blow he will send the
creature through the air sometimes to a distance of nearly a quarter
of a mile; yet so vigorous is the constitution of these Balls that it
will fall to earth apparently but little damaged. It is followed by
the rotund man accompanied by a smaller insect carrying spare clubs.
Though hampered by the prominent whiteness of its skin, the extreme
smallness of this Ball often enables it to defy re-discovery, and at
such times the fury of the little round man is terrible to
contemplate. He dances round the spot where the ball has
disappeared, making frenzied passes at the surrounding vegetation
with his club, uttering the while the most savage and bloodcurdling
growls. Occasionally striking at the small creature in fury, he will
miss it altogether, and, having struck merely the air, will sit down
heavily upon the ground, or, striking the solid earth, will shatter
his own club. Then a curious thing takes place: all the other
insects standing round place their right hand before their mouth,
and, turning away their faces, shake their bodies to and fro,
emitting a strange crackling sound. Whether this is to be regarded
as a mere expression of their grief that the blow of their comrade
should have miscarried, or whether one may assume it to be a
ceremonious appeal to their gods for better luck next time, I have
not as yet made up my mind. The striker, meanwhile, raises both
arms, the hands tightly clenched, towards the heavens, and utters
what is probably a prayer, prepared expressly for the occasion.

[The Heir of all Ages. His Inheritance.]

In similar manner he, the Celestial Observer, proceeds to describe
our billiard matches, our tennis tournaments, our croquet parties.
Maybe it never occurs to him that a large section of our race
surrounded by Eternity, would devote its entire span of life to sheer
killing of time. A middle-aged friend of mine, a cultured gentleman,
a M.A. of Cambridge, assured me the other day that, notwithstanding
all his experiences of life, the thing that still gave him the
greatest satisfaction was the accomplishment of a successful drive to
leg. Rather a quaint commentary on our civilization, is it not?
"The singers have sung, and the builders have builded. The artists
have fashioned their dreams of delight." The martyrs for thought and
freedom have died their death; knowledge has sprung from the bones of
ignorance; civilization for ten thousand years has battled with
brutality to this result--that a specimen gentleman of the Twentieth
Century, the heir of all the ages, finds his greatest joy in life the
striking of a ball with a chunk of wood!

Human energy, human suffering, has been wasted. Such crown of
happiness for a man might surely have been obtained earlier and at
less cost. Was it intended? Are we on the right track? The child's
play is wiser. The battered doll is a princess. Within the sand
castle dwells an ogre. It is with imagination that he plays. His
games have some relation to life. It is the man only who is content
with this everlasting knocking about of a ball. The majority of
mankind is doomed to labour so constant, so exhausting, that no
opportunity is given it to cultivate its brain. Civilization has
arranged that a small privileged minority shall alone enjoy that
leisure necessary to the development of thought. And what is the
answer of this leisured class? It is:

"We will do nothing for the world that feeds us, clothes us, keeps us
in luxury. We will spend our whole existence knocking balls about,
watching other people knocking balls about, arguing with one another
as to the best means of knocking balls about."

[Is it "Playing the Game?"]

Is it--to use their own jargon--"playing the game?"

And the queer thing is this over-worked world, that stints itself to
keep them in idleness, approves of the answer. "The flannelled
fool," "The muddied oaf," is the pet of the people; their hero, their
ideal.

But maybe all this is mere jealousy. Myself, I have never been
clever at knocking balls about.

CHAPTER X

[Patience and the Waiter.]

The slowest waiter I know is the British railway refreshment-room
waiter.

His very breathing--regular, harmonious, penetrating, instinct as it
is with all the better attributes of a well-preserved grandfather's
clock--conveys suggestion of dignity and peace. He is a huge,
impressive person. There emanates from him an atmosphere of
Lotusland. The otherwise unattractive refreshment-room becomes an
oasis of repose amid the turmoil of a fretful world. All things
conspire to aid him: the ancient joints, ranged side by side like
corpses in a morgue, each one decently hidden under its white muslin
shroud, whispering of death and decay; the dish of dead flies,
thoughtfully placed in the centre of the table; the framed
advertisements extolling the virtues of heavy beers and stouts, of
weird champagnes, emanating from haunted-looking chateaux, situate--
if one may judge from the illustration--in the midst of desert lands;
the sleep-inviting buzz of the bluebottles.

The spirit of the place steals over you. On entering, with a quarter
of an hour to spare, your idea was a cutlet and a glass of claret.
In the face of the refreshment-room waiter, the notion appears
frivolous, not to say un-English. You order cold beef and pickles,
with a pint of bitter in a tankard. To win the British waiter's
approval, you must always order beer in a tankard. The British
waiter, in his ideals, is mediaeval. There is a Shakespearean touch
about a tankard. A soapy potato will, of course, be added.
Afterwards a ton of cheese and a basin of rabbit's food floating in
water (the British salad) will be placed before you. You will work
steadily through the whole, anticipating the somnolence that will
subsequently fall upon you with a certain amount of satisfaction. It
will serve to dispel the last lingering regret at the reflection that
you will miss your appointment, and suffer thereby serious
inconvenience if not positive loss. These things are of the world--
the noisy, tiresome world you have left without.

To the English traveller, the foreign waiter in the earlier stages of
his career is a burden and a trial. When he is complete--when he
really can talk English I rejoice in him. When I object to him is
when his English is worse than my French or German, and when he will,
for his own educational purposes, insist, nevertheless, that the
conversation shall be entirely in English. I would he came to me
some other time. I would so much rather make it after dinner or,
say, the next morning. I hate giving lessons during meal times.

Besides, to a man with feeble digestion, this sort of thing can lead
to trouble. One waiter I met at an hotel in Dijon knew very little
English--about as much as a poll parrot. The moment I entered the
salle-a-manger he started to his feet.

"Ah! You English!" he cried.

"Well, what about us?" I answered. It was during the period of the
Boer War. I took it he was about to denounce the English nation
generally. I was looking for something to throw at him.

"You English--you Englishman, yes," he repeated.

And then I understood he had merely intended a question. I owned up
that I was, and accused him in turn of being a Frenchman. He
admitted it. Introductions, as it were, thus over, I thought I would
order dinner. I ordered it in French. I am not bragging of my
French, I never wanted to learn French. Even as a boy, it was more
the idea of others than of myself. I learnt as little as possible.
But I have learnt enough to live in places where they can't, or
won't, speak anything else. Left to myself, I could have enjoyed a
very satisfactory dinner. I was tired with a long day's journey, and
hungry. They cook well at this hotel. I had been looking forward to
my dinner for hours and hours. I had sat down in my imagination to a
consomme bisque, sole au gratin, a poulet saute, and an omelette au
fromage.

[Waiterkind in the making.]

It is wrong to let one's mind dwell upon carnal delights; I see that
now. At the time I was mad about it. The fool would not even listen
to me. He had got it into his garlic-sodden brain that all
Englishmen live on beef, and nothing but beef. He swept aside all my
suggestions as though they had been the prattlings of a foolish
child.

"You haf nice biftek. Not at all done. Yes?"

"No, I don't," I answered. "I don't want what the cook of a French
provincial hotel calls a biftek. I want something to eat. I want--"
Apparently, he understood neither English nor French.

"Yes, yes," he interrupted cheerfully, "with pottitoes."

"With what?" I asked. I thought for the moment he was suggesting
potted pigs' feet in the nearest English he could get to it.

"Pottito," he repeated; "boil pottito. Yes? And pell hell."

I felt like telling him to go there; I suppose he meant "pale ale."
It took me about five minutes to get that beefsteak out of his head.
By the time I had done it, I did not care what I had for dinner. I
took pot-du-jour and veal. He added, on his own initiative, a thing
that looked like a poultice. I did not try the taste of it. He
explained it was "plum poodeen." I fancy he had made it himself.

This fellow is typical; you meet him everywhere abroad. He
translates your bill into English for you, calls ten centimes a
penny, calculates twelve francs to the pound, and presses a handful
of sous affectionately upon you as change for a napoleon.

The cheating waiter is common to all countries, though in Italy and
Belgium he flourishes, perhaps, more than elsewhere. But the British
waiter, when detected, becomes surly--does not take it nicely. The
foreign waiter is amiable about it--bears no malice. He is grieved,
maybe, at your language, but that is because he is thinking of you--
the possible effect of it upon your future. To try and stop you, he
offers you another four sous. The story is told of a Frenchman who,
not knowing the legal fare, adopted the plan of doling out pennies to
a London cabman one at a time, continuing until the man looked
satisfied. Myself, I doubt the story. From what I know of the
London cabman, I can see him leaning down still, with out-stretched
hand, the horse between the shafts long since dead, the cab chockfull
of coppers, and yet no expression of satiety upon his face.

But the story would appear to have crossed the Channel, and to have
commended itself to the foreign waiter--especially to the railway
refreshment-room waiter. He doles out sous to the traveller, one at
a time, with the air of a man who is giving away the savings of a
lifetime. If, after five minutes or so, you still appear
discontented he goes away quite suddenly. You think he has gone to
open another chest of half-pence, but when a quarter of an hour has
passed and he does not reappear, you inquire about him amongst the
other waiters.

A gloom at once falls upon them. You have spoken of the very thing
that has been troubling them. He used to be a waiter here once--one
might almost say until quite recently. As to what has become of him-
-ah! there you have them. If in the course of their chequered career
they ever come across him, they will mention to him that you are
waiting for him. Meanwhile a stentorian-voiced official is shouting
that your train is on the point of leaving. You console yourself
with the reflection that it might have been more. It always might
have been more; sometimes it is.

[His Little Mistakes.]

A waiter at the Gare du Nord, in Brussels, on one occasion pressed
upon me a five-franc piece, a small Turkish coin the value of which
was unknown to me, and remains so to this day, a distinctly bad two
francs, and from a quarter of a pound to six ounces of centimes, as
change for a twenty-franc note, after deducting the price of a cup of
coffee. He put it down with the air of one subscribing to a charity.
We looked at one another. I suppose I must have conveyed to him the
impression of being discontented. He drew a purse from his pocket.
The action suggested that, for the purpose of satisfying my
inordinate demands, he would be compelled to draw upon his private
resources; but it did not move me. Abstracting reluctantly a fifty-
centime piece, he added it to the heap upon the table.

I suggested his taking a seat, as at this rate it seemed likely we
should be doing business together for some time. I think he gathered
I was not a fool. Hitherto he had been judging, I suppose, purely
from appearances. But he was not in the least offended.

"Ah!" he cried, with a cheery laugh, "Monsieur comprend!" He swept
the whole nonsense back into his bag and gave me the right change. I
slipped my arm through his and insisted upon the pleasure of his
society, until I had examined each and every coin. He went away
chuckling, and told another waiter all about it. They both of them
bowed to me as I went out, and wished me a pleasant journey. I left
them still chuckling. A British waiter would have been sulky all the
afternoon.

The waiter who insists upon mistaking you for the heir of all the
Rothschilds used to cost me dear when I was younger. I find the best
plan is to take him in hand at the beginning and disillusion him;
sweep aside his talk of '84 Perrier Jouet, followed by a '79 Chateau
Lafite, and ask him, as man to man, if he can conscientiously
recommend the Saint Julien at two-and-six. After that he settles
down to his work and talks sense.

The fatherly waiter is sometimes a comfort. You feel that he knows
best. Your instinct is to address him as "Uncle." But you remember
yourself in time. When you are dining a lady, however, and wish to
appear important, he is apt to be in the way. It seems, somehow, to
be his dinner. You have a sense almost of being de trop.

The greatest insult you can offer a waiter is to mistake him for your
waiter. You think he is your waiter--there is the bald head, the
black side-whiskers, the Roman nose. But your waiter had blue eyes,
this man soft hazel. You had forgotten to notice the eyes. You bar
his progress and ask him for the red pepper. The haughty contempt
with which he regards you is painful to bear. It is as if you had
insulted a lady. He appears to be saying the same thing:

"I think you have made a mistake. You are possibly confusing me with
somebody else; I have not the honour of your acquaintance."

[How to insult him.]

I do not wish it to be understood that I am in the habit of insulting
ladies, but occasionally I have made an innocent mistake, and have
met with some such response. The wrong waiter conveys to me
precisely the same feeling of humiliation.

"I will send your waiter to you," he answers. His tone implies that
there are waiters and waiters; some may not mind what class of person
they serve: others, though poor, have their self-respect. It is
clear to you now why your waiter is keeping away from you; the man is
ashamed of being your waiter. He is watching, probably, for an
opportunity to approach you when nobody is looking. The other waiter
finds him for you. He was hiding behind a screen.

"Table forty-two wants you," the other tells him. The tone of voice
adds:

"If you like to encourage this class of customer that is your
business; but don't ask me to have anything to do with him."

Even the waiter has his feelings.

CHAPTER XI

[The everlasting Newness of Woman.]

An Oriental visitor was returning from our shores to his native land.

"Well," asked the youthful diplomatist who had been told off to show
him round, as on the deck of the steamer they shook hands, "what do
you now think of England?"

"Too much woman," answered the grave Orientalist, and descended to
his cabin.

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