The Angel and the Author and others

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The chaperon was worse than useless. She was very old. She had been
promised her breakfast, but saw no signs of it. She could not speak
German; and remembered somewhat late in the day that two young ladies
had no business to accept breakfast at the hands of German officers:
and, if they did, at least they might see that they got it. She
appeared to be willing to talk about decadence of modern manners to
almost any extent, but the subject of the hairdresser, and how to get
rid of him, only bored her.

Their first stroke of luck occurred when the hairdresser, showing
them the "dropped three," fell down and temporarily stunned himself.
It was not kind of them, but they were desperate. They flew for the
bank just anyhow, and, scrambling over the grass, gained the
restaurant. The officer, overtaking them at the door, led them to
the table that had been reserved for them, then hastened back to hunt
for the chaperon. The girls thought their trouble was over. Had
they glanced behind them their joy would have been shorter-lived than
even was the case. The hairdresser had recovered consciousness in
time to see them waddling over the grass. He thought they were
running to fetch him brandy. When the officer returned with the
chaperon he found the hairdresser sitting opposite to them,
explaining that he really was not hurt, and suggesting that, as they
were there, perhaps they would like something to eat and drink.

The girls made one last frantic appeal to the man of buckram and
pipeclay, but the etiquette of the Saxon Army was inexorable. It
transpired that he might kill the hairdresser, but nothing else: he
must not speak to him--not even explain to the poor devil why it was
that he was being killed.

[Her path of Usefulness.]

It did not seem quite worth it. They had some sandwiches and coffee
at the hairdresser's expense, and went home in a cab: while the
chaperon had breakfast with the officer of noble family.

The American girl has succeeded in freeing European social
intercourse from many of its hide-bound conventions. There is still
much work for her to do. But I have faith in her.

CHAPTER XV

[Music and the Savage.]

I never visit a music-hall without reflecting concerning the great
future there must be before the human race.

How young we are, how very young! And think of all we have done!
Man is still a mere boy. He has only just within the last half-
century been put into trousers. Two thousand years ago he wore long
clothes--the Grecian robe, the Roman toga. Then followed the Little
Lord Fauntleroy period, when he went about dressed in a velvet suit
with lace collar and cuffs, and had his hair curled for him. The
late lamented Queen Victoria put him into trousers. What a wonderful
little man he will be when he is grown up!

A clergyman friend of mine told me of a German Kurhaus to which he
was sent for his sins and his health. It was a resort, for some
reason, specially patronized by the more elderly section of the
higher English middle class. Bishops were there, suffering from
fatty degeneration of the heart caused by too close application to
study; ancient spinsters of good family subject to spasms; gouty
retired generals. Can anybody tell me how many men in the British
Army go to a general? Somebody once assured me it was five thousand,
but that is absurd, on the face of it. The British Army, in that
case, would have to be counted by millions. There are a goodish few
American colonels still knocking about. The American colonel is
still to be met with here and there by the curious traveller, but
compared with the retired British general he is an extinct species.
In Cheltenham and Brighton and other favoured towns there are streets
of nothing but retired British generals--squares of retired British
generals--whole crescents of British generals. Abroad there are
pensions with a special scale of charges for British generals. In
Switzerland there has even been talk of reserving railway
compartments "For British Generals Only." In Germany, when you do
not say distinctly and emphatically on being introduced that you are
not a British general, you are assumed, as a matter of course, to be
a British general. During the Boer War, when I was residing in a
small garrison town on the Rhine, German military men would draw me
aside and ask of me my own private personal views as to the conduct
of the campaign. I would give them my views freely, explain to them
how I would finish the whole thing in a week.

"But how in the face of the enemy's tactics--" one of them would
begin.

"Bother the enemy's tactics," I would reply. "Who cares for
tactics?"

"But surely a British general--" they would persist. "Who's a
British general?" I would retort, "I am talking to you merely as a
plain commonsense man, with a head on my shoulders."

They would apologize for their mistake. But this is leading me away
from that German Kurhaus.

[Recreation for the Higher clergy.]

My clergyman friend found life there dull. The generals and the
spinsters left to themselves might have played cards, but they
thought of the poor bishops who would have had to look on envious.
The bishops and the spinsters might have sung ballads, but the
British general after dinner does not care for ballads, and had
mentioned it. The bishops and the generals might have told each
other stories, but could not before the ladies. My clergyman friend
stood the awful solemnity of three evenings, then cautiously felt his
way towards revelry. He started with an intellectual game called
"Quotations." You write down quotations on a piece of paper, and the
players have to add the author's name. It roped in four old ladies,
and the youngest bishop. One or two generals tried a round, but not
being familiar with quotations voted the game slow.

The next night my friend tried "Consequences." "Saucy Miss A. met
the gay General B. in"--most unlikely places. "He said." Really it
was fortunate that General B. remained too engrossed in the day
before yesterday's Standard to overhear, or Miss A. could never have
again faced him. "And she replied." The suppressed giggles excited
the curiosity of the non-players. Most of the bishops and half the
generals asked to be allowed to join. The giggles grew into roars.
Those standing out found that they could not read their papers in
comfort.

From "Consequences" the descent was easy. The tables and chairs were
pushed against the walls, the bishops and the spinsters and the
generals would sit in a ring upon the floor playing hunt the slipper.
Musical chairs made the two hours between bed and dinner the time of
the day they all looked forward to: the steady trot with every nerve
alert, the ear listening for the sudden stoppage of the music, the
eye seeking with artfulness the likeliest chair, the volcanic
silence, the mad scramble.

The generals felt themselves fighting their battles over again, the
spinsters blushed and preened themselves, the bishops took interest
in proving that even the Church could be prompt of decision and swift
of movement. Before the week was out they were playing Puss-in-the-
corner; ladies feeling young again were archly beckoning to stout
deans, to whom were returning all the sensations of a curate. The
swiftness with which the gouty generals found they could still hobble
surprised even themselves.

[Why are we so young?]

But it is in the music-hall, as I have said, that I am most impressed
with the youthfulness of man. How delighted we are when the long man
in the little boy's hat, having asked his short brother a riddle, and
before he can find time to answer it, hits him over the stomach with
an umbrella! How we clap our hands and shout with glee! It isn't
really his stomach: it is a bolster tied round his waist--we know
that; but seeing the long man whack at that bolster with an umbrella
gives us almost as much joy as if the bolster were not there.

I laugh at the knockabout brothers, I confess, so long as they are on
the stage; but they do not convince me. Reflecting on the
performance afterwards, my dramatic sense revolts against the "plot."
I cannot accept the theory of their being brothers. The difference
in size alone is a strain upon my imagination. It is not probable
that of two children of the same parents one should measure six foot
six, and the other five foot four. Even allowing for a freak of
nature, and accepting the fact that they might be brothers, I do not
believe they would remain so inseparable. The short brother would
have succeeded before now in losing the long brother. Those
continual bangings over the head and stomach would have weakened
whatever affection the short brother might originally have felt
towards his long relation. At least, he would insist upon the
umbrella being left at home.

"I will go for a walk with you," he might say, "I will stand stock
still with you in Trafalgar Square in the midst of the traffic while
you ask me silly riddles, but not if you persist in bringing with you
that absurd umbrella. You are too handy with it. Put it back in the
rack before we start, or go out by yourself."

Besides, my sense of justice is outraged. Why should the short
brother be banged and thumped without reason? The Greek dramatist
would have explained to us that the shorter brother had committed a
crime against the gods. Aristophanes would have made the longer
brother the instrument of the Furies. The riddles he asked would
have had bearing upon the shorter brother's sin. In this way the
spectator would have enjoyed amusement combined with the satisfactory
sense that Nemesis is ever present in human affairs. I present the
idea, for what it may be worth, to the concoctors of knockabout
turns.

[Where Brotherly (and Sisterly) Love reigns supreme]

The family tie is always strong on the music-hall stage. The
acrobatic troupe is always a "Family": Pa, Ma, eight brothers and
sisters, and the baby. A more affectionate family one rarely sees.
Pa and Ma are a trifle stout, but still active. Baby, dear little
fellow, is full of humour. Ladies do not care to go on the music-
hall stage unless they can take their sister with them. I have seen
a performance given by eleven sisters, all the same size and
apparently all the same age. She must have been a wonderful woman--
the mother. They all had golden hair, and all wore precisely similar
frocks--a charming but decolletee arrangement--in claret-coloured
velvet over blue silk stockings. So far as I could gather, they all
had the same young man. No doubt he found it difficult amongst them
to make up his mind.

"Arrange it among yourselves," he no doubt had said, "it is quite
immaterial to me. You are so much alike, it is impossible that a
fellow loving one should not love the lot of you. So long as I marry
into the family I really don't care."

When a performer appears alone on the music-hall stage it is easy to
understand why. His or her domestic life has been a failure. I
listened one evening to six songs in succession. The first two were
sung by a gentleman. He entered with his clothes hanging upon him in
shreds. He explained that he had just come from an argument with his
wife. He showed us the brick with which she had hit him, and the
bump at the back of his head that had resulted. The funny man's
marriage is never a success. But really this seems to be his own
fault. "She was such a lovely girl," he tells us, "with a face--
well, you'd hardly call it a face, it was more like a gas explosion.
Then she had those wonderful sort of eyes that you can see two ways
at once with, one of them looks down the street, while the other one
is watching round the corner. Can see you coming any way. And her
mouth!"

It appears that if she stands anywhere near the curb and smiles,
careless people mistake her for a pillar-box, and drop letters into
her.

"And such a voice!" We are told it is a perfect imitation of a
motor-car. When she laughs people spring into doorways to escape
being run over.

If he will marry that sort of woman, what can he expect? The man is
asking for it.

The lady who followed him also told us a sad story of misplaced
trust. She also was comic--so the programme assured us. The
humorist appears to have no luck. She had lent her lover money to
buy the ring, and the licence, and to furnish the flat. He did buy
the ring, and he furnished the flat, but it was for another lady.
The audience roared. I have heard it so often asked, "What is
humour?" From observation, I should describe it as other people's
troubles.

A male performer followed her. He came on dressed in a night-shirt,
carrying a baby. His wife, it seemed, had gone out for the evening
with the lodger. That was his joke. It was the most successful song
of the whole six.

[The one sure Joke.]

A philosopher has put it on record that he always felt sad when he
reflected on the sorrows of humanity. But when he reflected on its
amusements he felt sadder still.

Why was it so funny that the baby had the lodger's nose? We laughed
for a full minute by the clock.

Why do I love to see a flabby-faced man go behind curtains, and,
emerging in a wig and a false beard, say that he is now Bismarck or
Mr. Chamberlain? I have felt resentment against the Lightning
Impersonator ever since the days of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
During that summer every Lightning Impersonator ended his show by
shouting, while the band played the National Anthem, "Queen
Victoria!" He was not a bit like Queen Victoria. He did not even,
to my thinking, look a lady; but at once I had to stand up in my
place and sing "God save the Queen." It was a time of enthusiastic
loyalty; if you did not spring up quickly some patriotic old fool
from the back would reach across and hit you over the head with the
first thing he could lay his hands upon.

Other music-hall performers caught at the idea. By ending up with
"God save the Queen" any performer, however poor, could retire in a
whirlwind of applause. Niggers, having bored us with tiresome songs
about coons and honeys and Swanee Rivers, would, as a last resource,
strike up "God save the Queen" on the banjo. The whole house would
have to rise and cheer. Elderly Sisters Trippet, having failed to
arouse our enthusiasm by allowing us a brief glimpse of an ankle,
would put aside all frivolity, and tell us of a hero lover named
George, who had fought somebody somewhere for his Queen and country.
"He fell!"--bang from the big drum and blue limelight. In a
recumbent position he appears to have immediately started singing
"God save the Queen."

[How Anarchists are made.]

Sleepy members of the audience would be hastily awakened by their
friends. We would stagger to our feet. The Sisters Trippet, with
eyes fixed on the chandelier, would lead us: to the best of our
ability we would sing "God save the Queen."

There have been evenings when I have sung "God save the Queen" six
times. Another season of it, and I should have become a Republican.

The singer of patriotic songs is generally a stout and puffy man.
The perspiration pours from his face as the result of the violent
gesticulations with which he tells us how he stormed the fort. He
must have reached it very hot.

"There were ten to one agin us, boys." We feel that this was a
miscalculation on the enemy's part. Ten to one "agin" such wildly
gesticulating Britishers was inviting defeat.

It seems to have been a terrible battle notwithstanding. He shows us
with a real sword how it was done. Nothing could have lived within a
dozen yards of that sword. The conductor of the orchestra looks
nervous. Our fear is lest he will end by cutting off his own head.
His recollections are carrying him away. Then follows "Victory!"

The gas men and the programme sellers cheer wildly. We conclude with
the inevitable "God save the King."

CHAPTER XVI

[The Ghost and the Blind Children.]

Ghosts are in the air. It is difficult at this moment to avoid
talking of ghosts. The first question you are asked on being
introduced this season is:

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

I would be so glad to believe in ghosts. This world is much too
small for me. Up to a century or two ago the intellectual young man
found it sufficient for his purposes. It still contained the
unknown--the possible--within its boundaries. New continents were
still to be discovered: we dreamt of giants, Liliputians, desert-
fenced Utopias. We set our sail, and Wonderland lay ever just beyond
our horizon. To-day the world is small, the light railway runs
through the desert, the coasting steamer calls at the Islands of the
Blessed, the last mystery has been unveiled, the fairies are dead,
the talking birds are silent. Our baffled curiosity turns for relief
outwards. We call upon the dead to rescue us from our monotony. The
first authentic ghost will be welcomed as the saviour of humanity.

But he must be a living ghost--a ghost we can respect, a ghost we can
listen to. The poor spiritless addle-headed ghost that has hitherto
haunted our blue chambers is of no use to us. I remember a
thoughtful man once remarking during argument that if he believed in
ghosts--the silly, childish spooks about which we had been telling
anecdotes--death would possess for him an added fear: the idea that
his next dwelling-place would be among such a pack of dismal idiots
would sadden his departing hours. What was he to talk to them about?
Apparently their only interest lay in recalling their earthly
troubles. The ghost of the lady unhappily married who had been
poisoned, or had her throat cut, who every night for the last five
hundred years had visited the chamber where it happened for no other
purpose than to scream about it! what a tiresome person she would be
to meet! All her conversation during the long days would be around
her earthly wrongs. The other ghosts, in all probability, would have
heard about that husband of hers, what he said, and what he did, till
they were sick of the subject. A newcomer would be seized upon with
avidity.

A lady of repute writes to a magazine that she once occupied for a
season a wainscotted room in an old manor house. On several
occasions she awoke in the night: each time to witness the same
ghostly performance. Four gentlemen sat round a table playing cards.
Suddenly one of them sprang to his feet and plunged a dagger into the
back of his partner. The lady does not say so: one presumes it was
his partner. I have, myself, when playing bridge, seen an expression
on my partner's face that said quite plainly:

"I would like to murder you."

I have not the memory for bridge. I forget who it was that, last
trick but seven, played the two of clubs. I thought it was he, my
partner. I thought it meant that I was to take an early opportunity
of forcing trumps. I don't know why I thought so, I try to explain
why I thought so. It sounds a silly argument even to myself; I feel
I have not got it quite right. Added to which it was not my partner
who played the two of clubs, it was Dummy. If I had only remembered
this, and had concluded from it--as I ought to have done--that my
partner had the ace of diamonds--as otherwise why did he pass my
knave?--we might have saved the odd trick. I have not the head for
bridge. It is only an ordinary head--mine. I have no business to
play bridge.

[Why not, occasionally, a cheerful Ghost.]

But to return to our ghosts. These four gentlemen must now and
again, during their earthly existence, have sat down to a merry game
of cards. There must have been evenings when nobody was stabbed.
Why choose an unpleasant occasion to harp exclusively upon it? Why
do ghosts never give a cheerful show? The lady who was poisoned!
there must have been other evenings in her life. Why does she not
show us "The first meeting": when he gave her the violets and said
they were like her eyes? He wasn't always poisoning her. There must
have been a period before he ever thought of poisoning her. Cannot
these ghosts do something occasionally in what is termed "the lighter
vein"? If they haunt a forest glade, it is to perform a duel to the
death, or an assassination. Why cannot they, for a change, give us
an old-time picnic, or "The hawking party," which, in Elizabethan
costume, should make a pretty picture? Ghostland would appear to be
obsessed by the spirit of the Scandinavian drama: murders, suicides,
ruined fortunes, and broken hearts are the only material made use of.
Why is not a dead humorist allowed now and then to write the sketch?
There must be plenty of dead comic lovers; why are they never allowed
to give a performance?

[Where are the dead Humorists?]

A cheerful person contemplates death with alarm. What is he to do in
this land of ghosts? there is no place for him. Imagine the
commonplace liver of a humdrum existence being received into
ghostland. He enters nervous, shy, feeling again the new boy at
school. The old ghosts gather round him.

"How do you come here--murdered?"

"No, at least, I don't think so."

"Suicide?

"No--can't remember the name of it now. Began with a chill on the
liver, I think."

The ghosts are disappointed. But a happy suggestion is made.
Perhaps he was the murderer; that would be even better. Let him
think carefully; can he recollect ever having committed a murder? He
racks his brains in vain, not a single murder comes to his
recollection. He never forged a will. Doesn't even know where
anything is hid. Of what use will he be in ghostland? One pictures
him passing the centuries among a moody crowd of uninteresting
mediocrities, brooding perpetually over their wasted lives. Only the
ghosts of ladies and gentlemen mixed up in crime have any "show" in
ghostland.

[The Spirit does not shine as a Conversationalist.]

I feel an equal dissatisfaction with the spirits who are supposed to
return to us and communicate with us through the medium of three-
legged tables. I do not deny the possibility that spirits exist. I
am even willing to allow them their three-legged tables. It must be
confessed it is a clumsy method. One cannot help regretting that
during all the ages they have not evolved a more dignified system.
One feels that the three-legged table must hamper them. One can
imagine an impatient spirit getting tired of spelling out a lengthy
story on a three-legged table. But, as I have said, I am willing to
assume that, for some spiritual reason unfathomable to my mere human
intelligence, that three-legged table is essential. I am willing
also to accept the human medium. She is generally an unprepossessing
lady running somewhat to bulk. If a gentleman, he so often has dirty
finger-nails, and smells of stale beer. I think myself it would be
so much simpler if the spirit would talk to me direct; we could get
on quicker. But there is that about the medium, I am told, which
appeals to a spirit. Well, it is his affair, not mine, and I waive
the argument. My real stumbling-block is the spirit himself--the
sort of conversation that, when he does talk, he indulges in. I
cannot help feeling that his conversation is not worth the
paraphernalia. I can talk better than that myself.

The late Professor Huxley, who took some trouble over this matter,
attended some half-dozen seances, and then determined to attend no
more.

"I have," he said, "for my sins to submit occasionally to the society
of live bores. I refuse to go out of my way to spend an evening in
the dark with dead bores."

The spiritualists themselves admit that their table-rapping spooks
are precious dull dogs; it would be difficult, in face of the
communications recorded, for them to deny it. They explain to us
that they have not yet achieved communication with the higher
spiritual Intelligences. The more intelligent spirits--for some
reason that the spiritualists themselves are unable to explain--do
not want to talk to them, appear to have something else to do. At
present--so I am told, and can believe--it is only the spirits of
lower intelligence that care to turn up on these evenings. The
spiritualists argue that, by continuing, the higher-class spirits
will later on be induced to "come in." I fail to follow the
argument. It seems to me that we are frightening them away. Anyhow,
myself I shall wait awhile.

When the spirit comes along that can talk sense, that can tell me
something I don't know, I shall be glad to meet him. The class of
spirit that we are getting just at present does not appeal to me.
The thought of him--the reflection that I shall die and spend the
rest of eternity in his company--does not comfort me.

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