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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[She is now a Believer.]
A lady of my acquaintance tells me it is marvellous how much these
spirits seem to know. On her very first visit, the spirit, through
the voice of the medium--an elderly gentleman residing obscurely in
Clerkenwell--informed her without a moment's hesitation that she
possessed a relative with the Christian name of George. (I am not
making this up--it is real.) This gave her at first the idea that
spiritualism was a fraud. She had no relative named George--at
least, so she thought. But a morning or two later her husband
received a letter from Australia. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, as he
glanced at the last page, "I had forgotten all about the poor old
beggar."
"Whom is it from?" she asked.
"Oh, nobody you know--haven't seen him myself for twenty years--a
third or fourth cousin of mine--George--"
She never heard the surname, she was too excited. The spirit had
been right from the beginning; she HAD a relative named George. Her
faith in spiritualism is now as a rock.
There are thousands of folk who believe in Old Moore's Almanac. My
difficulty would be not to believe in the old gentleman. I see that
for the month of January last he foretold us that the Government
would meet with determined and persistent opposition. He warned us
that there would be much sickness about, and that rheumatism would
discover its old victims. How does he know these things? Is it that
the stars really do communicate with him, or does he "feel it in his
bones," as the saying is up North?
During February, he mentioned, the weather would be unsettled. He
concluded:
"The word Taxation will have a terrible significance for both
Government and people this month."
Really, it is quite uncanny. In March:
"Theatres will do badly during the month."
There seems to be no keeping anything from Old Moore. In April "much
dissatisfaction will be expressed among Post Office employees." That
sounds probable, on the face of it. In any event, I will answer for
our local postman.
In May "a wealthy magnate is going to die." In June there is going
to be a fire. In July "Old Moore has reason to fear there will be
trouble."
I do hope he may be wrong, and yet somehow I feel a conviction that
he won't be. Anyhow, one is glad it has been put off till July.
In August "one in high authority will be in danger of demise." In
September "zeal" on the part of persons mentioned "will outstrip
discretion." In October Old Moore is afraid again. He cannot avoid
a haunting suspicion that "Certain people will be victimized by
extensive fraudulent proceedings."
In November "the public Press will have its columns full of important
news." The weather will be "adverse," and "a death will occur in
high circles." This makes the second in one year. I am glad I do
not belong to the higher circles.
[How does he do it?]
In December Old Moore again foresees trouble, just when I was hoping
it was all over. "Frauds will come to light, and death will find its
victims."
And all this information is given to us for a penny.
The palmist examines our hand. "You will go a journey," he tells us.
It is marvellous! How could he have known that only the night before
we had been discussing the advisability of taking the children to
Margate for the holidays?
"There is trouble in store for you," he tells us, regretfully, "but
you will get over it." We feel that the future has no secret hidden
from him.
We have "presentiments" that people we love, who are climbing
mountains, who are fond of ballooning, are in danger.
The sister of a friend of mine who went out to the South African War
as a volunteer had three presentiments of his death. He came home
safe and sound, but admitted that on three distinct occasions he had
been in imminent danger. It seemed to the dear lady a proof of
everything she had ever read.
Another friend of mine was waked in the middle of the night by his
wife, who insisted that he should dress himself and walk three miles
across a moor because she had had a dream that something terrible was
happening to a bosom friend of hers. The bosom friend and her
husband were rather indignant at being waked at two o'clock in the
morning, but their indignation was mild compared with that of the
dreamer on learning that nothing was the matter. From that day
forward a coldness sprang up between the two families.
I would give much to believe in ghosts. The interest of life would
be multiplied by its own square power could we communicate with the
myriad dead watching us from their mountain summits. Mr. Zangwill,
in a poem that should live, draws for us a pathetic picture of blind
children playing in a garden, laughing, romping. All their lives
they have lived in darkness; they are content. But, the wonder of
it, could their eyes by some miracle be opened!
[Blind Children playing in a World of Darkness.]
May not we be but blind children, suggests the poet, living in a
world of darkness--laughing, weeping, loving, dying--knowing nothing
of the wonder round us?
The ghosts about us, with their god-like faces, it might be good to
look at them.
But these poor, pale-faced spooks, these dull-witted, table-thumping
spirits: it would be sad to think that of such was the kingdom of
the Dead.
CHAPTER XVII
[Parents and their Teachers.]
My heart has been much torn of late, reading of the wrongs of
Children. It has lately been discovered that Children are being
hampered and harassed in their career by certain brutal and ignorant
persons called, for want of a better name, parents. The parent is a
selfish wretch who, out of pure devilment, and without consulting the
Child itself upon the subject, lures innocent Children into the
world, apparently for the purpose merely of annoying them. The
parent does not understand the Child when he has got it; he does not
understand anything, not much. The only person who understands the
Child is the young gentleman fresh from College and the elderly
maiden lady, who, between them, produce most of the literature that
explains to us the Child.
The parent does not even know how to dress the Child. The parent
will persist in dressing the Child in a long and trailing garment
that prevents the Child from kicking. The young gentleman fresh from
College grows almost poetical in his contempt. It appears that the
one thing essential for the health of a young child is that it should
have perfect freedom to kick. Later on the parent dresses the Child
in short clothes, and leaves bits of its leg bare. The elderly
maiden Understander of Children, quoting medical opinion, denounces
us as criminals for leaving any portion of that precious leg
uncovered. It appears that the partially uncovered leg of childhood
is responsible for most of the disease that flesh is heir to.
Then we put it into boots. We "crush its delicately fashioned feet
into hideous leather instruments of torture." That is the sort of
phrase that is hurled at us! The picture conjured up is that of some
fiend in human shape, calling itself a father, seizing some helpless
cherub by the hair, and, while drowning its pathetic wails for mercy
beneath roars of demon laughter, proceeding to bind about its tender
bones some ancient curiosity dug from the dungeons of the
Inquisition.
If the young gentleman fresh from College or the maiden lady
Understander could be, if only for a month or two, a father! If only
he or she could guess how gladly the father of limited income would
reply,
"My dear, you are wrong in saying that the children must have boots.
That is an exploded theory. The children must not have boots. I
refuse to be a party to crushing their delicately fashioned feet into
hideous leather instruments of torture. The young gentleman fresh
from College and the elderly maiden Understander have decided that
the children must not have boots. Do not let me hear again that out-
of-date word--boots."
If there were only one young gentleman fresh from College, one maiden
lady Understander teaching us our duty, life would be simpler. But
there are so many young gentlemen from College, so many maiden lady
Understanders, on the job--if I may be permitted a vulgarism; and as
yet they are not all agreed. It is distracting for the parent
anxious to do right. We put the little dears into sandals, and then
at once other young gentlemen from College, other maiden lady
Understanders, point to us as would-be murderers. Long clothes are
fatal, short clothes are deadly, boots are instruments of torture, to
allow children to go about with bare feet shows that we regard them
as Incumbrances, and, with low cunning, are seeking to be rid of
them.
[Their first attempt.]
I knew a pair of parents. I am convinced, in spite of all that can
be said to the contrary, they were fond of their Child; it was their
first. They were anxious to do the right thing. They read with
avidity all books and articles written on the subject of Children.
They read that a Child should always sleep lying on its back, and
took it in turns to sit awake o' nights to make sure that the Child
was always right side up.
But another magazine told them that Children allowed to sleep lying
on their backs grew up to be idiots. They were sad they had not read
of this before, and started the Child on its right side. The Child,
on the contrary, appeared to have a predilection for the left, the
result being that neither the parents nor the baby itself for the
next three weeks got any sleep worth speaking of.
Later on, by good fortune, they came across a treatise that said a
Child should always be allowed to choose its own position while
sleeping, and their friends persuaded them to stop at that--told them
they would never strike a better article if they searched the whole
British Museum Library. It troubled them to find that Child
sometimes sleeping curled up with its toe in its mouth, and sometimes
flat on its stomach with its head underneath the pillow. But its
health and temper were decidedly improved.
[The Parent can do no right.]
There is nothing the parent can do right. You would think that now
and then he might, if only by mere accident, blunder into sense.
But, no, there seems to be a law against it. He brings home woolly
rabbits and indiarubber elephants, and expects the Child to be
contented "forsooth" with suchlike aids to its education. As a
matter of fact, the Child is content: it bangs its own head with the
woolly rabbit and does itself no harm; it tries to swallow the
indiarubber elephant; it does not succeed, but continues to hope.
With that woolly rabbit and that indiarubber elephant it would be as
happy as the day is long if only the young gentleman from Cambridge
would leave it alone, and not put new ideas into its head. But the
gentleman from Cambridge and the maiden lady Understander are
convinced that the future of the race depends upon leaving the Child
untrammelled to select its own amusements. A friend of mine, during
his wife's absence once on a visit to her mother, tried the
experiment.
The Child selected a frying-pan. How it got the frying-pan remains
to this day a mystery. The cook said "frying-pans don't walk
upstairs." The nurse said she should be sorry to call anyone a liar,
but that there was commonsense in everything. The scullery-maid said
that if everybody did their own work other people would not be driven
beyond the limits of human endurance; and the housekeeper said that
she was sick and tired of life. My friend said it did not matter.
The Child clung to the frying-pan with passion. The book my friend
was reading said that was how the human mind was formed: the Child's
instinct prompted it to seize upon objects tending to develop its
brain faculty. What the parent had got to do was to stand aside and
watch events.
The Child proceeded to black everything about the nursery with the
bottom of the frying-pan. It then set to work to lick the frying-pan
clean. The nurse, a woman of narrow ideas, had a presentiment that
later on it would be ill. My friend explained to her the error the
world had hitherto committed: it had imagined that the parent knew a
thing or two that the Child didn't. In future the Children were to
do their bringing up themselves. In the house of the future the
parents would be allotted the attics where they would be out of the
way. They might occasionally be allowed down to dinner, say, on
Sundays.
The Child, having exhausted all the nourishment the frying-pan
contained, sought to develop its brain faculty by thumping itself
over the head with the flat of the thing. With the selfishness of
the average parent--thinking chiefly of what the Coroner might say,
and indifferent to the future of humanity, my friend insisted upon
changing the game.
[His foolish talk.]
The parent does not even know how to talk to his own Child. The
Child is yearning to acquire a correct and dignified mode of
expression. The parent says: "Did ums. Did naughty table hurt
ickle tootsie pootsies? Baby say: ''Oo naughty table. Me no love
'oo.'"
The Child despairs of ever learning English. What should we think
ourselves were we to join a French class, and were the Instructor to
commence talking to us French of this description? What the Child,
according to the gentleman from Cambridge, says to itself is,
"Oh for one hour's intelligent conversation with a human being who
can talk the language."
Will not the young gentleman from Cambridge descend to detail? Will
he not give us a specimen dialogue?
A celebrated lady writer, who has made herself the mouthpiece of
feminine indignation against male stupidity, took up the cudgels a
little while ago on behalf of Mrs. Caudle. She admitted Mrs. Caudle
appeared to be a somewhat foolish lady. "BUT WHAT HAD CAUDLE EVER
DONE TO IMPROVE MRS. CAUDLE'S MIND?" Had he ever sought, with
intelligent illuminating conversation, to direct her thoughts towards
other topics than lent umbrellas and red-headed minxes?
It is my complaint against so many of our teachers. They scold us
for what we do, but so rarely tell us what we ought to do. Tell me
how to talk to my baby, and I am willing to try. It is not as if I
took a personal pride in the phrase: "Did ums." I did not even
invent it. I found it, so to speak, when I got here, and my
experience is that it soothes the Child. When he is howling, and I
say "Did ums" with sympathetic intonation, he stops crying. Possibly
enough it is astonishment at the ineptitude of the remark that
silences him. Maybe it is that minor troubles are lost sight of face
to face with the reflection that this is the sort of father with
which fate has provided him. But may not even this be useful to him?
He has got to meet with stupid people in the world. Let him begin by
contemplating me. It will make things easier for him later on. I
put forward the idea in the hope of comforting the young gentleman
from Cambridge.
We injure the health of the Child by enforcing on it silence. We
have a stupid formula that children should be seen and not heard. We
deny it exercise to its lungs. We discourage its natural and
laudable curiosity by telling it not to worry us--not to ask so many
questions.
Won't somebody lend the young gentleman from Cambridge a small and
healthy child just for a week or so, and let the bargain be that he
lives with it all the time? The young gentleman from Cambridge
thinks, when we call up the stairs to say that if we hear another
sound from the nursery during the next two hours we will come up and
do things to that Child the mere thought of which should appal it,
that is silencing the Child. It does not occur to him that two
minutes later that Child is yelling again at the top of its voice,
having forgotten all we ever said.
[The Child of Fiction.]
I know the sort of Child the weeper over Children's wrongs has in his
mind. It has deep, soulful, yearning eyes. It moves about the house
softly, shedding an atmosphere of patient resignation. It says:
"Yes, dear papa." "No, dear mamma." It has but one ambition--to be
good and useful. It has beautiful thoughts about the stars. You
don't know whether it is in the house or isn't: you find it with its
little face pressed close against the window-pane watching the golden
sunset. Nobody understands it. It blesses the old people and dies.
One of these days the young gentleman from Cambridge will, one hopes,
have a Baby of his own--a real Child: and serve him darn-well right.
At present he is labouring under a wrong conception of the article.
He says we over-educate it. We clog its wonderful brain with a mass
of uninteresting facts and foolish formulas that we call knowledge.
He does not know that all this time the Child is alive and kicking.
He is under the delusion that the Child is taking all this lying
down. We tell the Child it has got to be quiet, or else we will
wring its neck. The gentleman from Cambridge pictures the Child as
from that moment a silent spirit moving voiceless towards the grave.
We catch the Child in the morning, and clean it up, and put a little
satchel on its back, and pack it off to school; and the maiden lady
Understander pictures that Child wasting the all too brief period of
youth crowding itself up with knowledge.
My dear Madam, you take it from me that your tears are being wasted.
You wipe your eyes and cheer up. The dear Child is not going to be
overworked: HE is seeing to that.
As a matter of the fact, the Child of the present day is having, if
anything, too good a time. I shall be considered a brute for saying
this, but I am thinking of its future, and my opinion is that we are
giving it swelled head. The argument just now in the air is that the
parent exists merely for the Children. The parent doesn't count. It
is as if a gardener were to say,
"Bother the flowers, let them rot. The sooner they are out of the
way the better. The seed is the only thing that interests me."
You can't produce respectable seed but from carefully cultivated
flowers. The philosopher, clamouring for improved Children, will
later grasp the fact that the parent is of importance. Then he will
change his tactics, and address the Children, and we shall have our
time. He will impress on them how necessary it is for their own
sakes that they should be careful of us. We shall have books written
about misunderstood fathers who were worried into early graves.
[The misunderstood Father.]
Fresh Air Funds will be started for sending parents away to the
seaside on visits to kind bachelors living in detached houses, miles
away from Children. Books will be specially written for us picturing
a world where school fees are never demanded and babies never howl o'
nights. Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Parents will
arise. Little girls who get their hair entangled and mislay all
their clothes just before they are starting for the party--little
boys who kick holes in their best shoes will be spanked at the public
expense.
CHAPTER XVIII
[Marriage and the Joke of it.]
Marriages are made in heaven--"but solely," it has been added by a
cynical writer, "for export." There is nothing more remarkable in
human sociology than our attitude towards the institution of
marriage. So it came home to me the other evening as I sat on a cane
chair in the ill-lighted schoolroom of a small country town. The
occasion was a Penny Reading. We had listened to the usual overture
from Zampa, played by the lady professor and the eldest daughter of
the brewer; to "Phil Blood's Leap," recited by the curate; to the
violin solo by the pretty widow about whom gossip is whispered--one
hopes it is not true. Then a pale-faced gentleman, with a drooping
black moustache, walked on to the platform. It was the local tenor.
He sang to us a song of love. Misunderstandings had arisen; bitter
words, regretted as soon as uttered, had pierced the all too
sensitive spirit. Parting had followed. The broken-hearted one had
died believing his affection unrequited. But the angels had since
told him; he knew she loved him now--the accent on the now.
I glanced around me. We were the usual crowd of mixed humanity--
tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, with our cousins, and our
sisters, and our wives. So many of our eyes were wet with tears.
Miss Butcher could hardly repress her sobs. Young Mr. Tinker, his
face hidden behind his programme, pretended to be blowing his nose.
Mrs. Apothecary's large bosom heaved with heartfelt sighs. The
retired Colonel sniffed audibly. Sadness rested on our souls. It
might have been so different but for those foolish, hasty words!
There need have been no funeral. Instead, the church might have been
decked with bridal flowers. How sweet she would have looked beneath
her orange wreath! How proudly, gladly, he might have responded "I
will," take her for his wedded wife, to have and to hold from this
day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness
and in health, to love and to cherish, till death did them part. And
thereto he might have plighted his troth.
In the silence which reigned after the applause had subsided the
beautiful words of the Marriage Service seemed to be stealing through
the room: that they might ever remain in perfect love and peace
together. Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine. Thy children like
the olive branches round about thy table. Lo! thus shall a man be
blessed. So shall men love their wives as their own bodies, and be
not bitter against them, giving honour unto them as unto the weaker
vessel. Let the wife see that she reverence her husband, wearing the
ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.
[Love and the Satyr.]
All the stories sung by the sweet singers of all time were echoing in
our ears--stories of true love that would not run smoothly until the
last chapter; of gallant lovers strong and brave against fate; of
tender sweethearts, waiting, trusting, till love's golden crown was
won; so they married and lived happy ever after.
Then stepped briskly on the platform a stout, bald-headed man. We
greeted him with enthusiasm--it was the local low comedian. The
piano tinkled saucily. The self-confident man winked and opened wide
his mouth. It was a funny song; how we roared with laughter! The
last line of each verse was the same:
"And that's what it's like when you're married."
"Before it was 'duckie,' and 'darling,' and 'dear.' Now it's 'Take
your cold feet away, Brute! can't you hear?'
"Once they walked hand in hand: 'Me loves ickle 'oo.' Now he
strides on ahead" (imitation with aid of umbrella much appreciated;
the bald-headed man, in his enthusiasm and owing to the smallness of
the platform, sweeping the lady accompanist off her stool), "bawling:
'Come along, do.'"
The bald-headed man interspersed side-splitting patter. The husband
comes home late; the wife is waiting for him at the top of the stairs
with a broom. He kisses the servant-girl. She retaliates by
discovering a cousin in the Guards.
The comic man retired to an enthusiastic demand for an encore. I
looked around me at the laughing faces. Miss Butcher had been
compelled to stuff her handkerchief into her mouth. Mr. Tinker was
wiping his eyes; he was not ashamed this time, they were tears of
merriment. Mrs. Apothecary's motherly bosom was shaking like a
jelly. The Colonel was grinning from ear to ear.
Later on, as I noticed in the programme, the schoolmistress, an
unmarried lady, was down to sing "Darby and Joan." She has a
sympathetic voice. Her "Darby and Joan" is always popular. The
comic man would also again appear in the second part, and would
oblige with (by request) "His Mother-in-Law."
So the quaint comedy continues: To-night we will enjoy Romeo and
Juliet, for to-morrow we have seats booked for The Pink Domino.
[What the Gipsy did not mention.]
"Won't the pretty lady let the poor old gipsy tell her fortune?"
Blushes, giggles, protestations. Gallant gentleman friend insists.
A dark man is in love with pretty lady. Gipsy sees a marriage not so
very far ahead. Pretty lady says "What nonsense!" but looks serious.
Pretty lady's pretty friends must, of course, be teasing. Gallant
gentleman friend, by curious coincidence, happens to be dark. Gipsy
grins and passes on.
Is that all the gipsy knows of pretty lady's future? The rheumy,
cunning eyes! They were bonny and black many years ago, when the
parchment skin was smooth and fair. They have seen so many a passing
show--do they see in pretty lady's hand nothing further?
What would the wicked old eyes foresee did it pay them to speak: --
Pretty lady crying tears into a pillow. Pretty lady growing ugly,
spite and anger spoiling pretty features. Dark young man no longer
loving. Dark young man hurling bitter words at pretty lady--hurling,
maybe, things more heavy. Dark young man and pretty lady listening
approvingly to comic singer, having both discovered: "That's what
it's like when you're married."
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