The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
J >>
Jerome K. Jerome >> The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 | 13 |
14
"You remember that tea I gave you?" he said.
"Distinctly," I answered; "I've got the taste of it in my mouth
now."
"Did it upset you?" he asked.
"It annoyed me at the time," I answered; "but that's all over now."
He seemed thoughtful. "You were quite correct," he answered; "it
WAS snuff, a very special snuff, sent me all the way from India."
"I can't say I liked it," I replied.
"A stupid mistake of mine," he went on--"I must have mixed up the
packets!"
"Oh, accidents will happen," I said, "and you won't make another
mistake, I feel sure; so far as I am concerned."
We can all give advice. I had the honour once of serving an old
gentleman whose profession it was to give legal advice, and
excellent legal advice he always gave. In common with most men who
know the law, he had little respect for it. I have heard him say to
a would-be litigant--
"My dear sir, if a villain stopped me in the street and demanded of
me my watch and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. If he
thereupon said, 'Then I shall take it from you by brute force,' I
should, old as I am, I feel convinced, reply to him, 'Come on.' But
if, on the other hand, he were to say to me, 'Very well, then I
shall take proceedings against you in the Court of Queen's Bench to
compel you to give it up to me,' I should at once take it from my
pocket, press it into his hand, and beg of him to say no more about
the matter. And I should consider I was getting off cheaply."
Yet that same old gentleman went to law himself with his next-door
neighbour over a dead poll parrot that wasn't worth sixpence to
anybody, and spent from first to last a hundred pounds, if he spent
a penny.
"I know I'm a fool," he confessed. "I have no positive proof that
it WAS his cat; but I'll make him pay for calling me an Old Bailey
Attorney, hanged if I don't!"
We all know how the pudding OUGHT to be made. We do not profess to
be able to make it: that is not our business. Our business is to
criticize the cook. It seems our business to criticize so many
things that it is not our business to do. We are all critics
nowadays. I have my opinion of you, Reader, and you possibly have
your own opinion of me. I do not seek to know it; personally, I
prefer the man who says what he has to say of me behind my back. I
remember, when on a lecturing tour, the ground-plan of the hall
often necessitated my mingling with the audience as they streamed
out. This never happened but I would overhear somebody in front of
me whisper to his or her companion--"Take care, he's just behind
you." I always felt so grateful to that whisperer.
At a Bohemian Club, I was once drinking coffee with a Novelist, who
happened to be a broad-shouldered, athletic man. A fellow-member,
joining us, said to the Novelist, "I have just finished that last
book of yours; I'll tell you my candid opinion of it." Promptly
replied the Novelist, "I give you fair warning--if you do, I shall
punch your head." We never heard that candid opinion.
Most of our leisure time we spend sneering at one another. It is a
wonder, going about as we do with our noses so high in the air, we
do not walk off this little round world into space, all of us. The
Masses sneer at the Classes. The morals of the Classes are
shocking. If only the Classes would consent as a body to be taught
behaviour by a Committee of the Masses, how very much better it
would be for them. If only the Classes would neglect their own
interests and devote themselves to the welfare of the Masses, the
Masses would be more pleased with them.
The Classes sneer at the Masses. If only the Masses would follow
the advice given them by the Classes; if only they would be thrifty
on their ten shillings a week; if only they would all be
teetotalers, or drink old claret, which is not intoxicating; if only
all the girls would be domestic servants on five pounds a year, and
not waste their money on feathers; if only the men would be content
to work for fourteen hours a day, and to sing in tune, "God bless
the Squire and his relations," and would consent to be kept in their
proper stations, all things would go swimmingly--for the Classes.
The New Woman pooh-poohs the Old; the Old Woman is indignant with
the New. The Chapel denounces the Stage; the Stage ridicules Little
Bethel; the Minor Poet sneers at the world; the world laughs at the
Minor Poet.
Man criticizes Woman. We are not altogether pleased with woman. We
discuss her shortcomings, we advise her for her good. If only
English wives would dress as French wives, talk as American wives,
cook as German wives! if only women would be precisely what we want
them to be--patient and hard-working, brilliantly witty and
exhaustively domestic, bewitching, amenable, and less suspicious;
how very much better it would be for them--also for us. We work so
hard to teach them, but they will not listen. Instead of paying
attention to our wise counsel, the tiresome creatures are wasting
their time criticizing us. It is a popular game, this game of
school. All that is needful is a doorstep, a cane, and six other
children. The difficulty is the six other children. Every child
wants to be the schoolmaster; they will keep jumping up, saying it
is their turn.
Woman wants to take the stick now, and put man on the doorstep.
There are one or two things she has got to say to him. He is not at
all the man she approves of. He must begin by getting rid of all
his natural desires and propensities; that done, she will take him
in hand and make of him--not a man, but something very much
superior.
It would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody would only
follow our advice. I wonder, would Jerusalem have been the cleanly
city it is reported, if, instead of troubling himself concerning his
own twopenny-halfpenny doorstep, each citizen had gone out into the
road and given eloquent lectures to all the other inhabitants on the
subject of sanitation?
We have taken to criticizing the Creator Himself of late. The world
is wrong, we are wrong. If only He had taken our advice, during
those first six days!
Why do I seem to have been scooped out and filled up with lead? Why
do I hate the smell of bacon, and feel that nobody cares for me? It
is because champagne and lobsters have been made wrong.
Why do Edwin and Angelina quarrel? It is because Edwin has been
given a fine, high-spirited nature that will not brook
contradiction; while Angelina, poor girl, has been cursed with
contradictory instincts.
Why is excellent Mr. Jones brought down next door to beggary? Mr.
Jones had an income of a thousand a year, secured by the Funds. But
there came along a wicked Company promoter (why are wicked Company
promoters permitted?) with a prospectus, telling good Mr. Jones how
to obtain a hundred per cent. for his money by investing it in some
scheme for the swindling of Mr. Jones's fellow-citizens.
The scheme does not succeed; the people swindled turn out, contrary
to the promise of the prospectus, to be Mr. Jones and his
fellow-investors. Why does Heaven allow these wrongs?
Why does Mrs. Brown leave her husband and children, to run off with
the New Doctor? It is because an ill-advised Creator has given Mrs.
Brown and the New Doctor unduly strong emotions. Neither Mrs. Brown
nor the New Doctor are to be blamed. If any human being be
answerable it is, probably, Mrs. Brown's grandfather, or some early
ancestor of the New Doctor's.
We shall criticize Heaven when we get there. I doubt if any of us
will be pleased with the arrangements; we have grown so exceedingly
critical.
It was once said of a very superior young man that he seemed to be
under the impression that God Almighty had made the universe chiefly
to hear what he would say about it. Consciously or unconsciously,
most of us are of this way of thinking. It is an age of mutual
improvement societies--a delightful idea, everybody's business being
to improve everybody else; of amateur parliaments, of literary
councils, of playgoers' clubs.
First Night criticism seems to have died out of late, the Student of
the Drama having come to the conclusion, possibly, that plays are
not worth criticizing. But in my young days we were very earnest at
this work. We went to the play, less with the selfish desire of
enjoying our evening, than with the noble aim of elevating the
Stage. Maybe we did good, maybe we were needed--let us think so.
Certain it is, many of the old absurdities have disappeared from the
Theatre, and our rough-and-ready criticism may have helped the happy
dispatch. A folly is often served by an unwise remedy.
The dramatist in those days had to reckon with his audience.
Gallery and Pit took an interest in his work such as Galleries and
Pits no longer take. I recollect witnessing the production of a
very blood-curdling melodrama at, I think, the old Queen's Theatre.
The heroine had been given by the author a quite unnecessary amount
of conversation, so we considered. The woman, whenever she appeared
on the stage, talked by the yard; she could not do a simple little
thing like cursing the Villain under about twenty lines. When the
hero asked her if she loved him she stood up and made a speech about
it that lasted three minutes by the watch. One dreaded to see her
open her mouth. In the Third Act, somebody got hold of her and shut
her up in a dungeon. He was not a nice man, speaking generally, but
we felt he was the man for the situation, and the house cheered him
to the echo. We flattered ourselves we had got rid of her for the
rest of the evening. Then some fool of a turnkey came along, and
she appealed to him, through the grating, to let her out for a few
minutes. The turnkey, a good but soft-hearted man, hesitated.
"Don't you do it," shouted one earnest Student of the Drama, from
the Gallery; "she's all right. Keep her there!"
The old idiot paid no attention to our advice; he argued the matter
to himself. "'Tis but a trifling request," he remarked; "and it
will make her happy."
"Yes, but what about us?" replied the same voice from the Gallery.
"You don't know her. You've only just come on; we've been listening
to her all the evening. She's quiet now, you let her be."
"Oh, let me out, if only for one moment!" shrieked the poor woman.
"I have something that I must say to my child."
"Write it on a bit of paper, and pass it out," suggested a voice
from the Pit. "We'll see that he gets it."
"Shall I keep a mother from her dying child?" mused the turnkey.
"No, it would be inhuman."
"No, it wouldn't," persisted the voice of the Pit; "not in this
instance. It's too much talk that has made the poor child ill."
The turnkey would not be guided by us. He opened the cell door
amidst the execrations of the whole house. She talked to her child
for about five minutes, at the end of which time it died.
"Ah, he is dead!" shrieked the distressed parent.
"Lucky beggar!" was the unsympathetic rejoinder of the house.
Sometimes the criticism of the audience would take the form of
remarks, addressed by one gentleman to another. We had been
listening one night to a play in which action seemed to be
unnecessarily subordinated to dialogue, and somewhat poor dialogue
at that. Suddenly, across the wearying talk from the stage, came
the stentorian whisper--
"Jim!"
"Hallo!"
"Wake me up when the play begins."
This was followed by an ostentatious sound as of snoring. Then the
voice of the second speaker was heard--
"Sammy!"
His friend appeared to awake.
"Eh? Yes? What's up? Has anything happened?"
"Wake you up at half-past eleven in any event, I suppose?"
"Thanks, do, sonny." And the critic slept again.
Yes, we took an interest in our plays then. I wonder shall I ever
enjoy the British Drama again as I enjoyed it in those days? Shall
I ever enjoy a supper again as I enjoyed the tripe and onions washed
down with bitter beer at the bar of the old Albion? I have tried
many suppers after the theatre since then, and some, when friends
have been in generous mood, have been expensive and elaborate. The
cook may have come from Paris, his portrait may be in the
illustrated papers, his salary may be reckoned by hundreds; but
there is something wrong with his art, for all that, I miss a
flavour in his meats. There is a sauce lacking.
Nature has her coinage, and demands payment in her own currency. At
Nature's shop it is you yourself must pay. Your unearned increment,
your inherited fortune, your luck, are not legal tenders across her
counter.
You want a good appetite. Nature is quite willing to supply you.
"Certainly, sir," she replies, "I can do you a very excellent
article indeed. I have here a real genuine hunger and thirst that
will make your meal a delight to you. You shall eat heartily and
with zest, and you shall rise from the table refreshed, invigorated,
and cheerful."
"Just the very thing I want," exclaims the gourmet delightedly.
"Tell me the price."
"The price," answers Mrs. Nature, "is one long day's hard work."
The customer's face falls; he handles nervously his heavy purse.
"Cannot I pay for it in money?" he asks. "I don't like work, but I
am a rich man, I can afford to keep French cooks, to purchase old
wines."
Nature shakes her head.
"I cannot take your cheques, tissue and nerve are my charges. For
these I can give you an appetite that will make a rump-steak and a
tankard of ale more delicious to you than any dinner that the
greatest chef in Europe could put before you. I can even promise
you that a hunk of bread and cheese shall be a banquet to you; but
you must pay my price in my money; I do not deal in yours."
And next the Dilettante enters, demanding a taste for Art and
Literature, and this also Nature is quite prepared to supply.
"I can give you true delight in all these things," she answers.
"Music shall be as wings to you, lifting you above the turmoil of
the world. Through Art you shall catch a glimpse of Truth. Along
the pleasant paths of Literature you shall walk as beside still
waters."
"And your charge?" cries the delighted customer.
"These things are somewhat expensive," replies Nature. "I want from
you a life lived simply, free from all desire of worldly success, a
life from which passion has been lived out; a life to which appetite
has been subdued."
"But you mistake, my dear lady," replies the Dilettante; "I have
many friends, possessed of taste, and they are men who do not pay
this price for it. Their houses are full of beautiful pictures,
they rave about 'nocturnes' and 'symphonies,' their shelves are
packed with first editions. Yet they are men of luxury and wealth
and fashion. They trouble much concerning the making of money, and
Society is their heaven. Cannot I be as one of these?"
"I do not deal in the tricks of apes," answers Nature coldly; "the
culture of these friends of yours is a mere pose, a fashion of the
hour, their talk mere parrot chatter. Yes, you can purchase such
culture as this, and pretty cheaply, but a passion for skittles
would be of more service to you, and bring you more genuine
enjoyment. My goods are of a different class. I fear we waste each
other's time."
And next comes the boy, asking with a blush for love, and Nature's
motherly old heart goes out to him, for it is an article she loves
to sell, and she loves those who come to purchase it of her. So she
leans across the counter, smiling, and tells him that she has the
very thing he wants, and he, trembling with excitement, likewise
asks the figure.
"It costs a good deal," explains Nature, but in no discouraging
tone; "it is the most expensive thing in all my shop."
"I am rich," replies the lad. "My father worked hard and saved, and
he has left me all his wealth. I have stocks and shares, and lands
and factories; and will pay any price in reason for this thing."
But Nature, looking graver, lays her hand upon his arm.
"Put by your purse, boy," she says, "my price is not a price in
reason, nor is gold the metal that I deal in. There are many shops
in various streets where your bank-notes will be accepted. But if
you will take an old woman's advice, you will not go to them. The
thing they will sell you will bring sorrow and do evil to you. It
is cheap enough, but, like all things cheap, it is not worth the
buying. No man purchases it, only the fool."
"And what is the cost of the thing YOU sell then?" asks the lad.
"Self-forgetfulness, tenderness, strength," answers the old Dame;
"the love of all things that are of good repute, the hate of all
things evil--courage, sympathy, self-respect, these things purchase
love. Put by your purse, lad, it will serve you in other ways, but
it will not buy for you the goods upon my shelves."
"Then am I no better off than the poor man?" demands the lad.
"I know not wealth or poverty as you understand it," answers Nature.
"Here I exchange realities only for realities. You ask for my
treasures, I ask for your brain and heart in exchange--yours, boy,
not your father's, not another's."
"And this price," he argues, "how shall I obtain it?"
"Go about the world," replies the great Lady. "Labour, suffer,
help. Come back to me when you have earned your wages, and
according to how much you bring me so we will do business."
Is real wealth so unevenly distributed as we think? Is not Fate the
true Socialist? Who is the rich man, who the poor? Do we know?
Does even the man himself know? Are we not striving for the shadow,
missing the substance? Take life at its highest; which was the
happier man, rich Solomon or poor Socrates? Solomon seems to have
had most things that most men most desire--maybe too much of some
for his own comfort. Socrates had little beyond what he carried
about with him, but that was a good deal. According to our scales,
Solomon should have been one of the happiest men that ever lived,
Socrates one of the most wretched. But was it so?
Or taking life at its lowest, with pleasure its only goal. Is my
lord Tom Noddy, in the stalls, so very much jollier than 'Arry in
the gallery? Were beer ten shillings the bottle, and champagne
fourpence a quart, which, think you, we should clamour for? If
every West End Club had its skittle alley, and billiards could only
be played in East End pubs, which game, my lord, would you select?
Is the air of Berkeley Square so much more joy-giving than the
atmosphere of Seven Dials? I find myself a piquancy in the air of
Seven Dials, missing from Berkeley Square. Is there so vast a
difference between horse-hair and straw, when you are tired? Is
happiness multiplied by the number of rooms in one's house? Are
Lady Ermintrude's lips so very much sweeter than Sally's of the
Alley? What IS success in life?
ON THE PLAYING OF MARCHES AT THE FUNERALS OF MARIONETTES
He began the day badly. He took me out and lost me. It would be so
much better, would he consent to the usual arrangement, and allow me
to take him out. I am far the abler leader: I say it without
conceit. I am older than he is, and I am less excitable. I do not
stop and talk with every person I meet, and then forget where I am.
I do less to distract myself: I rarely fight, I never feel I want
to run after cats, I take but little pleasure in frightening
children. I have nothing to think about but the walk, and the
getting home again. If, as I say, he would give up taking me out,
and let me take him out, there would be less trouble all round. But
into this I have never been able to persuade him.
He had mislaid me once or twice, but in Sloane Square he lost me
entirely. When he loses me, he stands and barks for me. If only he
would remain where he first barked, I might find my way to him; but,
before I can cross the road, he is barking half-way down the next
street. I am not so young as I was and I sometimes think he
exercises me more than is good for me. I could see him from where I
was standing in the King's Road. Evidently he was most indignant.
I was too far off to distinguish the barks, but I could guess what
he was saying--
"Damn that man, he's off again."
He made inquiries of a passing dog--
"You haven't smelt my man about anywhere, have you?"
(A dog, of course, would never speak of SEEING anybody or anything,
smell being his leading sense. Reaching the top of a hill, he would
say to his companion--"Lovely smell from here, I always think; I
could sit and sniff here all the afternoon." Or, proposing a walk,
he would say--"I like the road by the canal, don't you? There's
something interesting to catch your nose at every turn.")
"No, I haven't smelt any man in particular," answered the other dog.
"What sort of a smelling man is yours?"
"Oh, an egg-and-bacony sort of a man, with a dash of soap about
him."
"That's nothing to go by," retorted the other; "most men would
answer to that description, this time of the morning. Where were
you when you last noticed him?"
At this moment he caught sight of me, and came up, pleased to find
me, but vexed with me for having got lost.
"Oh, here you are," he barked; "didn't you see me go round the
corner? Do keep closer. Bothered if half my time isn't taken up,
finding you and losing you again."
The incident appeared to have made him bad-tempered; he was just in
the humour for a row of any sort. At the top of Sloane Street a
stout military-looking gentleman started running after the Chelsea
bus. With a "Hooroo" William Smith was after him. Had the old
gentleman taken no notice, all would have been well. A butcher boy,
driving just behind, would--I could read it in his eye--have caught
Smith a flick as he darted into the road, which would have served
him right; the old gentleman would have captured his bus; and the
affair would have been ended. Unfortunately, he was that type of
retired military man all gout and curry and no sense. He stopped to
swear at the dog. That, of course, was what Smith wanted. It is
not often he gets a scrimmage with a full-grown man. "They're a
poor-spirited lot, most of them," he thinks; "they won't even answer
you back. I like a man who shows a bit of pluck." He was frenzied
with delight at his success. He flew round his victim, weaving
whooping circles and curves that paralyzed the old gentleman as
though they had been the mystic figures of a Merlin. The colonel
clubbed his umbrella, and attempted to defend himself. I called to
the dog, I gave good advice to the colonel (I judged him to be a
colonel; the louder he spoke, the less one could understand him),
but both were too excited to listen to me. A sympathetic bus driver
leaned over, and whispered hoarse counsel.
"Ketch 'im by the tail, sir," he advised the old gentleman; "don't
you be afraid of him; you ketch 'im firmly by the tail."
A milkman, on the other hand, sought rather to encourage Smith,
shouting as he passed--
"Good dog, kill him!"
A child, brained within an inch by the old gentleman's umbrella,
began to cry. The nurse told the old gentleman he was a fool--a
remark which struck me as singularly apt The old gentleman gasped
back that perambulators were illegal on the pavement; and, between
his exercises, inquired after myself. A crowd began to collect; and
a policeman strolled up.
It was not the right thing: I do not defend myself; but, at this
point, the temptation came to me to desert William Smith. He likes
a street row, I don't. These things are matters of temperament. I
have also noticed that he has the happy instinct of knowing when to
disappear from a crisis, and the ability to do so; mysteriously
turning up, quarter of a mile off, clad in a peaceful and
pre-occupied air, and to all appearances another and a better dog.
Consoling myself with the reflection that I could be of no practical
assistance to him and remembering with some satisfaction that, by a
fortunate accident, he was without his collar, which bears my name
and address, I slipped round the off side of a Vauxhall bus, making
no attempt at ostentation, and worked my way home through Lowndes
Square and the Park.
Five minutes after I had sat down to lunch, he flung open the
dining-room door, and marched in. It is his customary "entrance."
In a previous state of existence, his soul was probably that of an
Actor-Manager.
From his exuberant self-satisfaction, I was inclined to think he
must have succeeded in following the milkman's advice; at all
events, I have not seen the colonel since. His bad temper had
disappeared, but his "uppishness" had, if possible, increased.
Previous to his return, I had given The O'Shannon a biscuit. The
O'Shannon had been insulted; he did not want a dog biscuit; if he
could not have a grilled kidney he did not want anything. He had
thrown the biscuit on the floor. Smith saw it and made for it. Now
Smith never eats biscuits. I give him one occasionally, and he at
once proceeds to hide it. He is a thrifty dog; he thinks of the
future. "You never know what may happen," he says; "suppose the
Guv'nor dies, or goes mad, or bankrupt, I may be glad even of this
biscuit; I'll put it under the door-mat--no, I won't, somebody will
find it there. I'll scratch a hole in the tennis lawn, and bury it
there. That's a good idea; perhaps it'll grow!" Once I caught him
hiding it in my study, behind the shelf devoted to my own books. It
offended me, his doing that; the argument was so palpable.
Generally, wherever he hides it somebody finds it. We find it under
our pillows--inside our boots; no place seems safe. This time he
had said to himself--"By Jove! a whole row of the Guv'nor's books.
Nobody will ever want to take these out; I'll hide it here." One
feels a thing like that from one's own dog.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 | 13 |
14