The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
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Jerome K. Jerome >> The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
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We smiled back at them, and we made way for them; we rose from our
chairs with a polite, "Allow me, miss," "Don't mention it, I prefer
standing." "It is a delightful evening, is it not?" And perhaps-
-for what harm was there?--we dropped into conversation with these
chance fellow-passengers upon the stream of life. There were those
among us--bold daring spirits--who even went to the length of mild
flirtation. Some of us knew some of them, and in such happy case
there followed interchange of pretty pleasantries. Your English
middle-class young man and woman are not adepts at the game of
flirtation. I will confess that our methods were, perhaps,
elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle noisy as the evening
wore on. But we meant no evil; we did but our best to enjoy
ourselves, to give enjoyment, to make the too brief time, pass
gaily.
And then my thoughts travelled to small homes in distant suburbs,
and these bright lads and lasses round me came to look older and
more careworn. But what of that? Are not old faces sweet when
looked at by old eyes a little dimmed by love, and are not care and
toil but the parents of peace and joy?
But as I drew nearer, I saw that many of the faces were seared with
sour and angry looks, and the voices that rose round me sounded
surly and captious. The pretty compliment and praise had changed to
sneers and scoldings. The dimpled smile had wrinkled to a frown.
There seemed so little desire to please, so great a determination
not to be pleased.
And the flirtations! Ah me, they had forgotten how to flirt! Oh,
the pity of it! All the jests were bitter, all the little services
were given grudgingly. The air seemed to have grown chilly. A
darkness had come over all things.
And then I awoke to reality, and found I had been sitting in my
chair longer than I had intended. The band-stand was empty, the sun
had set; I rose and made my way home through the scattered crowd.
Nature is so callous. The Dame irritates one at times by her
devotion to her one idea, the propagation of the species.
"Multiply and be fruitful; let my world be ever more and more
peopled."
For this she trains and fashions her young girls, models them with
cunning hand, paints them with her wonderful red and white, crowns
them with her glorious hair, teaches them to smile and laugh, trains
their voices into music, sends them out into the world to captivate,
to enslave us.
"See how beautiful she is, my lad," says the cunning old woman.
"Take her; build your little nest with her in your pretty suburb;
work for her and live for her; enable her to keep the little ones
that I will send."
And to her, old hundred-breasted Artemis whispers, "Is he not a
bonny lad? See how he loves you, how devoted he is to you! He will
work for you and make you happy; he will build your home for you.
You will be the mother of his children."
So we take each other by the hand, full of hope and love, and from
that hour Mother Nature has done with us. Let the wrinkles come;
let our voices grow harsh; let the fire she lighted in our hearts
die out; let the foolish selfishness we both thought we had put
behind us for ever creep back to us, bringing unkindness and
indifference, angry thoughts and cruel words into our lives. What
cares she? She has caught us, and chained us to her work. She is
our universal mother-in-law. She has done the match-making; for the
rest, she leaves it to ourselves. We can love or we can fight; it
is all one to her, confound her.
I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught. In business
we use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another. The
shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and
affability, he might put up his shutters were he otherwise. The
commercial gent, no doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass,
but refrains from telling him so. Hasty tempers are banished from
the City. Can we not see that it is just as much to our interest to
banish them from Tooting and Hampstead?
The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he
wrapped the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside
him. And when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily
he sprang from his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he
was very comfortable where he was. And she! She had laughed at his
jokes; they were not very clever jokes, they were not very new. She
had probably read them herself months before in her own particular
weekly journal. Yet the harmless humbug made him happy. I wonder
if ten years hence she will laugh at such old humour, if ten years
hence he will take such clumsy pains to put her cape about her.
Experience shakes her head, and is amused at my question.
I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married
couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of
pupils. The husbands would recommend their wives to attend,
generously offering to pay the fee as a birthday present. The wife
would be indignant at the suggestion of good money being thus
wasted. "No, John, dear," she would unselfishly reply, "you need
the lessons more than I do. It would be a shame for me to take them
away from you," and they would wrangle upon the subject for the rest
of the day.
Oh! the folly of it. We pack our hamper for life's picnic with such
pains. We spend so much, we work so hard. We make choice pies, we
cook prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix
with loving hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with
every delicacy we can think of. Everything to make the picnic a
success is there except the salt. Ah! woe is me, we forget the
salt. We slave at our desks, in our workshops, to make a home for
those we love; we give up our pleasures, we give up our rest. We
toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we render the whole
feast tasteless for want of a ha'porth of salt--for want of a
soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a
touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy.
Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till
twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a
woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating.
Her rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children
so well dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so
uninviting. Everything about her is in apple-pie order, and
everybody wretched.
My good Madam, you polish your tables, you scour your kettles, but
the most valuable piece of furniture in the whole house you are
letting to rack and ruin for want of a little pains. You will find
it in your own room, my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror. It
is getting shabby and dingy, old-looking before its time; the polish
is rubbed off it, Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm. Do
you remember when he first brought it home, how proud he was of it?
Do you think you have used it well, knowing how he valued it? A
little less care of your pots and your pans, Madam, a little more of
yourself were wiser. Polish yourself up, Madam; you had a pretty
wit once, a pleasant laugh, a conversation that was not confined
exclusively to the short-comings of servants, the wrong-doings of
tradesmen. My dear Madam, we do not live on spotless linen, and
crumbless carpets. Hunt out that bundle of old letters you keep
tied up in faded ribbon at the back of your bureau drawer--a pity
you don't read them oftener. He did not enthuse about your cuffs
and collars, gush over the neatness of your darning. It was your
tangled hair he raved about, your sunny smile (we have not seen it
for some years, Madam--the fault of the Cook and the Butcher, I
presume), your little hands, your rosebud mouth--it has lost its
shape, Madam, of late. Try a little less scolding of Mary Ann, and
practise a laugh once a day: you might get back the dainty curves.
It would be worth trying. It was a pretty mouth once.
Who invented that mischievous falsehood that the way to a man's
heart was through his stomach? How many a silly woman, taking it
for truth, has let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy
in the kitchen. Of course, if you were foolish enough to marry a
pig, I suppose you must be content to devote your life to the
preparation of hog's-wash. But are you sure that he IS a pig? If
by any chance he be not?--then, Madam, you are making a grievous
mistake. My dear Lady, you are too modest. If I may say so without
making you unduly conceited, even at the dinner-table itself, you
are of much more importance than the mutton. Courage, Madam, be not
afraid to tilt a lance even with your own cook. You can be more
piquant than the sauce a la Tartare, more soothing surely than the
melted butter. There was a time when he would not have known
whether he was eating beef or pork with you the other side of the
table. Whose fault is it? Don't think so poorly of us. We are not
ascetics, neither are we all gourmets: most of us plain men, fond
of our dinner, as a healthy man should be, but fonder still of our
sweethearts and wives, let us hope. Try us. A moderately-cooked
dinner--let us even say a not-too-well-cooked dinner, with you
looking your best, laughing and talking gaily and cleverly--as you
can, you know--makes a pleasanter meal for us, after the day's work
is done, than that same dinner, cooked to perfection, with you
silent, jaded, and anxious, your pretty hair untidy, your pretty
face wrinkled with care concerning the sole, with anxiety regarding
the omelette.
My poor Martha, be not troubled about so many things. YOU are the
one thing needful--if the bricks and mortar are to be a home. See
to it that YOU are well served up, that YOU are done to perfection,
that YOU are tender and satisfying, that YOU are worth sitting down
to. We wanted a wife, a comrade, a friend; not a cook and a nurse
on the cheap.
But of what use is it to talk? the world will ever follow its own
folly. When I think of all the good advice that I have given it,
and of the small result achieved, I confess I grow discouraged. I
was giving good advice to a lady only the other day. I was
instructing her as to the proper treatment of aunts. She was
sucking a lead-pencil, a thing I am always telling her not to do.
She took it out of her mouth to speak.
"I suppose you know how everybody ought to do everything," she said.
There are times when it is necessary to sacrifice one's modesty to
one's duty.
"Of course I do," I replied.
"And does Mama know how everybody ought to do everything?" was the
second question.
My conviction on this point was by no means so strong, but for
domestic reasons I again sacrificed myself to expediency.
"Certainly," I answered; "and take that pencil out of your mouth.
I've told you of that before. You'll swallow it one day, and then
you'll get perichondritis and die."
She appeared to be solving a problem.
"All grown-up people seem to know everything," she summarized.
There are times when I doubt if children are as simple as they look.
If it be sheer stupidity that prompts them to make remarks of this
character, one should pity them, and seek to improve them. But if
it be not stupidity? well then, one should still seek to improve
them, but by a different method.
The other morning I overheard the nurse talking to this particular
specimen. The woman is a most worthy creature, and she was
imparting to the child some really sound advice. She was in the
middle of an unexceptional exhortation concerning the virtue of
silence, when Dorothea interrupted her with--
"Oh, do be quiet, Nurse. I never get a moment's peace from your
chatter."
Such an interruption discourages a woman who is trying to do her
duty.
Last Tuesday evening she was unhappy. Myself, I think that rhubarb
should never be eaten before April, and then never with lemonade.
Her mother read her a homily upon the subject of pain. It was
impressed upon her that we must be patient, that we must put up with
the trouble that God sends us. Dorothea would descend to details,
as children will.
"Must we put up with the cod-liver oil that God sends us?"
"Yes, decidedly."
"And with the nurses that God sends us?"
"Certainly; and be thankful that you've got them, some little girls
haven't any nurse. And don't talk so much."
On Friday I found the mother in tears.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing," was the answer; "only Baby. She's such a strange
child. I can't make her out at all. "
"What has she been up to now?"
"Oh, she will argue, you know."
She has that failing. I don't know where she gets it from, but
she's got it.
"Well?"
"Well, she made me cross; and, to punish her, I told her she
shouldn't take her doll's perambulator out with her."
"Yes?"
"Well, she didn't say anything then, but so soon as I was outside
the door, I heard her talking to herself--you know her way?"
"Yes?"
"She said--"
"Yes, she said?"
"She said, 'I must be patient. I must put up with the mother God
has sent me.'"
She lunches down-stairs on Sundays. We have her with us once a week
to give her the opportunity of studying manners and behaviour.
Milson had dropped in, and we were discussing politics. I was
interested, and, pushing my plate aside, leant forward with my
elbows on the table. Dorothea has a habit of talking to herself in
a high-pitched whisper capable of being heard above an Adelphi love
scene. I heard her say--
"I must sit up straight. I mustn't sprawl with my elbows on the
table. It is only common, vulgar people behave that way."
I looked across at her; she was sitting most correctly, and appeared
to be contemplating something a thousand miles away. We had all of
us been lounging! We sat up stiffly, and conversation flagged.
Of course we made a joke of it after the child was gone. But
somehow it didn't seem to be OUR joke.
I wish I could recollect my childhood. I should so like to know if
children are as simple as they can look.
ON THE DELIGHTS AND BENEFITS OF SLAVERY
My study window looks down upon Hyde Park, and often, to quote the
familiar promise of each new magazine, it amuses and instructs me to
watch from my tower the epitome of human life that passes to and fro
beneath. At the opening of the gates, creeps in the woman of the
streets. Her pitiful work for the time being is over. Shivering in
the chill dawn, she passes to her brief rest. Poor Slave! Lured to
the galley's lowest deck, then chained there. Civilization, tricked
fool, they say has need of such. You serve as the dogs of Eastern
towns. But at least, it seems to me, we need not spit on you. Home
to your kennel! Perchance, if the Gods be kind, they may send you
dreams of a cleanly hearth, where you lie with a silver collar round
your neck.
Next comes the labourer--the hewer of wood, the drawer of water-
-slouching wearily to his toil; sleep clinging still about his
leaden eyes, his pittance of food carried tied up in a dish-clout.
The first stroke of the hour clangs from Big Ben. Haste thee,
fellow-slave, lest the overseer's whip, "Out, we will have no
lie-a-beds here," descend upon thy patient back.
Later, the artisan, with his bag of tools across his shoulder. He,
too, listens fearfully to the chiming of the bells. For him also
there hangs ready the whip.
After him, the shop boy and the shop girl, making love as they walk,
not to waste time. And after these the slaves of the desk and of
the warehouse, employers and employed, clerks and tradesmen, office
boys and merchants. To your places, slaves of all ranks. Get you
unto your burdens.
Now, laughing and shouting as they run, the children, the sons and
daughters of the slaves. Be industrious, little children, and learn
your lessons, that when the time comes you may be ready to take from
our hands the creaking oar, to slip into our seat at the roaring
loom. For we shall not be slaves for ever, little children. It is
the good law of the land. So many years in the galleys, so many
years in the fields; then we can claim our freedom. Then we shall
go, little children, back to the land of our birth. And you we must
leave behind us to take up the tale of our work. So, off to your
schools, little children, and learn to be good little slaves.
Next, pompous and sleek, come the educated slaves--journalists,
doctors, judges, and poets; the attorney, the artist, the player,
the priest. They likewise scurry across the Park, looking anxiously
from time to time at their watches, lest they be late for their
appointments; thinking of the rates and taxes to be earned, of the
bonnets to be paid for, the bills to be met. The best scourged,
perhaps, of all, these slaves. The cat reserved for them has fifty
tails in place of merely two or three. Work, you higher
middle-class slave, or you shall come down to the smoking of
twopenny cigars; harder yet, or you shall drink shilling claret;
harder, or you shall lose your carriage and ride in a penny bus;
your wife's frocks shall be of last year's fashion; your trousers
shall bag at the knees; from Kensington you shall be banished to
Kilburn, if the tale of your bricks run short. Oh, a many-thonged
whip is yours, my genteel brother.
The slaves of fashion are the next to pass beneath me in review.
They are dressed and curled with infinite pains. The liveried,
pampered footman these, kept more for show than use; but their
senseless tasks none the less labour to them. Here must they come
every day, merry or sad. By this gravel path and no other must they
walk; these phrases shall they use when they speak to one another.
For an hour they must go slowly up and down upon a bicycle from Hyde
Park Corner to the Magazine and back. And these clothes must they
wear; their gloves of this colour, their neck-ties of this pattern.
In the afternoon they must return again, this time in a carriage,
dressed in another livery, and for an hour they must pass slowly to
and fro in foolish procession. For dinner they must don yet another
livery, and after dinner they must stand about at dreary social
functions till with weariness and boredom their heads feel dropping
from their shoulders.
With the evening come the slaves back from their work: barristers,
thinking out their eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their
dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of
motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to
please their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as,
together, they plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer. Two or
three hours you shall have to yourselves, slaves, to think and love
and play, if you be not too tired to think, or love, or play. Then
to your litter, that you may be ready for the morrow's task.
The twilight deepens into dark; there comes back the woman of the
streets. As the shadows, she rounds the City's day. Work strikes
its tent. Evil creeps from its peering place.
So we labour, driven by the whip of necessity, an army of slaves.
If we do not our work, the whip descends upon us; only the pain we
feel in our stomach instead of on our back. And because of that, we
call ourselves free men.
Some few among us bravely struggle to be really free: they are our
tramps and outcasts. We well-behaved slaves shrink from them, for
the wages of freedom in this world are vermin and starvation. We
can live lives worth living only by placing the collar round our
neck.
There are times when one asks oneself: Why this endless labour? Why
this building of houses, this cooking of food, this making of
clothes? Is the ant so much more to be envied than the grasshopper,
because she spends her life in grubbing and storing, and can spare
no time for singing? Why this complex instinct, driving us to a
thousand labours to satisfy a thousand desires? We have turned the
world into a workshop to provide ourselves with toys. To purchase
luxury we have sold our ease.
Oh, Children of Israel! why were ye not content in your wilderness?
It seems to have been a pattern wilderness. For you, a simple
wholesome food, ready cooked, was provided. You took no thought for
rent and taxes; you had no poor among you--no poor-rate collectors.
You suffered not from indigestion, nor the hundred ills that follow
over-feeding; an omer for every man was your portion, neither more
nor less. You knew not you had a liver. Doctors wearied you not
with their theories, their physics, and their bills. You were
neither landowners nor leaseholders, neither shareholders nor
debenture holders. The weather and the market reports troubled you
not. The lawyer was unknown to you; you wanted no advice; you had
nought to quarrel about with your neighbour. No riches were yours
for the moth and rust to damage. Your yearly income and expenditure
you knew would balance to a fraction. Your wife and children were
provided for. Your old age caused you no anxiety; you knew you
would always have enough to live upon in comfort. Your funeral, a
simple and tasteful affair, would be furnished by the tribe. And
yet, poor, foolish child, fresh from the Egyptian brickfield, you
could not rest satisfied. You hungered for the fleshpots, knowing
well what flesh-pots entail: the cleaning of the flesh-pots, the
forging of the flesh-pots, the hewing of wood to make the fires for
the boiling of the flesh-pots, the breeding of beasts to fill the
pots, the growing of fodder to feed the beasts to fill the pots.
All the labour of our life is centred round our flesh-pots. On the
altar of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind.
For a mess of pottage we sell our birthright.
Oh! Children of Israel, saw you not the long punishment you were
preparing for yourselves, when in your wilderness you set up the
image of the Calf, and fell before it, crying--"This shall be our
God."
You would have veal. Thought you never of the price man pays for
Veal? The servants of the Golden Calf! I see them, stretched
before my eyes, a weary, endless throng. I see them toiling in the
mines, the black sweat on their faces. I see them in sunless
cities, silent, and grimy, and bent. I see them, ague-twisted, in
the rain-soaked fields. I see them, panting by the furnace doors.
I see them, in loin-cloth and necklace, the load upon their head. I
see them in blue coats and red coats, marching to pour their blood
as an offering on the altar of the Calf. I see them in homespun and
broadcloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I see them in cap and
apron, the servants of the Calf. They swarm on the land and they
dot the sea. They are chained to the anvil and counter; they are
chained to the bench and the desk. They make ready the soil, they
till the fields where the Golden Calf is born. They build the ship,
and they sail the ship that carries the Golden Calf. They fashion
the pots, they mould the pans, they carve the tables, they turn the
chairs, they dream of the sauces, they dig for the salt, they weave
the damask, they mould the dish to serve the Golden Calf.
The work of the world is to this end, that we eat of the Calf. War
and Commerce, Science and Law! what are they but the four pillars
supporting the Golden Calf? He is our God. It is on his back that
we have journeyed from the primeval forest, where our ancestors ate
nuts and fruit. He is our God. His temple is in every street. His
blue-robed priest stands ever at the door, calling to the people to
worship. Hark! his voice rises on the gas-tainted air--"Now's your
time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy! ye people. Bring hither the
sweat of your brow, the sweat of your brain, the ache of your heart,
buy Veal with it. Bring me the best years of your life. Bring me
your thoughts, your hopes, your loves; ye shall have Veal for them.
Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy!"
Oh! Children of Israel, was Veal, even with all its trimmings, quite
worth the price?
And we! what wisdom have we learned, during the centuries? I talked
with a rich man only the other evening. He calls himself a
Financier, whatever that may mean. He leaves his beautiful house,
some twenty miles out of London, at a quarter to eight, summer and
winter, after a hurried breakfast by himself, while his guests still
sleep, and he gets back just in time to dress for an elaborate
dinner he himself is too weary or too preoccupied to more than
touch. If ever he is persuaded to give himself a holiday it is for
a fortnight in Ostend, when it is most crowded and uncomfortable.
He takes his secretary with him, receives and despatches a hundred
telegrams a day, and has a private telephone, through which he can
speak direct to London, brought up into his bedroom.
I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention. Business men
tell me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs
without it. My own wonder always is, how any human being with the
ordinary passions of his race can conduct his business, or even
himself, creditably, within a hundred yards of the invention. I can
imagine Job, or Griselda, or Socrates liking to have a telephone
about them as exercise. Socrates, in particular, would have made
quite a reputation for himself out of a three months' subscription
to a telephone. Myself, I am, perhaps, too sensitive. I once lived
for a month in an office with a telephone, if one could call it
life. I was told that if I had stuck to the thing for two or three
months longer, I should have got used to it. I know friends of
mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front of
their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so
much as answer it back. They tell me that at first they used to
swear and shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed.
That is what happens: you either break the telephone, or the
telephone breaks you. You want to see a man two streets off. You
might put on your hat, and be round at his office in five minutes.
You are on the point of starting when the telephone catches your
eye. You think you will ring him up to make sure he is in. You
commence by ringing up some half-dozen times before anybody takes
any notice of you whatever. You are burning with indignation at
this neglect, and have left the instrument to sit down and pen a
stinging letter of complaint to the Company when the ring-back
re-calls you. You seize the ear trumpets, and shout--
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