Джером К. Джером
The Angel and the Author, and Others
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 décolletée 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 séances, 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.
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.
