Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (430 page)

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.