Idle Ideas in 1905

  Transcribed from the 1905 Hurst and Blackett edition by David Price,email [email protected]

  IDLE IDEAS in 1905

  * * * * *

  BY

  JEROME K. JEROME

  AUTHOR OF

  “Three Men in a Boat,” “Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow,” etc.

  [Picture: Decorative graphic]

  LONDON HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED 182, HIGH HOLBORN, W.C.

  _All rights reserved_

  CONTENTS.

  CHAP. PAGE I. ARE WE AS INTERESTING AS WE THINK WE ARE? 1 II. SHOULD WOMEN BE BEAUTIFUL? 16 III. WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO BE MERRY? 29 IV. DO WE LIE A-BED TOO LATE? 46 V. SHOULD MARRIED MEN PLAY GOLF? 60 VI. ARE EARLY MARRIAGES A MISTAKE? 74 VII. DO WRITERS WRITE TOO MUCH? 89 VIII. SHOULD SOLDIERS BE POLITE? 105 IX. OUGHT STORIES TO BE TRUE? 122 X. CREATURES THAT ONE DAY SHALL BE MEN 141 XI. HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH LITTLE 158 XII. SHOULD WE SAY WHAT WE THINK, OR THINK WHAT WE 173 SAY? XIII. IS THE AMERICAN HUSBAND MADE ENTIRELY OF STAINED 186 GLASS XIV. DOES THE YOUNG MAN KNOW EVERYTHING WORTH KNOWING? 199 XV. HOW MANY CHARMS HATH MUSIC, WOULD YOU SAY? 213 XVI. THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN! NEED IT BE SO HEAVY? 225 XVII. WHY DIDN’T HE MARRY THE GIRL? 238 XVIII. WHAT MRS. WILKINS THOUGHT ABOUT IT 251 XIX. SHALL WE BE RUINED BY CHINESE CHEAP LABOUR? 264 XX. HOW TO SOLVE THE SERVANT PROBLEM 278 XXI. WHY WE HATE THE FOREIGNER 292

  ARE WE AS INTERESTING AS WE THINK WE ARE?

  “CHARMED. Very hot weather we’ve been having of late—I mean cold. Letme see, I did not quite catch your name just now. Thank you so much.Yes, it is a bit close.” And a silence falls, neither of us being ableto think what next to say.

  What has happened is this: My host has met me in the doorway, and shakenme heartily by the hand.

  “So glad you were able to come,” he has said. “Some friends of minehere, very anxious to meet you.” He has bustled me across the room.“Delightful people. You’ll like them—have read all your books.”

  He has brought me up to a stately lady, and has presented me. We haveexchanged the customary commonplaces, and she, I feel, is waiting for meto say something clever, original and tactful. And I don’t know whethershe is Presbyterian or Mormon; a Protectionist or a Free Trader; whethershe is engaged to be married or has lately been divorced!

  A friend of mine adopts the sensible plan of always providing you with ashort history of the person to whom he is about to lead you.

  “I want to introduce you to a Mrs. Jones,” he whispers. “Clever woman.Wrote a book two years ago. Forget the name of it. Something abouttwins. Keep away from sausages. Father ran a pork shop in the Borough.Husband on the Stock Exchange. Keep off coke. Unpleasantness about acompany. You’ll get on best by sticking to the book. Lot in it aboutplatonic friendship. Don’t seem to be looking too closely at her. Has aslight squint she tries to hide.”

  By this time we have reached the lady, and he introduces me as a friendof his who is simply dying to know her.

  “Wants to talk about your book,” he explains. “Disagrees with youentirely on the subject of platonic friendship. Sure you’ll be able toconvince him.”

  It saves us both a deal of trouble. I start at once on platonicfriendship, and ask her questions about twins, avoiding sausages andcoke. She thinks me an unusually interesting man, and I am less boredthan otherwise I might be.

  I have sometimes thought it would be a serviceable device if, in Society,we all of us wore a neat card—pinned, say, upon our back—setting forthsuch information as was necessary; our name legibly written, and how tobe pronounced; our age (not necessarily in good faith, but for purposesof conversation. Once I seriously hurt a German lady by demanding of herinformation about the Franco-German war. She looked to me as if shecould not object to being taken for forty. It turned out she wasthirty-seven. Had I not been an Englishman I might have had to fight aduel); our religious and political beliefs; together with a list of thesubjects we were most at home upon; and a few facts concerning ourcareer—sufficient to save the stranger from, what is vulgarly termed“putting his foot in it.” Before making jokes about “Dumping,” ordiscussing the question of Chinese Cheap Labour, one would glance behindand note whether one’s companion was ticketed “Whole-hogger,” or“Pro-Boer.” Guests desirous of agreeable partners—an “agreeable person,”according to the late Lord Beaconsfield’s definition, being “a person whoagrees with you”—could make their own selection.

  “Excuse me. Would you mind turning round a minute? Ah, ‘WagnerianCrank!’ I am afraid we should not get on together. I prefer the Italianschool.”

  Or, “How delightful. I see you don’t believe in vaccination. May I takeyou into supper?”

  Those, on the other hand, fond of argument would choose a suitableopponent. A master of ceremonies might be provided who would stand inthe centre of the room and call for partners: “Lady with strong views infavour of female franchise wishes to meet gentleman holding the opinionsof St. Paul. With view to argument.”

  An American lady, a year or two ago, wrote me a letter that did me realgood: she appreciated my work with so much understanding, criticised itwith such sympathetic interest. She added that, when in England thesummer before, she had been on the point of accepting an invitation tomeet me; but at the last moment she had changed her mind; she felt sosure—she put it pleasantly, but this is what it came to—that in my ownproper person I should fall short of her expectations. For my own sake Ifelt sorry she had cried off; it would have been worth something to havemet so sensible a woman. An author introduced to people who have read—orwho say that they have read—his books, feels always like a man taken forthe first time to be shown to his future wife’s relations. They are verypleasant. They try to put him at his ease. But he knows instinctivelythey are disappointed with him. I remember, when a very young man,attending a party at which a famous American humorist was the chiefguest. I was standing close behind a lady who was talking to herhusband.

  “He doesn’t look a bit funny,” said the lady.

  “Great Scott!” answered her husband. “How did you expect him to look?Did you think he would have a red nose and a patch over one eye?”

  “Oh, well, he might look funnier than that, anyhow,” retorted the lady,highly dissatisfied. “It isn’t worth coming for.”

  We all know the story of the hostess who, leaning across the table duringthe dessert, requested of the funny man that he would kindly saysomething amusing soon, because the dear children were waiting to go tobed. Children, I suppose, have no use for funny people who don’t chooseto be funny. I once invited a friend down to my house for a Saturday toMonday. He is an entertaining man, and before he came I dilated on hispowers of humour—somewhat foolishly perhaps—in the presence of a certainyouthful person who resides with me, and who listens when she oughtn’tto, and never when
she ought. He happened not to be in a humorous moodthat evening. My young relation, after dinner, climbed upon my knee.For quite five minutes she sat silent. Then she whispered:

  “Has he said anything funny?”

  “Hush. No, not yet; don’t be silly.”

  Five minutes later: “Was that funny?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—can’t you hear? We are talking about Old Age Pensions.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, it’s—oh, never mind now. It isn’t a subject on which one can befunny.”

  “Then what’s he want to talk about it for?”

  She waited for another quarter of an hour. Then, evidently bored, andmuch to my relief, suggested herself that she might as well go to bed.She ran to me the next morning in the garden with an air of triumph.

  “He said something so funny last night,” she told me.

  “Oh, what was it?” I inquired. It seemed to me I must have missed it.

  “Well, I can’t exactly ’member it,” she explained, “not just at themoment. But it was so funny. I dreamed it, you know.”

  For folks not Lions, but closely related to Lions, introductions must betrying ordeals. You tell them that for years you have been yearning tomeet them. You assure them, in a voice trembling with emotion, that thisis indeed a privilege. You go on to add that when a boy—

  At this point they have to interrupt you to explain that they are not theMr. So-and-So, but only his cousin or his grandfather; and all you canthink of to say is: “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  I had a nephew who was once the amateur long-distance bicycle champion.I have him still, but he is stouter and has come down to a motor car. Insporting circles I was always introduced as “Shorland’s Uncle.”Close-cropped young men would gaze at me with rapture; and then inquire:“And do you do anything yourself, Mr. Jerome?”

  But my case was not so bad as that of a friend of mine, a doctor. Hemarried a leading actress, and was known ever afterwards as “Miss B—’shusband.”

  At public dinners, where one takes one’s seat for the evening next tosomeone that one possibly has never met before, and is never likely tomeet again, conversation is difficult and dangerous. I remember talkingto a lady at a Vagabond Club dinner. She asked me during the_entree_—with a light laugh, as I afterwards recalled—what I thought,candidly, of the last book of a certain celebrated authoress. I toldher, and a coldness sprang up between us. She happened to be the certaincelebrated authoress; she had changed her place at the last moment so asto avoid sitting next to another lady novelist, whom she hated.

  One has to shift oneself, sometimes, on these occasions. A newspaper mancame up to me last Ninth of November at the Mansion House.

  “Would you mind changing seats with me?” he asked. “It’s a bit awkward.They’ve put me next to my first wife.”

  I had a troubled evening myself once long ago. I accompanied a youngwidow lady to a musical At Home, given by a lady who had moreacquaintances than she knew. We met the butler at the top of the stairs.My friend spoke first:

  “Say Mrs. Dash and—”

  The butler did not wait for more—he was a youngish man—but shouted out:

  “Mr. and Mrs. Dash.”

  “My dear! how very quiet you have kept!” cried our hostess delighted.“Do let me congratulate you.”

  The crush was too great and our hostess too distracted at the moment forany explanations. We were swept away, and both of us spent the remainderof the evening feebly protesting our singleness.

  If it had happened on the stage it would have taken us the whole play toget out of it. Stage people are not allowed to put things right whenmistakes are made with their identity. If the light comedian isexpecting a plumber, the first man that comes into the drawing-room hasgot to be a plumber. He is not allowed to point out that he never was aplumber; that he doesn’t look like a plumber; that no one not an idiotwould mistake him for a plumber. He has got to be shut up in thebath-room and have water poured over him, just as if he were a plumber—astage plumber, that is. Not till right away at the end of the last actis he permitted to remark that he happens to be the new curate.

  I sat out a play once at which most people laughed. It made me sad. Adear old lady entered towards the end of the first act. We knew she wasthe aunt. Nobody can possibly mistake the stage aunt—except the peopleon the stage. They, of course, mistook her for a circus rider, and shuther up in a cupboard. It is what cupboards seem to be reserved for onthe stage. Nothing is ever put in them excepting the hero’s relations.When she wasn’t in the cupboard she was in a clothes basket, or tied upin a curtain. All she need have done was to hold on to something whileremarking to the hero:

  “If you’ll stop shouting and jumping about for just ten seconds, and giveme a chance to observe that I am your maiden aunt from Devonshire, allthis tomfoolery can be avoided.”

  That would have ended it. As a matter of fact that did end it fiveminutes past eleven. It hadn’t occurred to her to say it before.

  In real life I never knew but of one case where a man suffered in silenceunpleasantness he could have ended with a word; and that was the case ofthe late Corney Grain. He had been engaged to give his entertainment ata country house. The lady was a _nouvelle riche_ of snobbish instincts.She left instructions that Corney Grain when he arrived was to dine withthe servants. The butler, who knew better, apologised; but Corney was aman not easily disconcerted. He dined well, and after dinner rose andaddressed the assembled company.

  “Well, now, my good friends,” said Corney, “if we have all finished, andif you are all agreeable, I shall be pleased to present to you my littleshow.”

  The servants cheered. The piano was dispensed with. Corney contrived toamuse his audience very well for half-an-hour without it. At ten o’clockcame down a message: Would Mr. Corney Grain come up into thedrawing-room. Corney went. The company in the drawing-room werewaiting, seated.

  “We are ready, Mr. Grain,” remarked the hostess.

  “Ready for what?” demanded Corney.

  “For your entertainment,” answered the hostess.

  “But I have given it already,” explained Corney; “and my engagement wasfor one performance only.”

  “Given it! Where? When?”

  “An hour ago, downstairs.”

  “But this is nonsense,” exclaimed the hostess.

  “It seemed to me somewhat unusual,” Corney replied; “but it has alwaysbeen my privilege to dine with the company I am asked to entertain. Itook it you had arranged a little treat for the servants.”

  And Corney left to catch his train.

  Another entertainer told me the following story, although a joke againsthimself. He and Corney Grain were sharing a cottage on the river. A mancalled early one morning to discuss affairs, and was talking to Corney inthe parlour, which was on the ground floor. The window was open. Theother entertainer—the man who told me the story—was dressing in the roomabove. Thinking he recognised the voice of the visitor below, he leantout of his bedroom window to hear better. He leant too far, and divedhead foremost into a bed of flowers, his bare legs—and only his barelegs—showing through the open window of the parlour.

  “Good gracious!” exclaimed the visitor, turning at the moment and seeinga pair of wriggling legs above the window sill; “who’s that?”

  Corney fixed his eyeglass and strolled to the window.

  “Oh, it’s only What’s-his-name,” he explained. “Wonderful spirits. Canbe funny in the morning.”