 CHAPTER XV How many charms have music, would you say? The argument of the late Herr Wagner was that grand opera, the music drama, as he called it, included and therefore did away with the necessity for all other arts. Music in all its branches, of course, it provides. So much I will concede to the late Herr Wagner. There are times I confess when my musical yearnings might shock the late Herr Wagner, times when I feel unequal to following three distinct themes at one in the same instant. Listen, whispers the Wagnerian enthusiast to me, the cornet has now the Brunhilde motive. It seems to me, in my then state of depravity, as if the cornet had even more than this the matter with him. The second violins, continues the Wagnerian enthusiast, are carrying on the Wotan theme. That they are carrying on goes without saying, the player's faces are streaming with perspiration. The brass explains my friend, his object is to cultivate my ear, is accompanying the singers. I should have said drowning them. There are occasions when I can rave about Wagner with the best of them. High class moods come to all of us. The difference between the really high class man and us commonplace workaday men is the difference between, say, the eagle and the barnyard chicken. I am the barnyard chicken. I have my wings. There are ecstatic moments when I feel I want to spurn the sordid earth and soar into the realms of art. I do fly a little, but my body is heavy and I only get as far as the fence. After a while I find it lonesome on the fence and I hop down again among my fellows. Listening to Wagner, during such temporary Philistinic mood, my sense of fair play is outraged. A lone, lorn woman stands upon the stage trying to make herself heard. She has to do this sort of thing for her living. Maybe an invalid mother, younger brothers and sisters are dependent upon her. One hundred and forty men, all armed with powerful instruments, well organized and most of them looking well fed, combine to make it impossible for a single note of that poor woman's voice to be heard above their din. I see her standing there, opening and shutting her mouth, getting redder and redder in the face. She's singing when she feels sure of it. You could hear her if only those one hundred and forty men would ease up for a minute. She makes one mighty supreme effort, above the banging of the drums, the blare of the trumpets, the shrieking of the strings, that last despairing note is distinctly heard. She has won, but the victory has cost her dear. She sinks down fainting on the stage and is carried off by supers. Chivalrous indignation has made it difficult for me to keep my seat watching the unequal contest. My instinct was to leap the barrier, hurl the bald-headed chief of her enemies from his high chair, and lay about me with the trombone or the clarinet, which ever might have come the easier to my snatch. You cowardly lot of bullies I have wanted to cry, are you not ashamed of yourself? One hundred and forty of you against one, and that one a still beautiful and comparatively speaking young lady. Be quiet for a minute, can't you? Give the poor girl a chance. A lady of my acquaintance says that sitting out a Wagnerian opera seems to her like listening to a singer accompanied by four orchestras playing different tunes at the same time. As I have said, there are times when Wagner carries me along with him, when I exult in the crash and whirl of his contending harmonies. But alas, there are those other moods, those after-dinner moods, when my desire is for something distinctly resembling a tune. Still there are other composers of Grand Opera besides Wagner. I grant to the late Herr Wagner that insofar as music is concerned opera can supply us with all we can need. But it was also Wagner's argument that Grand Opera could supply us with acting, and there I am compelled to disagree with him. Wagner thought that the arts of acting and singing could be combined. I have seen artists the great man has trained himself. As singers they left nothing to be desired, but the acting in Grand Opera has never yet impressed me. Wagner never succeeded in avoiding the operatic convention, and nobody else ever will. When the operatic lover meets his sweetheart he puts her in a corner, and turning his back upon her comes down to the footlights and tells the audience how he adores her. When he is finished, he in his turn retires into the corner and she comes down and tells the audience that she is simply mad about him. Overcome with joy at finding she really cares for him, he comes down right and says that this is the happiest moment of his life, and she stands left, twelve feet away from him, and has the presentiment that all this sort of thing is much too good to last. They go off together, backwards, side by side. If there is any love-making, such as I understand by the term, it is done off. This is not my idea of acting, but I do not see how you are going to substitute for it anything more natural. When you are singing at the top of your voice, you don't want a heavy woman hanging round your neck. When you are killing a man and warbling about it at the same time, you don't want him fooling around you defending himself. You want him to have a little reasonable patience and to wait in his proper place till you have finished, telling him, or rather telling the crowd, how much you hate and despise him. When the proper time comes, and if he is where you expect to find him while thinking of your upper sea, you will hit him lightly on the shoulder with your sword, and then he can die to his own particular tune. If you have been severely wounded in battle, or in any other sort of row, and have got to sing a long ballad before you finally expire, you don't want to have to think how a man would really behave who knew he had only a god a few minutes to live and was feeling bad about it. The chances are that he would not want to sing at all. The woman who really loved him would not encourage him to sing. She would want him to keep quiet while she moved herself about a bit, in case there was anything that could be done for him. If a mob is climbing the stairs thirsting for your blood, you do not want to stand upright with your arms stretched out, a good eighteen inches from the door, while you go over, at some length, the varied incidents leading up to the annoyance. If your desire were to act naturally, you would push against that door for all you were worth, and yell for somebody to bring you a chest of drawers and a bedstead, and things like that to pile up against it. If you were a king and you were giving a party, you would not want your guests to fix you up at the other end of the room and leave you there with nobody to talk to but your own wife while they turned their backs upon you and had a long and complicated dance all to themselves. You would want to be in it. You would want to let them know that you were king. In acting all these little points have to be considered. In opera everything is rightly sacrificed to musical necessity. I have seen the young, enthusiastic opera singer who thought that he or she could act and sing at the same time. The experienced artist takes the center of the stage and husbands his resources. Whether he is supposed to be indignant because somebody has killed his mother, or cheerful because he is going out to fight his country's foes who are only waiting until he has finished singing to attack the town, he leaves it to the composer to make clear. Also it was Herr Wagner's idea that the backcloth would leave the opera goer indifferent to the picture gallery. The castle on the rock, accessible only by balloon, in which every window lights up simultaneously and instantaneously one minute after sunset while the full moon is rushing up the sky at the pace of a champion comet, that wonderful sea that suddenly opens and swallows up the ship, those snow-clad mountains over which the shadow of the hero passes like a threatening cloud, the grand old chateau trembling in the wind. What need, we'll ask the opera goer of the future, of your turners and your caros, when, for prices ranging from a shilling upwards, we can have a dozen pictures such as these rolled up and down before us every evening. But perhaps the most daring hope of all was the dream that came to Herr Wagner that his opera singers, his grouped choruses, would eventually satisfy the craving of the public for high-class statuary. I am not quite sure the general public does care for statuary. I do not know whether the idea has ever occurred to the anarchist, but were I myself organizing secret committee meetings for unholy purposes, I should invite my comrades to meet in that section of the local museum devoted to statuary. I can conceive of no place where we should be freer from prying eyes and listening ears. A select few, however, do appreciate statuary, and such, I am inclined to think, will not be weaned from their passion by the contemplation of the opera singer in his or her various quaint costumes. And even if the tenor always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as silt-like as she has described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bar relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. The young and giddy-pated the chorus master has no use for. The sober, honest, industrious lady or gentleman with a knowledge of music is very properly his ideal. What I admire about the chorus chiefly is its unity. The whole village dresses exactly alike. In wicked, worldly villages there is rivalry leading to heartburn and jealousy. One lady comes out suddenly on, say, a bank holiday in a fetching blue that conquers every male heart. Next holiday her rival cuts her out with a green hat. In the operatic village it must be that the girls gather together beforehand to arrange this thing. There is probably a meeting called. The dear Count's wedding announces the chairwoman. You will all be pleased to hear has been fixed for the fourteenth at eleven o'clock in the morning. The entire village will be assembled at ten thirty to await the return of the bridal cortege from the church and offer its felicitations. Married ladies will, of course, come accompanied by their husbands. Unmarried ladies must each bring a male partner as near their own height as possible. Fortunately in this village the number of males is exactly equal to that of females so that the picture need not be spoiled. The children will organize themselves into an independent body and will group themselves picturesquely. It has been thought advisable, continues the chairwoman, that the village should meet the dear Count and his bride at some spot not too far removed from the local ale-house. The costume to be worn by the ladies will consist of a short pink skirt terminating at the knees and ornamented with festoons of flowers. Above will be worn a bolero in mauve silk without sleeves and cut decollette. The shoes will be of yellow satin over flesh-colored stockings. Ladies who are out will wear pearl necklaces and a simple device in emeralds to decorate the hair. Thank God we can all of us afford it, and provided the weather holds up and nothing unexpected happens, he is not what I call a lucky man, our Count, and it is always as well to be prepared for possibilities. Well, I think we may look forward to a really pleasant day. It cannot be done, Herr Wagner, believe me. You cannot substitute the music drama for all the arts combined. The object to be aimed at by the wise composer should be to make us, while listening to his music, forgetful of all remaining artistic considerations. Section 16 of Idle Ideas in 1905. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eric Leach. Idle Ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. Jerome. The white man's burden. Need it be so heavy? It is a delightful stroll on a sunny summer morning from the hog to the wheat and bosh, the little house in the wood, built for Princess Amalia, widow of Stotholder Frederick Henry, under whom Holland escaped finally from the bondage of her foes and entered into the promised land of liberty. Leaving the quiet streets the tree-bordered canals with their creeping barges you pass through a pleasant park, where the soft-eyed deer press round you, hurt and indignant if you have brought nothing in your pocket, not even a piece of sugar, to offer them. It is not that they are grasping, it is the want of attention that wounds them. I thought he was a gentleman, they seem to be saying to one another, if you glance back. He looked like a gentleman. Their mild eyes haunt you. On the next occasion you do not forget. The park merges into the forest. You go by winding ways till you reach the trim Dutch gardens, moat encircled in the centre of which stands the prim old-fashioned villa, which to the simple Dutchman appears a palace. The concierge, an old soldier, bows low to you and introduces you to his wife, a stately white-haired dame who talks most languages a little so far as relates to all things within and appertaining to this tiny palace of the wood. To things without, beyond the wood, her powers of conversation do not extend. Apparently such matters do not interest her. She conducts you to the Chinese room. The sun streams through the windows, illuminating the wondrous golden dragon standing out in bold relief from the burnished lacquer work. Decorating still further with light and shade, the delicate silk embroideries, thin tapered hands have woven with infinite pains. The walls are hung with rice paper, depicting the conventional scenes of the conventional Chinese life. You find your thoughts wondering. These grotesque figures, these caricatures of humanity, a comical creature surely this Chinaman, the pantaloon of civilization. How useful has he been to us for our farces, our comic operas, this yellow baby in his ample pinafore who lives thousands of years ago who has now passed into this strange second childhood? But is he dying, or does the life of a nation wake again as after sleep? Is he this droll harmless thing he here depicts himself, and if not, suppose fresh sap be stirring through his three hundred millions? We thought he was so very dead. We thought the time had come to cut him up and divide him, the only danger being lest we should quarrel over his carcass among ourselves. Suppose it turns out as the fable of the wood-cutter and the bear. The wood-cutter found the bear lying in the forest. At first he was much frightened, but the bear lay remarkably still, so the woodman crept nearer, ventured to kick the bear very gently, ready to run if need be. Surely the bear was dead, and parts of a bear are good to eat, and bear skin to pour wood-folk on cold winter nights is grateful. So the woodman drew his knife and commenced the necessary preliminaries, but the bear was not dead. If the Chinaman be not dead, if the cutting up process has only served to awaken him, in a little time from now we shall know. From the Chinese room the white-haired dame leads us to the Japanese room. Had dental-looking Princess Amalia some vague foreshadowing of the future in her mind when she planned these two rooms leading into one another, the Japanese decorations are more grotesque, the designs less cheerfully comical than those of cousin Chinaman. These monstrous misshapen wrestlers, these patient-looking gods with their inscrutable eyes. Is it always there, or is it only by the light of present events that one reads into the fantastic fancies of the artist working long ago in the doorway of his paper-house, a meaning that has hitherto escaped us? But the chief attraction of the Huitenbosch is the gorgeous orange saloon, lighted by a cupola, fifty feet above the floor, the walls one blaze of pictures, chiefly of the gorgeous Jordan school, the defeat of the vices, time vanquishing slander, mostly allegorical in praise of all the virtues, in praise of enlightenment and progress. Aptly enough in a room so decorated, here was held the famous peace-Congress that closed the last century. One can hardly avoid smiling as one thinks of the solemn conclave of grandees assembled to proclaim the popularity of peace. It was in the autumn of the same year that Europe decided upon the dividing up of China that soldiers were instructed by Christian monarchs to massacre men, women and children, the idea being to impress upon the heathen army the superior civilization of the white man. The Boer war followed almost immediately. Since when the white man has been pretty busy all over the world with his expeditions and his missions, the world is undoubtedly growing more refined. We do not care for ugly words, even the burglar refers eerily to the little job he has on hand. You would think he has found work in the country. I should not be surprised to learn that he says a prayer before starting telegraphs home to his anxious wife the next morning that his task has been crowned with blessing. Until the far-off date of universal brotherhood war will continue, matters considered unimportant by both parties will, with a mighty flourish of trumpets, be referred to arbitration. I was talking of a famous financier a while ago with a man who has been his secretary. Amongst other anecdotes he told me of a certain agreement about which dispute had arisen. The famous financier took the paper into his own hands and made a few swift calculations. Let it go, he concluded. It is only a thousand pounds at the outside. May as well be honest. Concerning a dead fisherman or two concerning boundaries through unproductive mountain ranges we shall arbitrate and feel virtuous. For gold mines and good pasturelands mixed up with a little honour to give respectability to the business we shall fight it out as previously. War being thus inevitable the humane man will rejoice that by one of those brilliant discoveries so simple when they are explained war in the future is going to be rendered equally satisfactory to victor and to vanquished. In by elections as a witty writer has pointed out there are no defeats, only victories and moral victories. The idea seems to have caught on. War in the future is evidently going to be conducted on the same understanding. Once upon a time from a far-off land a certain general telegraphed home congratulating his government that the enemy had shown no inclination whatever to prevent his running away. The whole country rejoiced. Why, they never even tried to stop him, citizens meeting other citizens in the street told each other. Ah, they've had enough of him, I bet they're only too glad to get rid of him. Why, they say he ran for miles without seeing a trace of the foe. The enemy's general, on the other hand, also wrote home congratulating his government. In this way the same battle can be mafficked over by both parties. Contentment is the great secret of happiness. Everything happens for the best if only you look at it the right way. That is going to be the argument. The general of the future will telegraph to headquarters that he is pleased to be able to inform his majesty that the enemy having broken down all opposition has succeeded in crossing the frontier and is now well on his way to his majesty's capital. I'm luring him on, he will add, as fast as I can. At our present rate of progress I am in hopes of bringing him home by the tenth. Lest foolish civilian sort of people should wonder whereabouts lies the cause for rejoicing, the military man will condescend to explain. The enemy is being enticed farther and farther from his base. The defeated general who is not really defeated, who is only artful and who appears to be running away, is not really running away at all. On the contrary he is running home, bringing, as he explains, the enemy with him. If I remember rightly it is long since I played it, there is a parlor game entitled Puss in the Corner. You beckon another player to you with your finger, Puss Puss you cry, thereupon he has to leave his chair, his base, as the military man would term it, and try to get to you without anything happening to him. War in the future is going to be Puss in the Corner on a bigger scale. You lure your enemy away from his base. If all goes well if he does not see the trap that is being laid for him, why then almost before he knows it he finds himself in your capital. That finishes the game. You find out what it is he really wants, provided it is something within reason and you happen to have it handy, you give it to him. He goes home crowing and you, on your side, laugh when you think how cleverly you succeeded in luring him away from his base. There is a bright side to all things. The gentleman charged with the defence of a fortress will meet the other gentleman who has captured it and shake hands with him mid the ruins. So here you are at last, he will explain, why didn't you come before, we've been waiting for you. And he will send off dispatches, felicitating his chief on having got that fortress off their hands, together with all the worry and expense it has been to them. When prisoners are taken you will console yourself with the reflection that the cost of feeding them for the future will have to be born by the enemy. With a good cannon you will watch being trailed away with a sigh of relief. Confounded heavy things you will say to yourself, thank goodness I've got rid of them. Let them have the fun of dragging them about these ghastly roads, see how he likes the job. War is a ridiculous method of settling disputes. Anything that can tend to make its ridiculous aspect more apparent is to be welcomed. The new school of military dispatch writers may succeed in turning even the laughter of the mob against it. The present trouble in the East would never have occurred but for the white man's enthusiasm for bearing other people's burdens. What we call the yellow danger is the fear that the yellow man may before long request us so far as he is concerned, to put his particular burden down. It may occur to him that, seeing it as his property, he would just as soon carry it himself. A London policeman told me a story the other day that struck him as an example of cockney humour under trying circumstances, but it may also serve as a fable. From a lonely street in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden early one morning the constable heard cries of Stop Thief shouted in a childish treble. He arrived on the scene just in time to collar a young hooligan who, having snatched a basket of fruit from a small lad, a greengrocer's errand boy, as it turned out, was with it making tracks. The greengrocer's boy between panting and tears delivered his accusation. The hooligan regarded him with an expression of amazed indignation. What you mean, stale in it, exclaimed Mr. Hooligan, while I was carrying it for you. The white man has got into the way of carrying other people's burdens, and now it looks as if the yellow man were going to object to our carrying his any further. Maybe he is going to get nasty and insist on carrying it himself. We call this the yellow danger. A friend of mine, he is a man who in the street walks into lamp posts and apologises, sees rising from the east the dawn of a new day in the world's history. The yellow danger is to him a golden hope. He sees a race long stagnant, stretching its giant limbs with the first vague movements of returning life. He is a poor sort of patriot. He calls himself, I suppose, a white man, yet he shamelessly confesses he would rather see Asia's millions rise from the ruins of their ancient civilization to take their part in the future of humanity than that half the population of the globe should remain bound in savagery for the pleasure and the profit of his own particular species. He even goes so far as to think that the white man may have something to learn. The world has belonged to him now for some thousands of years. Has he done all with it that could have been done? Are his ideals the last word? Not what the yellow man has absorbed from Europe, but what he is going to give Europe it is that interest, my friend. He is watching the birth of a new force, an influence as yet unknown. He clings to the fond belief that new ideas, new formulae to replace the old worn shibboleths may, during these thousands of years, have been developing in those keen brains that behind the impressive yellow mask have been working so long in silence and in mystery. This is the end of the white man's burden, Need It Be So Heavy? Recording by Eric Leitch, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 17 of Idle Ideas in 1905. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are under public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shaleefa Malikim. Idle Ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. Jerome. Why doesn't he marry the girl? What is wrong with marriage anyhow? I find myself pondering this question so often when reading high-class literature. I put it to myself again the other evening, during a performance of Faust. Why could not Faust have married the girl? I would not have married her myself for any consideration whatsoever. But that is not the argument. Faust, apparently, could not see anything amiss with her. Both of them were mad about each other. Yet the idea of a quiet and ostentatious marriage with a week's honeymoon, say, in Vienna, followed by a needless cottage-orn, not too far from Nürnberg, so that their friends could have come out to them, never seems to have occurred to either of them. There could have been a garden. Magritte might have kept chickens and a cow. That sort of girl, brought up to hard work and by no means too well educated, is all the better for having something to do. Later, with the gradual arrival of the family, a good all-round woman might have been hired in to assist. Faust, of course, would have had a study and got to work again, that would have kept him out of further mischief. The idea that a brainy man his age was going to be happy with nothing to do all day but fool round a petticoat was ridiculous from the beginning. Valentine, a good fellow Valentine with nice ideas, would have spent his Saturdays to Monday with him. Over a pipe and a glass of wine he and Faust would have discussed the local politics. He would have danced to children on his knee, have told them tales about the war, taught at the elder's boy to shoot. Faust, with a practical man like Valentine to help him, would probably have invented a new gun. Valentine would have got it taken up. Things might have come of it. Sybil, in course of time, would have married and settled down. Faust had taken a little house near to them. He and Marguerite would have joked when Mrs. Sybil was not around about his early infatuation. The old mother would have toddled over from noon-back, not too often, just for the day. The picture grows upon one, the more one thinks of it. Why did it never occur to them? There would have been a bit of a bother with the old man. I can imagine Mephistopheles being upset about it, thinking himself swindled. Of course, if that was the reason, if Faust said to himself, I should like to marry the girl, but I won't do it. It would not be fair to the old man. There has been to a lot of trouble working this thing up. In common gratitude, I cannot turn round now, and behave like a decent sensible man. It would not be playing the game. If this was the way Faust looked at the matter, there is nothing more to be said. Indeed, it shows him in rather refined light, noble, if quixotic. If on the other hand he looked at the question from the point of view of himself and the girl, I think the thing might have been managed. All one had to do in those days, when one wanted to get rid of the devil, was to show him a sword-hilled. Faust and my greed could have slipped into a church one morning, and have kept him out of the way with the sword-hilled, till the ceremony was through. They might have hired a small boy. You see, the gentleman I read, well, he wants us, and we don't want him. That is the only difference between us. Now you take this sword, and when you see him coming, show him the hilt. You've heard him. Just show him the sword and shake your head. He will understand. The old gentleman's expression, when subsequently Faust presented him to Marguerite, would have been interesting. Allow me, my wife, my dear, a friend of mine, you may remember meeting him that night at your rounds. As I have said, there would have been ructions, but I do not myself see what could have been done. There was nothing in the bond to the effect that Faust should not marry so far as we are told. The old man had a sense of humour. My own opinion is that, after getting over the first annoyance, he himself would have seen the joke. I can even picture him looking in now and again on Mr. and Mrs. Faust. The children would be hurried off to bed, and there would be for a while an atmosphere of constraint. But the old man had a way with him. He would have told one or two stories at which my greed would have blushed, at which Faust would have grinned. I can see the old fellow occasionally joining the homely social board. The children, all at first, would have said silent with staring eyes. But as I have said, the old man had a way with him. Why should he not have reformed? The good woman's unconsciously exerted influence. The sweet child's straddle. One hears of such a thing. Might he have not come to be known as Nunky? Myself, I believe I have already mentioned it. I would not have married Marguerite. She is not my ideal of a good girl. I never liked the way she deceived her mother. And that hound of hers—well, a nice girl would not have been France. Was it such a woman? She did not behave at all too well to civil either. It is clear to me that she leapt the boy on. And what was she doing with that box of jewels, anyhow? She was not a fool. She could not have gone every day to that fountain, chetted with those girlfriends of hers and learnt nothing. She must have known that people don't go leaving twenty thousand pounds of worse of jewels about on doorsteps as part of a round game. Her own instinct, if she had been a good girl, would have taught her to leave the thing alone. I don't believe in these innocent people who do not know what they are doing half their time. Ask any London magistrate what he thinks of the lady who explains that you picked up the diamond brooch. Not meaning, of course, your worship to take it. I would not do such a thing. It just happened this way, your worship. I was standing, as you might say, here, and not seeing anyone about in the shop, I opened the case and took it out, thinking as perhaps it might belong to someone. And then this gentleman here, as I had not noticed before, comes up quite suddenly and says, You come along with me, he says. What for? I says. When I don't even know you, I says. For stealing, he says. Well, that's a hard word you use to a lady, I says. I don't know what you mean, I'm sure. And if she had put them all on, not thinking, what would a really nice girl have done when the gentleman came up and assured her they were hers? She would have been thirty seconds taking them off and flinging them back into the box. Thank you, she would have said. I'll trouble you to leave this garden as quickly as you entered it, and take them with you. I'm not that sort of girl. My greed clings to the jills, and accepts the young man's arm for a moonlight promenade. And when it does enter into her innocent head, that he and she have walked at the shady garden long enough, what does she do when she had said goodbye and shut the door? She opens a ground floor window and begins to sing. Maybe I am not poetical, but I do like justice. When other girls do these sort of things, they get called names. I cannot see why this particular girl should be held up as an ideal. She kills a mother. According to her own account, this was an accident. It is not an original line of defence, and you are not allowed to hear the evidence for the prosecution. She also kills her baby. You're not to blame her for that, because at the time she was feeling poorly. I don't see why this girl should have a special line of angels to take her up to heaven. There must have been decent hard-working women in Nuremberg, more entitled to the ticket. Why is it that all these years we have been content to accept Magritte as a type of innocence and virtue? The explanation is, I suppose, that Goethe wrote at a time when it was a convention to regard all women as good. Anything in Petticoat was virtuous. If she did wrong, it was always somebody else's fault. Cherché la femme was a later notion, and the date of Goethe it was always Cherché l'homme. It was a man's fault. It was a devil's fault. It was anybody's fault you liked, but not hers. The convention has not yet died out. I was reading the other day, a most interesting book by brilliant American authors, seeing I live far away from the ladies' horns. I venture to mention names. I am speaking of Patient Sparhawk by Gerdrude Atherton. I take this book, because it is typical of a large body of fiction. Miss Sparhawk lives a troubled life. It puzzles her. She asks herself what is wrong. Her own idea is that it is civilisation. If it is not civilisation, then it is the American man or nature or democracy. Miss Sparhawk marries the wrong man. Later on she gets engaged to another wrong man. In the end we are left to believe she is about to be married to the right men. I should be better satisfied if I could hear Miss Sparhawk talking six months after that last marriage. But if a mistake has again been made, I am confident that in Miss Sparhawk's opinion the thought will not be Miss Sparhawk's. The argument is always the same, Miss Sparhawk being a lady can do no wrong. If Miss Sparhawk cared to listen to me for five minutes, I feel I could put her right on this point. It is quite true my dear girl, I should say to her. Something is wrong, very wrong, but it is not the American man. Never your mind, the American man, you leave him to worry out his own salvation. You are not a girl to put him right, even where he is wrong. And it is not civilisation. Civilisation has a deal to answer for, I admit. Don't you load it up with this additional trouble. The thing that is wrong in this case of yours, if you will forgive me am I saying no. It's you. You make a fool of yourself. You marry a man who is a mere animal because he appeals to your animal instincts. Then, like the lady who cried out, a lack of marriage to black, you appeal to have an against the injustice of being mated with a clown. You are not a nice girl, either in your ideas or in your behaviour. I don't blame you for it, you did not make yourself. But when you set to work to attract all that is loath in man, why be so astonished at your own success? There are plenty of shocking American men, I agree. One meets a class even outside America, but nice American girls will tell you that there are also nice American men. There is an odd proverb about birds of a feather. Next time you find yourself in the company of a shocking American man, you'll just ask yourself how he got there and how it is he seems to be feeling at home. You learn self-control, get it out of your head that you are the centre of the universe and grasp the idea that a pedicote is not a halo and you will find civilisation not half as wrong as you thought it. I know what Miss Barhawks' reply would be. You say all this to me? To me, a lady? Great heavens! What has become of Chivalry? A Frenchman was once put on trial for murdering his father and mother. He confesses guilt but begged for mercy on the plea that he was an orphan. Chivalry was founded on the assumption that a woman was worthy to be worshipped. The modern woman's notion is that when she does wrong she ought to be excused by Chivalry's man because she is a lady. I like the naughty heron, we all of us do. The early Victorian heron, the angel in a white frock, was a bull. We knew exactly what she was going to do, the right thing. We did not even have to ask ourselves, what would she think is the right thing to do under the circumstances? It was always a conventional right thing. We could have put it to a Sunday school and have got the answer every time. The heron with passions, instincts, emotions, is to be welcomed, but I want her to grasp the fact that after all she is only one of us. I should like a better if, instead of demanding, what is wrong in civilization, what is the world coming to, and so forth, she would occasionally say to herself, I guess I've made a fool of myself this time, I do feel that I've shamed of myself. She would not lose by it. We should respect her all the more, and of, why didn't he marry the girl? Section 18 of Idle Ideas in 1905 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Richard Kilmer Idle Ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. Jerome Chapter 18 What Mrs. Wilkins Thought About It Last year, traveling on the Underground Railroad, I met a man. He was one of the saddest-looking men I have seen for years. I used to know him well in the old days when we were journalists together. I asked him, in a sympathetic tone, how things were going with him. I expected his response would be a flood of tears, and that in the end I should have to fork out a fiver. To my astonishment, his answer was that things were going exceedingly well with him. I did not want to say to him bluntly, then what has happened to you to make you look like a mute at a temperance funeral, I said, and how are all at home? I thought that if the trouble lay there he would take the opportunity. It brightened him somewhat, the necessity of replying to the question. It appeared that his wife was in the best of health. You remember her, he continued with a smile. All spirits, always cheerful. Nothing seems to put her out. Not even. He ended the sentence abruptly with a sigh. His mother-in-law, I learned, from further talk with him, had died since I last met him, and had left them a comfortable addition to their income. His eldest daughter was engaged to be married. It's entirely a love-match, he explained, and he's such a dear good fellow that I should not have made any objection even had he been poor. But of course, as it is, I am naturally all the more content. His eldest boy, having won the model scholarship, was going up to Cambridge in the autumn. His own health, he told me, had greatly improved, and a novel he had written in his leisure time promised to be one of the successes of the season, than it was that I spoke plainly. If I am opening a wound too painful to be touched, I said, tell me. If on the contrary, it is an ordinary sort of trouble upon which the sympathy of a fellow worker may fall as bomb, let me hear it. So far as I am concerned, he replied, I should be glad to tell you. Speaking about it does me good, and may lead, so I am always in hopes, to an idea. But for your own sake, if you take my advice, you will not press me. How can it affect me, I asked. It is nothing to do with me, is it? It need have nothing to do with you, he answered. If you are sensible enough to keep out of it, if I tell you, from this time onward, it will be your trouble also. Anyhow, that is what has happened in four separate cases. If you like to be the fifth and complete the half dozen of us, you are welcome. But remember, I have warned you. What has it done to the other five, I demanded. It has changed them from cheerful, companionable persons into gloomy, one-idead boars, he told me. They think of but one thing. They talk of but one thing. They dream of but one thing. Instead of getting over it, as time goes on, it takes possession of them more and more. There are men, of course, who would be unaffected by it, and who could shake it off. I warn you in particular against it. Because in spite of all that is said, I am convinced you have a sense of humor. And that being so, it will lay hold of you. It will plague you night and day. You see what it has made of me. Three months ago a lady interviewer described me as of a sunny temperament. If you know your own business, you will get out at the next station. I wish now I had followed his advice. As it was, I allowed my curiosity to take possession of me, and begged him to explain. And he did so. It was just about Christmas time, he said. We were discussing the Drury Lane pantomime, some three or four of us, in the smoking-room of the Devonshire Club. When Young Gold said he thought it would prove a mistake, the introduction of a subject like the fiscal question into the story of Humpty Dumpty, the two things so far as he could see, had nothing to do with one another. He added that he entertained a real regard for Mr. Dan Leno, whom he had once met on a steamboat, but that there were other topics upon which he would prefer to seek that gentleman's guidance. The fellowship, on the other hand, declared that he had no sympathy with the argument that artists should never intrude upon public affairs. The actor was a fellow citizen with the rest of us. He said that, whether one agreed with their conclusions or not, one must admit that the nation owed a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Brown Potter and to Miss Olga Nethersoll, for giving to it the benefit of their convictions. He had talked to both ladies in private on the subject and was convinced they knew as much about it as did most people. Burnside, who was one of the party, contended that if sides were to be taken, a pantomime should surely advocate the free food cause, seeing it was a form of entertainment supposed to appeal primarily to the tastes of the little englander. Then I came into the discussion. The fiscal question, I said, is on everybody's tongue. Such being the case, it is fit and proper it should be referred to in our annual pantomime, which has come to be regarded as a review of the year's doings. But it should not have been dealt with from the political standpoint. The proper attitude to have assumed toward it was that of innocent railery free from all trace of partisanship. Old Johnson had strolled up and was standing behind us. The very thing I have been trying to get a hold of for weeks, he said, a bright, amusing resume of the whole problem that should give offence to neither side. You know our paper, he continued. We steer clear of politics, but at the same time try to be up to date. It's not always easy. The treatment of the subject, on the lines you suggest, is just what we require. I do wish you would write me something. Here's a good old sort, Johnson. It seemed an easy thing. I said I would. Since that time I have been thinking how to do it. As a matter of fact, I have not thought of much else. Maybe you can suggest something. I was feeling in a good working mood the next morning. Pilsen said I to myself. Shall we have the benefit of this? He does not need anything boisterously funny. A few playfully witty remarks on the subject will be the ideal. I lit a pipe and sat down to think. At half-past twelve, having to write some letters before going out to lunch, I dismissed the fiscal question from my mind. But not for long. It worried me all the afternoon. I thought maybe something would come to me in the evening. I wasted all that evening. And I wasted all the following morning. Everything has its amusing side, I told myself. One turns out comic stories about funerals, about weddings. Hardly a misfortune that can happen to mankind, but has produced its comic literature. An American friend of mine once took a contract from the editor of an insurance journal to write four humorous stories. One was to deal with an earthquake. The second with a cyclone. The third with a flood. And the fourth with a thunderstorm. And more amusing stories I have never read. What is the matter with the fiscal question? I myself have written lightly on buying metalism. Home rule, we used to be merry over in the eighties. I remember one delightful evening at Consher's Hall. It would have been more delightful still, but for a raw-boned Irishman who rose towards eleven o'clock and requested to be informed if any other speaker was wishful to make any more jokes on the subject of old Ireland. Because if so, the raw-boned gentleman was prepared to save time by waiting and dealing with them altogether. But if not, then, so the raw-boned gentleman announced, his intention was to go for the last speaker. And the last speaker, but two at once, and without further warning. No other humorous rising, the raw-boned gentleman proceeded to make good his threat, with the result that the fund degenerated somewhat. Even on the Boer War, we used to whisper jokes to one another in quiet places. In this fiscal question, there must be fun. Where is it? For days I thought of little else. My laundress, as we call them in the temple, noticed my trouble. Mrs. Wilkins I confessed, I am trying to think of something innocently amusing to say on the fiscal question. I've heard about it, she said, but I don't have much time to read the papers. They want to make us pay more for our food, don't they? For some of it I explained, but then we shall pay less for other things, so that really we shan't be paying more at all. There doesn't say much in it either way, was Mrs. Wilkins' opinion. Just so I agreed. That is the advantage of the system. It will cost nobody anything, and will result in everybody being better off. The pity is, said Mrs. Wilkins, that pity nobody ever thought of it before. The whole trouble hitherto I explained has been the foreigner. Ah, said Mrs. Wilkins, I've never heard much good of him. Though they do say the Almighty has a use for almost everything. These foreigners I continued, these Germans and Americans, they dump things on us, you know. What's that, demanded Mrs. Wilkins? What's dump? Well, it's dumping, you know, you take things and you dump them down. But what things? How do they do it? asked Mrs. Wilkins. Why, all sorts of things. Pig iron, bacon, doormats, everything. They bring them over here in ships, you understand. And then, if you please, just dump them down on our shores. You don't mean surely to tell me that they just throw them out and leave them there, worried Mrs. Wilkins. Of course not, I replied. When I say they dump these things upon our shores, that is a figure of speech. What I mean is, they sell them to us. But why do we buy them if we don't want them? asked Mrs. Wilkins. We're not bound to buy them, are we? It is their artfulness, I explained, these Germans and Americans and the others. They are all just as bad as one another. They insist on selling us these things at less price than they cost to make. It seems a bit silly of them, don't it? thought Mrs. Wilkins. I suppose being foreigners, poor things. They ain't naturally got much sense. It does seem silly of them. If you look at it that way, I admit it. But what we have got to consider is the injury it is doing us. Don't see how it can do us much harm, argued Mrs. Wilkins. Seems a bit of luck so far as we're concerned. There's a few more things they'd be welcome to dump around my way. I don't seem to be putting this thing quite in the right light to you, Mrs. Wilkins, I confessed. It's a long argument and you might not be able to follow it. But you must take it as a fact, now generally admit it, that the cheaper you buy things, the sooner your money goes. By allowing the foreigner to sell us all these things at about half the cost price. He is getting richer every day and we are getting poorer. Unless we as a country insist on paying at least 20% more for everything we want, it is calculated that in a very few years England won't have a penny left. Sounds a bit topsy-turvy, suggested Mrs. Wilkins. It may sound so, I answered. But I fear there can be no doubt of it. The Board of Trade Returns would seem to prove it conclusively. Well, God be praised, we found that out in time ejaculated Mrs. Wilkins piously. It is a matter of congratulations, I agreed. The difficulty is that a good many other people say that far from being ruined, we are doing very well indeed and are growing richer every year. But how can they say that, argued Mrs. Wilkins? When, as you tell me, those trade returns prove just the opposite. Well, they say the same, Mrs. Wilkins, that the Board of Trade Returns prove just the opposite. Well, they can't both be right, said Mrs. Wilkins. You would be surprised, Mrs. Wilkins, I said, how many things can be proved from Board of Trade Returns? But I have not yet thought of that article for Pilsen. End of Chapter 18. Recording by Richard Kilmer, Rio Medina, Texas. Section 19 of Idle Ideas in 1905. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jason Mills. Idle Ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. Jerome. Chapter 19. Shall we be ruined by a Chinese cheap labour? What is all this talk I hear about the Chinese? said Mrs. Wilkins to me the other morning. We generally indulge in a little chat while Mrs. Wilkins is laying the breakfast table. Letters and newspapers do not arrive in my part of the Temple much before nine. From half past eight to nine, I am rather glad of Mrs. Wilkins. They have been up to some of their tricks again, haven't they? The foreigner, Mrs. Wilkins, I replied, whether he be Chinese or any other he, is always up to tricks. Was not England specially prepared by an all wise providence to frustrate these nervous tricks? Which of such particular tricks may you be referring to at the moment, Mrs. Wilkins? Well, he's coming over here, isn't he, sir? To take the work out of our mouths, as it were. Well, not exactly over here to England, Mrs. Wilkins, I explained. He has been introduced into Africa to work in the mines there. It's a funny thing, said Mrs. Wilkins, but to hear the way some of them talk in our block, you might run away with the notion, that is, if you didn't know them, that work was their only joy. I said to one of them the other evening, a man has called himself a brass finisher, though Lord knows the only brass he ever finishes is what his poor wife earns and isn't quick enough to hide away from him. Well, whatever happens, I says, it will be clever of him if they take away much work from you. He made them all laugh, that did, I did, Mrs. Wilkins, with a touch of pardonable pride. Ah, continued the good lady. It's surprising how contented they can be with the little some of them, given my odd working woman to look after them, and a day out once a week with the procession of the unemployed, they don't ask for nothing more. There's that beauty my poor sister Jane was full enough to marry. Serves her right, as I used to tell her at first, they didn't seem to be any more need to rub it into her. She'd add one good husband. It wouldn't have been fair for her to have had another, even if there'd been a chance of it, seeing the few of them there is to go round amongst so many. But it's always the same with those widows. If we happen to have been lucky the first time, we put it down to our own judgment. Think we can't ever make a mistake. And if we draw a wrong gun, as the saying is, we argue as if it was the duty of Providence to make it up to us the second time. Why, I'd have been making a fool of myself three years ago if he hadn't been good-natured enough to call one afternoon when I was out and uke it off with £2.80 in the best teapot that I had been soft enough to talk to him about and never let me set eyes on him again. God bless him. He's one of the born-tired he is, as poor Jane might have seen for herself if she had only looked at him instead of listening to him. But that's courtship all the world over, old and younger like. So far as I've been able to see it, was the opinion of Mrs. Wilkins. The man's all eyes and the woman all ears. They don't seem to have had any other senses left him. I ran against him the other night on my way home at the corner of Grey's Inn Road. There was the usual crowd watching a pack of them Italians laying down the asphalt in Albarn, and he was among them. He had secured the only lump post and was leaning against it. Oh, lie, I says. Glad to see you haven't lost your job. Nothing like sticking to it when you've dropped into something that really suits you. What do you mean, Martha, he says? He's not one of what I call your smartsort. He takes a bit of sarcasm to get through his head. Well, I says. You're still on the old track, I see, looking for work. Take care you don't have an accident one of these days and run up again it before you've got time to get out of its way. It's these miserable foreigners, he says. Look at them, he says. There's enough of you doing that, I says. I've got my room to put straight and three hours needlework to do before I can get to bed. But don't let me into you. You might forget what work was like if you didn't take an opportunity of watching it now and then. They come over here, he says, and take the work away from us, chaps. Ah, I says, poor things. Perhaps they ain't married. Lazy devils, he says. Look at them smoking cigarettes. I could do that sort of work. There's nothing in it. It don't take even foreigners to dub a bit of tar about a road. Yes, I says. You could always do anybody else's work but your own. I can't find it, Martha, he says. No, I says. And you never will in the sort of places you go looking for it. They don't hang it out on lump posts and they don't leave it about at the street corners. Go home, I says, and turn the mangle for your poor wife. That's big enough for you to find even in the dark. Looking for work, snorted Mrs. Wilkins with contempt. We women never have much difficulty in finding it, I've noticed. There are times when I feel I could do with losing it for a day. But what did he reply, Mrs. Wilkins, I asked? Your brass-finishing friend who was holding forth on the subject of Chinese cheap labour. Mrs. Wilkins, as a conversationalist, is not easily kept to the point. I was curious to know what the working classes were thinking on the subject. Oh, that, replied Mrs. Wilkins. He did not say nothing. He ain't the sort that's got much to say in an argument. He belongs to the crowd that angers about at the back and does the shouting. But there was another of them, a young fellow, as I feel sorry for, with a wife and three small children, who hasn't had much luck for the last six months, and that through no fault of his own, I should say, from the look of him. I was a fool, says he, when I chucked a good situation and went out to the war. He told me I was going to fight for equal rights for all white men. I thought they meant that all of us were going to have a better chance, and it seemed worth making a bit of sacrifice for that did. I should be glad if they would give me a job in their minds that would enable me to feed my wife and children. That's all I asked them for. It is a difficult problem, Mrs. Wilkins, I said. According to the mine owners. Ah, said Mrs. Wilkins. They don't seem to be exactly what you call popular, they're mine owners, do they? Dare say they're not as bad as they're painted. Some people, Mrs. Wilkins, I said, paint them very black. There are those who hold that the South African mine owner is not a man at all, but a kind of pantomime demon. You take Goliath, the whale that swallowed Jonah, a selection from the least respectable citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah at their worst, Bluebeard, Bloody Queen Mary, Guy Fawkes, and the Sea Serpent, or rather you take the most objectionable attributes of all these various personages and mix them up together. The result is the South African Mine Owner, a monster who would willingly promote a company for the putting on the market of a new meat extract, prepared exclusively from newborn infants, provided the scheme promised a fair and reasonable opportunity of fleecing the widow an orphan. I've heard they're a bad lot, said Mrs. Wilkins. But where most of us that, if we listen to what other people say about us? Quite so, Mrs. Wilkins, I agreed. One never arrives at the truth by listening to one side only. On the other hand, for example, there are those who stoutly maintain that the South African Mine Owner is a kind of spiritual creature, all heart and sentiment, who, against his own will, has been, so to speak, dumped down upon this earth as the result of overproduction up above of the higher class of archangel. The stock of archangels of superior finish, exceeds the heavenly demand. The surplus has been dropped down into South Africa and has taken to mine awning. It is not that these celestial visitors of German-sounding nomenclature care themselves about the gold. Their only desire is, during this earthly pilgrimage of theirs, to benefit the human race. Nothing can be obtained in this world without money. That's true, said Mrs. Wilkins with a sigh. For gold, everything can be obtained. The aim of the mine awning archangel is to provide the world with gold. Why should the world trouble to grow things and make things? Let us, said these archangels, temporarily dwelling in South Africa, dig up and distribute to the world plenty of gold. Then the world can buy whatever it wants and be happy. There may be a flaw in the argument, Mrs. Wilkins, I allowed. I am not presenting it to you as the last word upon the subject. I am merely quoting the view of the South African Mine Owner, feeling himself a much misunderstood benefactor of mankind. I expect, said Mrs. Wilkins, they are just the ordinary sort of Christian like the rest of us, anxious to do the best they can for themselves and not too particular as to doing other people in the process. I am inclined to think, Mrs. Wilkins, I said, that you are not very far from the truth. A friend of mine a year ago was very bitter on the subject of Chinese cheap labour. A little later, there died a distant relative of his who left him 20,000 South African mining shares. He thinks now that to object to the Chinese is narrow-minded, illiberal and against all religious teaching. He has bought an abridged edition of Confucius and tells me that there is much that is ennobling in Chinese morality. Indeed, I gather from him that the introduction of the Chinese into South Africa will be the serving of that country. The noble Chinese will afford an object lesson to the poor white man, displaying to him the virtues of sobriety, thrift and humility. I also gather that it will be of inestimable benefit to the noble Chinese himself. The Christian missionary will get hold of him in bulk, so to speak, and imbue him with the higher theology. It appears to be one of those rare cases where everybody is benefited at the expense of nobody. It is always a pity to let these rare opportunities slip by. Well, said Mrs. Wilkins, I have nothing to say again the Chinaman as a Chinaman. As to his being an Ethan, well, throwing stones at a church as the saying is, don't make a Christian of you. There's Christians I've met who couldn't do themselves much on by changing their religion. And as to cleanliness, well, I've never met but one, and he was a washerwoman, and I'd rather have sat next to him in a third-class carriage on a bank holiday than next to some of them. Seems to me, continued Mrs. Wilkins, we've got into the habit of talking a bit too much about other people's dirt. The London atmosphere ain't naturally a dry-cleaning process in itself, but there's a goodish few who seem to think it is. One comes across free-born Britons here and there as I be sorry to scrub clean for a shilling and find my own soap. It is a universal failing, Mrs. Wilkins, I explained. If you talk to a travelled Frenchman, he contrasts to his own satisfaction the Paris ouvrière in his blue blouse with the appearance of the London liberer. I dare say they're all right according to their lights, said Mrs. Wilkins, but it does seem a bit wrong that if our own chaps are willing and anxious to work, after all they've done too in the way of getting the mines for us, they shouldn't be allowed the job. Again, Mrs. Wilkins, it is difficult to arrive at a just conclusion, I said. The mine-owner, according to his enemies, hates the British workmen with the natural instinct that evil creatures feel towards the noble and virtuous. He will go to trouble and expense merely to spite the British workmen to keep him out of South Africa. According to his friends, the mine-owner sets his face against the idea of white labour for two reasons. First and foremost, it is not nice work. The mine-owner hates the thought of his beloved white brother toiling in the mines. It is not right that the noble white man should demean himself by such work. Secondly, white labour is too expensive. If for digging gold, men had to be paid anything like the same price as they are paid for digging coal, the mines could not be worked. The world would lose the gold that the mine-owner is anxious to bestow upon it. The mine-owner, following his own inclinations, would take a little farm, grow potatoes and live a beautiful life, perhaps write a little poetry. A slave to sense of duty, he is chained to the philanthropic work of gold mining. If we hamper him and worry him, the danger is that he will get angry with us. Possibly he will order his fiery chariot and return to where he came from. Well, he can't take the gold with him wherever he goes to, argue Mrs. Wilkins. You talk, Mrs. Wilkins, I said, as if the gold were of more value to the world than is the mine-owner. Well, isn't it, the mother of Mrs. Wilkins? It's a new idea, Mrs. Wilkins, I answered. It wants thinking out. End of chapter 19, shall we be ruined by Chinese cheap labor? Recording by Jason Mills. Section 20 of Idol Ideas in 1905. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eric Leach. Idol Ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. Jerome. How to solve the servant problem? I'm glad to see, Mrs. Wilkins, I said that the women's domestic Guild of America has succeeded in solving the servant-girl problem. Not too soon, one might almost say. Oh, said Mrs. Wilkins as she took the cover off the bacon and gave an extra polish to the mustard pot with her apron. They are clever people over there, least ways so I've always heard. This, their latest, Mrs. Wilkins, as I said, I am inclined to regard as their greatest triumph. My hope is that the women's domestic Guild of America, when it has finished with the United States and Canada, will perhaps see its way to establishing a branch in England. There are ladies of my acquaintance who would welcome, I feel sure, any really satisfactory solution of the problem. Well, good luck to it is all I say, responded Mrs. Wilkins. And if it makes all the girls content with their places and all the mistress is satisfied with what they've gotten happy in their minds, why, God bless it, say I. The mistake hither, too, I said from what I read, appears to have been that the right servant was not sent to the right place. What the women's domestic Guild of America proposes to do is find the right servant for the right place. You see the difference, don't you, Mrs. Wilkins? That's the secret, agreed Mrs. Wilkins. They don't anticipate any difficulty in getting the right sort of girl to take it. I gather not, Mrs. Wilkins, I replied. Mrs. Wilkins is of a pessimistic turn of mind. I'm not so sure about it, she said. The Almighty don't seem to have made too many of that sort, unless these American ladies that you speak of are going to start a factory of their own. I'm afraid there is disappointment in store for them. Don't throw cold water on the idea before it has fairly started, Mrs. Wilkins, I pleaded. Well, sir, said Mrs. Wilkins. I have been a girl myself in service, and in my time I've had a few mistresses of my own, and I've heard a good deal about others. There were ladies and ladies, as you may know, sir, and some of them, if they aren't exactly angels, are about as near to it as can be looked for in this climate, and they are not the ones that do most of the complaining. But as for the average mistress, well, it ain't a girl she wants, it's a plaster image without any natural in-eds, a sort of thing as ain't human, and ain't to be found in human nature. And then she'd grumble at it if it didn't happen to be able to be in two places at once. You fear that the standard for that right girl is likely to be set a trifle too high, Mrs. Wilkins, I suggested. That right girl, according to the notions of some of them, retorted Mrs. Wilkins. Her place ain't down here among us mere mortals. Her place is up in heaven with an arp in a golden crown. There's my niece Emma. I don't say she's a saint, but a better-hearted, harder-working girl at 20 pounds a year you don't expect to find, unless maybe you're a natural-born fool that can't help yourself. She wanted a place. She had been home for nearly six months, nursing her old father, as had been down all the winter with rheumatic fever, and I'll put to it she was for a few clothes. Your ear and talk about gals has insist on an hour a day for practice in the piano and the right to invite the young man to spend the evening with them in the drawing room. Perhaps it's meant to be funny. I ain't come across that type of girl myself outside the pictures in the comic papers, and I'll never believe till I see her myself that anybody else has. They sent her from the registry office to a lady at Clapton. I hope you're good at getting up early in the morning, says the lady. I like a gal as rise as cheerfully to her work. Well, ma'am, says Emma, I can't say as I've got a passion for it, but it's one of those things that has to be done, and I guess I've learnt the trick. I'm a great believer in early rising, says my lady in the morning. One is always fresher for one's work. My husband and the younger children breakfast at half past seven. Myself and my eldest daughter have our breakfast in bed at eight. That'll be all right, ma'am, says Emma. And I hope, says the lady, you're of an amiable disposition. Some gals, when you ring the bell, come up looking so disagreeable one almost wishes one didn't want them. Well, it ain't a thing, explains Emma, as makes you want to burst out laughing ear in the bell go off for the 20th time, and abin' suddenly to put down your work at, perhaps a critical moment. Some ladies don't seem to be able to reach down the at for themselves. I hope you're not impertinent, says the lady. If there's one thing that I object to in a servant, it is impertinent. We none of us like being answered back, says Emma, more particularly when we are in the wrong, but I know my place, ma'am, and I shan't give you no lip. It always leads to less trouble I find keeping your mouth shut rather than open at it. Oh, you fund of children, asks ma'lady. It depends upon the children, says Emma. There are some I've had to do with, as made the day seem pleasanter, and I've come across others as I could have part if from at any moment without tears. I like a girl, says the lady, who is naturally fund of children. It shows a good character. How many of them are there, says Emma? Four of them answers ma'lady, but you won't have much to do except with the two youngest. The great thing with young children is to surround them with good examples. Are you a Christian, asks ma'lady? That's what them generally called, says Emma. Every other Sunday evening out is my rule, says the lady, but of course I shall expect you to go to church. Do you mean in my time, ma'am, says Emma, or in yours? I mean on your evening, of course, says ma'lady. How else could you go? Well, ma'am, says Emma, I'd like to see my people now and then. There are better things, says ma'lady, than seeing what you call your people, and I should not care to take a girl into my house as put a pleasure before a religion. You are not engaged, I hope. Woken up, ma'am, do you mean, says Emma? No, ma'am, there is nobody I've got in my mind not just at present. I never will take a gal, explains ma'lady, who is engaged. I find it distracts her attention from her work, and they must insist if you come to me, continues ma'lady, that you get yourself another hat and jacket. If there's one thing I object to in a servant, it is a disposition to cheap finery. Her own daughter was sitting there beside her with half a dozen silver bangles on her wrist, and a sort of thing hanging round her neck, as, had it been real, would have been worth perhaps a thousand pounds. But Emma wanted a job, so she kept her thoughts to herself. I can put these things by and get myself something else, she says. If you don't mind, ma'am, advancing me something out to my first three months wages, I'm afraid my account at the bank is a bit overdrawn. The lady whispered something to her daughter. I'm afraid you don't think in it over, she says, that you won't suit after all. You don't look serious enough. I feel sure from the way you do your air, says my lady, there's a frivolous side to your nature. So Emma came away and was not on the whole too sorry. But do they get servants to come to them, this type of mistress, do you think, Mrs. Wilkins? They get them all right, said Mrs. Wilkins. And if it's a decent gal, it makes a bad gal other. The ever-afterwards looks upon every mistress as her enemy, and acts accordingly. And if she ain't a naturally good gal, it makes her worse, and then your ear with awful things gales are. I don't say it's an easy problem, continued Mrs. Wilkins. It's just like marriages. The good mistress gets older, the bad servant, and the bad mistress as often as not is lucky. But how is it, I argued, that in hotels, for instance, this service is excellent, and the girls, generally speaking, seem contented. The work is hard, and the wage is not much better, if as good. Ah, said Mrs. Wilkins, you have it the rotten ale on the head there, sir. They go into the hotels and work like niggers, knowing that if a single thing goes wrong, they'll be bully-ragged and sworn at till they don't know whether they are standing on their head or their heels. But that of their hours. The gal knows when a work is done, and when the clock strikes, she is a human being once again. She has got that moment to look forward to all day, and it keeps her going. In private service, there is no moment in the day to hope for. If the lady's reasonable, she ain't overworked, but now how can she ever feel she is her own mistress, free to come and go, to wear a bit of finery, to have a bit of fun? She works from six in the morning till 11 or 12 at night, and then only she goes to bed provided she ain't wanted. She don't belong to herself at all. It's that that irritates them. I see a point, Mrs. Wilkins, I said, and, of course, in a house where two or three servants were kept, some such plan might be easily arranged. The girl who commenced work at six o'clock in the morning might consider herself free at six o'clock in the evening. What she did with herself, how she dressed herself in her own time would be her affair. What church the clerk or the workman belongs to, what company he keeps, is no concern of the firm. In such matters, mistresses, I am inclined to think, saddle themselves with a responsibility for which there is no need. If the girl behaves herself while in the house and does her work, there the contract ends. The mistress who thinks at her duty to combine the roles of employer and of maiden aren't as naturally resented. The next month, the girl might change her hours from 12 to 12, and her fellow servant could enjoy the six a.m. to six p.m. shift. But how do you suppose to deal, Mrs. Wilkins, with the smaller menage, that employers only one servant? Well, sir, said Mrs. Wilkins, it seems to me simple enough. Ladies talk pretty about the dignity of labour and are never tired of pointing out why girls should prefer domestic service to all other kinds of work. Suppose they practise what they preach. In the house where there's only the master and the mistress and say a couple of small children, let the lady take a turn. After all, it's only a duty, same as the office or the shop is the man's. Where on the other hand, there are bigish boys and girls about the place where it wouldn't do them any harm to be taught to play a little less and to look up to themselves a little more. It's just arranging things, that's all that's wanted. You remind me of a family I once knew, Mrs. Wilkins, I said. It consisted of the usual father and mother and of five sad, healthy girls. They kept two servants, or rather, they never kept any servants. They lived always looking for servants, breaking their hearts over servants, packing servants off at a moment's notice, standing disconsolately looking after servants who had packed themselves off at a moment's notice, wondering generally what the world was coming to. It occurred to me at the time that without much trouble, they could have lived a peaceful life without servants. The oldest girl was learning painting and seemed unable to learn anything else. It was poor sort of painting, she noticed it herself, but she seemed to think that if she talked a lot about it and thought of nothing else, that somehow it would all come right. The second girl played the violin. She played it from early morning till late evening and friends fell away from them. There wasn't a spark of talent in the family, but they all had a notion that a vague longing to be admired was just the same as genius. Another daughter fancied she would like to be an actress and screamed all day in the attic. The fourth wrote poetry on a typewriter and wondered why nobody seemed to want it. While the fifth one suffered from a weird belief that smearing wood with a red-hot sort of poker was a thing worth doing for its own sake, all of them seemed willing enough to work provided only that it was work of no use to any living soul. With a little sense and the occasional assistance of a chairwoman, they could have led a merrier life. If I was given a wise secret, said Mrs. Wilkins, I'd say to the mistresses, show yourselves able to be independent. It's because the gals know that the mistresses can't do without them that they sometimes give themselves airs. This is the end of How to Solve the Servant Problem, read by Eric Leach, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Section 21 of Idol Ideas in 1905. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Roger Clifton. Idol Ideas in 1905 by Jerome K. Jerome. Section 21, Why We Hate the Foreigner. The advantage that the foreigner possesses over the Englishman is that he is born good. He does not have to try to be good as we do. He does not have to start the new year with a resolution to be good and succeed by our accidents in being so to the middle of January. He is just good all the year round. When a foreigner is told to mount or descend from a tram on the near side, it does not occur to him that it will be humanly possible to secure egress from or ingress to that tram from the off side. In Brussels once, I witnessed a daring attempt by a lawless foreigner to enter a tram from the wrong side. The gate was open. He was standing close beside it. A line of traffic was in his way. To have got round to the right side of that tram would have meant missing it. He entered when the conductor was not looking and took his seat. The astonishment of the conductor on finding him there was immense. How did he get there? The conductor had been watching the proper entrance and the man had not passed him. Later the true explanation suggested itself to the conductor, but for a while he hesitated to accuse a fellow human being of such crime. He appealed to the passenger himself. What's his presence to be accounted for by miracle or by sin? The passenger confessed. It was more in sorrow than in anger that the conductor requested him at once to leave. This tram was going to be kept respectable. The passenger proved refractory. A halt was called and the gendarmerie appealed to. After the manner of policeman they sprang as it were from the ground and formed up behind an imposing officer who might took to be the sergeant. At first the sergeant could hardly believe the conductor's statement. Even then had the passenger asserted that he had entered by the proper entrance his word would have been taken. Much easier to the foreign official mind would it have been to believe that the conductor had been stricken with temporary blindness than that man born of woman would have deliberately done anything expressly forbidden by a printed notice. Myself, in his case, I should have lied and got the trouble over, but he was a proud man or had not much sense, one of the two, and so held fast to the truth. It was pointed out to him that he must descend immediately and wait for the next tram. Other gendarmes were arriving from every quarter. Resistance in the circumstances seemed hopeless. He said he would get down. He made to descend this time by the propagate, but that was not justice. He had mounted the wrong side, he must have liked on the wrong side. Accordingly he was put out amongst the traffic, after which the conductor preached a sermon from the centre of the tram on the danger of a sense and a sense conducted from the wrong quarter. There is a law throughout Germany and excellent law it is. I would we had it in England, that nobody may scatter paper about the street. An English military friend told me that one day in Dresden, unacquainted with this rule, he tore a long letter he had been reading into some 50 fragments and threw them behind him. A policeman stopped him and explained to him quite politely the law upon the subject. My military friend agreed that it was a very good law, thanked the man for his information and said that for the future he would bear it in mind. That, as the policeman pointed out, would make things right enough for the future, but meanwhile it was necessary to deal with the past, with the 50 or so pieces of paper lying scattered about the road and pavement. My military friend, with a pleasant laugh, confessed he did not see what was to be done. The policeman, more imaginative, saw a way out. It was that my military friend should set to work and pick up those 50 scraps of paper. He is an English general on the retired list and of imposing appearance. His manner on occasion is haughty. He did not see himself on his hands and knees in the Chief Street of Dresden in the middle of the afternoon picking up paper. The German policeman himself admitted that the situation was awkward. If the English general could not accept it, there happened to be an alternative. It was that the English general should accompany the policeman through the streets, followed by the usual crowd, to the nearest prison some three miles off. It being now four o'clock in the afternoon, they would probably find the judge departed, but the most comfortable thing possible in prison cells should be allotted to him, and the policeman had little doubt that the general, having paid his fine of 40 marks, would find himself a free man again in time for lunch the following day. The general suggested hiring a boy to pick up the paper. The policeman referred to the wording of the law and found that this would not be permitted. I thought the matter out, my friend told me, imagining all the possible alternatives, including that of knocking the fellow down and making a boat, and came to the conclusion that his first suggestion would on the whole result in the least discomfort. But I had no idea that picking up small scraps of thin paper off greasy stones was the business that I found it. It took me nearly 10 minutes and afforded amusement I calculate to over a thousand people. But it is a good law, mind you. All I wish is that I had known it beforehand. On one occasion I accompanied an American lady to a German opera house. The taking off of hats in the German Schauspielhaus is obligatory, and again I would it were so in England. But the American lady is accustomed to disregard rules made by mere man. She explained to the doorkeeper that she was going to wear her hat. He, on his side, explained to her that she was not. They were both a bit short with one another. I took the opportunity to turn aside and buy a programme. The fewer people there are mixed up in an argument, I always think, the better. My companion explained quite frankly to the doorkeeper that it did not matter what he said she was not going to take any notice of him. He did not look a talkative man at any time, and may be this announcement further discouraged him. In any case, he made no attempt to answer. All he did was to stand in the centre of the doorway with a faraway look in his eyes. The doorway was some four feet wide. He was about three feet six across and weighed about twenty stone. As I explained, I was busy buying a programme, and when I returned, my friend had her hat in her hand and was digging pins into it. I think she was trying to make believe it was the heart of the doorkeeper. She did not want to listen to the opera. She wanted to talk all the time about that doorkeeper, but the people round us would not even let her do that. She has spent three winters in Germany since then. Now, when she feels like passing through a door that is standing wide open just in front of her, and which leads to just the place she wants to get to, and an official shakes his head at her and explains that she must not, but must go up two flights of stairs and along a corridor and down another flight of stairs, and so get to her place that way, she apologises for her error and trots off looking ashamed of herself. Continental governments have trained their citizens to perfection. Obedience is the continent's first law. The story that is told of a Spanish king who was nearly drowned, because the particular official whose duty it was to dive in after Spanish kings when they tumbled out of boats happened to be dead, and his successor had not yet been appointed, I can quite believe. On the continental railways, if you ride second class with a first-class ticket, you render yourself liable to imprisonment. What the penalty is for riding first with a second-class ticket, I cannot say, probably death, though a friend of mine came very near on one occasion to finding out. All would have gone well with him if he had not been so darned honest. He is one of those men who pride themselves on being honest. I believe he takes a positive pleasure in being honest. He had purchased a second-class ticket for a station up a mountain, but meeting by chance on the platform a lady acquaintance had gone with her into a first-class apartment. On arriving at the journey's end he explained to the collector what he'd done, and with his purse in his hand demanded to know the difference. They took him into a room and locked the door. They wrote out his confession and read it over to him and made him sign it and then they sent for a policeman. The policeman cross-examined him for about a quarter of an hour. They did not believe the story about the lady. Where was the lady? He did not know. They searched the neighbourhood for her, but could not find her. He suggested, what turned out to be the truth, that tired of loitering about the station she had gone up the mountain. An anarchist outrage had occurred in the neighbouring town some months before. The policeman suggested searching for bonds. Fortunately a Cook's agent, returning with a party of tourists, arrived upon the scene and took it upon himself to explain in delicate language that my friend was a bit of an ass and could not tell first-class from second. It was the red cushions that had deceived my friend. He thought it was first-class as a matter of fact it was second-class. Everybody breathed again. The confession was torn up amid universal joy. And then the fool of a ticket-collector wanted to know about the lady who must have travelled in a second-class compartment with a first-class ticket. He looked as if a bad time were in store for her on her return to the station. But the admirable representative of Cook was again equal to the occasion. He explained that my friend was also a bit of a liar. When he said he had travelled with this lady he was merely boasting. He would like to have travelled with her. That was all he meant. Only his German was shaky. Joy once more entered upon the scene. My friend's character appeared to be re-established. He was not the abandoned wretch for whom they'd taken him only apparently a wandering idiot. Such and one the German official could respect. At the expense of such and one the German official even consented to drink beer. Not only the foreign man, woman and child but the foreign dog is born good. In England, if you happen to be the possessor of a dog much of your time is taken up dragging him out of fights, quarreling with the possessor of the other dog as to which began it, explaining to irate elderly ladies that he did not kill the cat that the cat must have died of heart disease while running across the road, assuring disbelieving gamekeepers that he is not your dog that you have not the faintest notion whose dog he is. With the foreign dog life is a peaceful proceeding. When the foreign dog sees a row tears spring to his eyes. He hastens on and tries to find a policeman. When the foreign dog sees a cat in a hurry he stands aside to allow her to pass. They dress the foreign dog, some of them, in a little coat with a pocket for his handkerchief and put shoes on his feet. They have not given him a hat, not yet. When they do he will contrive by some means or another to raise it politely when he meets a cat he thinks he knows. One morning in a continental city I came across a disturbance. It might be more correct to say the disturbance came across me. It swept down upon me and velled up to me before I knew that I was in it. A fox terrier it was belonging to a very young lady. It was when the disturbance was to a certain extent over that we discovered he belonged to this young lady. She arrived towards the end of the disturbance very much out of breath. She'd been running for a mile, poor girl, and shouting most of the way. When she looked round and saw all the things that had happened and had had other things that she had missed explained to her she burst into tears. An English owner of that fox terrier would have given one look round and then jumped upon the nearest tram going anywhere. But as I've said, the foreigner is born good. I left her giving her name addressed to seven different people. But it was about the dog I wished to speak more particularly. He had commenced innocently enough trying to catch a sparrow. Nothing did like to sparrow more than being chased by a dog. A dozen times he thought he had the sparrow. Then another dog had got in his way. I don't know what they call this breed of dog, but abroad it's popular. It has no tail and looks like a pig when things are going well with it. This particular specimen, when I saw him, looked more like part of a doormat. The fox terrier had seized it by the scruff of the neck and had rolled it over into the gutter just in front of a motorcycle. Its owner, a large lady, had dotted out to save it and had collided with the motorcyclist. The large lady had been thrown some half a dozen yards against an Italian boy carrying a trayload of plaster images. I have seen a good deal of trouble in my life, but never one yet that did not have an Italian image vendor somehow or other mixed up in it. Where these boys hide in times of peace is a mystery. The chance of being upset brings them out as sunshine brings out flies. The motorcycle had dashed into a little milk cart and had spread it out neatly in the middle of the tram lines. The tram traffic looked like being stopped for a quarter of an hour, but the idea of every approaching tram driver appeared to be that if he rang his bell with sufficient vigor this seeming obstruction would fade away and disappear. In an English town all this would not have attracted much attention. Somebody would have explained that a dog was the original cause and the whole series of events would have appeared ordinary and natural. Upon these foreigners the fear descended that the Almighty for some reason was angry with them. A policeman ran to catch the dog. The delighted dog rushed backwards, barking furiously and tried to throw up paving-stands with its hind legs. That frightened a nursemaid who was wheeling a perambulator and then it was that I entered into the proceedings. Seated on the edge of the pavement with a perambulator on one side of me and a howling baby on the other, I told that dog what I thought of him. Forgetful that I was in a foreign land but he might not understand me, I told it him in English. I told it him at length. I told it very loud and clear. He stood a yard in front of me listening to me with an expression of ecstatic joy I have never before or since seen equaled on any face human or canine. He drank it in as though it had been music from paradise. Where have I heard that song before? He seemed to be saying to himself the old familiar language they used to talk to me when I was young. He approached nearer to me. There were almost tears in his eyes when I had finished. Say it again, he seemed to be asking of me. Oh, say it all over again, the dear old English oaths and curses that in this God-forsaken land I never hoped to hear again. I learnt from the young lady that he was an English-born fox terrier. That explained everything. The foreign dog does not do this sort of thing. The foreigner is born good. That is why we hate him.