Books: Idle Ideas in 1905
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Jerome K. Jerome >> Idle Ideas in 1905
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It is curious the attraction the Church has always possessed for the
marketing classes. Christ drove them from the Temple, but still, in
every continental city, they cluster round its outer walls. It makes
a charming picture on a sunny morning, the great cathedral with its
massive shadow forming the background; splashed about its feet, like
a parterre of gay flowers around the trunk of some old tree, the
women, young girls in their many coloured costumes, sitting before
their piled-up baskets of green vegetables, of shining fruits.
In Brussels the chief market is held on the Grande Place. The great
gilded houses have looked down upon much the same scene every morning
these four hundred years. In summer time it commences about half-
past four; by five o'clock it is a roaring hive, the great city round
about still sleeping.
Here comes the thrifty housewife of the poor, to whom the difference
of a tenth of a penny in the price of a cabbage is all-important, and
the much harassed keeper of the petty pension. There are houses in
Brussels where they will feed you, light you, sleep you, wait on you,
for two francs a day. Withered old ladies, ancient governesses, who
will teach you for forty centimes an hour, gather round these
ricketty tables, wolf up the thin soup, grumble at the watery coffee,
help themselves with unladylike greediness to the potato pie. It
must need careful housewifery to keep these poor creatures on two
francs a day and make a profit for yourself. So "Madame," the much-
grumbled-at, who has gone to bed about twelve, rises a little before
five, makes her way down with her basket. Thus a few sous may be
saved upon the day's economies.
Sometimes it is a mere child who is the little housekeeper. One
thinks that perhaps this early training in the art of haggling may
not be good for her. Already there is a hard expression in the
childish eyes, mean lines about the little mouth. The finer
qualities of humanity are expensive luxuries, not to be afforded by
the poor.
They overwork their patient dogs, and underfeed them. During the two
hours' market the poor beasts, still fastened to their little
"chariots," rest in the open space about the neighbouring Bourse.
They snatch at what you throw them; they do not even thank you with a
wag of the tail. Gratitude! Politeness! What mean you? We have
not heard of such. We only work. Some of them amid all the din lie
sleeping between their shafts. Some are licking one another's sores.
One would they were better treated; alas! their owners, likewise, are
overworked and underfed, housed in kennels no better. But if the
majority in every society were not overworked and underfed and meanly
housed, why, then the minority could not be underworked and overfed
and housed luxuriously. But this is talk to which no respectable
reader can be expected to listen.
They are one babel of bargaining, these markets. The purchaser
selects a cauliflower. Fortunately, cauliflowers have no feelings,
or probably it would burst into tears at the expression with which it
is regarded. It is impossible that any lady should desire such a
cauliflower. Still, out of mere curiosity, she would know the price-
-that is, if the owner of the cauliflower is not too much ashamed of
it to name a price.
The owner of the cauliflower suggests six sous. The thing is too
ridiculous for argument. The purchaser breaks into a laugh.
The owner of the cauliflower is stung. She points out the beauties
of that cauliflower. Apparently it is the cauliflower out of all her
stock she loves the best; a better cauliflower never lived; if there
were more cauliflowers in the world like this particular cauliflower
things might be different. She gives a sketch of the cauliflower's
career, from its youth upwards. Hard enough it will be for her when
the hour for parting from it comes. If the other lady has not
sufficient knowledge of cauliflowers to appreciate it, will she
kindly not paw it about, but put it down and go away, and never let
the owner of the cauliflower see her again.
The other lady, more as a friend than as a purchaser, points out the
cauliflower's defects. She wishes well to the owner of the
cauliflower, and would like to teach her something about her
business. A lady who thinks such a cauliflower worth six sous can
never hope to succeed as a cauliflower vendor. Has she really taken
the trouble to examine the cauliflower for herself, or has love made
her blind to its shortcomings?
The owner of the cauliflower is too indignant to reply. She snatches
it away, appears to be comforting it, replaces it in the basket. The
other lady is grieved at human obstinacy and stupidity in general.
If the owner of the cauliflower had had any sense she would have
asked four sous. Eventually business is done at five.
It is the custom everywhere abroad--asking the price of a thing is
simply opening conversation. A lady told me that, the first day she
began housekeeping in Florence, she handed over to a poulterer for a
chicken the price he had demanded--with protestations that he was
losing on the transaction, but wanted, for family reasons,
apparently, to get rid of the chicken. He stood for half a minute
staring at her, and then, being an honest sort of man, threw in a
pigeon.
Foreign housekeepers starting business in London appear hurt when our
tradesmen decline to accept half-a-crown for articles marked three-
and-six.
"Then why mark it only three-and-sixpence?" is the foreign
housekeeper's argument.
SHOULD MARRIED MEN PLAY GOLF?
That we Englishmen attach too much importance to sport goes without
saying--or, rather, it has been said so often as to have become a
commonplace. One of these days some reforming English novelist will
write a book, showing the evil effects of over-indulgence in sport:
the neglected business, the ruined home, the slow but sure sapping of
the brain--what there may have been of it in the beginning--leading
to semi-imbecility and yearly increasing obesity.
A young couple, I once heard of, went for their honeymoon to
Scotland. The poor girl did not know he was a golfer (he had wooed
and won her during a period of idleness enforced by a sprained
shoulder), or maybe she would have avoided Scotland. The idea they
started with was that of a tour. The second day the man went out for
a stroll by himself. At dinner-time he observed, with a far-away
look in his eyes, that it seemed a pretty spot they had struck, and
suggested their staying there another day. The next morning after
breakfast he borrowed a club from the hotel porter, and remarked that
he would take a walk while she finished doing her hair. He said it
amused him, swinging a club while he walked. He returned in time for
lunch and seemed moody all the afternoon. He said the air suited
him, and urged that they should linger yet another day.
She was young and inexperienced, and thought, maybe, it was liver.
She had heard much about liver from her father. The next morning he
borrowed more clubs, and went out, this time before breakfast,
returning to a late and not over sociable dinner. That was the end
of their honeymoon so far as she was concerned. He meant well, but
the thing had gone too far. The vice had entered into his blood, and
the smell of the links drove out all other considerations.
We are most of us familiar, I take it, with the story of the golfing
parson, who could not keep from swearing when the balls went wrong.
"Golf and the ministry don't seem to go together," his friend told
him. "Take my advice before it's too late, and give it up, Tammas."
A few months later Tammas met his friend again.
"You were right, Jamie," cried the parson cheerily, "they didna run
well in harness; golf and the meenistry, I hae followed your advice:
I hae gi'en it oop."
"Then what are ye doing with that sack of clubs?" inquired Jamie.
"What am I doing with them?" repeated the puzzled Tammas. "Why I am
going to play golf with them." A light broke upon him. "Great
Heavens, man!" he continued, "ye didna' think 'twas the golf I'd
gi'en oop?"
The Englishman does not understand play. He makes a life-long labour
of his sport, and to it sacrifices mind and body. The health resorts
of Europe--to paraphrase a famous saying that nobody appears to have
said--draw half their profits from the playing fields of Eton and
elsewhere. In Swiss and German kurhausen enormously fat men bear
down upon you and explain to you that once they were the champion
sprinters or the high-jump representatives of their university--men
who now hold on to the bannisters and groan as they haul themselves
upstairs. Consumptive men, between paroxysms of coughing, tell you
of the goals they scored when they were half-backs or forwards of
extraordinary ability. Ex-light-weight amateur pugilists, with the
figure now of an American roll-top desk, butt you into a corner of
the billiard-room, and, surprised they cannot get as near you as they
would desire, whisper to you the secret of avoiding the undercut by
the swiftness of the backward leap. Broken-down tennis players, one-
legged skaters, dropsical gentlemen-riders, are to be met with
hobbling on crutches along every highway of the Engadine.
They are pitiable objects. Never having learnt to read anything but
the sporting papers, books are of no use to them. They never wasted
much of their youth on thought, and, apparently, have lost the knack
of it. They don't care for art, and Nature only suggests to them the
things they can no longer do. The snow-clad mountain reminds them
that once they were daring tobogannists; the undulating common makes
them sad because they can no longer handle a golf-club; by the
riverside they sit down and tell you of the salmon they caught before
they caught rheumatic fever; birds only make them long for guns;
music raises visions of the local cricket-match of long ago,
enlivened by the local band; a picturesque estaminet, with little
tables spread out under the vines, recalls bitter memories of ping-
pong. One is sorry for them, but their conversation is not
exhilarating. The man who has other interests in life beyond sport
is apt to find their reminiscences monotonous; while to one another
they do not care to talk. One gathers that they do not altogether
believe one another.
The foreigner is taking kindly to our sports; one hopes he will be
forewarned by our example and not overdo the thing. At present, one
is bound to admit, he shows no sign of taking sport too seriously.
Football is gaining favour more and more throughout Europe. But yet
the Frenchman has not got it out of his head that the coup to
practise is kicking the ball high into the air and catching it upon
his head. He would rather catch the ball upon his head than score a
goal. If he can manoeuvre the ball away into a corner, kick it up
into the air twice running, and each time catch it on his head, he
does not seem to care what happens after that. Anybody can have the
ball; he has had his game and is happy.
They talk of introducing cricket into Belgium; I shall certainly try
to be present at the opening game. I am afraid that, until he learns
from experience, the Belgian fielder will stop cricket balls with his
head. That the head is the proper thing with which to play ball
appears to be in his blood. My head is round, he argues, and hard,
just like the ball itself; what part of the human frame more fit and
proper with which to meet and stop a ball.
Golf has not yet caught on, but tennis is firmly established from St.
Petersburg to Bordeaux. The German, with the thoroughness
characteristic of him, is working hard. University professors, stout
majors, rising early in the morning, hire boys and practise back-
handers and half-volleys. But to the Frenchman, as yet, it is a
game. He plays it in a happy, merry fashion, that is shocking to
English eyes.
Your partner's service rather astonishes you. An occasional yard or
so beyond the line happens to anyone, but this man's object appears
to be to break windows. You feel you really must remonstrate, when
the joyous laughter and tumultuous applause of the spectators explain
the puzzle to you. He has not been trying to serve; he has been
trying to hit a man in the next court who is stooping down to tie up
his shoe-lace. With his last ball he has succeeded. He has hit the
man in the small of the back, and has bowled him over. The unanimous
opinion of the surrounding critics is that the ball could not
possibly have been better placed. A Doherty has never won greater
applause from the crowd. Even the man who has been hit appears
pleased; it shows what a Frenchman can do when he does take up a
game.
But French honour demands revenge. He forgets his shoe, he forgets
his game. He gathers together all the balls that he can find; his
balls, your balls, anybody's balls that happen to be handy. And then
commences the return match. At this point it is best to crouch down
under shelter of the net. Most of the players round about adopt this
plan; the more timid make for the club-house, and, finding themselves
there, order coffee and light up cigarettes. After a while both
players appear to be satisfied. The other players then gather round
to claim their balls. This makes a good game by itself. The object
is to get as many balls as you can, your own and other people's--for
preference other people's--and run off with them round the courts,
followed by whooping claimants.
In the course of half-an-hour or so, when everybody is dead beat, the
game--the original game--is resumed. You demand the score; your
partner promptly says it is "forty-fifteen." Both your opponents
rush up to the net, and apparently there is going to be a duel. It
is only a friendly altercation; they very much doubt its being
"forty-fifteen." "Fifteen-forty" they could believe; they suggest it
as a compromise. The discussion is concluded by calling it deuce.
As it is rare for a game to proceed without some such incident
occurring in the middle of it, the score generally is deuce. This
avoids heart-burning; nobody wins a set and nobody loses. The one
game generally suffices for the afternoon.
To the earnest player, it is also confusing to miss your partner
occasionally--to turn round and find that he is talking to a man.
Nobody but yourself takes the slightest objection to his absence.
The other side appear to regard it as a good opportunity to score.
Five minutes later he resumes the game. His friend comes with him,
also the dog of his friend. The dog is welcomed with enthusiasm; all
balls are returned to the dog. Until the dog is tired you do not get
a look in. But all this will no doubt soon be changed. There are
some excellent French and Belgian players; from them their
compatriots will gradually learn higher ideals. The Frenchman is
young in the game. As the right conception of the game grows upon
him, he will also learn to keep the balls lower.
I suppose it is the continental sky. It is so blue, so beautiful; it
naturally attracts one. Anyhow, the fact remains that most tennis
players on the Continent, whether English or foreign, have a tendency
to aim the ball direct at Heaven. At an English club in Switzerland
there existed in my days a young Englishman who was really a
wonderful player. To get the ball past him was almost an
impossibility. It was his return that was weak. He only had one
stroke; the ball went a hundred feet or so into the air and descended
in his opponent's court. The other man would stand watching it, a
little speck in the Heavens, growing gradually bigger and bigger as
it neared the earth. Newcomers would chatter to him, thinking he had
detected a balloon or an eagle. He would wave them aside, explain to
them that he would talk to them later, after the arrival of the ball.
It would fall with a thud at his feet, rise another twenty yards or
so and again descend. When it was at the proper height he would hit
it back over the net, and the next moment it would be mounting the
sky again. At tournaments I have seen that young man, with tears in
his eyes, pleading to be given an umpire. Every umpire had fled.
They hid behind trees, borrowed silk hats and umbrellas and pretended
they were visitors--any device, however mean, to avoid the task of
umpiring for that young man. Provided his opponent did not go to
sleep or get cramp, one game might last all day. Anyone could return
his balls; but, as I have said, to get a ball past him was almost an
impossibility. He invariably won; the other man, after an hour or
so, would get mad and try to lose. It was his only chance of dinner.
It is a pretty sight, generally speaking, a tennis ground abroad.
The women pay more attention to their costumes than do our lady
players. The men are usually in spotless white. The ground is often
charmingly situated, the club-house picturesque; there is always
laughter and merriment. The play may not be so good to watch, but
the picture is delightful. I accompanied a man a little while ago to
his club on the outskirts of Brussels. The ground was bordered by a
wood on one side, and surrounded on the other three by petites
fermes--allotments, as we should call them in England, worked by the
peasants themselves.
It was a glorious spring afternoon. The courts were crowded. The
red earth and the green grass formed a background against which the
women, in their new Parisian toilets, under their bright parasols,
stood out like wondrous bouquets of moving flowers. The whole
atmosphere was a delightful mingling of idle gaiety, flirtation, and
graceful sensuousness. A modern Watteau would have seized upon the
scene with avidity.
Just beyond--separated by the almost invisible wire fencing--a group
of peasants were working in the field. An old woman and a young
girl, with ropes about their shoulders, were drawing a harrow, guided
by a withered old scarecrow of a man. They paused for a moment at
the wire fencing, and looked through. It was an odd contrast; the
two worlds divided by that wire fencing--so slight, almost invisible.
The girl swept the sweat from her face with her hand; the woman
pushed back her grey locks underneath the handkerchief knotted about
her head; the old man straightened himself with some difficulty. So
they stood, for perhaps a minute, gazing with quiet, passionless
faces through that slight fencing, that a push from their work-
hardened hands might have levelled.
Was there any thought, I wonder, passing through their brains? The
young girl--she was a handsome creature in spite of her disfiguring
garments. The woman--it was a wonderfully fine face: clear, calm
eyes, deep-set under a square broad brow. The withered old
scarecrow--ever sowing the seed in the spring of the fruit that
others shall eat.
The old man bent again over the guiding ropes: gave the word. The
team moved forward up the hill. It is Anatole France, I think, who
says: Society is based upon the patience of the poor.
ARE EARLY MARRIAGES A MISTAKE?
I am chary nowadays of offering counsel in connection with subjects
concerning which I am not and cannot be an authority. Long ago I
once took upon myself to write a paper about babies. It did not aim
to be a textbook on the subject. It did not even claim to exhaust
the topic. I was willing that others, coming after me, should
continue the argument--that is if, upon reflection, they were still
of opinion there was anything more to be said. I was pleased with
the article. I went out of my way to obtain an early copy of the
magazine in which it appeared, on purpose to show it to a lady friend
of mine. She was the possessor of one or two babies of her own,
specimens in no way remarkable, though she herself, as was natural
enough, did her best to boom them. I thought it might be helpful to
her: the views and observations, not of a rival fancier, who would
be prejudiced, but of an intelligent amateur. I put the magazine
into her hands, opened at the proper place.
"Read it through carefully and quietly," I said; "don't let anything
distract you. Have a pencil and a bit of paper ready at your side,
and note down any points upon which you would like further
information. If there is anything you think I have missed out let me
know. It may be that here and there you will be disagreeing with me.
If so, do not hesitate to mention it, I shall not be angry. If a
demand arises I shall very likely issue an enlarged and improved
edition of this paper in the form of a pamphlet, in which case hints
and suggestions that to you may appear almost impertinent will be of
distinct help to me."
"I haven't got a pencil," she said; "what's it all about?"
"It's about babies," I explained, and I lent her a pencil.
That is another thing I have learnt. Never lend a pencil to a woman
if you ever want to see it again. She has three answers to your
request for its return. The first, that she gave it back to you and
that you put it in your pocket, and that it's there now, and that if
it isn't it ought to be. The second, that you never lent it to her.
The third, that she wishes people would not lend her pencils and then
clamour for them back, just when she has something else far more
important to think about.
"What do you know about babies?" she demanded.
"If you will read the paper," I replied, "you will see for yourself.
It's all there."
She flicked over the pages contemptuously.
"There doesn't seem much of it?" she retorted.
"It is condensed," I pointed out to her.
"I am glad it is short. All right, I'll read it," she agreed.
I thought my presence might disturb her, so went out into the garden.
I wanted her to get the full benefit of it. I crept back now and
again to peep through the open window. She did not seem to be making
many notes. But I heard her making little noises to herself. When I
saw she had reached the last page, I re-entered the room.
"Well?" I said.
"Is it meant to be funny," she demanded, "or is it intended to be
taken seriously?"
"There may be flashes of humour here and there--"
She did not wait for me to finish.
"Because if it's meant to be funny," she said, "I don't think it is
at all funny. And if it is intended to be serious, there's one thing
very clear, and that is that you are not a mother."
With the unerring instinct of the born critic she had divined my one
weak point. Other objections raised against me I could have met.
But that one stinging reproach was unanswerable. It has made me, as
I have explained, chary of tendering advice on matters outside my own
department of life. Otherwise, every year, about Valentine's day,
there is much that I should like to say to my good friends the birds.
I want to put it to them seriously. Is not the month of February
just a little too early? Of course, their answer would be the same
as in the case of my motherly friend.
"Oh, what do you know about it? you are not a bird."
I know I am not a bird, but that is the very reason why they should
listen to me. I bring a fresh mind to bear upon the subject. I am
not tied down by bird convention. February, my dear friends--in
these northern climes of ours at all events--is much too early. You
have to build in a high wind, and nothing, believe me, tries a lady's
temper more than being blown about. Nature is nature, and womenfolk,
my dear sirs, are the same all the world over, whether they be birds
or whether they be human. I am an older person than most of you, and
I speak with the weight of experience.
If I were going to build a house with my wife, I should not choose a
season of the year when the bricks and planks and things were liable
to be torn out of her hand, her skirts blown over her head, and she
left clinging for dear life to a scaffolding pole. I know the
feminine biped and, you take it from me, that is not her notion of a
honeymoon. In April or May, the sun shining, the air balmy--when,
after carrying up to her a load or two of bricks, and a hod or two of
mortar, we could knock off work for a few minutes without fear of the
whole house being swept away into the next street--could sit side by
side on the top of a wall, our legs dangling down, and peck and
morsel together; after which I could whistle a bit to her--then
housebuilding might be a pleasure.
The swallows are wisest; June is their idea, and a very good idea,
too. In a mountain village in the Tyrol, early one summer, I had the
opportunity of watching very closely the building of a swallow's
nest. After coffee, the first morning, I stepped out from the great,
cool, dark passage of the wirtschaft into the blazing sunlight, and,
for no particular reason, pulled-to the massive door behind me.
While filling my pipe, a swallow almost brushed by me, then wheeled
round again, and took up a position on the fence only a few yards
from me. He was carrying what to him was an exceptionally large and
heavy brick. He put it down beside him on the fence, and called out
something which I could not understand. I did not move. He got
quite excited and said some more. It was undoubtable he was
addressing me--nobody else was by. I judged from his tone that he
was getting cross with me. At this point my travelling companion,
his toilet unfinished, put his head out of the window just above me.
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