Books: Idle Ideas in 1905
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Jerome K. Jerome >> Idle Ideas in 1905
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"Such an odd thing," he called down to me. "I never noticed it last
night. A pair of swallows are building a nest here in the hall.
You've got to be careful you don't mistake it for a hat-peg. The old
lady says they have built there regularly for the last three years."
Then it came to me what it was the gentleman had been saying to me:
"I say, sir, you with the bit of wood in your mouth, you have been
and shut the door and I can't get in."
Now, with the key in my possession, it was so clear and
understandable, I really forgot for the moment he was only a bird.
"I beg your pardon," I replied, "I had no idea. Such an
extraordinary place to build a nest."
I opened the door for him, and, taking up his brick again, he
entered, and I followed him in. There was a deal of talk.
"He shut the door," I heard him say, "Chap there, sucking the bit of
wood. Thought I was never going to get in."
"I know," was the answer; "it has been so dark in here, if you'll
believe me, I've hardly been able to see what I've been doing."
"Fine brick, isn't it? Where will you have it?"
Observing me sitting there, they lowered their voices. Evidently she
wanted him to put the brick down and leave her to think. She was not
quite sure where she would have it. He, on the other hand, was sure
he had found the right place for it. He pointed it out to her and
explained his views. Other birds quarrel a good deal during nest
building, but swallows are the gentlest of little people. She let
him put it where he wanted to, and he kissed her and ran out. She
cocked her eye after him, watched till he was out of sight, then
deftly and quickly slipped it out and fixed it the other side of the
door.
"Poor dears" (I could see it in the toss of her head); "they will
think they know best; it is just as well not to argue with them."
Every summer I suffer much from indignation. I love to watch the
swallows building. They build beneath the eaves outside my study
window. Such cheerful little chatter-boxes they are. Long after
sunset, when all the other birds are sleeping, the swallows still are
chattering softly. It sounds as if they were telling one another
some pretty story, and often I am sure there must be humour in it,
for every now and then one hears a little twittering laugh. I
delight in having them there, so close to me. The fancy comes to me
that one day, when my brain has grown more cunning, I, too, listening
in the twilight, shall hear the stories that they tell.
One or two phrases already I have come to understand: "Once upon a
time"--"Long, long ago"--"In a strange, far-off land." I hear these
words so constantly, I am sure I have them right. I call it "Swallow
Street," this row of six or seven nests. Two or three, like villas
in their own grounds, stand alone, and others are semi-detached. It
makes me angry that the sparrows will come and steal them. The
sparrows will hang about deliberately waiting for a pair of swallows
to finish their nest, and then, with a brutal laugh that makes my
blood boil, drive the swallows away and take possession of it. And
the swallows are so wonderfully patient.
"Never mind, old girl," says Tommy Swallow, after the first big cry
is over, to Jenny Swallow, "let's try again."
And half an hour later, full of fresh plans, they are choosing
another likely site, chattering cheerfully once more. I watched the
building of a particular nest for nearly a fortnight one year; and
when, after two or three days' absence, I returned and found a pair
of sparrows comfortably encsonced therein, I just felt mad. I saw
Mrs. Sparrow looking out. Maybe my anger was working upon my
imagination, but it seemed to me that she nodded to me:
"Nice little house, ain't it? What I call well built."
Mr. Sparrow then flew up with a gaudy feather, dyed blue, which
belonged to me. I recognised it. It had come out of the brush with
which the girl breaks the china ornaments in our drawing-room. At
any other time I should have been glad to see him flying off with the
whole thing, handle included. But now I felt the theft of that one
feather as an added injury. Mrs. Sparrow chirped with delight at
sight of the gaudy monstrosity. Having got the house cheap, they
were going to spend their small amount of energy upon internal
decoration. That was their idea clearly, a "Liberty interior." She
looked more like a Cockney sparrow than a country one--had been born
and bred in Regent Street, no doubt.
"There is not much justice in this world," said I to myself; "but
there's going to be some introduced into this business--that is, if I
can find a ladder."
I did find a ladder, and fortunately it was long enough. Mr. and
Mrs. Sparrow were out when I arrived, possibly on the hunt for cheap
photo frames and Japanese fans. I did not want to make a mess. I
removed the house neatly into a dust-pan, and wiped the street clear
of every trace of it. I had just put back the ladder when Mrs.
Sparrow returned with a piece of pink cotton-wool in her mouth. That
was her idea of a colour scheme: apple-blossom pink and Reckitt's
blue side by side. She dropped her wool and sat on the waterspout,
and tried to understand things.
"Number one, number two, number four; where the blazes"--sparrows are
essentially common, and the women are as bad as the men--"is number
three?"
Mr. Sparrow came up from behind, over the roof. He was carrying a
piece of yellow-fluff, part of a lamp-shade, as far as I could judge.
"Move yourself," he said, "what's the sense of sitting there in the
rain?"
"I went out just for a moment," replied Mrs. Sparrow; "I could not
have been gone, no, not a couple of minutes. When I came back--"
"Oh, get indoors," said Mr. Sparrow, "talk about it there."
"It's what I'm telling you," continued Mrs. Sparrow, "if you would
only listen. There isn't any door, there isn't any house--"
"Isn't any--" Mr. Sparrow, holding on to the rim of the spout, turned
himself topsy-turvy and surveyed the street. From where I was
standing behind the laurel bushes I could see nothing but his back.
He stood up again, looking angry and flushed.
"What have you done with the house? Can't I turn my back a minute--"
"I ain't done nothing with it. As I keep on telling you, I had only
just gone--"
"Oh, bother where you had gone. Where's the darned house gone?
that's what I want to know."
They looked at one another. If ever astonishment was expressed in
the attitude of a bird it was told by the tails of those two
sparrows. They whispered wickedly together. The idea occurred to
them that by force or cunning they might perhaps obtain possession of
one of the other nests. But all the other nests were occupied, and
even gentle Jenny Swallow, once in her own home with the children
round about her, is not to be trifled with. Mr. Sparrow called at
number two, put his head in at the door, and then returned to the
waterspout.
"Lady says we don't live there," he explained to Mrs. Sparrow. There
was silence for a while.
"Not what I call a classy street," commented Mrs. Sparrow.
"If it were not for that terrible tired feeling of mine," said Mr.
Sparrow, "blame if I wouldn't build a house of my own."
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Sparrow, "--I have heard it said that a little
bit of work, now and then, does you good."
"All sorts of wild ideas about in the air nowadays," said Mr.
Sparrow, "it don't do to listen to everybody."
"And it don't do to sit still and do nothing neither," snapped Mrs.
Sparrow. "I don't want to have to forget I'm a lady, but--well, any
man who was a man would see things for himself."
"Why did I every marry?" retorted Mr. Sparrow.
They flew away together, quarrelling.
DO WRITERS WRITE TOO MUCH?
On a newspaper placard, the other day, I saw announced a new novel by
a celebrated author. I bought a copy of the paper, and turned
eagerly to the last page. I was disappointed to find that I had
missed the first six chapters. The story had commenced the previous
Saturday; this was Friday. I say I was disappointed and so I was, at
first. But my disappointment did not last long. The bright and
intelligent sub-editor, according to the custom now in vogue, had
provided me with a short synopsis of those first six chapters, so
that without the trouble of reading them I knew what they were all
about.
"The first instalment," I learned, "introduces the reader to a
brilliant and distinguished company, assembled in the drawing-room of
Lady Mary's maisonette in Park Street. Much smart talk is indulged
in."
I know that "smart talk" so well. Had I not been lucky enough to
miss that first chapter I should have had to listen to it once again.
Possibly, here and there, it might have been new to me, but it would
have read, I know, so very like the old. A dear, sweet white-haired
lady of my acquaintance is never surprised at anything that happens.
"Something very much of the same kind occurred," she will remember,
"one winter when we were staying in Brighton. Only on that occasion
the man's name, I think, was Robinson."
We do not live new stories--nor write them either. The man's name in
the old story was Robinson, we alter it to Jones. It happened, in
the old forgotten tale, at Brighton, in the winter time; we change it
to Eastbourne, in the spring. It is new and original--to those who
have not heard "something very like it" once before.
"Much smart talk is indulged in," so the sub-editor has explained.
There is absolutely no need to ask for more than that. There is a
Duchess who says improper things. Once she used to shock me. But I
know her now. She is really a nice woman; she doesn't mean them.
And when the heroine is in trouble, towards the middle of the book,
she is just as amusing on the side of virtue. Then there is a
younger lady whose speciality is proverbs. Apparently whenever she
hears a proverb she writes it down and studies it with the idea of
seeing into how many different forms it can be twisted. It looks
clever; as a matter of fact, it is extremely easy.
Be virtuous and you will be happy.
She jots down all the possible variations: Be virtuous and you will
be unhappy.
"Too simple that one," she tells herself. Be virtuous and your
friends will be happy if you are not.
"Better, but not wicked enough. Let us think again. Be happy and
people will jump to the conclusion that you are virtuous.
"That's good, I'll try that one at to-morrow's party."
She is a painstaking lady. One feels that, better advised, she might
have been of use in the world.
There is likewise a disgraceful old Peer who tells naughty stories,
but who is good at heart; and one person so very rude that the wonder
is who invited him.
Occasionally a slangy girl is included, and a clergyman, who takes
the heroine aside and talks sense to her, flavoured with epigram.
All these people chatter a mixture of Lord Chesterfield and Oliver
Wendell Holmes, of Heine, Voltaire, Madame de Stael, and the late
lamented H. J. Byron. "How they do it beats me," as I once overheard
at a music hall a stout lady confess to her friend while witnessing
the performance of a clever troup, styling themselves "The Boneless
Wonders of the Universe."
The synopsis added that: "Ursula Bart, a charming and
unsophisticated young American girl possessed of an elusive
expression makes her first acquaintance with London society."
Here you have a week's unnecessary work on the part of the author
boiled down to its essentials. She was young. One hardly expects an
elderly heroine. The "young" might have been dispensed with,
especially seeing it is told us that she was a girl. But maybe this
is carping. There are young girls and old girls. Perhaps it is as
well to have it in black and white; she was young. She was an
American young girl. There is but one American young girl in English
fiction. We know by heart the unconventional things that she will
do, the startlingly original things that she will say, the fresh
illuminating thoughts that will come to her as, clad in a loose robe
of some soft clinging stuff, she sits before the fire, in the
solitude of her own room.
To complete her she had an "elusive expression." The days when we
used to catalogue the heroine's "points" are past. Formerly it was
possible. A man wrote perhaps some half-a-dozen novels during the
whole course of his career. He could have a dark girl for the first,
a light girl for the second, sketch a merry little wench for the
third, and draw you something stately for the fourth. For the
remaining two he could go abroad. Nowadays, when a man turns out a
novel and six short stories once a year, description has to be
dispensed with. It is not the writer's fault. There is not
sufficient variety in the sex. We used to introduce her thus:
"Imagine to yourself, dear reader, an exquisite and gracious creature
of five feet three. Her golden hair of that peculiar shade"--here
would follow directions enabling the reader to work it out for
himself. He was to pour some particular wine into some particular
sort of glass, and wave it about before some particular sort of a
light. Or he was to get up at five o'clock on a March morning and go
into a wood. In this way he could satisfy himself as to the
particular shade of gold the heroine's hair might happen to be. If
he were a careless or lazy reader he could save himself time and
trouble by taking the author's word for it. Many of them did.
"Her eyes!" They were invariably deep and liquid. They had to be
pretty deep to hold all the odds and ends that were hidden in them;
sunlight and shadow, mischief, unsuspected possibilities, assorted
emotions, strange wild yearnings. Anything we didn't know where else
to put we said was hidden in her eyes.
"Her nose!" You could have made it for yourself out of a pen'orth of
putty after reading our description of it.
"Her forehead!" It was always "low and broad." I don't know why it
was always low. Maybe because the intellectual heroine was not then
popular. For the matter of that I doubt if she be really popular
now. The brainless doll, one fears, will continue for many years to
come to be man's ideal woman--and woman's ideal of herself for
precisely the same period, one may be sure.
"Her chin!" A less degree of variety was permissible in her chin.
It had to be at an angle suggestive of piquancy, and it had to
contain at least the suspicion of a dimple.
To properly understand her complexion you were expected to provide
yourself with a collection of assorted fruits and flowers. There are
seasons in the year when it must have been difficult for the
conscientious reader to have made sure of her complexion. Possibly
it was for this purpose that wax flowers and fruit, carefully kept
from the dust under glass cases, were common objects in former times
upon the tables of the cultured.
Nowadays we content ourselves--and our readers also, I am inclined to
think--with dashing her off in a few bold strokes. We say that
whenever she entered a room there came to one dreams of an old world
garden, the sound of far-off bells. Or that her presence brought
with it the scent of hollyhocks and thyme. As a matter of fact I
don't think hollyhocks do smell. It is a small point; about such we
do not trouble ourselves. In the case of the homely type of girl I
don't see why we should not borrow Mr. Pickwick's expression, and
define her by saying that in some subtle way she always contrived to
suggest an odour of chops and tomato sauce.
If we desire to be exact we mention, as this particular author seems
to have done, that she had an "elusive expression," or a penetrating
fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable
nuance.
But it is not policy to bind oneself too closely to detail. A wise
friend of mine, who knows his business, describes his hero invariably
in the vaguest terms. He will not even tell you whether the man is
tall or short, clean shaven or bearded.
"Make the fellow nice," is his advice. "Let every woman reader
picture him to herself as her particular man. Then everything he
says and does becomes of importance to her. She is careful not to
miss a word."
For the same reason he sees to it that his heroine has a bit of every
girl in her. Generally speaking, she is a cross between Romola and
Dora Copperfield. His novels command enormous sales. The women say
he draws a man to the life, but does not seem to know much about
women. The men like his women, but think his men stupid.
Of another famous author no woman of my acquaintance is able to speak
too highly. They tell me his knowledge of their sex is simply
marvellous, his insight, his understanding of them almost uncanny.
Thinking it might prove useful, I made an exhaustive study of his
books. I noticed that his women were without exception brilliant
charming creatures possessed of the wit of a Lady Wortlay Montagu,
combined with the wisdom of a George Eliot. They were not all of
them good women, but all of them were clever and all of them were
fascinating. I came to the conclusion that his lady critics were
correct: he did understand women. But to return to our synopsis.
The second chapter, it appeared, transported us to Yorkshire where:
"Basil Longleat, a typical young Englishman, lately home from
college, resides with his widowed mother and two sisters. They are a
delightful family."
What a world of trouble to both writer and to reader is here saved.
"A typical young Englishman!" The author probably wrote five pages,
elaborating. The five words of the sub-editor present him to me more
vividly. I see him positively glistening from the effects of soap
and water. I see his clear blue eye; his fair crisp locks, the
natural curliness of which annoys him personally, though alluring to
everybody else; his frank winning smile. He is "lately home from
college." That tells me that he is a first-class cricketer; a first-
class oar; that as a half-back he is incomparable; that he swims like
Captain Webb; is in the first rank of tennis players; that his half-
volley at ping-pong has never been stopped. It doesn't tell me much
about his brain power. The description of him as a "typical young
Englishman" suggests more information on this particular point. One
assumes that the American girl with the elusive expression is going
to have sufficient for both.
"They are a delightful family." The sub-editor does not say so, but
I imagine the two sisters are likewise typical young Englishwomen.
They ride and shoot and cook and make their own dresses, have common
sense and love a joke.
The third chapter is "taken up with the humours of a local cricket
match."
Thank you, Mr. Sub-editor. I feel I owe you gratitude.
In the fourth, Ursula Bart (I was beginning to get anxious about her)
turns up again. She is staying at the useful Lady Mary's place in
Yorkshire. She meets Basil by accident one morning while riding
alone. That is the advantage of having an American girl for your
heroine. Like the British army: it goes anywhere and does anything.
In chapter five Basil and Ursula meet again; this time at a picnic.
The sub-editor does not wish to repeat himself, otherwise he possibly
would have summed up chapter five by saying it was "taken up with the
humours of the usual picnic."
In chapter six something happens:
"Basil, returning home in the twilight, comes across Ursula Bart, in
a lonely point of the moor, talking earnestly to a rough-looking
stranger. His approach over the soft turf being unnoticed, he cannot
help overhearing Ursula's parting words to the forbidding-looking
stranger: 'I must see you again! To-morrow night at half-past nine!
In the gateway of the ruined abbey!' Who is he? And why must Ursula
see him again at such an hour, in such a spot?"
So here, at cost of reading twenty lines, I am landed, so to speak,
at the beginning of the seventh chapter. Why don't I set to work to
read it? The sub-editor has spoiled me.
"You read it," I want to say to him. "Tell me to-morrow morning what
it is all about. Who was this bounder? Why should Ursula want to
see him again? Why choose a draughty place? Why half-past nine
o'clock at night, which must have been an awkward time for both of
them--likely to lead to talk? Why should I wade though this seventh
chapter of three columns and a half? It's your work. What are you
paid for?"
My fear is lest this sort of thing shall lead to a demand on the part
of the public for condensed novels. What busy man is going to spend
a week of evenings reading a book when a nice kind sub-editor is
prepared in five minutes to tell him what it is all about!
Then there will come a day--I feel it--when the business-like Editor
will say to himself: "What in thunder is the sense of my paying one
man to write a story of sixty thousand words and another man to read
it and tell it again in sixteen hundred!"
We shall be expected to write our novels in chapters not exceeding
twenty words. Our short stories will be reduced to the formula:
"Little boy. Pair of skates. Broken ice, Heaven's gates." Formerly
an author, commissioned to supply a child's tragedy of this genre for
a Christmas number, would have spun it out into five thousand words.
Personally, I should have commenced the previous spring--given the
reader the summer and autumn to get accustomed to the boy. He would
have been a good boy; the sort of boy that makes a bee-line for the
thinnest ice. He would have lived in a cottage. I could have spread
that cottage over two pages; the things that grew in the garden, the
view from the front door. You would have known that boy before I had
done with him--felt you had known him all your life. His quaint
sayings, his childish thoughts, his great longings would have been
impressed upon you. The father might have had a dash of humour in
him, the mother's early girlhood would have lent itself to pretty
writing. For the ice we would have had a mysterious lake in the
wood, said to be haunted. The boy would have loved o' twilights to
stand upon its margin. He would have heard strange voices calling to
him. You would have felt the thing was coming.
So much might have been done. When I think of that plot wasted in
nine words it makes me positively angry.
And what is to become of us writers if this is to be the new fashion
in literature? We are paid by the length of our manuscript at rates
from half-a-crown a thousand words, and upwards. In the case of
fellows like Doyle and Kipling I am told it runs into pounds. How
are we to live on novels the serial rights of which to most of us
will work out at four and nine-pence.
It can't be done. It is no good telling me you can see no reason why
we should live. That is no answer. I'm talking plain business.
And what about book-rights? Who is going to buy novels of three
pages? They will have to be printed as leaflets and sold at a penny
a dozen. Marie Corelli and Hall Caine--if all I hear about them is
true--will possibly make their ten or twelve shillings a week. But
what about the rest of us? This thing is worrying me.
SHOULD SOLDIERS BE POLITE?
My desire was once to pass a peaceful and pleasant winter in
Brussels, attending to my work, improving my mind. Brussels is a
bright and cheerful town, and I think I could have succeeded had it
not been for the Belgian Army. The Belgian Army would follow me
about and worry me. Judging of it from my own experience, I should
say it was a good army. Napoleon laid it down as an axiom that your
enemy never ought to be permitted to get away from you--never ought
to be allowed to feel, even for a moment, that he had shaken you off.
What tactics the Belgian Army might adopt under other conditions I am
unable to say, but against me personally that was the plan of
campaign it determined upon and carried out with a success that was
astonishing, even to myself.
I found it utterly impossible to escape from the Belgian Army. I
made a point of choosing the quietest and most unlikely streets, I
chose all hours--early in the morning, in the afternoon, late in the
evening. There were moments of wild exaltation when I imagined I had
given it the slip. I could not see it anywhere, I could not hear it.
"Now," said I to myself, "now for five minutes' peace and quiet."
I had been doing it injustice: it had been working round me.
Approaching the next corner, I would hear the tattoo of its drum.
Before I had gone another quarter of a mile it would be in full
pursuit of me. I would jump upon a tram, and travel for miles.
Then, thinking I had shaken it off, I would alight and proceed upon
my walk. Five minutes later another detachment would be upon my
heels. I would slink home, the Belgian Army pursuing me with its
exultant tattoo. Vanquished, shamed, my insular pride for ever
vanished, I would creep up into my room and close the door. The
victorious Belgian Army would then march back to barracks.
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