Books: Idle Ideas in 1905
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Jerome K. Jerome >> Idle Ideas in 1905
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If only it had followed me with a band: I like a band. I can loaf
against a post, listening to a band with anyone. I should not have
minded so much had it come after me with a band. But the Belgian
Army, apparently, doesn't run to a band. It has nothing but this
drum. It has not even a real drum--not what I call a drum. It is a
little boy's drum, the sort of thing I used to play myself at one
time, until people took it away from me, and threatened that if they
heard it once again that day they would break it over my own head.
It is cowardly going up and down, playing a drum of this sort, when
there is nobody to stop you. The man would not dare to do it if his
mother was about. He does not even play it. He walks along tapping
it with a little stick. There's no tune, there's no sense in it. He
does not even keep time. I used to think at first, hearing it in the
distance, that it was the work of some young gamin who ought to be at
school, or making himself useful taking the baby out in the
perambulator: and I would draw back into dark doorways, determined,
as he came by, to dart out and pull his ear for him. To my
astonishment--for the first week--I learnt it was the Belgian Army,
getting itself accustomed, one supposes, to the horrors of war. It
had the effect of making me a peace-at-any-price man.
They tell me these armies are necessary to preserve the tranquility
of Europe. For myself, I should be willing to run the risk of an
occasional row. Cannot someone tell them they are out of date, with
their bits of feathers and their odds and ends of ironmongery--grown
men that cannot be sent out for a walk unless accompanied by a couple
of nursemen, blowing a tin whistle and tapping a drum out of a toy
shop to keep them in order and prevent their running about: one
might think they were chickens. A herd of soldiers with their pots
and pans and parcels, and all their deadly things tied on to them,
prancing about in time to a tune, makes me think always of the White
Knight that Alice met in Wonderland. I take it that for practical
purposes--to fight for your country, or to fight for somebody else's
country, which is, generally speaking, more popular--the thing
essential is that a certain proportion of the populace should be able
to shoot straight with a gun. How standing in a line and turning out
your toes is going to assist you, under modern conditions of warfare,
is one of the many things my intellect is incapable of grasping.
In mediaeval days, when men fought hand to hand, there must have been
advantage in combined and precise movement. When armies were mere
iron machines, the simple endeavour of each being to push the other
off the earth, then the striking simultaneously with a thousand arms
was part of the game. Now, when we shoot from behind cover with
smokeless powder, brain not brute force--individual sense not
combined solidity is surely the result to be aimed at. Cannot
somebody, as I have suggested, explain to the military man that the
proper place for the drill sergeant nowadays is under a glass case in
some museum of antiquities?
I lived once near the Hyde Park barracks, and saw much of the drill
sergeant's method. Generally speaking, he is a stout man with the
walk of an egotistical pigeon. His voice is one of the most
extraordinary things in nature: if you can distinguish it from the
bark of a dog, you are clever. They tell me that the privates, after
a little practice, can--which gives one a higher opinion of their
intelligence than otherwise one might form. But myself I doubt even
this statement. I was the owner of a fine retriever dog about the
time of which I am speaking, and sometimes he and I would amuse
ourselves by watching Mr. Sergeant exercising his squad. One morning
he had been shouting out the usual "Whough, whough, whough!" for
about ten minutes, and all had hitherto gone well. Suddenly, and
evidently to his intense astonishment, the squad turned their backs
upon him and commenced to walk towards the Serpentine.
"Halt!" yelled the sergeant, the instant his amazed indignation
permitted him to speak, which fortunately happened in time to save
the detachment from a watery grave.
The squad halted.
"Who the thunder, and the blazes, and other things told you to do
that?"
The squad looked bewildered, but said nothing, and were brought back
to the place where they were before. A minute later precisely the
same thing occurred again. I really thought the sergeant would
burst. I was preparing to hasten to the barracks for medical aid.
But the paroxysm passed. Calling upon the combined forces of heaven
and hell to sustain him in his trouble, he requested his squad, as
man to man, to inform him of the reason why to all appearance they
were dispensing with his services and drilling themselves.
At this moment "Columbus" barked again, and the explanation came to
him.
"Please go away, sir," he requested me. "How can I exercise my men
with that dog of yours interfering every five minutes?"
It was not only on that occasion. It happened at other times. The
dog seemed to understand and take a pleasure in it. Sometimes
meeting a soldier, walking with his sweetheart, Columbus, from behind
my legs, would bark suddenly. Immediately the man would let go the
girl and proceed, involuntarily, to perform military tricks.
The War Office authorities accused me of having trained the dog. I
had not trained him: that was his natural voice. I suggested to the
War Office authorities that instead of quarrelling with my dog for
talking his own language, they should train their sergeants to use
English.
They would not see it. Unpleasantness was in the air, and, living
where I did at the time, I thought it best to part with Columbus. I
could see what the War Office was driving at, and I did not desire
that responsibility for the inefficiency of the British Army should
be laid at my door.
Some twenty years ago we, in London, were passing through a riotous
period, and a call was made to law-abiding citizens to enrol
themselves as special constables. I was young, and the hope of
trouble appealed to me more than it does now. In company with some
five or six hundred other more or less respectable citizens, I found
myself one Sunday morning in the drill yard of the Albany Barracks.
It was the opinion of the authorities that we could guard our homes
and protect our wives and children better if first of all we learned
to roll our "eyes right" or left at the given word of command, and to
walk with our thumbs stuck out. Accordingly a drill sergeant was
appointed to instruct us on these points. He came out of the
canteen, wiping his mouth and flicking his leg, according to rule,
with the regulation cane. But, as he approached us, his expression
changed. We were stout, pompous-looking gentlemen, the majority of
us, in frock coats and silk hats. The sergeant was a man with a
sense of the fitness of things. The idea of shouting and swearing at
us fell from him: and that gone there seemed to be no happy medium
left to him. The stiffness departed from his back. He met us with a
defferential attitude, and spoke to us in the language of social
intercourse.
"Good morning, gentlemen," said the sergeant.
"Good morning," we replied: and there was a pause.
The sergeant fidgetted upon his feet. We waited.
"Well, now, gentlemen," said the sergeant, with a pleasant smile,
"what do you say to falling in?"
We agreed to fall in. He showed us how to do it. He cast a critical
eye along the back of our rear line.
"A little further forward, number three, if you don't mind, sir," he
suggested.
Number three, who was an important-looking gentleman, stepped
forward.
The sergeant cast his critical eye along the front of the first line.
"A little further back, if you don't mind, sir," he suggested,
addressing the third gentleman from the end.
"Can't," explained the third gentleman, "much as I can do to keep
where I am."
The sergeant cast his critical eye between the lines.
"Ah," said the sergeant, "a little full-chested, some of us. We will
make the distance another foot, if you please, gentlemen."
In pleasant manner, like to this, the drill proceeded.
"Now then, gentlemen, shall we try a little walk? Quick march!
Thank you, gentlemen. Sorry to trouble you, but it may be necessary
to run--forward I mean, of course.. So if you really do not mind, we
will now do the double quick. Halt! And if next time you can keep a
little more in line--it has a more imposing appearance, if you
understand me. The breathing comes with practice."
If the thing must be done at all, why should it not be done in this
way? Why should not the sergeant address the new recruits politely:
"Now then, you young chaps, are you all ready? Don't hurry
yourselves: no need to make hard work of what should be a pleasure
to all of us. That's right, that's very good indeed--considering you
are only novices. But there is still something to be desired in your
attitude, Private Bully-boy. You will excuse my being personal, but
are you knock-kneed naturally? Or could you, with an effort, do you
think, contrive to give yourself less the appearance of a marionette
whose strings have become loose? Thank you, that is better. These
little things appear trivial, I know, but, after all, we may as well
try and look our best -
"Don't you like your boots, Private Montmorency? Oh, I beg your
pardon. I thought from the way you were bending down and looking at
them that perhaps their appearance was dissatisfying to you. My
mistake.
"Are you suffering from indigestion, my poor fellow? Shall I get you
a little brandy? It isn't indigestion. Then what's the matter with
it? Why are you trying to hide it? It's nothing to be ashamed of.
We've all got one. Let it come forward man. Let's see it."
Having succeeded, with a few such kindly words, in getting his line
into order, he would proceed to recommend healthy exercise.
"Shoulder arms! Good, gentlemen, very good for a beginning. Yet
still, if I may be critical, not perfect. There is more in this
thing than you might imagine, gentlemen. May I point out to Private
Henry Thompson that a musket carried across the shoulder at right
angles is apt to inconvenience the gentleman behind. Even from the
point of view of his own comfort, I feel sure that Private Thompson
would do better to follow the usual custom in this matter.
"I would also suggest to Private St. Leonard that we are not here to
practice the art of balancing a heavy musket on the outstretched palm
of the hand. Private St. Leonard's performance with the musket is
decidedly clever. But it is not war.
"Believe me, gentlemen, this thing has been carefully worked out, and
no improvement is likely to result from individual effort. Let our
idea be uniformity. It is monotonous, but it is safe. Now, then,
gentlemen, once again."
The drill yard would be converted into a source of innocent delight
to thousands. "Officer and gentleman" would become a phrase of
meaning. I present the idea, for what it may be worth, with my
compliments, to Pall Mall.
The fault of the military man is that he studies too much, reads too
much history, is over reflective. If, instead, he would look about
him more he would notice that things are changing. Someone has told
the British military man that Waterloo was won upon the playing
fields of Eton. So he goes to Eton and plays. One of these days he
will be called upon to fight another Waterloo: and afterwards--when
it is too late--they will explain to him that it was won not upon the
play field but in the class room.
From the mound on the old Waterloo plain one can form a notion of
what battles, under former conditions, must have been. The other
battlefields of Europe are rapidly disappearing: useful Dutch
cabbages, as Carlyle would have pointed out with justifiable
satisfaction, hiding the theatre of man's childish folly. You find,
generally speaking, cobblers happily employed in cobbling shoes,
women gossipping cheerfully over the washtub on the spot where a
hundred years ago, according to the guide-book, a thousand men
dressed in blue and a thousand men dressed in red rushed together
like quarrelsome fox-terriers, and worried each other to death.
But the field of Waterloo is little changed. The guide, whose
grandfather was present at the battle--quite an extraordinary number
of grandfathers must have fought at Waterloo: there must have been
whole regiments composed of grandfathers--can point out to you the
ground across which every charge was delivered, can show you every
ridge, still existing, behind which the infantry crouched. The whole
business was began and finished within a space little larger than a
square mile. One can understand the advantage then to be derived
from the perfect moving of the military machine; the uses of the
echelon, the purposes of the linked battalion, the manipulation of
centre, left wing and right wing. Then it may have been worth while-
-if war be ever worth the while--which grown men of sense are
beginning to doubt--to waste two years of a soldier's training,
teaching him the goose-step. In the twentieth century, teaching
soldiers the evolutions of the Thirty Years' War is about as sensible
as it would be loading our iron-clads with canvas.
I followed once a company of Volunteers across Blackfriars Bridge on
their way from Southwark to the Temple. At the bottom of Ludgate
Hill the commanding officer, a young but conscientious gentleman,
ordered "Left wheel!" At once the vanguard turned down a narrow
alley--I forget its name--which would have led the troop into the
purlieus of Whitefriars, where, in all probability, they would have
been lost for ever. The whole company had to be halted, right-about-
faced, and retired a hundred yards. Then the order "Quick march!"
was given. The vanguard shot across Ludgate Circus, and were making
for the Meat Market.
At this point that young commanding officer gave up being a military
man and talked sense.
"Not that way," he shouted: "up Fleet Street and through Middle
Temple Lane."
Then without further trouble the army of the future went upon its
way.
OUGHT STORIES TO BE TRUE?
There was once upon a time a charming young lady, possessed of much
taste, who was asked by her anxious parent, the years passing and
family expenditure not decreasing, which of the numerous and eligible
young men then paying court to her she liked the best. She replied,
that was her difficulty; she could not make up her mind which she
liked the best. They were all so nice. She could not possibly
select one to the exclusion of all the others. What she would have
liked would have been to marry the lot; but that, she presumed, was
impracticable.
I feel I resemble that young lady, not so much in charm and beauty as
in indecision of mind, when the question is that of my favourite
author or my favourite book. It is as if one were asked one's
favourite food. There are times when one fancies an egg with one's
tea. On other occasions one dreams of a kipper. To-day one clamours
for lobsters. To-morrow one feels one never wishes to see a lobster
again. One determines to settle down, for a time, to a diet of bread
and milk and rice pudding. Asked suddenly to say whether I preferred
ices to soup, or beef-steak to caviare, I should be completely
nonplussed.
There may be readers who care for only one literary diet. I am a
person of gross appetites, requiring many authors to satisfy me.
There are moods when the savage strength of the Bronte sisters is
companionable to me. One rejoices in the unrelieved gloom of
"Wuthering Heights," as in the lowering skies of a stormy autumn.
Perhaps part of the marvel of the book comes from the knowledge that
the authoress was a slight, delicate young girl. One wonders what
her future work would have been, had she lived to gain a wider
experience of life; or was it well for her fame that nature took the
pen so soon from her hand? Her suppressed vehemence may have been
better suited to those tangled Yorkshire byways than to the more
open, cultivated fields of life.
There is not much similarity between the two books, yet when
recalling Emily Bronte my thoughts always run on to Olive Schreiner.
Here, again, was a young girl with the voice of a strong man. Olive
Schreiner, more fortunate, has lived; but I doubt if she will ever
write a book that will remind us of her first. "The Story of an
African Farm" is not a work to be repeated. We have advanced in
literature of late. I can well remember the storm of indignation
with which the "African Farm" was received by Mrs. Grundy and her
then numerous, but now happily diminishing, school. It was a book
that was to be kept from the hands of every young man and woman. But
the hands of the young men and women stretched out and grasped it, to
their help. It is a curious idea, this of Mrs. Grundy's, that the
young man and woman must never think--that all literature that does
anything more than echo the conventions must be hidden away.
Then there are times when I love to gallop through history on Sir
Walter's broomstick. At other hours it is pleasant to sit in
converse with wise George Eliot. From her garden terrace I look down
on Loamshire and its commonplace people; while in her quiet, deep
voice she tells me of the hidden hearts that beat and throb beneath
these velveteen jackets and lace falls.
Who can help loving Thackeray, wittiest, gentlest of men, in spite of
the faint suspicion of snobbishness that clings to him? There is
something pathetic in the good man's horror of this snobbishness, to
which he himself was a victim. May it not have been an affectation,
born unconsciously of self-consciousness? His heroes and heroines
must needs be all fine folk, fit company for lady and gentlemen
readers. To him the livery was too often the man. Under his stuffed
calves even Jeames de la Pluche himself stood upon the legs of a man,
but Thackeray could never see deeper than the silk stockings.
Thackeray lived and died in Clubland. One feels that the world was
bounded for him by Temple Bar on the east and Park Lane on the west;
but what there was good in Clubland he showed us, and for the sake of
the great gentlemen and sweet ladies that his kindly eyes found in
that narrow region, not too overpeopled with great gentlemen and
sweet women, let us honour him.
"Tom Jones," "Peregrine Pickle," and "Tristram Shandy" are books a
man is the better for reading, if he read them wisely. They teach
him that literature, to be a living force, must deal with all sides
of life, and that little help comes to us from that silly pretence of
ours that we are perfect in all things, leading perfect lives, that
only the villain of the story ever deviates from the path of
rectitude.
This is a point that needs to be considered by both the makers and
the buyers of stories. If literature is to be regarded solely as the
amusement of an idle hour, then the less relationship it has to life
the better. Looking into a truthful mirror of nature we are
compelled to think; and when thought comes in at the window self-
satisfaction goes out by the door. Should a novel or play call us to
ponder upon the problems of existence, or lure us from the dusty high
road of the world, for a while, into the pleasant meadows of
dreamland? If only the latter, then let our heroes and our heroines
be not what men and women are, but what they should be. Let Angelina
be always spotless and Edwin always true. Let virtue ever triumph
over villainy in the last chapter; and let us assume that the
marriage service answers all the questions of the Sphinx.
Very pleasant are these fairy tales where the prince is always brave
and handsome; where the princess is always the best and most
beautiful princess that ever lived; where one knows the wicked people
at a glance by their ugliness and ill-temper, mistakes being thus
rendered impossible; where the good fairies are, by nature, more
powerful than the bad; where gloomy paths lead ever to fair palaces;
where the dragon is ever vanquished; and where well-behaved husbands
and wives can rely upon living happily ever afterwards. "The world
is too much with us, late and soon." It is wise to slip away from it
at times to fairyland. But, alas, we cannot live in fairyland, and
knowledge of its geography is of little help to us on our return to
the rugged country of reality.
Are not both branches of literature needful? By all means let us
dream, on midsummer nights, of fond lovers led through devious paths
to happiness by Puck; of virtuous dukes--one finds such in fairyland;
of fate subdued by faith and gentleness. But may we not also, in our
more serious humours, find satisfaction in thinking with Hamlet or
Coriolanus? May not both Dickens and Zola have their booths in
Vanity Fair? If literature is to be a help to us, as well as a
pastime, it must deal with the ugly as well as with the beautiful; it
must show us ourselves, not as we wish to appear, but as we know
ourselves to be. Man has been described as a animal with aspirations
reaching up to Heaven and instincts rooted--elsewhere. Is literature
to flatter him, or reveal him to himself?
Of living writers it is not safe, I suppose, to speak except,
perhaps, of those who have been with us so long that we have come to
forget they are not of the past. Has justice ever been done to
Ouida's undoubted genius by our shallow school of criticism, always
very clever in discovering faults as obvious as pimples on a fine
face? Her guardsmen "toy" with their food. Her horses win the Derby
three years running. Her wicked women throw guinea peaches from the
windows of the Star and Garter into the Thames at Richmond. The
distance being about three hundred and fifty yards, it is a good
throw. Well, well, books are not made worth reading by the absence
of absurdities. Ouida possesses strength, tenderness, truth,
passion; and these be qualities in a writer capable of carrying many
more faults than Ouida is burdened with. But that is the method of
our little criticism. It views an artist as Gulliver saw the
Brobdingnag ladies. It is too small to see them in their entirety:
a mole or a wart absorbs all its vision.
Why was not George Gissing more widely read? If faithfulness to life
were the key to literary success, Gissing's sales would have been
counted by the million instead of by the hundred.
Have Mark Twain's literary qualities, apart altogether from his
humour, been recognised in literary circles as they ought to have
been? "Huck Finn" would be a great work were there not a laugh in it
from cover to cover. Among the Indians and some other savage tribes
the fact that a member of the community has lost one of his senses
makes greatly to his advantage; he is then regarded as a superior
person. So among a school of Anglo-Saxon readers, it is necessary to
a man, if he would gain literary credit, that he should lack the
sense of humour. One or two curious modern examples occur to me of
literary success secured chiefly by this failing.
All these authors are my favourites; but such catholic taste is held
nowadays to be no taste. One is told that if one loves Shakespeare,
one must of necessity hate Ibsen; that one cannot appreciate Wagner
and tolerate Beethoven; that if we admit any merit in Dore, we are
incapable of understanding Whistler. How can I say which is my
favourite novel? I can only ask myself which lives clearest in my
memory, which is the book I run to more often than to another in that
pleasant half hour before the dinner-bell, when, with all apologies
to good Mr. Smiles, it is useless to think of work.
I find, on examination, that my "David Copperfield" is more
dilapidated than any other novel upon my shelves. As I turn its dog-
eared pages, reading the familiar headlines "Mr. Micawber in
difficulties," "Mr. Micawber in prison," "I fall in love with Dora,"
"Mr. Barkis goes out with the tide," "My child wife," "Traddles in a
nest of roses"--pages of my own life recur to me; so many of my
sorrows, so many of my joys are woven in my mind with this chapter or
the other. That day--how well I remember it when I read of "David's"
wooing, but Dora's death I was careful to skip. Poor, pretty little
Mrs. Copperfield at the gate, holding up her baby in her arms, is
always associated in my memory with a child's cry, long listened for.
I found the book, face downwards on a chair, weeks afterwards, not
moved from where I had hastily laid it.
Old friends, all of you, how many times have I not slipped away from
my worries into your pleasant company! Peggotty, you dear soul, the
sight of your kind eyes is so good to me. Our mutual friend, Mr.
Charles Dickens, is prone, we know, just ever so slightly to gush.
Good fellow that he is, he can see no flaw in those he loves, but
you, dear lady, if you will permit me to call you by a name much
abused, he has drawn in true colours. I know you well, with your big
heart, your quick temper, your homely, human ways of thought. You
yourself will never guess your worth--how much the world is better
for such as you! You think of yourself as of a commonplace person,
useful only for the making of pastry, the darning of stockings, and
if a man--not a young man, with only dim half-opened eyes, but a man
whom life had made keen to see the beauty that lies hidden beneath
plain faces--were to kneel and kiss your red, coarse hand, you would
be much astonished. But he would be a wise man, Peggotty, knowing
what things a man should take carelessly, and for what things he
should thank God, who has fashioned fairness in many forms.
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