Books: Idle Ideas in 1905
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Jerome K. Jerome >> Idle Ideas in 1905
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HOW MANY CHARMS HATH 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 and the same instant.
"Listen," whispers the Wagnerian enthusiast to me, "the cornet has
now the Brunnhilda 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 players' 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-organised, 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 is singing, one feels sure of it; one 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 clarionet--whichever might have come the
easier to my snatch.
"You cowardly lot of bullies," I have wanted to cry, "are you not
ashamed of yourselves? A 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, in so far 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 has 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 C, 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 got 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
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
centre 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 back cloth 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, will ask the opera-goer of the future, of your
Turners and your Corots, 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 organising 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 sylph-like as she is 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
bas 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 jealously. 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 organise
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 alehouse. 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
decollete. The shoes should be of yellow satin over flesh-coloured
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.
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN! NEED IT BE SO HEAVY?
It is a delightful stroll on a sunny summer morning from the Hague to
the Huis ten Bosch, the little "house in the wood," built for
Princess Amalia, widow of Stadtholter 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 garden, 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 dragons standing out in
bold relief from the burnished lacquer work, decorating still further
with light and shade the delicate silk embroideries thin taper 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 wandering. These grotesque figures, these
caricatures of humanity! A comical creature, surely, this Chinaman,
the pantaloon of civilization. How useful he has been to us for our
farces, our comic operas! This yellow baby, in his ample pinafore,
who lived 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 carcase among ourselves.
Suppose it turns out as the fable of the woodcutter and the bear?
The woodcutter 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 bearskin to poor woodfolk 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 waken 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 gentle-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, mis-shapen wrestlers, these patient-looking gods, with
their inscrutable eyes! Was 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 Huis ten Bosch is the gorgeous Orange
Saloon, lighted by a cupola, fifty feet above the floor, the walls
one blaze of pictures, chiefly of the gorgeous Jordaen 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 Chinee 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 airily to the "little job" he has on hand. You would think he
had 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 had 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 pasture lands, 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 are 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 am 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
parlour 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 have 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 borne by the enemy. Captured 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 him 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 is 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 d'yer mean, stealing it?" exclaimed Mr. Hooligan. "Why, I was
carrying it for yer!"
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 interests 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.
WHY DIDN'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,
unostentatious marriage with a week's honeymoon, say, in Vienna,
followed by a neat little cottage orne, not too far from Nurnberg, so
that their friends could have come out to them, never seems to have
occurred to either of them.
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