Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (286 page)

And she, had she known what lay behind; those days when he knelt before her, swore that his only dream was to save her from all pain. Passion lies dead; it is a flame that burns out quickly. The most beautiful face in the world grows indifferent to us when we have sat opposite it every morning at breakfast, every evening at supper, for a brief year or two. Passion is the seed. Love grows from it, a tender sapling, beautiful to look upon, but wondrous frail, easily broken, easily trampled on during those first years of wedded life. Only by much nursing, by long caring-for, watered with tears, shall it grow into a sturdy tree, defiant of the winds, ‘neath which Darby and Joan shall sit sheltered in old age.

They had commonsense, brave hearts. Darby had expected too much. Darby had not made allowance for human nature which he ought to have done, seeing how much he had of it himself. Joan knows he did not mean it. Joan has a nasty temper; she admits it. Joan will try, Darby will try. They kiss again with tears. It is a workaday world; Darby and Joan will take it as it is, will do their best. A little kindness, a little clasping of the hands before night comes.

Many ways of Love.

Youth deems it heresy, but I sometimes wonder if our English speaking way is quite the best. I discussed the subject once with an old French lady. The English reader forms his idea of French life from the French novel; it leads to mistaken notions. There are French Darbys, French Joans, many thousands of them.

“Believe me,” said my old French friend, “your English way is wrong; our way is not perfect, but it is the better, I am sure. You leave it entirely to the young people. What do they know of life, of themselves, even. He falls in love with a pretty face. She — he danced so well! he was so agreeable that day of the picnic! If marriage were only for a month or so; could be ended without harm when the passion was burnt out. Ah, yes! then perhaps you would be right. I loved at eighteen, madly — nearly broke my heart. I meet him occasionally now. My dear” — her hair was silvery white, and I was only thirty-five; she always called me “my dear”; it is pleasant at thirty-five to be talked to as a child. “He was a perfect brute, handsome he had been, yes, but all that was changed. He was as stupid as an ox. I never see his poor frightened-looking wife without shuddering thinking of what I have escaped. They told me all that, but I looked only at his face, and did not believe them. They forced me into marriage with the kindest man that ever lived. I did not love him then, but I loved him for thirty years; was it not better?”

“But, my dear friend,” I answered; “that poor, frightened-looking wife of your first love! Her marriage also was, I take it, the result of parental choosing. The love marriage, I admit, as often as not turns out sadly. The children choose ill. Parents also choose ill. I fear there is no sure receipt for the happy marriage.”

“You are arguing from bad examples,” answered my silver-haired friend; “it is the system that I am defending. A young girl is no judge of character. She is easily deceived, is wishful to be deceived. As I have said, she does not even know herself. She imagines the mood of the moment will remain with her. Only those who have watched over her with loving insight from her infancy know her real temperament.

“The young man is blinded by his passion. Nature knows nothing of marriage, of companionship. She has only one aim. That accomplished, she is indifferent to the future of those she has joined together. I would have parents think only of their children’s happiness, giving to worldly considerations their true value, but nothing beyond, choosing for their children with loving care, with sense of their great responsibility.”

Which is it?

“I fear our young people would not be contented with our choosing,” I suggested.

“Are they so contented with their own, the honeymoon over?” she responded with a smile.

We agreed it was a difficult problem viewed from any point.

But I still think it would be better were we to heap less ridicule upon the institution. Matrimony cannot be “holy” and ridiculous at the same time. We have been familiar with it long enough to make up our minds in which light to regard it.

CHAPTER XIX

Man and his Tailor.

What’s wrong with the “Made-up Tie”? I gather from the fashionable novelist that no man can wear a made-up tie and be a gentleman. He may be a worthy man, clever, well-to-do, eligible from every other point of view; but She, the refined heroine, can never get over the fact that he wears a made-up tie. It causes a shudder down her high-bred spine whenever she thinks of it. There is nothing else to be said against him. There is nothing worse about him than this — he wears a made-up tie. It is all sufficient. No true woman could ever care for him, no really classy society ever open its doors to him.

I am worried about this thing because, to confess the horrid truth, I wear a made-up tie myself. On foggy afternoons I steal out of the house disguised. They ask me where I am going in a hat that comes down over my ears, and why I am wearing blue spectacles and a false beard, but I will not tell them. I creep along the wall till I find a common hosier’s shop, and then, in an assumed voice, I tell the man what it is I want. They come to fourpence halfpenny each; by taking the half-dozen I get them for a trifle less. They are put on in a moment, and, to my vulgar eye, look neat and tasteful.

Of course, I know I am not a gentleman. I have given up hopes of ever being one. Years ago, when life presented possibilities, I thought that with pains and intelligence I might become one. I never succeeded. It all depends on being able to tie a bow. Round the bed-post, or the neck of the water-jug, I could tie the wretched thing to perfection. If only the bed-post or the water-jug could have taken my place and gone to the party instead of me, life would have been simpler. The bed-post and the water-jug, in its neat white bow, looked like a gentleman — the fashionable novelist’s idea of a gentleman. Upon myself the result was otherwise, suggesting always a feeble attempt at suicide by strangulation. I could never understand how it was done. There were moments when it flashed across me that the secret lay in being able to turn one’s self inside out, coming up with one’s arms and legs the other way round. Standing on one’s head might have surmounted the difficulty; but the higher gymnastics Nature has denied to me. “The Boneless Wonder” or the “Man Serpent” could, I felt, be a gentleman so easily. To one to whom has been given only the common ordinary joints gentlemanliness is apparently an impossible ideal.

It is not only the tie. I never read the fashionable novel without misgiving. Some hopeless bounder is being described:

“If you want to know what he is like,” says the Peer of the Realm, throwing himself back in his deep easy-chair, and puffing lazily at his cigar of delicate aroma, “he is the sort of man that wears three studs in his shirt.”

The difficulty of being a Gentleman.

Merciful heavens! I myself wear three studs in my shirt. I also am a hopeless bounder, and I never knew it. It comes upon me like a thunderbolt. I thought three studs were fashionable. The idiot at the shop told me three studs were all the rage, and I ordered two dozen. I can’t afford to throw them away. Till these two dozen shirts are worn out, I shall have to remain a hopeless bounder.

Why have we not a Minister of the Fine Arts? Why does not a paternal Government fix notices at the street corners, telling the would-be gentleman how many studs he ought to wear, what style of necktie now distinguishes the noble-minded man from the base-hearted? They are prompt enough with their police regulations, their vaccination orders — the higher things of life they neglect.

I select at random another masterpiece of English literature.

“My dear,” says Lady Montresor, with her light aristocratic laugh, “you surely cannot seriously think of marrying a man who wears socks with yellow spots?”

Lady Emmelina sighs.

“He is very nice,” she murmurs, “but I suppose you are right. I suppose that sort of man does get on your nerves after a time.”

“My dear child,” says Lady Montresor, “he is impossible.”

In a cold sweat I rush upstairs into my bedroom.

I thought so: I am always wrong. All my best socks have yellow spots. I rather fancied them. They were expensive, too, now I come to think of it.

What am I to do? If I sacrifice them and get red spots, then red spots, for all I know, may be wrong. I have no instinct. The fashionable novelist never helps one. He tells us what is wrong, but he does not tell us what is right. It is creative criticism that I feel the need of. Why does not the Lady Montresor go on? Tell me what sort of socks the ideal lover ought to wear. There are so many varieties of socks. What is a would-be-gentleman to do? Would it be of any use writing to the fashionable novelist: —

How we might, all of us, be Gentlemen.

“Dear Mr. Fashionable Novelist (or should it be Miss?), — Before going to my tailor, I venture to write to you on a subject of some importance. I am fairly well educated, of good family and address, and, so my friends tell me, of passable appearance. I yearn to become a gentleman. If it is not troubling you too much, would you mind telling me how to set about the business? What socks and ties ought I to wear? Do I wear a flower in my button-hole, or is that a sign of a coarse mind? How many buttons on a morning coat show a beautiful nature? Does a stand-up collar with a tennis shirt prove that you are of noble descent, or, on the contrary, stamp you as a
parvenu
? If answering these questions imposes too great a tax on your time, perhaps you would not mind telling me how you yourself know these things. Who is your authority, and when is he at home? I should apologize for writing to you but that I feel you will sympathize with my appeal. It seems a pity there should be so many vulgar, ill-bred people in the world when a little knowledge on these trivial points would enable us all to become gentlemen. Thanking you in anticipation, I remain . . .”

Would he or she tell us? Or would the fashionable novelist reply as I once overheard a harassed mother retort upon one of her inquiring children. Most of the afternoon she had been rushing out into the garden, where games were in progress, to tell the children what they must not do:—”Tommy, you know you must not do that. Haven’t you got any sense at all?” “Johnny, you wicked boy, how dare you do that; how many more times do you want me to tell you?” “Jane, if you do that again you will go straight to bed, my girl!” and so on.

At length the door was opened from without, and a little face peeped in: “Mother!”

“Now, what is it? can’t I ever get a moment’s peace?”

“Mother, please would you mind telling us something we might do?”

The lady almost fell back on the floor in her astonishment. The idea had never occurred to her.

“What may you do! Don’t ask me. I am tired enough of telling you what not to do.”

Things a Gentleman should never do.

I remember when a young man, wishful to conform to the rules of good society, I bought a book of etiquette for gentlemen. Its fault was just this. It told me through many pages what not to do. Beyond that it seemed to have no idea. I made a list of things it said a gentleman should
never
do: it was a lengthy list.

Determined to do the job completely while I was about it, I bought other books of etiquette and added on their list of “Nevers.” What one book left out another supplied. There did not seem much left for a gentleman to do.

I concluded by the time I had come to the end of my books, that to be a true gentleman my safest course would be to stop in bed for the rest of my life. By this means only could I hope to avoid every possible
faux pas
, every solecism. I should have lived and died a gentleman. I could have had it engraved upon my tombstone:

“He never in his life committed a single act unbecoming to a gentleman.”

To be a gentleman is not so easy, perhaps, as a fashionable novelist imagines. One is forced to the conclusion that it is not a question entirely for the outfitter. My attention was attracted once by a notice in the window of a West-End emporium, “Gentlemen supplied.”

It is to such like Universal Providers that the fashionable novelist goes for his gentleman. The gentleman is supplied to him complete in every detail. If the reader be not satisfied, that is the reader’s fault. He is one of those tiresome, discontented customers who does not know a good article when he has got it.

I was told the other day of the writer of a musical farce (or is it comedy?) who was most desirous that his leading character should be a perfect gentleman. During the dress rehearsal, the actor representing the part had to open his cigarette case and request another perfect gentleman to help himself. The actor drew forth his case. It caught the critical eye of the author.

“Good heavens!” he cried, “what do you call that?”

“A cigarette case,” answered the actor.

“But, my dear boy,” exclaimed the author, “surely it is silver?”

“I know,” admitted the actor, “it does perhaps suggest that I am living beyond my means, but the truth is I picked it up cheap.”

The author turned to the manager.

“This won’t do,” he explained, “a real gentleman always carries a gold cigarette case. He must be a gentleman, or there’s no point in the plot.”

“Don’t let us endanger any point the plot may happen to possess, for goodness sake,” agreed the manager, “let him by all means have a gold cigarette case.”

How one may know the perfect Gentleman.

So, regardless of expense, a gold cigarette case was obtained and put down to expenses. And yet on the first night of that musical play, when that leading personage smashed a tray over a waiter’s head, and, after a row with the police, came home drunk to his wife, even that gold cigarette case failed to convince one that the man was a gentleman beyond all doubt.