The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. Jerome Klapka Jerome
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after the first halfdozen? Do you think the gushing female who has read all your books, and who wonders what it must feel like to be so clever, will be welcome to you the tenth time you meet her? Do you think press cuttings will always consist of wondering admiration of your genius, of paragraphs about your charming personal appearance under the heading, ‘Our Celebrities’? Have you thought of the Uncomplimentary criticisms, of the spiteful paragraphs, of the everlasting fear of slipping a few inches down the greasy pole called ‘popular taste,’ to which you are condemned to cling for life, as some lesser criminal to his weary tread-mill, struggling with no hope but not to fall! Make a home, lad, for the woman who loves you; gather one or two friends about you; work, think, and play, that will bring you happiness. Shun this roaring gingerbread fair that calls itself, forsooth, the ‘World of art and letters.’ Let its clowns and its contortionists fight among themselves for the plaudits and the halfpence of the mob. Let it be with its shouting and its surging, its blare and its cheap flare. Come away, the summer’s night is just the other side of the hedge, with its silence and its stars.”
You and I, Cinderella, are experienced people, and can therefore offer good advice, but do you think we should be listened to?
“Ah, no, my Prince is not as yours. Mine will love me always, and I am peculiarly fitted for the life of a palace. I have the instinct and the ability for it. I am sure I was made for a princess. Thank you, Cinderella, for your well-meant counsel, but there is much difference between you and me.”
That is the answer you would receive, Cinderella; and my young friend would say to me, “Yes, I can understand your finding disappointment in the literary career; but then, you see, our cases are not quite similar. I am not likely to find much trouble in keeping my position. I shall not fear reading what the critics say of me. No doubt there are disadvantages, when you are among the ruck, but there is always plenty of room at the top. So thank you, and goodbye.”
Besides, Cinderella dear, we should not quite mean it – this excellent advice. We have grown accustomed to these gew-gaws, and we should miss them in spite of our knowledge of their trashiness: you, your palace and your little gold crown; I, my mountebank’s cap, and the answering laugh that goes up from the crowd when I shake my bells. We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing. Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only everything, and we will be content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have had your day. Some little dogs never get theirs. You must not be greedy. You have known happiness. The palace was Paradise for those few months, and the Prince’s arms were about you, Cinderella, the Prince’s kisses on your lips; the gods themselves cannot take that from you.
The cake cannot last for ever if we will eat of it so greedily. There must come the day when we have picked hungrily the last crumb – when we sit staring at the empty board, nothing left of the feast, Cinderella, but the pain that comes of feasting.
It is a naïve confession, poor Human Nature has made to itself, in choosing, as it has, this story of Cinderella for its leading moral: – Be good, little girl. Be meek under your many trials. Be gentle and kind, in spite of your hard lot, and one day – you shall marry a prince and ride in your own carriage. Be brave and true, little boy. Work hard and wait with patience, and in the end, with God’s blessing, you shall earn riches enough to come back to London town and marry your master’s daughter.
You and I, gentle Reader, could teach these young folks a truer lesson, an we would. We know, alas! that the road of all the virtues does not lead to wealth, rather the contrary; else how explain our limited incomes? But would it be well, think you, to tell them bluntly the truth – that honesty is the most expensive luxury a man can indulge in; that virtue, if persisted in, leads, generally speaking, to a six-roomed house in an outlying suburb? Maybe the world is wise: the fiction has its uses.
I am acquainted with a fairly intelligent young lady. She can read and write, knows her tables up to six times, and can argue. I regard her as representative of average Humanity in its attitude towards Fate; and this is a dialogue I lately overheard between her and an older lady who is good enough to occasionally impart to her the wisdom of the world —
“I’ve been good this morning, haven’t I?”
“Yes – oh yes, fairly good, for you.”
“You think Papa will take me to the circus to-night?”
“Yes, if you keep good. If you don’t get naughty this afternoon.”
A pause.
“I was good on Monday, you may remember, nurse.”
“Tolerably good.”
“Very good, you said, nurse.”
“Well, yes, you weren’t bad.”
“And I was to have gone to the pantomime, and I didn’t.”
“Well, that was because your aunt came up suddenly, and your Papa couldn’t get another seat. Poor auntie wouldn’t have gone at all if she hadn’t gone then.”
“Oh, wouldn’t she?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“Do you think she’ll come up suddenly to-day?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so.”
“No, I hope she doesn’t. I want to go to the circus to-night. Because, you see, nurse, if I don’t it will discourage me.”
So, perhaps the world is wise in promising us the circus. We believe her at first. But after a while, I fear, we grow discouraged.
ON THE EXCEPTIONAL MERIT ATTACHING TO THE THINGS WE MEANT TO DO
I can remember – but then I can remember a long time ago. You, gentle Reader, just entering upon the prime of life, that age by thoughtless youth called middle, I cannot, of course, expect to follow me – when there was in great demand a certain periodical ycleped The Amateur. Its aim was noble. It sought to teach the beautiful lesson of independence, to inculcate the fine doctrine of self-help. One chapter explained to a man how he might make flower-pots out of Australian meat cans; another how he might turn butter-tubs into music-stools; a third how he might utilize old bonnet boxes for Venetian blinds: that was the principle of the whole scheme, you made everything from something not intended for it, and as ill-suited to the purpose as possible.
Two pages, I distinctly recollect, were devoted to the encouragement of the manufacture of umbrella stands out of old gaspiping. Anything less adapted to the receipt of hats and umbrellas than gas-piping I cannot myself conceive: had there been, I feel sure the author would have thought of it, and would have recommended it.
Picture-frames you fashioned out of ginger-beer corks. You saved your ginger-beer corks, you found a picture – and the thing was complete. How much ginger-beer it would be necessary to drink, preparatory to the making of each frame; and the effect of it upon the frame-maker’s physical, mental and moral well-being, did not concern The Amateur. I calculate that for a fair-sized picture sixteen dozen bottles might suffice. Whether, after sixteen dozen of ginger-beer, a man would take any interest in framing a picture – whether he would retain any pride in the picture itself, is doubtful. But this, of course, was not the point.
One young gentleman of my acquaintance – the son of the gardener of my sister, as friend Ollendorff would have described him – did succeed in getting through sufficient ginger-beer to frame his grandfather, but the result was not encouraging. Indeed, the gardener’s wife herself was but ill satisfied.
“What’s all them corks round father?” was her first question.
“Can’t you see,” was the somewhat indignant reply, “that’s the frame.”
“Oh! but why corks?”
“Well, the book said corks.”
Still the old lady remained unimpressed.
“Somehow it don’t look like father now,” she sighed.
Her