The Angel and the Author, and Others. Jerome Klapka Jerome
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she laughed, “he has got a good opinion of himself. He told me he considered both books among the finest in the English language.”
It is as well always to make a note of the author’s name. Some people never do – more particularly playgoers. A well-known dramatic author told me he once took a couple of colonial friends to a play of his own. It was after a little dinner at Kettner’s; they suggested the theatre, and he thought he would give them a treat. He did not mention to them that he was the author, and they never looked at the programme. Their faces as the play proceeded lengthened; it did not seem to be their school of comedy. At the end of the first act they sprang to their feet.
“Let’s chuck this rot,” suggested one.
“Let’s go to the Empire,” suggested the other. The well-known dramatist followed them out. He thinks the fault must have been with the dinner.
A young friend of mine – a man of good family – contracted a mésalliance: that is, he married the daughter of a Canadian farmer, a frank, amiable girl, bewitchingly pretty, with more character in her little finger than some girls possess in their whole body. I met him one day, some three months after his return to London.
“Well,” I asked him, “how is it shaping?”
“She is the dearest girl in the world,” he answered. “She has only got one fault; she believes what people say.”
“She will get over that,” I suggested.
“I hope she does,” he replied; “it’s awkward at present.”
“I can see it leading her into difficulty,” I agreed.
“She is not accomplished,” he continued. He seemed to wish to talk about it to a sympathetic listener. “She never pretended to be accomplished. I did not marry her for her accomplishments. But now she is beginning to think she must have been accomplished all the time, without knowing it. She plays the piano like a schoolgirl on a parents’ visiting-day. She told them she did not play – not worth listening to – at least, she began by telling them so. They insisted that she did, that they had heard about her playing, and were thirsting to enjoy it. She is good nature itself. She would stand on her head if she thought it would give real joy to anyone. She took it they really wanted to hear her, and so let ’em have it. They tell her that her touch is something quite out of the common – which is the truth, if only she could understand it – why did she never think of taking up music as a profession? By this time she is wondering herself that she never did. They are not satisfied with hearing her once. They ask for more, and they get it. The other evening I had to keep quiet on my chair while she thumped through four pieces one after the other, including the Beethoven Sonata. We knew it was the Beethoven Sonata. She told us before she started it was going to be the Beethoven Sonata, otherwise, for all any of us could have guessed, it might have been the ‘Battle of Prague.’ We all sat round with wooden faces, staring at our boots. Afterwards those of them that couldn’t get near enough to her to make a fool of her crowded round me. Wanted to know why I had never told them I had discovered a musical prodigy. I’ll lose my temper one day and pull somebody’s nose, I feel I shall. She’s got a recitation; whether intended to be serious or comic I had never been able to make up my mind. The way she gives it confers upon it all the disadvantages of both. It is chiefly concerned with an angel and a child. But a dog comes into it about the middle, and from that point onward it is impossible to tell who is talking – sometimes you think it is the angel, and then it sounds more like the dog. The child is the easiest to follow: it talks all the time through its nose. If I have heard that recitation once I have heard it fifty times; and now she is busy learning an encore.
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