when the sea washes half of it away. To me, Seaside Piers are the most
deadly things. You pay tuppence to go on them, and you generally stay
on them until you can stay no longer because--well, because you _have_
paid tuppence. Having walked along the dreary length of the tail-end
which joins the shore, there seems really nothing to do at the end of
your journey except to spit over the side. Of course, there are always
those derelict kind of amusements such as putting a penny in a slot and
being sprayed with some vile scent; or putting a ha'penny in another
slot and seeing a lead ball being shot into any hole except the one in
which, had it disappeared therein, you would have got your money back.
For the rest, I am sure that half the people remain on them for the
simple reason that tuppence is tuppence in these days or any other
days. Of course, there is generally a band which plays twice,
sometimes three times, a day; but it is not a band which ever does much
more than blast its way through a selection from "Carmen," or a
fantasia on "Faust." Of course, if you like crowds--well, a pier is
for you another name for Paradise. Nobody uses the tail-part except to
walk to the end, or _from_ it, on the side which is protected from the
wind. But the end of a pier--where it swells and the band plays--is a
kind of receptacle which receives the human debouch. There you have
the spectacle of what human beings would look like if they were put
into a bowl, like goldfish, and had nothing to do but swim round and
round.
I suppose there _is_ an amusement in such a picture--because, look at
the women who come there every morning and bring their knitting! And
the "flappers" and the "knuts"--they seem never to tire of seeing each
other pass and re-pass for a solid hour on end! Why do they go there?
It cannot be to see clothes, because the most you see, as a rule, is a
white skirt and blouse and a brown neck all peeling with the heat!
They must go there, then, because to go on the pier is all part and
parcel of the seaside habit--and an English seaside, anyway, is one big
bunch of habits, from the three-mile promenade of unsympathetic
asphalt, with its backing of houses in the Graeco-Surbiton style, to
the railway station at the back of the town, where antiquated "flies"
won't take anybody anywhere under half-a-crown. It belongs, I suppose,
to that strain of fidelity which runs through the British "soul"--a
fidelity which finds expression in facing death sooner than forego
roast beef on Sunday, and will applaud an old operatic favourite until
her front teeth drop out. It is all very laudable, but it has its
"trying" side. One becomes rather tired of the average seaside resort,
which is built and designed rather as if the "authorities" believed
that God made Blackpool on the Seventh Day, and it was their religious
duty to erect replicas of His handiwork up and down the coast. And
under this delusion piers, I suppose, were born.
Well, certainly they are convenient to throw yourself off the end of
them. Happily--or unhappily, whichever way you look at it--the town
council never seem to know quite what to do with them. Beside the
penny fair and the brass band, they only seem to be the haven of rest
for fifth-rate theatrical touring companies, who manage to pay for
their summer outing in the theatre erected at the end. Otherwise their
importance consists chiefly in being a convenient place for the
"flapper" to "meet mother," and to carry on a violent flirtation,
without the slightest danger, with any Gay Lothario in lavender socks
who kind o' tickles them with his eyes and makes them giggle. But for
myself, who have no mamma to meet, nor any desire to flop about with
"flappers," piers are deadly things. Their great excitement is when
the sea washes half of them away at a moment when, apparently, five
thousand people living in boarding-houses had only just vacated them.
And sometimes even that miraculous escape seems a pity! What do you
think?
_Visitors_
I always think that visitors are charming "interruptions." They are
delightful when they arrive; they are equally delightful--perhaps more
so--when they go. Only on the third day of their visit are they
tiresome, and their qualities distinctly below the par we expected.
Almost anybody can put up with almost anybody for three days. There is
the delight of showing him over the house, bringing out all our
treasures and listening the while our visitor shows us his envy (or his
hypocrisy) by his compliments; there is the pleasure of taking him
round the garden and pointing out our own pet plants and bulbs. Even
the servants can keep smiling through three days of extra work. But
the second night begins to see us becoming exhausted. We have said
everything we wanted to say. We have taken him up to the attic and to
the farthest ends of the pig sty, we have laid down the law concerning
our own pet enthusiasms and tolerated him while he told us about his
own. But a sense of boredom begins to creep into our hearts at the end
of the second evening, which, if there were not the pleasure of bidding
him "Good-bye" on the morrow to keep our spirits up, would end in
exasperation to be fought down and a yawn to be suppressed. The man
who invented "long visits" ought to be made to spend them for the rest
of his life as a punishment. There is only one thing longer--though it
sounds rather like a paradox to say so--and that is a "long day." To
"spend a long day" with anyone sees both you and your hostess "sold up"
long before the evening. Happily, that infliction is a country form of
entertainment, and is reserved principally for relations and family
friends who might otherwise expect us to ask them for a month.
You see, most of us are creatures possessing habits as well as a liver.
Visitors are a fearful strain on both--after forty-eight hours. The
strain of appearing at our most hospitable and best--from the breakfast
egg in the morning to the "nightcap" at night--is one which only those
who are given a bed-sitting-room and a door with a key in it can come
through triumphantly. Visitors usually have nothing to do, while we
have our own work--and the two can rarely mate for long. Of course,
there are visitors who seem born with a gift for visiting; they give us
of their brightest and best for forty-eight hours and have "letters to
write" up in their bedroom during most of the subsequent days of their
sojourn. Also there are hostesses who seem born with the "smile of
cordiality" fixed on to their mouths. They also give of their best and
brightest for forty-eight hours and then, metaphorically, give their
guests a latch-key and a time-table of meals, and wash their hands of
them until they meet again on the door-step of "farewell." But the
majority of visitors seem incapable of leading their own lives in any
house except their own. They follow you about and wait for you at odd
corners, until you are either driven to committing murder or going out
to the post-office to send a telegram to yourself killing off a great
aunt and giving an early date for her funeral. Also there are some
hostesses who cannot let their guests alone; who must always be asking
them "What are they going to do to-day," or telling them not to forget
that Lady Sploshykins is coming to tea especially to meet them!
Frantic for our entertainment, they invite all the dull people of the
neighbourhood to meals, and drag us along with them to the dull
people's houses on the exchange visit. They are always terrified that
we are "feeling it dull," whereas the dulness really comes of our not
being allowed to stupefy in peace.
"Never outstay your welcome" is one of the social adages I would
impress upon all young people; and "Be extremely modest concerning the
length to which that welcome would be likely to extend" is an addenda
to it. Failing any other calculation, forty-eight hours of being a
"fixture" and twelve hours of packing up are generally the safe limit.
Following that advice, you will generally enjoy the dullest visit and
will want to come again; following that advice, also, your hostess will
enjoy seeing you and hope you will. Not to follow it is to risk losing
a friend. Everybody hates the visitor who comes whenever he is asked
and stays far too long when he arrives.
_The Unimpassioned English_
I have just been to see the latest musical comedy. Of course, I feel
in love with the heroine. Could I help myself? Even women have fallen
in love with her--so what chance has a mere male, and one at the
dangerous age at that? But what struck me almost as much as the
youthful charm and cleverness of the new American "star" and the
invigoratingly "catchy" music, was the way in which _all the young men
on the stage put both their hands into their trouser pockets the moment
they put on evening clothes_! They didn't do it in their glad day-rags
. . . or, at least, only one hand at a time, anyway. But immediately
they appeared _en grande tenue_, both their hands disappeared as if by
magic! _C'ètait bien drôle, j'vous assure!_ Perhaps . . . who knows?
. . . they were but counting their "moneys." . . . For the chorus
ladies are certainly rather attractive, and even a svelte figure _has
been known_ to hold a big dinner! But the fact still remains . . . if
one night some wicked dresser takes it into his evil head to stitch up
their trouser pockets, every one of the young men will have to come on
and do physical "jerks," or go outside and cut his own arms off!
But then, most Englishmen seem at a loss to know what to do with their
limbs when they are not using them for anything very special at the
moment. Have you ever sat and watched the "niggly" things which
people--especially Englishmen--do with their hands when they don't know
what to do with them otherwise? It is very instructive, I assure you.
I suppose our language does not lend itself to anything except being
spoken out of our mouths. Unlike Frenchmen, we have not learnt to talk
also with our hands. We consider it "bad form" . . . _like scratching
in public where you itch_! Well, perhaps our decision in this respect
has added to the general fun of existence. In life's everyday, one
doesn't notice these things, maybe. One has become so habituated to
"Father" drumming "Colonel Bogey" on the chair-arm; or "Little Willee"
playing "shakes" with two ha'pennies and a pen-knife--that one has
ceased to pay any attention to these minor irritations. And, when we
are among strangers, we are so busy watching that people don't put
_their_ hands into _our_ pockets, that we generally put our own hands
into them for safety. . . . Which, perhaps, accounts for the
Englishman's habit . . . who knows?
But on the stage, this custom is an almost mesmeric one to watch. We
certainly do see other people at a disadvantage when they are strutting
the Boards of Illusion . . . men especially. But to a foreigner, who
is not used to seeing a man's hands disappear the moment he is asked to
stand up, the sight must come with something of a shock. For my own
part, I think his amazement is justified. Surely God gave a man two
hands for other needs than to pick things up with or hide them?
Personally, I always think that it is a thousand pities that men are
not expected to knit. They grew up to be idle in the drawing-room, I
suppose, in times when every other woman was a "Sister Susie." But the
"Sister Susie" species is nowadays almost extinct. It requires a
German offensive to drive the modern woman towards her darning needles.
In a recent literary competition in EVE, the subject was "Bores, and
how to make the best of them." Well, personally, I could suffer
them--if not more gladly, at least with a greater resignation--if I
were allowed to recite, "Two plain; one purl" so long as their
infliction lasted. As it is, I am left with nothing else to do except
furtively to watch the clock, and secretly to ring up "OO Heaven" to
send down a bombing party to deliver me.
Men of the Latin races are far more wise in this respect. If you tied
the hands of a Frenchman, or an Italian, or even a Spaniard, up behind
his back, the odds are he would be struck dumb! But we Englishmen--we
only seem able to become eloquent when, as it were, we have voluntarily
placed our own hands into the handcuffs of our own trouser pockets.
Even Englishwomen are singularly un-self-revealing with anything except
their tongues. You have only to watch an Englishwoman singing to
realise how extremely limited are her powers of expression. She places
both hands over her heart to represent "Love," and opens them wide to
illustrate every other emotion.
And this self-restriction--especially when you can't hear what she is
singing about, which is not seldom--leads more quickly to the wrinkles
of perplexity than even does the problem of how to circumvent the
culinary soarings of Mrs. Beaton, and yet obtain the same results . . .
with eggs at the price they are! If some producing genius had not
conceived the idea of ending off nearly every musical-comedy song with
a dance, and yet another genius of equally enviable parts had not
created the beauty chorus, I don't know how many a prima donna of the
lighter stage would ever be able to get through her own numbers. For,
to dance at the end of her little ditty, and to have the chorus girls
relieve her of further action at the end of the first verse, brings as
great a relief to her as well as to the audience, as do his trouser
pockets to the young man who makes-believe to love her for ever and for
ever . . . and then some, on the stage.
And, because we have taken the well-dressed "poker" as our ideal of
masculine "good form" in society, English men and women always seem to
exude an atmosphere of "slouching" indifference to everything except
their God--and football. It has such a very chilling effect upon
exuberant foreigners when they run up against it. Emotionally, I am
sure we are as developed as any other nation . . . look at our poetry,
for example! But we have so long denied the right to express it, that
we have forgotten how it should be done.
"_I shall love you on and on . . . throughout life; after death; until
the end of eternity . . . !_" declares the impassioned Englishman, the
while he carelessly shakes the dead-end off his cigarette on to
somebody else's carpet.
"_And for you, Egbert, the world will be only too well lost. I will
willingly die with you . . . at any time most convenient to yourself,_"
answers his equally-impassioned mistress, gently replacing an errant
kiss-curl behind her left ear.
Well, I suppose it does take another Englishman to realise that these
two are preparing for a _crime passionel_. But a simple foreigner,
more used to the violence of the "movies" in everyday life than we are,
might be excused if he merely believed them to be protesting a
preference for prawns in aspic over prawns without.
Not, however, that it really matters . . . so long as the lovers, like
Maisie, "get right there" at the finish. For, after all, does not
passion mostly end in the same kind of old "tripe" . . . either here in
England or . . . well, let us say . . . the tropics?
_Relations_
Our Relations are a race apart. They are not often our friends; rarer
still are they our enemies. They are just "relations"--men and women
who treat our endeavours towards righteousness with all the outspoken
hostility of those who dislike us, whom yet we do not want to quarrel
with because then there may be nobody left except the village doctor to
bury us.
Relations always seem to know us too little, and too well. The good in
us is continually warped by the bad in us--which, in parenthesis, is
the only one of our secrets relatives ever seem able to keep. To tell
the world of our faults would be like throwing mud at the family tree.
Moreover, relations always seem born with long memories. There is no
one in this world who remembers quite so far back, nor quite so
vividly, as a mother-in-law. And one's relations-in-law are but one's
own relations in a concentrated and more virulent form. And yet
everybody is somebody's relation. You consider that remark trite,
perhaps? Well, "trite" it undoubtedly is, and yet it is extremely
difficult to realise. The middle-aged woman whom you find so charming,
so sympathetic, so very "understanding," may send her nephews and
nieces fleeing in all directions the moment she appears among them.
The man you look upon as being an insufferable bore may still be Miss
Somebody-or-other's best beloved Uncle John. It is so hard to explain.
It is almost as hard to explain as the charm of the man your closest
woman-friend marries. What she can see in him you cannot for the life
of you perceive, while he, on his part, secretly wonders why the woman
he loves ever sought friendship with such a pompous, dull ass as you
are. Love is blind, so they say. Well, so is friendship--so are
relations--blind to everything except your faults.
Another odd thing about relations is that only very rarely can you ever
make friends with them. At best, your intimacy amounts to nothing more
than a truce. You are extremely lucky if it isn't open warfare. They
know at once too little about you and too much. They never by any
chance acknowledge that you have changed, that you are a better man
than once you were. What you have once been, in their opinion, you
will always be--so help-them-heaven-to-hide-the-wine-cellar-key! You
may change your friends as you "grow out" of them, or they "grow out"
of you; but your relations are for ever immutable. The friends of your
youth you have sometimes nothing in common with later on, except
"memories"; and except for these "memories" there is little or no tie
between you. But the "memories" of friends centre around pleasant
things, whereas the "memories" of relations seem to specialise at all
times in the disagreeable. Moreover, relations will never acknowledge
that you have ever really _grown up_. This is one of their most
tiresome characteristics. To them you will always be the little boy
who forgot to write profusive thanks for the half-a-crown they gave you
when you first went to school. You can always tell the man or woman
who live among their relatives. They possess no individuality, no
"vision"; they are narrow, self-centred, pompous, clannish--with that
clannishness which means only complete self-satisfaction with the clan.
They take their mental and moral "cue" from the oldest generation among
them. The younger members are, metaphorically speaking, patted on the
head and told to believe in grandpapa as they believe in God.
No, the great benefit of having relations is to come back to them. To
visit them is like stirring up once more the memories of your lost
youth, which time and distance have rendered faint. And to return once
more to one's youth is good for every man. It makes him realise
himself, and the "thread" which has been running through his life
linking all the incidents together. And, as I said before, relations
are agreeable adjuncts at your own funeral, since you may always depend
upon them saying nice things about you when it's too late for you to
hear them. Friends will never do that. They don't need to. They
carry your epitaph with them written on their own hearts. The "nice"
things have been said--they have been said to YOU.
_Polite Conversation_
A man may live to be a hundred; he may have learnt to speak twelve
different languages--all badly; he may know, in fact, everything a man
ought to know, and have done everything a man ought to have done; but
one thing he probably won't have learnt--or, if he has done so, then he
ought to be counted among the Twelve Apostles and other "wonders"--and
that is the fact that, what interests him enormously to talk about
won't necessarily be anything but a bore for other people to listen to.
Most people talk a great deal and tell you absolutely nothing you want
particularly to know. The man or woman who can talk _impersonally_ is
as rare as a psychic phenomenon when you want to see it but won't _pay
for_ a manifestation! Most people can talk of nothing but themselves
because nothing else really interests them. I don't mean to say that
they boast, but, what they talk about is purely their own personal
affair--ranging from golf to grandchildren. That is what makes dogs
the most sympathetic listeners in the world. Could they speak, I fear
me they would only tell us about their puppies, or of their new bone,
or of the rat they worried to death the last time they scampered
through the wood. Cats are far more egotistical, and consequently far
more human. They can't talk, it is true; neither can they listen. By
their manner we know exactly what interests them at the moment, and if
they appear to sympathise with us, it is only because what we want at
the moment fits in admirably with their own desires. And so many
people are just like cats in this. They invite us to their houses,
presumably because they desire our company, but, in reality, in order
that they may relate to us at length the incidents, big or small, which
have marked the calendar of their recent very everyday existence.
But we, on our side, are not without our means of revenge. We invite
them back again, under protestations of friendship, and, when we have
got them, and, as it were, chained them down with the fetters of
politeness, we relate to them in our turn everything which has happened
to us and ours. We never ask ourselves if our children, or our cook,
or our new hat, or our next summer holiday can interest anybody outside
the radius of their influence. We demand another human being to smile
when we smile, show anger when we show anger, echo our own admiration
for our new hat, and generally retrace with us our life in retrospect
and journey with us into the problematical future. For, as I said
before, the wisdom which realises that the incidents of our own life
need not--very probably do not, although they may be too polite to show
it--interest other people, is the rarest wisdom of all. Most people
will never, never learn it. And the more people love their own
affairs, the more they seek the world for listeners whom, as it were,
they may devour. They usually have hundreds of intimates, and boast at
Christmas of having sent off a thousand cards! As a matter of fact,
they very probably have not one real friend. But that does not trouble
them. They don't require friendship. They only need, as it were, a
perpetual pair of ears into which to pour the trivialities of their
daily life. Personally, I get so tired of listening to stories of
children I have never seen; golfing "yarns" which I have heard before;
servants--all as bad as each other; Lloyd George; new clothes;
ailments; what Aunt Emily intends to do with last year's frock, and of
little Flora's cough. I wish it were the fashion for people to ask
their friends to _do_ something, instead of securing their society,
with nothing to do with it when they've got it, except to offer hours
for conversation with literally nothing to say on either side. I
should like to read a book in company, it is nice to work in company; a
visit to a theatre with a congenial companion is delightful--and this,
of course, applies to concerts, lectures, picture galleries, even
shopping. But the usual form of friendly entertainment is a deadly
thing. Only a cook, who at the same time is an artist, can make them
possible. For you can endure hours of little other than the personal
note in conversation with the compensation of a culinary _chef'
d'oeuvre_ in front of you. That is why you so often hear of a
"perfectly charming woman with a simply wonderful cook." It's the
cook, I fancy, who is the real charmer.
_Awful Warnings_
Old Age is bad enough, but a dyspeptic Old Age--that surely is fate
hitting us below the belt! For with advancing years the love of
adventure leaves us; the "Love of a Lifetime" becomes to us of more
real consequence than our pet armchair--but the _love of a good
dinner_, that, at least, can make the everyday of an octogenarian well
worth living. Young people little realise the awful prophecy implied
in that irritating remark--"Don't gobble!" There is another one,
almost equally irritating to youth--"Go and change your socks!" But,
if the truth must be told, you regret the "No" you said to Edwin when
he asked you to "fly with him"; the louis you failed to place _en
plein_ on thirty-six, which you _felt_ was coming up, infinitely less
than that you still persisted to "gobble" when you were warned not to,
and you failed to change your socks while there was yet time. Now it
is too late, alas! How true it is, the saying--"If Youth knew how, and
Age only could." The trouble is that, when elderly people would warn
youth, they rarely ever give concrete examples. They always imply some
_moral_ loss which will happen to young people if they do not follow
their elders' advice. But youth would be far more impressed if age
drew a vivid picture of their own physical and digestive decrepitude.
But, of course, age won't do that. Why should it? No one likes to
think that their "every movement tells a story."
Personally, I can foresee a new profession open to those elderly people
who are the victims of their own early indiscretions. Why should they
not tour the country as a collection of _awful warnings_! Fancy the
joy there would be in the hearts of all those who, as it were, stand
bawling at the cross-roads that the "narrow path" is the broader one in
the long run, if they woke up and saw on the hoardings some such
announcement as this:--
Coming! Coming!! Coming!!!
FOR ONE WEEK ONLY!
The Awful End of the Man who
Gobbled his Food!
Mary of the Hooked Figure; or, the Girl who Wouldn't
Change her Wet Socks!
A Picture of Living Vermin; or, the Man who
Never Washed!
The End of the Girl who Would Take the
Wrong Turning!