which were his in his younger days and complaining of the lowly estate
into which he is fallen in his middle age. The quarters in which he now
resides are of the humblest, but he speaks of them most ostentatiously
to all who have not visited them, referring to them as “chambers” and
adding that, while they are far above the average, they are not at
all what he has been used to in other years. When we have him for our
guest, which we do out of pity at Christmas and such seasons when it
seems shameful to neglect one’s own kin, he upsets our whole household
with his constant complaints and exactions.
So, far from trying to make himself as little a nuisance as possible,
he must needs take his breakfast in bed because that was his custom
in the days of his prosperity, and he must be supplied with all sorts
of dainties and extra dishes because his stomach, so he says, craves
them, having become accustomed to them when he was wealthy. He finds
fault with the cooking, saying that it probably seems well enough
to us, who have never been used to anything better, but that it is
death to the palate of one who has been in the habit of eating and
drinking of the best. He picks flaws in our pictures and decries our
taste in furnishings, and so sends my wife off to her chamber in a fit
of indignant weeping. And not content with all this, he is forever
borrowing of me small sums of money which he declares he stands in need
of to pay off certain obligations to friends whom he has known in his
better days and who have seen fit to ask him to dinner or to the play.
To allow such obligations to go unpaid would be most offensive to his
acute sense of honor and would cast discredit upon his honored name. In
fact, Mr. _Idler_, he is twice as arrogant and proud in his poverty as
he was when he was well-off. And more than once I have wished with all
my heart that he might be rich again, and so take himself off and leave
us in peace.
To come nearer home, my wife is the victim of a nervous disorder which
totally incapacitates her from doing our housework, though we can ill
afford a servant, but which, oddly enough, does not interfere with her
attendance at matinées or card-parties given by her women friends.
This is doubtless due, as she says, to the fact that exertion which
is in the nature of a diversion takes her mind from her trouble and
so mends her condition for the time being. Though this disorder is
not in the least dangerous, it is most obstinate and causes her, so
she assures me, the most acute mental anguish and the most terrible
physical suffering. It is of such a peculiar nature that any mention
of the amount of the month’s bills sets it instantly in motion, and
disappointment in the matter of getting a new hat is enough to cause
her to take to her bed for a week. But though, as you can readily see,
this indisposition puts her to a great deal of trouble and annoyance,
she will not consent to enter a sanatorium where she might be cured
of it, nor will she follow the advice of the doctor whom she calls in
from one to three times a month; so that I am forced to conclude that
she is actually proud of being an invalid. And I am the more of this
opinion, since when I complain of feeling ill or indisposed, she always
assures me that I do not know what suffering is and that I never can
know because I was not born a woman.
These and other cases which have come under my observation have
convinced me that people are more proud of their afflictions than of
their blessings, and that the most common use of adversity is to make
life miserable for others.
I am, Sir,
EDWARD EASYMAN.
THE SCIENCE OF MAKING ENEMIES
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: As I am about to open a school of an unusual nature, I
have determined not only to secure for the same as much publicity
as possible, but also to explain to the public the nature of the
instruction which will be furnished in my new academy. My course of
study is, I think, unique; and I fear that without explanation it would
probably prove quite incomprehensible to the public at large and to
those who may chance to hear of the school through friends or to read
my advertisements in the press.
In this connection, it seems to me not out of place to acquaint you, in
some sort, with the reasons which led me to settle upon the plan of my
proposed course of instruction, and this I shall accordingly do to the
best of my ability.
I entered at an early age upon my present profession, which is, as
you may have surmised, that of an educator. I became, in turn, an
instructor, a tutor and a professor of sociology. I have ever been
of an independent character of mind, and in the course of my work I
have been prone to draw my own conclusions without, I confess, much
consideration of, or regard for, the opinions of others who assume,
or have assumed, to be authorities upon the subject. Society, I
believe, is a subject which must be studied at first hand. Text-books
and treatises may be well enough as stimulants to study, but the real
essential is a knowledge of people. I, therefore, devoted myself to
the study of mankind, and I studied the students of my classes with
more enthusiasm and with more application, I dare say, than my students
studied their text-books. But I did not stop with the study of others,
I also studied myself. I studied myself as an isolated individual, and
I studied myself in relation to others, and it was as a result of this
study that I finally made a most disconcerting discovery--a discovery
which was not made until I had entered upon my professorship, and
which shocked me inexpressibly and bade fair, for a time, to put an end
to my career as a teacher.
Though at first it was only a suspicion, it soon became a conviction.
I discovered that I was _unpopular_. Not unpopular with a few only,
for all of us are that, but generally and hopelessly unpopular; a man
without any friends and with a great many enemies. I do not now recall
what first called my attention to this matter, but I do remember that
I gave it a great deal of thought and attention and I studied the case
in the same impartial manner that I would study any other case of
social phenomena. I took careful note of the demeanor and behavior of
my students and my fellow members of the faculty, and I soon settled
beyond any reasonable doubt all question as to my popularity. I had
never established myself upon a footing of familiarity or friendship
with my students and I now came to see the reason why this was so. My
students did not like me and they would have nothing more to do with me
than was absolutely necessary. It was the same with the members of the
faculty. I was retained in my position because I was an able instructor
and an indefatigable worker. There was no sort of favoritism in my case
and I knew that my colleagues as well as my students would have been
glad to see me guilty of some blunder which would justify my removal.
As you may suppose, this was not only a hard blow to my vanity, but
a very painful thing to think upon. Like most men, I had always
assumed that people were glad to know me and to have me about, and
it distressed me exceedingly to learn that this assumption was
without foundation or justification. It is one of the enigmas of
human nature--this conviction of personal popularity. No man can
conceive of himself as a pariah, nor even as a very unpopular person,
until he actually finds himself in that situation. Even the greatest
bores seldom realize that they _are_ bores. But most bores are not
sociologists.
Now, when I had become fully convinced that my unpopularity was a fact
and not a figment of my imagination, I began to turn the matter over
in my mind and to direct my attention to the study of popularity and
unpopularity both as to cause and effect. My study led me to several
discoveries. The first was this: that some people are born with the
attribute of popularity and possess the faculty of making friends
without any conscious effort on their part, while others have a trick
of making enemies without actually being guilty of any offense. This
is not what is called positive and negative “magnetism,” but it is
something like that. When a man possesses this faculty for making
friends he will make them whether or no, even though he be lacking in
all the qualities which men find admirable. He may be selfish, cold,
over-ambitious and ruthless of the rights of others, and yet exercise
a fascination upon other men. Such a man was Napoleon Bonaparte, who
called forth the greatest personal devotion and enthusiasm in the men
whom he destroyed for his own ends. Contrariwise, a man may be noble,
generous, affable and everything that a popular man should be, and yet
be practically without friends.
But I made another and greater discovery which reconciled me to my
unpopularity and which, indeed, completely revolutionized my views upon
the subject--_I discovered that the greatest men in the world have been
the ones who had the most enemies!_
And it was upon making this discovery, Sir--the most important, in my
opinion, that has been made by any sociologist of our time--that I
determined to set up my school for the exposition of the science of
making enemies. All men, said I to myself, are naturally ambitious;
they desire fame, honor and riches. They have but to be shown the way
and they will enter eagerly upon it.
Elated as I was at my great discovery, I could not but wonder that men
had not discovered this secret long ago. How could such men as Spencer,
Lecky, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the others have overlooked a thing
so _simple_ and so obviously true?
Here, I rejoiced, I have a discovery--not a theory, not an
hypothesis--but a fact! A fact which may be tested and proven in any
field of human activity--in government, in commerce, in religion, in
literature, in art--in everything! No religion can live without first
enduring persecution; no government can survive without the patriotism
bred of the fear of enemies and the hatred of foes; no general
can become great without war; no author becomes a classic without
criticism; no prophet can conquer without opposition. Nothing great can
be done without enemies.
For generations, for ages, men have been proceeding upon an entirely
erroneous theory that friends are more necessary to success than
enemies. Such stupidity! Such utter disregard of the evidence to the
contrary which confronts us upon every hand! Our park benches are
lined with men who had too many friends, our charitable institutions
are overflowing with them. Think of the most popular man you know and
then of the most successful! Are they the same? Of course not. Once you
stop to think of it, the truth of my discovery is self-evident. No
matter where you go you will find that the greatest man is the one who
has the most enemies.
Friends are not only not necessary to a man’s success, but they are
often a positive detriment. A man surrounded by friends is like a man
blindfolded--he can not see where he is going. How do you improve? By
correcting your faults. And who points out your faults, your friends
or your enemies? An enemy is a spur. An enemy is an inspiration. Your
friends sympathize with you, commiserate with you, agree with you and
flatter you; but your enemies _advertise you_.
Whistler once wrote a book called _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies_,
and I suspect that Whistler had caught an inkling of the truth of my
great discovery, but his title was a misnomer. The making of enemies
is not an art, but a science. Some people have a special gift for it,
as I have, but almost any one can learn how. By observing a few simple
rules in this connection, any man should be able to acquire all the
enemies he may desire. But any man may save himself a great deal of
time and trouble by taking my course of instruction. When he receives
his diploma from the Sourface Training School he will be so well versed
in this science that he will thereafter follow the principles of the
school without any thought whatever, but purely from force of habit.
Judging from the number of people I see about me who are trying in an
amateurish way to acquire enemies, the academy should have a large
attendance from the start, and since I have never met a more unpopular
man than myself, I know of no one more eminently qualified to conduct
such a school. I can not afford to make public my method of instruction
because such an action would open the field to a host of imitators, but
I can assure you that the course is most effective.
There is only one doubt in my mind about the success of the school,
and that is this: I fear that when the public realizes the tremendous
import of my discovery and appreciates the great work which I am doing
for humanity, I shall become so popular that I will be in great danger
of losing the success which I have labored so hard to attain and which
I so richly deserve.
Truly yours,
SAMUEL SOURFACE,
Headmaster, Sourface Training School.
CRANKTOWN, NEW JERSEY.
THE FATE OF FALSTAFF
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am an actor; a follower of Thespis, an interpreter of men
and emotions. To become such was the dream of my boyhood’s ambition.
At an early age (I shall not state when, since you would probably
be incredulous) I used, Sir, to act plays for my own amusement and
afterward for the amusement of my elders. Where other children were
content to play in careless fashion, without attempting anything like
an exact reproduction or imitation of Nature, I was most particular in
this respect. If I played Julius Cæsar, I had, to satisfy my artistic
instinct, to carry a short sword and not a long one; I must needs wrap
myself in a sheet and swear by the heathen gods. Nothing short of this
satisfied me. I could not, as so many children do, thrust a feather
duster down the neck of my jacket and play at being an Indian chief;
on the contrary, I must have the feathers in my hair and my complexion
darkened until I bore some actual resemblance to the aborigine. Without
these aids to illusion I could not enjoy myself or get any manner of
amusement from the sport. I was so close a student of details, even at
that age, that in playing Indian I acquired a habit of toeing-in which
caused my mother much distress and which clung to me for many months.
Nor was I less particular in the matter of my speech. I was forever
mouthing sentiments and speeches culled from my father’s library, some
of them, I dare say, weird and bizarre enough upon my youthful and
innocent lips. However this may be, I had an abiding horror of all
sorts of anachronisms, and I preferred Ben Jonson to Shakespeare for
the reason that he was less frequently guilty of offending my artistic
sense in this respect.
It was not long before my parents were impressed with my natural bent
in this direction and encouraged me in my favorite diversion by
taking the part of an audience, while my younger brother was pressed
into service with his harmonica and rendered the overtures and the
interludes to the best of his somewhat limited ability; for I could
no more act without an orchestra than I could act without a make-up.
Incidentally I came to practise the art of elocution, and it was said
in our neighborhood that I could interpret _Horatio at the Bridge_ in a
most telling fashion, and that not Riley himself could improve upon my
rendition of _The Raggedy Man_.
With such a wealth of youthful experience, it was not surprising that
I found myself at the age of twenty-one a supernumerary in a theater,
nor that soon afterward I was given a speaking part and rose, before
long, to the dignity of “leads” in a stock company of the first class.
It was at this time that I was given my first opportunity really
to distinguish myself. A prominent manager, who shall be nameless,
sent for me and told me that he had chosen me to play Falstaff in a
production of _Henry the Fourth_ which he intended putting on the
following winter.
Elated as I was at this splendid opportunity for a display of my genius
for acting, I could not forbear voicing certain conscientious scruples
as to my ability to do the part justice.
“I can undoubtedly interpret the character to your most complete
satisfaction,” said I to the manager, “but there is an obstacle, which,
while by no means unsurmountable, must, nevertheless, be overcome at
once or not at all.”
“And what is that?” he inquired.
“Why,” said I, “I am not fat enough.”
“What odds?” he answered; “while there are pads and pillows, this
should be no matter for despair. You have only to stuff your doublet
and pad your hose until you are as swollen as you like.”
“That,” I protested, “may do very well for your merely commercial
actors who have no concern in their acting beyond the matter of drawing
a salary; but I, Sir, am an _actor_, not a mere buffoon, not a vulgar
clown to waddle about a stage wagging a hypocritical belly and passing
off feathers for fat. If I am to play Falstaff, I will be Falstaff, in
the flesh as well as in the spirit. My corporosity shall be sincere,
my puffing and grunting shall be genuine; I will eat real food and
drink real liquor upon your stage, and when I waddle I shall waddle as
Nature intended fat men to waddle--because I can not help it. My calves
shall be as natural as Sir John’s own, so that if I am pricked with the
point of a rapier, I shall give utterance to a howl which is not mere
mockery, but as real as a howl may well be, and which will delight the
audience as no feigned howl ever could do.
“No, no! I shall not play Falstaff like a clown in a pantomime, but
like that very knight himself. My performance shall be as real as the
performance of Nature. I will be Sir John redivivus. Falstaff shall
live again in me. He shall be I and I will be he, and there is an end
of it.”
Well, Sir, to be brief, the manager was so struck with my unusual
and, I may say, unaffected, sincerity, that he voluntarily advanced
me a portion of my salary and agreed to my proposal that, instead of
wasting valuable time in rehearsing a part in which I was already
practically letter-perfect, my part in the rehearsals should be taken
by a substitute, while I retired to the country and devoted myself to
my labor of love--to the task of putting on so much flesh as would be
necessary to act with fidelity the pursy knight errant. And this I did
to so good purpose that from my normal weight of about one hundred and
ninety pounds, I soon came to weigh upward of two hundred and eighty,
and was as fat as any one could wish when we opened in _Henry the
Fourth_ in the Autumn.
To say, Sir, that my performance was a success is to do scant justice
to the literary ability of William Shakespeare and to my own histrionic
powers. It was not merely a success--it was a triumph! Ah, Sir, if I
could but whisper in your ear the name by which I was known in those
days of superlative glory, you would recall in the flash of an eye the
days when the whole of the English-speaking world was convulsed with
merriment at my performance and when press and public were vying with
each other to do me honor! Never was such a performance of Falstaff
given before, and never, I fear, will such a performance be given
again. I was Falstaff to the very life! Falstaff in person and not to
be mistaken for any one else. You could have sworn that I had stepped
bodily out of the pages of the folio edition and thrust my way into the
theater of my own volition, usurping the place of the actor.
Four whole seasons we played to crowded houses--New York, Chicago, San
Francisco and London--and everywhere the critics all agreed that never
had such a perfect Falstaff been seen before. This we followed with
_The Merry Wives of Windsor_, repeating our success for two seasons, so
that for six years I was known to every actor and patron of the theater
as the greatest Falstaff that ever was.
But Fate, alas! however prodigal she may appear for a time, is not
constant in her favors. All things come to an end sooner or later, and
our production of _The Merry Wives_ ran its course in time. How well
do I remember that last night of all--the glitter of the electrics
overhead, the glare of the footlights, the music of the orchestra,
and, oh, above all else, the thunderous applause that greeted me when
I appeared before the curtain, clad in trunks and doublet, to make
my farewell speech! There ended our production, and there ended my
greatness and my life. My grossness I have still, but my greatness has
fled forever! Disconsolate I wander through the haunts of stageland, a
fat pale ghost of my former self; a Falstaff out of place and out of
time; a Falstaff without jollity or joy. I, Sir, have become that thing
which I hate above all other things in the world, I have become an
Anachronism!
Conceive, if you can, my consternation when I discovered my dilemma.
Having no further need for my excessive flesh, I sought to reduce my
weight only to find that I could not lose it! Six years of playing
Falstaff had made me Falstaff for good or ill. No fighter of the
prize-ring, no beauty of the court, ever labored as I labored to
struggle back to slimness. No Hamlet ever cried more earnestly than I,
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!”
Like Sisyphus, I toiled for months with my burden, rolling off flesh
only to have it roll on again, until at last I gave up in despair.
No manager would employ me to play for him--I was too fat. Too fat
to act, too fat to play at any part but one. Once only since that
time have I tried to obtain an engagement and that was when I saw an
advertisement of a revival of my own great play, _Henry the Fourth_.
But would you believe it, Sir, the manager had the impudence to laugh
in my face, to deny the truth of my story and scoff at my insistence
upon my identity. He called me, Sir, _a fat slob_! In desperation
I tried a Dime Museum, only to be told that no “fat freaks” were
employed who weighed less than three hundred and fifty pounds. At
last I fell into my present disgraceful situation; I was employed by
a restaurant-keeper as a decoy. In the window of one of the cheapest
and vilest cafés in this city I sit for eight hours daily drawing a
crowd about the place while I toy with a knife and fork and pretend to
eat of a meal that I would not feed my most bitter enemy. I do not eat
it. I can not eat it. And so, Sir, here I sit each day, a mere husk
of my former self, a hulk, a wrecked Leviathan! A fraud and a freak;
a delusion and a snare. This have I suffered in consequence of my
devotion to an ideal--I who was for six years the greatest Falstaff the
world has ever known!
T. P.
THE REWARD OF MERIT
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am an ashman, or, as they call me nowadays, a scavenger. It
may appear to you, Sir, a queer thing that a man in my station in life
should address a letter to an editor and upon such a subject, but when
I have made you acquainted with the facts of my case, I think it will
not seem so strange.
It is true that I am now employed as a scavenger, but I was formerly
the occupant of a very different station in life; I was formerly a
physician. I wish to lay before you what I consider the causes of my
descent in the social scale. When a man who has once been a member
of an honored profession is reduced to manual labor of a peculiarly
disagreeable sort, the common opinion is like to be that he is in some
way responsible for his own downfall; that he has fallen a victim
to drink or drugs, to a passion for gambling, or to some other
injurious habit. In my own case, I will not deny that the change in my
circumstances is probably due to my own conduct, though I do assure
you that it was not caused by my indulgence in the habits which I have
mentioned above. To be brief, Sir, I am of the opinion that my present
poverty and obscurity is nothing more nor less than the reward of merit.
It has been my observation that most of the favorite theories of the
human race are erroneous. They come into being as mere suggestions,
they grow into convictions, they thrive as platitudes, and they die as
superstitions. There have been millions of them since the world began,
and I have no doubt there will be millions of others before the last
man has vanished from the face of the earth. Some of these theories
live on long after they have been clearly demonstrated to be without
foundation in fact, and sometimes they work great harm to the innocent
persons who accept and act upon them in good faith. Such has been my
sad experience, and the theory which was responsible for my present
unpleasant situation was the theory that merit is always rewarded.