"Spiffin, old man," he replied. And then he wanted to know if I was
coming out.
I said "no" at first, but he overruled me. He said that a man with a
suit like that had no right to stop indoors. "Every citizen," said he,
"owes a duty to the public. Each one should contribute to the general
happiness as far as lies in his power. Come out and give the girls a
treat."
Jim is slangy. I don't know where he picks it up. It certainly is not
from me.
I said: "Do you think it will really please 'em?" He said it would be
like a day in the country to them.
That decided me. It was a lovely evening and I went.
When I got home I undressed and rubbed myself down with whisky, put
my feet in hot water and a mustard-plaster on my chest, had a basin of
gruel and a glass of hot brandy-and-water, tallowed my nose, and went to
bed.
These prompt and vigorous measures, aided by a naturally strong
constitution, were the means of preserving my life; but as for the suit!
Well, there, it isn't a suit; it's a splash-board.
And I did fancy that suit, too. But that's just the way. I never do get
particularly fond of anything in this world but what something dreadful
happens to it. I had a tame rat when I was a boy, and I loved that
animal as only a boy would love an old water-rat; and one day it fell
into a large dish of gooseberry-fool that was standing to cool in the
kitchen, and nobody knew what had become of the poor creature until the
second helping.
I do hate wet weather in town. At least, it is not so much the wet
as the mud that I object to. Somehow or other I seem to possess an
irresistible alluring power over mud. I have only to show myself in the
street on a muddy day to be half-smothered by it. It all comes of being
so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by lightning.
Other people can go out on dirty days and walk about for hours without
getting a speck upon themselves; while if I go across the road I come
back a perfect disgrace to be seen (as in my boyish days my poor dear
mother tried often to tell me). If there were only one dab of mud to be
found in the whole of London, I am convinced I should carry it off from
all competitors.
I wish I could return the affection, but I fear I never shall be able
to. I have a horror of what they call the "London particular." I feel
miserable and muggy all through a dirty day, and it is quite a relief
to pull one's clothes off and get into bed, out of the way of it all.
Everything goes wrong in wet weather. I don't know how it is, but there
always seem to me to be more people, and dogs, and perambulators, and
cabs, and carts about in wet weather than at any other time, and they
all get in your way more, and everybody is so disagreeable--except
myself--and it does make me so wild. And then, too, somehow I always
find myself carrying more things in wet weather than in dry; and when
you have a bag, and three parcels, and a newspaper, and it suddenly
comes on to rain, you can't open your umbrella.
Which reminds me of another phase of the weather that I can't bear, and
that is April weather (so called because it always comes in May).
Poets think it very nice. As it does not know its own mind five minutes
together, they liken it to a woman; and it is supposed to be very
charming on that account. I don't appreciate it, myself. Such
lightning-change business may be all very agreeable in a girl. It is no
doubt highly delightful to have to do with a person who grins one moment
about nothing at all, and snivels the next for precisely the same cause,
and who then giggles, and then sulks, and who is rude, and affectionate,
and bad-tempered, and jolly, and boisterous, and silent, and passionate,
and cold, and stand-offish, and flopping, all in one minute (mind,
I don't say this. It is those poets. And they are supposed to
be connoisseurs of this sort of thing); but in the weather the
disadvantages of the system are more apparent. A woman's tears do not
make one wet, but the rain does; and her coldness does not lay the
foundations of asthma and rheumatism, as the east wind is apt to. I
can prepare for and put up with a regularly bad day, but these
ha'porth-of-all-sorts kind of days do not suit me. It aggravates me to
see a bright blue sky above me when I am walking along wet through,
and there is something so exasperating about the way the sun comes out
smiling after a drenching shower, and seems to say: "Lord love you, you
don't mean to say you're wet? Well, I am surprised. Why, it was only my
fun."
They don't give you time to open or shut your umbrella in an English
April, especially if it is an "automaton" one--the umbrella, I mean, not
the April.
I bought an "automaton" once in April, and I did have a time with it! I
wanted an umbrella, and I went into a shop in the Strand and told them
so, and they said:
"Yes, sir. What sort of an umbrella would you like?"
I said I should like one that would keep the rain off, and that would
not allow itself to be left behind in a railway carriage.
"Try an 'automaton,'" said the shopman.
"What's an 'automaton'?" said I.
"Oh, it's a beautiful arrangement," replied the man, with a touch of
enthusiasm. "It opens and shuts itself."
I bought one and found that he was quite correct. It did open and shut
itself. I had no control over it whatever. When it began to rain, which
it did that season every alternate five minutes, I used to try and get
the machine to open, but it would not budge; and then I used to stand
and struggle with the wretched thing, and shake it, and swear at it,
while the rain poured down in torrents. Then the moment the rain ceased
the absurd thing would go up suddenly with a jerk and would not come
down again; and I had to walk about under a bright blue sky, with an
umbrella over my head, wishing that it would come on to rain again, so
that it might not seem that I was insane.
When it did shut it did so unexpectedly and knocked one's hat off.
I don't know why it should be so, but it is an undeniable fact that
there is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losing
his hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one's back on
suddenly becoming aware that one's head is bare is among the most bitter
ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the wild chase after it,
accompanied by an excitable small dog, who thinks it is a game, and
in the course of which you are certain to upset three or four innocent
children--to say nothing of their mothers--butt a fat old gentleman on
to the top of a perambulator, and carom off a ladies' seminary into the
arms of a wet sweep.
After this, the idiotic hilarity of the spectators and the disreputable
appearance of the hat when recovered appear but of minor importance.
Altogether, what between March winds, April showers, and the entire
absence of May flowers, spring is not a success in cities. It is all
very well in the country, as I have said, but in towns whose population
is anything over ten thousand it most certainly ought to be abolished.
In the world's grim workshops it is like the children--out of place.
Neither shows to advantage amid the dust and din. It seems so sad to see
the little dirt-grimed brats try to play in the noisy courts and muddy
streets. Poor little uncared-for, unwanted human atoms, they are not
children. Children are bright-eyed, chubby, and shy. These are dingy,
screeching elves, their tiny faces seared and withered, their baby
laughter cracked and hoarse.
The spring of life and the spring of the year were alike meant to be
cradled in the green lap of nature. To us in the town spring brings but
its cold winds and drizzling rains. We must seek it among the leafless
woods and the brambly lanes, on the heathy moors and the great still
hills, if we want to feel its joyous breath and hear its silent voices.
There is a glorious freshness in the spring there. The scurrying clouds,
the open bleakness, the rushing wind, and the clear bright air thrill
one with vague energies and hopes. Life, like the landscape around us,
seems bigger, and wider, and freer--a rainbow road leading to unknown
ends. Through the silvery rents that bar the sky we seem to catch a
glimpse of the great hope and grandeur that lies around this little
throbbing world, and a breath of its scent is wafted us on the wings of
the wild March wind.
Strange thoughts we do not understand are stirring in our hearts. Voices
are calling us to some great effort, to some mighty work. But we do not
comprehend their meaning yet, and the hidden echoes within us that would
reply are struggling, inarticulate and dumb.
We stretch our hands like children to the light, seeking to grasp we
know not what. Our thoughts, like the boys' thoughts in the Danish song,
are very long, long thoughts, and very vague; we cannot see their end.
It must be so. All thoughts that peer outside this narrow world cannot
be else than dim and shapeless. The thoughts that we can clearly grasp
are very little thoughts--that two and two make four-that when we are
hungry it is pleasant to eat--that honesty is the best policy; all
greater thoughts are undefined and vast to our poor childish brains. We
see but dimly through the mists that roll around our time-girt isle of
life, and only hear the distant surging of the great sea beyond.