“NOW, which would you advise, dear? You see, with the red I shan’t be
able to wear my magenta hat.”
“Well then, why not have the grey?”
“Yes—yes, I think the grey will be _more useful_.”
“It’s a good material.”
“Yes, and it’s a _pretty_ grey. You know what I mean, dear; not a
_common_ grey. Of course grey is always an _uninteresting_ colour.”
“It’s quiet.”
“And then again, what I feel about the red is that it is so warm-looking.
Red makes you _feel_ warm even when you’re _not_ warm. You know what I
mean, dear!”
“Well then, why not have the red? It suits you—red.”
“No; do you really think so?”
“Well, when you’ve got a colour, I mean, of course!”
“Yes, that is the drawback to red. No, I think, on the whole, the grey
is _safer_.”
“Then you will take the grey, madam?”
“Yes, I think I’d better; don’t you, dear?”
“I like it myself very much.”
“And it is good wearing stuff. I shall have it trimmed with— Oh! you
haven’t cut it off, have you?”
“I was just about to, madam.”
“Well, don’t for a moment. Just let me have another look at the red.
You see, dear, it has just occurred to me—that chinchilla would look so
well on the red!”
“So it would, dear!”
“And, you see, I’ve _got_ the chinchilla.”
“Then have the red. Why not?”
“Well, there is the hat I’m thinking of.”
“You haven’t anything else you could wear with that?”
“Nothing at all, and it would go so _beautifully_ with the grey.—Yes, I
think I’ll have the grey. It’s always a safe colour—grey.”
“Fourteen yards I think you said, madam?”
“Yes, fourteen yards will be enough; because I shall mix it with—One
minute. You see, dear, if I take the grey I shall have nothing to wear
with my black jacket.”
“Won’t it go with grey?”
“Not well—not so well as with red.”
“I should have the red then. You evidently fancy it yourself.”
“No, personally I prefer the grey. But then one must think of
_everything_, and—Good gracious! that’s surely not the right time?”
“No, madam, it’s ten minutes slow. We always keep our clocks a little
slow!”
“And we were too have been at Madame Jannaway’s at a quarter past twelve.
How long shopping does take! Why, whatever time did we start?”
“About eleven, wasn’t it?”
“Half-past ten. I remember now; because, you know, we said we’d start at
half-past nine. We’ve been two hours already!”
“And we don’t seem to have done much, do we?”
“Done literally nothing, and I meant to have done so much. I _must_ go
to Madame Jannaway’s. Have you got my purse, dear? Oh, it’s all right,
I’ve got it.”
“Well, now you haven’t decided whether you’re going to have the grey or
the red.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what I _do_ want now. I had made up my mind a
minute ago, and now it’s all gone again—oh yes, I remember, the red.
Yes, I’ll have the red. No, I don’t mean the red, I mean the grey.”
“You were talking about the red last time, if you remember, dear.”
“Oh, so I was, you’re quite right. That’s the worst of shopping. Do you
know I get quite confused sometimes.”
“Then you will decide on the red, madam?”
“Yes—yes, I shan’t do any better, shall I, dear? What do _you_ think?
You haven’t got any other shades of red, have you? This is such an
_ugly_ red.”
The shopman reminds her that she has seen all the other reds, and that
this is the particular shade she selected and admired.
“Oh, very well,” she replies, with the air of one from whom all earthly
cares are falling, “I must take that then, I suppose. I can’t be worried
about it any longer. I’ve wasted half the morning already.”
Outside she recollects three insuperable objections to the red, and four
unanswerable arguments why she should have selected the grey. She
wonders would they change it, if she went back and asked to see the
shop-walker? Her friend, who wants her lunch, thinks not.
“That is what I hate about shopping,” she says. “One never has time to
really _think_.”
She says she shan’t go to that shop again.
We laugh at her, but are we so very much better? Come, my superior male
friend, have you never stood, amid your wardrobe, undecided whether, in
her eyes, you would appear more imposing, clad in the rough tweed suit
that so admirably displays your broad shoulders; or in the orthodox black
frock, that, after all, is perhaps more suitable to the figure of a man
approaching—let us say, the nine-and-twenties? Or, better still, why not
riding costume? Did we not hear her say how well Jones looked in his
top-boots and breeches, and, “hang it all,” we have a better leg than
Jones. What a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is
it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women
have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more and more
reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, the tight-fitting pantaloons,
the neat kneebreeches of our forefathers impossible to-day? Are we grown
more modest—or has there come about a falling off, rendering concealment
advisable?
I can never understand, myself, why women love us. It must be our honest
worth, our sterling merit, that attracts them—certainly not our
appearance, in a pair of tweed “dittos,” black angora coat and vest,
stand-up collar, and chimney-pot hat! No, it must be our sheer force of
character that compels their admiration.
What a good time our ancestors must have had was borne in upon me when,
on one occasion, I appeared in character at a fancy dress ball. What I
represented I am unable to say, and I don’t particularly care. I only
know it was something military. I also remember that the costume was two
sizes too small for me in the chest, and thereabouts; and three sizes too
large for me in the hat. I padded the hat, and dined in the middle of
the day off a chop and half a glass of soda-water. I have gained prizes
as a boy for mathematics, also for scripture history—not often, but I
have done it. A literary critic, now dead, once praised a book of mine.
I know there have been occasions when my conduct has won the approbation
of good men; but never—never in my whole life, have I felt more proud,
more satisfied with myself than on that evening when, the last hook
fastened, I gazed at my full-length Self in the cheval glass. I was a
dream. I say it who should not; but I am not the only one who said it.
I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red, trimmed with gold
braid wherever there was room for gold braid; and where there was no more
possible room for gold braid there hung gold cords, and tassels, and
straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened me, gold embroidered belts and
sashes caressed me, white horse-hair plumes waved o’er me. I am not sure
that everything was in its proper place, but I managed to get everything
on somehow, and I looked well. It suited me. My success was a
revelation to me of female human nature. Girls who had hitherto been
cold and distant gathered round me, timidly solicitous of notice. Girls
on whom I smiled lost their heads and gave themselves airs. Girls who
were not introduced to me sulked and were rude to girls that had been.
For one poor child, with whom I sat out two dances (at least she sat,
while I stood gracefully beside her—I had been advised, by the costumier,
_not_ to sit), I was sorry. He was a worthy young fellow, the son of a
cotton broker, and he would have made her a good husband, I feel sure.
But he was foolish to come as a beer-bottle.
Perhaps, after all, it is as well those old fashions have gone out. A
week in that suit might have impaired my natural modesty.
One wonders that fancy dress balls are not more popular in this grey age
of ours. The childish instinct to “dress up,” to “make believe,” is with
us all. We grow so tired of being always ourselves. A tea-table
discussion, at which I once assisted, fell into this:—Would any one of
us, when it came to the point, change with anybody else, the poor man
with the millionaire, the governess with the princess—change not only
outward circumstances and surroundings, but health and temperament,
heart, brain, and soul; so that not one mental or physical particle of
one’s original self one would retain, save only memory? The general
opinion was that we would not, but one lady maintained the affirmative.
“Oh no, you wouldn’t really, dear,” argued a friend; “you _think_ you
would.”
“Yes, I would,” persisted the first lady; “I am tired of myself. I’d
even be you, for a change.”
In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was—What sort of man
shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at
thirty-nine we say, “I wish Fate hadn’t made me this sort of man.”
In those days I was a reader of much well-meant advice to young men, and
I gathered that, whether I should become a Sir Lancelot, a Herr
Teufelsdrockh, or an Iago was a matter for my own individual choice.
Whether I should go through life gaily or gravely was a question the pros
and cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I turned to
books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made up our minds to
be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary with the world, and prone to
soliloquy. I determined to join them.
For a month I rarely smiled, or, when I did, it was with a weary, bitter
smile, concealing a broken heart—at least that was the intention.
Shallow-minded observers misunderstood.
“I know exactly how it feels,” they would say, looking at me
sympathetically, “I often have it myself. It’s the sudden change in the
weather, I think;” and they would press neat brandy upon me, and suggest
ginger.
Again, it is distressing to the young man, busy burying his secret sorrow
under a mound of silence, to be slapped on the back by commonplace people
and asked—“Well, how’s ‘the hump’ this morning?” and to hear his mood of
dignified melancholy referred to, by those who should know better, as
“the sulks.”
There are practical difficulties also in the way of him who would play
the Byronic young gentleman. He must be supernaturally wicked—or rather
must _have been_; only, alas! in the unliterary grammar of life, where
the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the
indefinite, but from the present indicative, “to have been” is “to be”;
and to be wicked on a small income is impossible. The ruin of even the
simplest of maidens costs money. In the Courts of Love one cannot sue in
_formâ pauperis_; nor would it be the Byronic method.
“To drown remembrance in the cup” sounds well, but then the “cup,” to be
fitting, should be of some expensive brand. To drink deep of old Tokay
or Asti is poetical; but when one’s purse necessitates that the draught,
if it is to be deep enough to drown anything, should be of thin beer at
five-and-nine the four and a half gallon cask, or something similar in
price, sin is robbed of its flavour.
Possibly also—let me think it—the conviction may have been within me that
Vice, even at its daintiest, is but an ugly, sordid thing, repulsive in
the sunlight; that though—as rags and dirt to art—it may afford
picturesque material to Literature, it is an evil-smelling garment to the
wearer; one that a good man, by reason of poverty of will, may come down
to, but one to be avoided with all one’s effort, discarded with returning
mental prosperity.
Be this as it may, I grew weary of training for a saturnine young man;
and, in the midst of my doubt, I chanced upon a book the hero of which
was a debonnaire young buck, own cousin to Tom and Jerry. He attended
fights, both of cocks and men, flirted with actresses, wrenched off
door-knockers, extinguished street lamps, played many a merry jest upon
many an unappreciative night watch-man. For all the which he was much
beloved by the women of the book. Why should not I flirt with actresses,
put out street lamps, play pranks on policemen, and be beloved? London
life was changed since the days of my hero, but much remained, and the
heart of woman is eternal. If no longer prizefighting was to be had, at
least there were boxing competitions, so called, in dingy back parlours
out Whitechapel way. Though cockfighting was a lost sport, were there
not damp cellars near the river where for twopence a gentleman might back
mongrel terriers to kill rats against time, and feel himself indeed a
sportsman? True, the atmosphere of reckless gaiety, always surrounding
my hero, I missed myself from these scenes, finding in its place an
atmosphere more suggestive of gin, stale tobacco, and nervous
apprehension of the police; but the essentials must have been the same,
and the next morning I could exclaim in the very words of my
prototype—“Odds crickets, but I feel as though the devil himself were in
my head. Peste take me for a fool.”
But in this direction likewise my fatal lack of means opposed me. (It
affords much food to the philosophic mind, this influence of income upon
character.) Even fifth-rate “boxing competitions,” organized by
“friendly leads,” and ratting contests in Rotherhithe slums, become
expensive, when you happen to be the only gentleman present possessed of
a collar, and are expected to do the honours of your class in dog’s-nose.
True, climbing lamp-posts and putting out the gas is fairly cheap,
providing always you are not caught in the act, but as a recreation it
lacks variety. Nor is the modern London lamp-post adapted to sport.
Anything more difficult to grip—anything with less “give” in it—I have
rarely clasped. The disgraceful amount of dirt allowed to accumulate
upon it is another drawback from the climber’s point of view. By the
time you have swarmed up your third post a positive distaste for “gaiety”
steals over you. Your desire is towards arnica and a bath.
Nor in jokes at the expense of policemen is the fun entirely on your
side. Maybe I did not proceed with judgment. It occurs to me now,
looking back, that the neighbourhoods of Covent Garden and Great
Marlborough Street were ill-chosen for sport of this nature. To bonnet a
fat policeman is excellent fooling. While he is struggling with his
helmet you can ask him comic questions, and by the time he has got his
head free you are out of sight. But the game should be played in a
district where there is not an average of three constables to every dozen
square yards. When two other policemen, who have had their eye on you
for the past ten minutes, are watching the proceedings from just round
the next corner, you have little or no leisure for due enjoyment of the
situation. By the time you have run the whole length of Great Titchfield
Street and twice round Oxford Market, you are of opinion that a joke
should never be prolonged beyond the point at which there is danger of
its becoming wearisome; and that the time has now arrived for home and
friends. The “Law,” on the other hand, now raised by reinforcements to a
strength of six or seven men, is just beginning to enjoy the chase. You
picture to yourself, while doing Hanover Square, the scene in Court the
next morning. You will be accused of being drunk and disorderly. It
will be idle for you to explain to the magistrate (or to your relations
afterwards) that you were only trying to live up to a man who did this
sort of thing in a book and was admired for it. You will be fined the
usual forty shillings; and on the next occasion of your calling at the
Mayfields’ the girls will be out, and Mrs. Mayfield, an excellent lady,
who has always taken a motherly interest in you, will talk seriously to
you and urge you to sign the pledge.
Thanks to your youth and constitution you shake off the pursuit at
Notting Hill; and, to avoid any chance of unpleasant _contretemps_ on the
return journey, walk home to Bloomsbury by way of Camden Town and
Islington.
I abandoned sportive tendencies as the result of a vow made by myself to
Providence, during the early hours of a certain Sunday morning, while
clinging to the waterspout of an unpretentious house situate in a side
street off Soho. I put it to Providence as man to man. “Let me only get
out of this,” I think were the muttered words I used, “and no more
‘sport’ for me.” Providence closed on the offer, and did let me get out
of it. True, it was a complicated “get out,” involving a broken skylight
and three gas globes, two hours in a coal cellar, and a sovereign to a
potman for the loan of an ulster; and when at last, secure in my chamber,
I took stock of myself—what was left of me,—I could not but reflect that
Providence might have done the job neater. Yet I experienced no desire
to escape the terms of the covenant; my inclining for the future was
towards a life of simplicity.
Accordingly, I cast about for a new character, and found one to suit me.
The German professor was becoming popular as a hero about this period.
He wore his hair long and was otherwise untidy, but he had “a heart of
steel,” occasionally of gold. The majority of folks in the book, judging
him from his exterior together with his conversation—in broken English,
dealing chiefly with his dead mother and his little sister Lisa,—dubbed
him uninteresting, but then they did not know about the heart. His chief
possession was a lame dog which he had rescued from a brutal mob; and
when he was not talking broken English he was nursing this dog.
But his speciality was stopping runaway horses, thereby saving the
heroine’s life. This, combined with the broken English and the dog,
rendered him irresistible.
He seemed a peaceful, amiable sort of creature, and I decided to try him.
I could not of course be a German professor, but I could, and did, wear
my hair long in spite of much public advice to the contrary, voiced
chiefly by small boys. I endeavoured to obtain possession of a lame dog,
but failed. A one-eyed dealer in Seven Dials, to whom, as a last
resource, I applied, offered to lame one for me for an extra five
shillings, but this suggestion I declined. I came across an
uncanny-looking mongrel late one night. He was not lame, but he seemed
pretty sick; and, feeling I was not robbing anybody of anything very
valuable, I lured him home and nursed him. I fancy I must have
over-nursed him. He got so healthy in the end, there was no doing
anything with him. He was an ill-conditioned cur, and he was too old to
be taught. He became the curse of the neighbourhood. His idea of sport
was killing chickens and sneaking rabbits from outside poulterers’ shops.
For recreation he killed cats and frightened small children by yelping
round their legs. There were times when I could have lamed him myself,
if only I could have got hold of him. I made nothing by running that
dog—nothing whatever. People, instead of admiring me for nursing him
back to life, called me a fool, and said that if I didn’t drown the brute
they would. He spoilt my character utterly—I mean my character at this
period. It is difficult to pose as a young man with a heart of gold,
when discovered in the middle of the road throwing stones at your own
dog. And stones were the only things that would reach and influence him.
I was also hampered by a scarcity in runaway horses. The horse of our
suburb was not that type of horse. Once and only once did an opportunity
offer itself for practice. It was a good opportunity, inasmuch as he was
not running away very greatly. Indeed, I doubt if he knew himself that
he was running away. It transpired afterwards that it was a habit of
his, after waiting for his driver outside the Rose and Crown for what he
considered to be a reasonable period, to trot home on his own account.
He passed me going about seven miles an hour, with the reins dragging
conveniently beside him. He was the very thing for a beginner, and I
prepared myself. At the critical moment, however, a couple of officious
policemen pushed me aside and did it themselves.
There was nothing for me to regret, as the matter turned out. I should
only have rescued a bald-headed commercial traveller, very drunk, who
swore horribly, and pelted the crowd with empty collar-boxes.
From the window of a very high flat I once watched three men, resolved to
stop a runaway horse. Each man marched deliberately into the middle of
the road and took up his stand. My window was too far away for me to see
their faces, but their attitude suggested heroism unto death. The first
man, as the horse came charging towards him, faced it with his arms
spread out. He never flinched until the horse was within about twenty
yards of him. Then, as the animal was evidently determined to continue
its wild career, there was nothing left for him to do but to retire again
to the kerb, where he stood looking after it with evident sorrow, as
though saying to himself—“Oh, well, if you are going to be headstrong I
have done with you.”
The second man, on the catastrophe being thus left clear for him, without
a moment’s hesitation, walked up a bye street and disappeared. The third
man stood his ground, and, as the horse passed him, yelled at it. I
could not hear what he said. I have not the slightest doubt it was
excellent advice, but the animal was apparently too excited even to
listen. The first and the third man met afterwards, and discussed the
matter sympathetically. I judged they were regretting the pig-headedness
of runaway horses in general, and hoping that nobody had been hurt.
I forget the other characters I assumed about this period. One, I know,
that got me into a good deal of trouble was that of a downright, honest,
hearty, outspoken young man who always said what he meant.
I never knew but one man who made a real success of speaking his mind. I
have heard him slap the table with his open hand and exclaim—
“You want me to flatter you—to stuff you up with a pack of lies. That’s
not me, that’s not Jim Compton. But if you care for my honest opinion,
all I can say is, that child is the most marvellous performer on the
piano I’ve ever heard. I don’t say she is a genius, but I have heard
Liszt and Metzler and all the crack players, and I prefer _her_. That’s
my opinion. I speak my mind, and I can’t help it if you’re offended.”
“How refreshing,” the parents would say, “to come across a man who is not
afraid to say what he really thinks. Why are we not all outspoken?”
The last character I attempted I thought would be easy to assume. It was
that of a much admired and beloved young man, whose great charm lay in
the fact that he was always just—himself. Other people posed and acted.
He never made any effort to be anything but his own natural, simple self.
I thought I also would be my own natural, simple self. But then the
question arose—What was my own natural, simple self?
That was the preliminary problem I had to solve; I have not solved it to
this day. What am I? I am a great gentleman, walking through the world
with dauntless heart and head erect, scornful of all meanness, impatient
of all littleness. I am a mean-thinking, little-daring man—the type of
man that I of the dauntless heart and the erect head despise
greatly—crawling to a poor end by devious ways, cringing to the strong,
timid of all pain. I—but, dear reader, I will not sadden your sensitive
ears with details I could give you, showing how contemptible a creature
this wretched I happens to be. Nor would you understand me. You would
only be astonished, discovering that such disreputable specimens of
humanity contrive to exist in this age. It is best, my dear sir, or
madam, you should remain ignorant of these evil persons. Let me not
trouble you with knowledge.
I am a philosopher, greeting alike the thunder and the sunshine with
frolic welcome. Only now and then, when all things do not fall exactly
as I wish them, when foolish, wicked people will persist in doing
foolish, wicked acts, affecting my comfort and happiness, I rage and fret
a goodish deal.
As Heine said of himself, I am knight, too, of the Holy Grail, valiant
for the Truth, reverent of all women, honouring all men, eager to yield
life to the service of my great Captain.
And next moment, I find myself in the enemy’s lines, fighting under the
black banner. (It must be confusing to these opposing Generals, all
their soldiers being deserters from both armies.) What are women but
men’s playthings! Shall there be no more cakes and ale for me because
thou art virtuous! What are men but hungry dogs, contending each against
each for a limited supply of bones! Do others lest thou be done. What
is the Truth but an unexploded lie!
I am a lover of all living things. You, my poor sister, struggling with
your heavy burden on your lonely way, I would kiss the tears from your
worn cheeks, lighten with my love the darkness around your feet. You, my
patient brother, breathing hard as round and round you tramp the trodden
path, like some poor half-blind gin-horse, stripes your only
encouragement, scanty store of dry chaff in your manger! I would jog
beside you, taking the strain a little from your aching shoulders; and we
would walk nodding, our heads side by side, and you, remembering, should
tell me of the fields where long ago you played, of the gallant races
that you ran and won. And you, little pinched brats, with wondering
eyes, looking from dirt-encrusted faces, I would take you in my arms and
tell you fairy stories. Into the sweet land of make-believe we would
wander, leaving the sad old world behind us for a time, and you should be
Princes and Princesses, and know Love.
But again, a selfish, greedy man comes often, and sits in my clothes. A
man who frets away his life, planning how to get more money—more food,
more clothes, more pleasures for himself; a man so busy thinking of the
many things he needs he has no time to dwell upon the needs of others.
He deems himself the centre of the universe. You would imagine, hearing
him grumbling, that the world had been created and got ready against the
time when he should come to take his pleasure in it. He would push and
trample, heedless, reaching towards these many desires of his; and when,
grabbing, he misses, he curses Heaven for its injustice, and men and
women for getting in his path. He is not a nice man, in any way. I
wish, as I say, he would not come so often and sit in my clothes. He
persists that he is I, and that I am only a sentimental fool, spoiling
his chances. Sometimes, for a while, I get rid of him, but he always
comes back; and then he gets rid of me and I become him. It is very
confusing. Sometimes I wonder if I really am myself.