“It’s tea,” he explained.
“Oh!” I replied; “I was wondering if it could be snuff.”
“Well, it’s not exactly tea,” he continued, “it’s a sort of tea. You
take one cup of that—one cup, and you will never care for any other kind
of tea again.”
He was quite right, I took one cup. After drinking it I felt I didn’t
care for any other tea. I felt I didn’t care for anything, except to die
quietly and inoffensively. He called on me a week later.
“You remember that tea I gave you?” he said.
“Distinctly,” I answered; “I’ve got the taste of it in my mouth now.”
“Did it upset you?” he asked.
“It annoyed me at the time,” I answered; “but that’s all over now.”
He seemed thoughtful. “You were quite correct,” he answered; “it _was_
snuff, a very special snuff, sent me all the way from India.”
“I can’t say I liked it,” I replied.
“A stupid mistake of mine,” he went on—“I must have mixed up the
packets!”
“Oh, accidents will happen,” I said, “and you won’t make another mistake,
I feel sure; so far as I am concerned.”
We can all give advice. I had the honour once of serving an old
gentleman whose profession it was to give legal advice, and excellent
legal advice he always gave. In common with most men who know the law,
he had little respect for it. I have heard him say to a would-be
litigant—
“My dear sir, if a villain stopped me in the street and demanded of me my
watch and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. If he thereupon
said, ‘Then I shall take it from you by brute force,’ I should, old as I
am, I feel convinced, reply to him, ‘Come on.’ But if, on the other
hand, he were to say to me, ‘Very well, then I shall take proceedings
against you in the Court of Queen’s Bench to compel you to give it up to
me,’ I should at once take it from my pocket, press it into his hand, and
beg of him to say no more about the matter. And I should consider I was
getting off cheaply.”
Yet that same old gentleman went to law himself with his next-door
neighbour over a dead poll parrot that wasn’t worth sixpence to anybody,
and spent from first to last a hundred pounds, if he spent a penny.
“I know I’m a fool,” he confessed. “I have no positive proof that it
_was_ his cat; but I’ll make him pay for calling me an Old Bailey
Attorney, hanged if I don’t!”
We all know how the pudding _ought_ to be made. We do not profess to be
able to make it: that is not our business. Our business is to criticize
the cook. It seems our business to criticize so many things that it is
not our business to do. We are all critics nowadays. I have my opinion
of you, Reader, and you possibly have your own opinion of me. I do not
seek to know it; personally, I prefer the man who says what he has to say
of me behind my back. I remember, when on a lecturing tour, the
ground-plan of the hall often necessitated my mingling with the audience
as they streamed out. This never happened but I would overhear somebody
in front of me whisper to his or her companion—“Take care, he’s just
behind you.” I always felt so grateful to that whisperer.
At a Bohemian Club, I was once drinking coffee with a Novelist, who
happened to be a broad-shouldered, athletic man. A fellow-member,
joining us, said to the Novelist, “I have just finished that last book of
yours; I’ll tell you my candid opinion of it.” Promptly replied the
Novelist, “I give you fair warning—if you do, I shall punch your head.”
We never heard that candid opinion.
Most of our leisure time we spend sneering at one another. It is a
wonder, going about as we do with our noses so high in the air, we do not
walk off this little round world into space, all of us. The Masses sneer
at the Classes. The morals of the Classes are shocking. If only the
Classes would consent as a body to be taught behaviour by a Committee of
the Masses, how very much better it would be for them. If only the
Classes would neglect their own interests and devote themselves to the
welfare of the Masses, the Masses would be more pleased with them.
The Classes sneer at the Masses. If only the Masses would follow the
advice given them by the Classes; if only they would be thrifty on their
ten shillings a week; if only they would all be teetotalers, or drink old
claret, which is not intoxicating; if only all the girls would be
domestic servants on five pounds a year, and not waste their money on
feathers; if only the men would be content to work for fourteen hours a
day, and to sing in tune, “God bless the Squire and his relations,” and
would consent to be kept in their proper stations, all things would go
swimmingly—for the Classes.
The New Woman pooh-poohs the Old; the Old Woman is indignant with the
New. The Chapel denounces the Stage; the Stage ridicules Little Bethel;
the Minor Poet sneers at the world; the world laughs at the Minor Poet.
Man criticizes Woman. We are not altogether pleased with woman. We
discuss her shortcomings, we advise her for her good. If only English
wives would dress as French wives, talk as American wives, cook as German
wives! if only women would be precisely what we want them to be—patient
and hard-working, brilliantly witty and exhaustively domestic,
bewitching, amenable, and less suspicious; how very much better it would
be for them—also for us. We work so hard to teach them, but they will
not listen. Instead of paying attention to our wise counsel, the
tiresome creatures are wasting their time criticizing us. It is a
popular game, this game of school. All that is needful is a doorstep, a
cane, and six other children. The difficulty is the six other children.
Every child wants to be the schoolmaster; they will keep jumping up,
saying it is their turn.
Woman wants to take the stick now, and put man on the doorstep. There
are one or two things she has got to say to him. He is not at all the
man she approves of. He must begin by getting rid of all his natural
desires and propensities; that done, she will take him in hand and make
of him—not a man, but something very much superior.
It would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody would only
follow our advice. I wonder, would Jerusalem have been the cleanly city
it is reported, if, instead of troubling himself concerning his own
twopenny-halfpenny doorstep, each citizen had gone out into the road and
given eloquent lectures to all the other inhabitants on the subject of
sanitation?
We have taken to criticizing the Creator Himself of late. The world is
wrong, we are wrong. If only He had taken our advice, during those first
six days!
Why do I seem to have been scooped out and filled up with lead? Why do I
hate the smell of bacon, and feel that nobody cares for me? It is
because champagne and lobsters have been made wrong.
Why do Edwin and Angelina quarrel? It is because Edwin has been given a
fine, high-spirited nature that will not brook contradiction; while
Angelina, poor girl, has been cursed with contradictory instincts.
Why is excellent Mr. Jones brought down next door to beggary? Mr. Jones
had an income of a thousand a year, secured by the Funds. But there came
along a wicked Company promoter (why are wicked Company promoters
permitted?) with a prospectus, telling good Mr. Jones how to obtain a
hundred per cent. for his money by investing it in some scheme for the
swindling of Mr. Jones’s fellow-citizens.
The scheme does not succeed; the people swindled turn out, contrary to
the promise of the prospectus, to be Mr. Jones and his fellow-investors.
Why does Heaven allow these wrongs?
Why does Mrs. Brown leave her husband and children, to run off with the
New Doctor? It is because an ill-advised Creator has given Mrs. Brown
and the New Doctor unduly strong emotions. Neither Mrs. Brown nor the
New Doctor are to be blamed. If any human being be answerable it is,
probably, Mrs. Brown’s grandfather, or some early ancestor of the New
Doctor’s.
We shall criticize Heaven when we get there. I doubt if any of us will
be pleased with the arrangements; we have grown so exceedingly critical.
It was once said of a very superior young man that he seemed to be under
the impression that God Almighty had made the universe chiefly to hear
what he would say about it. Consciously or unconsciously, most of us are
of this way of thinking. It is an age of mutual improvement societies—a
delightful idea, everybody’s business being to improve everybody else; of
amateur parliaments, of literary councils, of playgoers’ clubs.
First Night criticism seems to have died out of late, the Student of the
Drama having come to the conclusion, possibly, that plays are not worth
criticizing. But in my young days we were very earnest at this work. We
went to the play, less with the selfish desire of enjoying our evening,
than with the noble aim of elevating the Stage. Maybe we did good, maybe
we were needed—let us think so. Certain it is, many of the old
absurdities have disappeared from the Theatre, and our rough-and-ready
criticism may have helped the happy dispatch. A folly is often served by
an unwise remedy.
The dramatist in those days had to reckon with his audience. Gallery and
Pit took an interest in his work such as Galleries and Pits no longer
take. I recollect witnessing the production of a very blood-curdling
melodrama at, I think, the old Queen’s Theatre. The heroine had been
given by the author a quite unnecessary amount of conversation, so we
considered. The woman, whenever she appeared on the stage, talked by the
yard; she could not do a simple little thing like cursing the Villain
under about twenty lines. When the hero asked her if she loved him she
stood up and made a speech about it that lasted three minutes by the
watch. One dreaded to see her open her mouth. In the Third Act,
somebody got hold of her and shut her up in a dungeon. He was not a nice
man, speaking generally, but we felt he was the man for the situation,
and the house cheered him to the echo. We flattered ourselves we had got
rid of her for the rest of the evening. Then some fool of a turnkey came
along, and she appealed to him, through the grating, to let her out for a
few minutes. The turnkey, a good but soft-hearted man, hesitated.
“Don’t you do it,” shouted one earnest Student of the Drama, from the
Gallery; “she’s all right. Keep her there!”
The old idiot paid no attention to our advice; he argued the matter to
himself. “’Tis but a trifling request,” he remarked; “and it will make
her happy.”
“Yes, but what about us?” replied the same voice from the Gallery. “You
don’t know her. You’ve only just come on; we’ve been listening to her
all the evening. She’s quiet now, you let her be.”
“Oh, let me out, if only for one moment!” shrieked the poor woman. “I
have something that I must say to my child.”
“Write it on a bit of paper, and pass it out,” suggested a voice from the
Pit. “We’ll see that he gets it.”
“Shall I keep a mother from her dying child?” mused the turnkey. “No, it
would be inhuman.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” persisted the voice of the Pit; “not in this instance.
It’s too much talk that has made the poor child ill.”
The turnkey would not be guided by us. He opened the cell door amidst
the execrations of the whole house. She talked to her child for about
five minutes, at the end of which time it died.
“Ah, he is dead!” shrieked the distressed parent.
“Lucky beggar!” was the unsympathetic rejoinder of the house.
Sometimes the criticism of the audience would take the form of remarks,
addressed by one gentleman to another. We had been listening one night
to a play in which action seemed to be unnecessarily subordinated to
dialogue, and somewhat poor dialogue at that. Suddenly, across the
wearying talk from the stage, came the stentorian whisper—
“Jim!”
“Hallo!”
“Wake me up when the play begins.”
This was followed by an ostentatious sound as of snoring. Then the voice
of the second speaker was heard—
“Sammy!”
His friend appeared to awake.
“Eh? Yes? What’s up? Has anything happened?”
“Wake you up at half-past eleven in any event, I suppose?”
“Thanks, do, sonny.” And the critic slept again.
Yes, we took an interest in our plays then. I wonder shall I ever enjoy
the British Drama again as I enjoyed it in those days? Shall I ever
enjoy a supper again as I enjoyed the tripe and onions washed down with
bitter beer at the bar of the old Albion? I have tried many suppers
after the theatre since then, and some, when friends have been in
generous mood, have been expensive and elaborate. The cook may have come
from Paris, his portrait may be in the illustrated papers, his salary may
be reckoned by hundreds; but there is something wrong with his art, for
all that, I miss a flavour in his meats. There is a sauce lacking.
Nature has her coinage, and demands payment in her own currency. At
Nature’s shop it is you yourself must pay. Your unearned increment, your
inherited fortune, your luck, are not legal tenders across her counter.
You want a good appetite. Nature is quite willing to supply you.
“Certainly, sir,” she replies, “I can do you a very excellent article
indeed. I have here a real genuine hunger and thirst that will make your
meal a delight to you. You shall eat heartily and with zest, and you
shall rise from the table refreshed, invigorated, and cheerful.”
“Just the very thing I want,” exclaims the gourmet delightedly. “Tell me
the price.”
“The price,” answers Mrs. Nature, “is one long day’s hard work.”
The customer’s face falls; he handles nervously his heavy purse.
“Cannot I pay for it in money?” he asks. “I don’t like work, but I am a
rich man, I can afford to keep French cooks, to purchase old wines.”
Nature shakes her head.
“I cannot take your cheques, tissue and nerve are my charges. For these
I can give you an appetite that will make a rump-steak and a tankard of
ale more delicious to you than any dinner that the greatest _chef_ in
Europe could put before you. I can even promise you that a hunk of bread
and cheese shall be a banquet to you; but you must pay my price in my
money; I do not deal in yours.”
And next the Dilettante enters, demanding a taste for Art and Literature,
and this also Nature is quite prepared to supply.
“I can give you true delight in all these things,” she answers. “Music
shall be as wings to you, lifting you above the turmoil of the world.
Through Art you shall catch a glimpse of Truth. Along the pleasant paths
of Literature you shall walk as beside still waters.”
“And your charge?” cries the delighted customer.
“These things are somewhat expensive,” replies Nature. “I want from you
a life lived simply, free from all desire of worldly success, a life from
which passion has been lived out; a life to which appetite has been
subdued.”
“But you mistake, my dear lady,” replies the Dilettante; “I have many
friends, possessed of taste, and they are men who do not pay this price
for it. Their houses are full of beautiful pictures, they rave about
‘nocturnes’ and ‘symphonies,’ their shelves are packed with first
editions. Yet they are men of luxury and wealth and fashion. They
trouble much concerning the making of money, and Society is their heaven.
Cannot I be as one of these?”
“I do not deal in the tricks of apes,” answers Nature coldly; “the
culture of these friends of yours is a mere pose, a fashion of the hour,
their talk mere parrot chatter. Yes, you can purchase such culture as
this, and pretty cheaply, but a passion for skittles would be of more
service to you, and bring you more genuine enjoyment. My goods are of a
different class. I fear we waste each other’s time.”
And next comes the boy, asking with a blush for love, and Nature’s
motherly old heart goes out to him, for it is an article she loves to
sell, and she loves those who come to purchase it of her. So she leans
across the counter, smiling, and tells him that she has the very thing he
wants, and he, trembling with excitement, likewise asks the figure.
“It costs a good deal,” explains Nature, but in no discouraging tone; “it
is the most expensive thing in all my shop.”
“I am rich,” replies the lad. “My father worked hard and saved, and he
has left me all his wealth. I have stocks and shares, and lands and
factories; and will pay any price in reason for this thing.”
But Nature, looking graver, lays her hand upon his arm.
“Put by your purse, boy,” she says, “my price is not a price in reason,
nor is gold the metal that I deal in. There are many shops in various
streets where your bank-notes will be accepted. But if you will take an
old woman’s advice, you will not go to them. The thing they will sell
you will bring sorrow and do evil to you. It is cheap enough, but, like
all things cheap, it is not worth the buying. No man purchases it, only
the fool.”
“And what is the cost of the thing _you_ sell then?” asks the lad.
“Self-forgetfulness, tenderness, strength,” answers the old Dame; “the
love of all things that are of good repute, the hate of all things
evil—courage, sympathy, self-respect, these things purchase love. Put by
your purse, lad, it will serve you in other ways, but it will not buy for
you the goods upon my shelves.”
“Then am I no better off than the poor man?” demands the lad.
“I know not wealth or poverty as you understand it,” answers Nature.
“Here I exchange realities only for realities. You ask for my treasures,
I ask for your brain and heart in exchange—yours, boy, not your father’s,
not another’s.”
“And this price,” he argues, “how shall I obtain it?”
“Go about the world,” replies the great Lady. “Labour, suffer, help.
Come back to me when you have earned your wages, and according to how
much you bring me so we will do business.”
Is real wealth so unevenly distributed as we think? Is not Fate the true
Socialist? Who is the rich man, who the poor? Do we know? Does even
the man himself know? Are we not striving for the shadow, missing the
substance? Take life at its highest; which was the happier man, rich
Solomon or poor Socrates? Solomon seems to have had most things that
most men most desire—maybe too much of some for his own comfort.
Socrates had little beyond what he carried about with him, but that was a
good deal. According to our scales, Solomon should have been one of the
happiest men that ever lived, Socrates one of the most wretched. But was
it so?
Or taking life at its lowest, with pleasure its only goal. Is my lord
Tom Noddy, in the stalls, so very much jollier than ’Arry in the gallery?
Were beer ten shillings the bottle, and champagne fourpence a quart,
which, think you, we should clamour for? If every West End Club had its
skittle alley, and billiards could only be played in East End pubs, which
game, my lord, would you select? Is the air of Berkeley Square so much
more joy-giving than the atmosphere of Seven Dials? I find myself a
piquancy in the air of Seven Dials, missing from Berkeley Square. Is
there so vast a difference between horse-hair and straw, when you are
tired? Is happiness multiplied by the number of rooms in one’s house?
Are Lady Ermintrude’s lips so very much sweeter than Sally’s of the
Alley? What _is_ success in life?