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Diary of a Pilgrimage: And Six Essays
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Diary of a Pilgrimage
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Diary of a Pilgrimage
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This promises, at the outset, to be a true blue Jerome K. Jerome work of the sort familiar to most readers. It fits in neatly with the Three Men books.
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"Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well now, why don’t you write a sensible book? I should like to see you make people think.”
"“Do you believe it can be done, then?” I asked.
"“Well, try,” he replied.
"Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it. I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can.
"What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales.
"London, March, 1891."
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"Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.
"Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.
"One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man according to his deserts.
"But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time."
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"If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore. It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-class and then ride third—that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.
"A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people—I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was—came up to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first voyage.
"I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.
"He replied: “Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night.”
"What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether."
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"Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigorously among themselves.
"B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that the other six were liars.
"What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had languages of their own,—there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in but English.
"Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.
"These two stout ones, however—the German and one of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.
"The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the people already there.
"He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the platform and answered him back in English.
"English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.
"We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested. In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business. The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner’s, was to become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.
"A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them in English.
"B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like this."
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"Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome, and does not know what else to do with himself, he takes a walk round the train, and gets the passengers to show him their tickets, after which he returns to his box cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about sunsets and mountains and old masters; but to the German railway-guard the world can show nothing more satisfying, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.
"Nearly all the German railway officials have this same craving for tickets. If only they get somebody to show them a railway-ticket, they are happy. It seemed a harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided that it would be only kind to humour them in it during our stay.
"Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway official standing about, looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got him a second-class return.
"For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once—the whole twenty or twenty-four of them—and let him take them in his hand and look at them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.
"B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did not turn the man’s head (and it was more than probable that it would), so much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.
"So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow’s face brighten up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from which it had so long been absent.
"But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control his passion for tickets—or, at least, keep it within due bounds.
"Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see your “billet.”
"You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one, somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully, thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.
"There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it is possibly in one of the bags—somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you only knew where that was, or your purse."
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"To pass away the time, we strolled about the city. Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it. There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it was busier than usual, and its promenades were thronged with citizens and country folk in holiday attire, among whom the Southern peasants, wearing their quaint, centuries-old costume, stood out in picturesque relief. Fashion, in its world-wide crusade against variety and its bitter contest with form and colour, has recoiled, defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses of Bavaria."
"Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side."
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"I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.
"I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,” an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined to sample it.
"It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else. It even tasted like putty—at least, like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again."
"I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.
"I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling—being jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?
"B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.
"B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke. Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B.:
"“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?”
"B. said: “Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my sake.”
"To humour him, I lit up.
"I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light them, especially not if the match be a German one. The German match is quite a high art work. It has a yellow head and a magenta or green stem, and can certainly lay claim to being the handsomest match in Europe.
"We smoked a good many penny cigars during our stay in Germany, and that we were none the worse for doing so I consider as proof of our splendid physique and constitution. I think the German cigar test might, with reason, be adopted by life insurance offices.—Question: “Are you at present, and have you always been, of robust health?” Answer: “I have smoked a German cigar, and still live.” Life accepted."
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"We were fortunate enough to find our land-lord, a worthy farmer, waiting for us with a tumble-down conveyance, in appearance something between a circus-chariot and a bath-chair, drawn by a couple of powerful-looking horses; and in this, after a spirited skirmish between our driver and a mob of twenty or so tourists, who pretended to mistake the affair for an omnibus, and who would have clambered into it and swamped it, we drove away.
"Higher and higher we climbed, and grander and grander towered the frowning moon-bathed mountains round us, and chillier and chillier grew the air. For most of the way we crawled along, the horses tugging us from side to side of the steep road; but, wherever our coachman could vary the monotony of the pace by a stretch-gallop—as, for instance, down the precipitous descents that occasionally followed upon some extra long and toilsome ascent—he thoughtfully did so. At such times the drive became really quite exciting, and all our weariness was forgotten.
"The steeper the descent, the faster, of course, we could go. The rougher the road, the more anxious the horses seemed to be to get over it quickly. During the gallop, B. and I enjoyed, in a condensed form, all the advantages usually derived from crossing the Channel on a stormy day, riding on a switchback railway, and being tossed in a blanket—a hard, nobbly blanket, full of nasty corners and sharp edges. I should never have thought that so many different sensations could have been obtained from one machine!
"About half-way up we passed Ettal, at the entrance to the Valley of the Ammer. The great white temple, standing, surrounded by its little village, high up amid the mountain solitudes, is a famous place of pilgrimage among devout Catholics. Many hundreds of years ago, one of the early Bavarian kings built here a monastery as a shrine for a miraculous image of the Virgin that had been sent down to him from Heaven to help him when, in a foreign land, he had stood sore in need, encompassed by his enemies. Maybe the stout arms and hearts of his Bavarian friends were of some service in the crisis also; but the living helpers were forgotten. The old church and monastery, which latter was a sort of ancient Chelsea Hospital for decayed knights, was destroyed one terrible night some hundred and fifty years ago by a flash of lightning; but the wonder-working image was rescued unhurt, and may still be seen and worshipped beneath the dome of the present much less imposing church which has been reared upon the ruins of its ancestor.
"The monastery, which was also rebuilt at the same time, now serves the more useful purpose of a brewery."
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"We ourselves saw the play yesterday, and we are now discussing it. I am explaining to B. the difficulty I experience in writing an account of it for my diary. I tell him that I really do not know what to say about it.
"We ourselves saw the play yesterday, and we are now discussing it. I am explaining to B. the difficulty I experience in writing an account of it for my diary. I tell him that I really do not know what to say about it.
"He smokes for a while in silence, and then, taking the pipe from his lips, he says:
"“Does it matter very much what you say about it?”
"I find much relief in that thought. It at once lifts from my shoulders the oppressive feeling of responsibility that was weighing me down. After all, what does it matter what I say? What does it matter what any of us says about anything? Nobody takes much notice of it, luckily for everybody. This reflection must be of great comfort to editors and critics. A conscientious man who really felt that his words would carry weight and influence with them would be almost afraid to speak at all. It is the man who knows that it will not make an ounce of difference to anyone what he says, that can grow eloquent and vehement and positive. It will not make any difference to anybody or anything what I say about the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. So I shall just say what I want to.
"But what do I want to say? What can I say that has not been said, and said much better, already? (An author must always pretend to think that every other author writes better than he himself does. He does not really think so, you know, but it looks well to talk as though he did.) What can I say that the reader does not know, or that, not knowing, he cares to know? It is easy enough to talk about nothing, like I have been doing in this diary hitherto. It is when one is confronted with the task of writing about something, that one wishes one were a respectable well-to-do sweep—a sweep with a comfortable business of his own, and a pony—instead of an author.
"B. says:
"“Well, why not begin by describing Ober-Ammergau.”
"I say it has been described so often."
"“Explain how all the houses are numbered according to the date they were built, so that number sixteen comes next to number forty-seven, and there is no number one because it has been pulled down. Tell how unsophisticated visitors, informed that their lodgings are at number fifty-three, go wandering for days and days round fifty-two, under the not unreasonable impression that their house must be next door, though, as a matter of fact, it is half a mile off at the other end of the village, and are discovered one sunny morning, sitting on the doorstep of number eighteen, singing pathetic snatches of nursery rhymes, and trying to plat their toes into door-mats, and are taken up and carried away screaming, to end their lives in the madhouse at Munich.
"“Talk about the weather. People who have stayed here for any length of time tell me that it rains at Ober-Ammergau three days out of every four, the reason that it does not rain on the fourth day being that every fourth day is set apart for a deluge. They tell me, also, that while it will be pouring with rain just in the village the sun will be shining brightly all round about, and that the villagers, when the water begins to come in through their roofs, snatch up their children and hurry off to the nearest field, where they sit and wait until the storm is over.”
"“Do you believe them—the persons that you say tell you these tales?” I ask.
"“Personally I do not,” he replies. “I think people exaggerate to me because I look young and innocent, but no doubt there is a ground-work of truth in their statements. I have myself left Ober-Ammergau under a steady drenching rain, and found a cloudless sky the other side of the Kofel."
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"It seems to be a habit of Munich trains to start off in this purposeless way. Apparently, their sole object is to get away from the town. They don’t care where they go to; they don’t care what becomes of them, so long as they escape from Munich.
"“For heaven’s sake,” they say to themselves, “let us get away from this place. Don’t let us bother about where we shall go; we can decide that when we are once fairly outside. Let’s get out of Munich; that’s the great thing.”
"B. begins to grow quite frightened. He says:
"“We shall never be able to leave this city. There are no trains out of Munich at all. It’s a plot to keep us here, that’s what it is. We shall never be able to get away. We shall never see dear old England again!”
"I try to cheer him up by suggesting that perhaps it is the custom in Bavaria to leave the destination of the train to the taste and fancy of the passengers. The railway authorities provide a train, and start it off at 2.15. It is immaterial to them where it goes to. That is a question for the passengers to decide among themselves. The passengers hire the train and take it away, and there is an end of the matter, so far as the railway people are concerned. If there is any difference of opinion between the passengers, owing to some of them wishing to go to Spain, while others want to get home to Russia, they, no doubt, settle the matter by tossing up."
"B.’s intellect generally gives way about this point, and he becomes simply drivelling. He discovers trains that run from Munich to Heidelberg in fourteen minutes, by way of Venice and Geneva, with half-an-hour’s interval for breakfast at Rome. He rushes up and down the book in pursuit of demon expresses that arrive at their destinations forty-seven minutes before they start, and leave again before they get there. He finds out, all by himself, that the only way to get from South Germany to Paris is to go to Calais, and then take the boat to Moscow. Before he has done with the timetable, he doesn’t know whether he is in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, nor where he wants to get to, nor why he wants to go there."
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September 14, 2020 - September 14, 2020.
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September 09, 2020 - September 12, 2020.
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September 09, 2020 - September 12, 2020.
Transcribed from the
1919 J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd. edition
by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org.
Proofed by Andrew Wallace,
email
andy@linxit.demon.co.uk.
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Six Essays
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Six Essays
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DREAMS
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Dreams
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Dreams
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Delightful, right off the bat.
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"The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied that, as I was going into a theater, the cloak-room attendant stopped me in the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me.
"I was not surprised; indeed, my acquaintanceship with theater harpies would prevent my feeling any surprise at such a demand, even in my waking moments; but I was, I must honestly confess, considerably annoyed. It was not the payment of the cloak-room fee that I so much minded--I offered to give that to the man then and there. It was the parting with my legs that I objected to.
"I said I had never heard of such a rule being attempted to be put in force at any respectable theater before, and that I considered it a most absurd and vexatious regulation. I also said I should write to The Times about it.
"The man replied that he was very sorry, but that those were his instructions. People complained that they could not get to and from their seats comfortably, because other people's legs were always in the way; and it had, therefore, been decided that, in future, everybody should leave their legs outside.
"It seemed to me that the management, in making this order, had clearly gone beyond their legal right; and, under ordinary circumstances, I should have disputed it. Being present, however, more in the character of a guest than in that of a patron, I hardly like to make a disturbance; and so I sat down and meekly prepared to comply with the demand.
"I had never before known that the human leg did unscrew. I had always thought it was a fixture. But the man showed me how to undo them, and I found that they came off quite easily.
"The discovery did not surprise me any more than the original request that I should take them off had done. Nothing does surprise one in a dream."
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"I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished--not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.
"They bore the calamity, besides, with an amount of stoicism that would have done credit to a Spartan father. There was no fuss, no scene. On the contrary, an atmosphere of mild cheerfulness prevailed.
"Yet they were very kind. Somebody--an uncle, I think--left me a packet of sandwiches and a little something in a flask, in case, as he said, I should feel peckish on the scaffold."
"The number of so called imaginative writers who visit the moon is legion, and for all the novelty that they find, when they get there, they might just as well have gone to Putney. Others are continually drawing for us visions of the world one hundred or one thousand years hence. There is always a depressing absence of human nature about the place; so much so, that one feels great consolation in the thought, while reading, that we ourselves shall be comfortably dead and buried before the picture can be realized. In these prophesied Utopias everybody is painfully good and clean and happy, and all the work is done by electricity."
Apart from that last, one has to wonder if he read a contemporary George Bernard Shaw, and if so, did he envy, or even comprehend, the stature. Then again, Jerome K. Jerome was far too immersed in his religion to be able to appreciate anything slightly outside it's bounds, so it's unlikely he understood Shaw.
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He begins thus with the familiar side splitting, humour of his, to begin with.
But soon enough, the author turns to his yearning, to serious thought. In this, he was not quite so successful, though it might not have been evident in his time. His disdain for electricity, for example, was out of place, as we know now well over a century later.
And, too, his imagery about human thought being a slow growing tree, not fireworks, is yet quite incorrect. We know now how soon after he wrote this it came about like a series of thunderbolts when relativity, atom structure and splitting, radium and more revolutionised the world of thought, as much as flights and phones and computers did everyday lives.
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September 14, 2020 - September 14, 2020.
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CLOCKS
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Clocks:-
Small and very very readable, and everything one expects of the author after reading the three men adventures - although in this only the protagonist figures along with his social interactions generally as necessary.
The chief interaction is with the clocks in general and a large grandfather clock in particular, which was bought because the wife admired one bought by a friend of the husband and wished they could have one - and who has not experienced this, having seen a beautiful clock in someone's home, remembering one that actually did belong to one's grandfather (but one was too young then and not stable enough to have a home to house such a clock, so he did not leave it for one to inherit after all!) - so one connects with this immediately, even in this era of various far more advanced clocks - digital clocks and watches, computers and laptops and phones, almost everything everywhere with its own clock and that too either atomic or gps or better, with possibilities of two or more clocks display according to one's needs or fancy.
Still, one hankers after such clocks for home, a large grandfather clock and - if one has seen them - a cuckoo clock too if one can have them. And then one reads this, and one's tiredness of work vanishes and one laughs out loud never mind how late one lay oneself in bed and expected to read only a page before falling asleep. One cannot put this one down and is sorry he did not write more about his fights and coming to understandings with his other clocks.
In one word?
Superb!
Tuesday, May 13, 2014.
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April 26, 2020.
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Small and very very readable, and everything one expects of the author after reading the three men adventures - although in this only the protagonist figures along with his social interactions generally as necessary.
The chief interaction is with the clocks in general and a large grandfather clock in particular, which was bought because the wife admired one bought by a friend of the husband and wished they could have one - and who has not experienced this, having seen a beautiful clock in someone's home, remembering one that actually did belong to one's grandfather (but one was too young then and not stable enough to have a home to house such a clock, so he did not leave it for one to inherit after all!) - so one connects with this immediately, even in this era of various far more advanced clocks - digital clocks and watches, computers and laptops and phones, almost everything everywhere with its own clock and that too either atomic or gps or better, with possibilities of two or more clocks display according to one's needs or fancy.
Still, one hankers after such clocks for home, a large grandfather clock and - if one has seen them - a cuckoo clock too if one can have them. And then one reads this, and one's tiredness of work vanishes and one laughs out loud never mind how late one lay oneself in bed and expected to read only a page before falling asleep. One cannot put this one down and is sorry he did not write more about his fights and coming to understandings with his other clocks.
In one word?
Superb!
Tuesday, May 13, 2014.
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April 26, 2020.
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EVERGREENS
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Evergreens
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Evergreens
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At first, one might get the impression that he's waxing eloquent and poetic about nature, and one might be surprised if one is used to this author, thinking he keeps surprising one, and too, one wonders why he's so unappreciative of beauty of evergreens! He seems to not see their beauty even in winter, when they alone lend beauty to otherwise bare Nordic latitudes, whether covered in snow or otherwise.
Then soon enough it's clear why. He's chosen an inappropriate simile, and is talking of humans.
"There are evergreen men and women in the world, praise be to God! Not many of them, but a few. They are not the showy folk; they are not the clever, attractive folk. (Nature is an old-fashioned shopkeeper; she never puts her best goods in the window.) They are only the quiet, strong folk; they are stronger than the world, stronger than life or death, stronger than Fate. The storms of life sweep over them, and the rains beat down upon them, and the biting frosts creep round them; but the winds and the rains and the frosts pass away, and they are still standing, green and straight. They love the sunshine of life in their undemonstrative way—its pleasures, its joys. But calamity cannot bow them, sorrow and affliction bring not despair to their serene faces, only a little tightening of the lips; the sun of our prosperity makes the green of their friendship no brighter, the frost of our adversity kills not the leaves of their affection."
In short, if one recalls Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility, he's comparing the two lovers of Marianne, really, and soon enough comes precisely to that, without, of course, naming or mentioning them, or the book or the author.
A better example would have been stone castles of gray-brown drab hue, that couldn't be whitewashed or painted gay, or decorated as other cottages or mansions can, but have strength and permanence.
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Funnily enough, he is fair enough to do the same with genders turned, even though he's been emphatic about loving Dora and finding Agnes both unbelievable and unattractive, a bore, in his favourite work by his favourite author Charles Dickens - David Copperfield. Here he's not naming them, again, but basically lashing at silly youth for preference of the attractive.
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It's startling when he shifts slightly, and writes about the then present society.
"We have no school for the turning-out of stanch men in this nineteenth century. In the old, earnest times, war made men stanch and true to each other. We have learned up a good many glib phrases about the wickedness of war, and we thank God that we live in these peaceful, trading times, wherein we can—and do—devote the whole of our thoughts and energies to robbing and cheating and swindling one another—to "doing" our friends, and overcoming our enemies by trickery and lies—wherein, undisturbed by the wicked ways of fighting-men, we can cultivate to better perfection the "smartness," the craft, and the cunning, and all the other "business-like" virtues on which we so pride ourselves, and which were so neglected and treated with so little respect in the bad old age of violence, when men chose lions and eagles for their symbols rather than foxes.
"There is a good deal to be said against war. I am not prepared to maintain that war did not bring with it disadvantages, but there can be no doubt that, for the noblest work of Nature—the making of men—it was a splendid manufactory. It taught men courage. It trained them in promptness and determination, in strength of brain and strength of hand. From its stern lessons they learned fortitude in suffering, coolness in danger, cheerfulness under reverses. Chivalry, Reverence, and Loyalty are the beautiful children of ugly War. But, above all gifts, the greatest gift it gave to men was stanchness."
One has to recall he was writing at the zenith of British Empire era, before WWI. The Russian revolution was looming, expected, according to his writing in 1905, but still a way off, and as for the war that came. he certainly was neither expecting nor could he have known the ghastliness of it before it was on them.
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Suddenly then he writes about bulldogs, about encountering one as a boy, and its the familiar Jerome K. Jerome.
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August 05, 2020- August 05, 2020.
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TEA-KETTLES
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Jerome K. Jerome begins with a theory, presumably experimented during his time, about holding a hot tea kettle on the pam of hand, and other such theories, for instance lying flat on water on one's back, subduing an animal with power of gaze, and thence - from humour, so far - goes on to seriously discourse to futility of humans preaching to other humans.
"I was walking up and down the garden, following out this very idea — namely, of the childishness of our trying to teach one another in matters that we know so little of ourselves — when, on passing the summer-house, I overheard my argument being amusingly illustrated by my eldest niece, aged seven, who was sitting very upright in a very big chair, giving information to her younger sister, aged five, on the subject of “Babies: their origin, discovery, and use.
"“You know, babies,” she was remarking in conclusion, “ain’t like dollies. Babies is ‘live. Nobody gives you babies till you’re growed up. An’ they’re very improper. We’re not s’posed to talk ‘bout such things — we was babies once.”
"She is a very thoughtful child, is my eldest niece. Her thirst for knowledge is a most praise-worthy trait in her character, but has rather an exhausting effect upon the rest of the family. We limit her now to seven hundred questions a day. After she has asked seven hundred questions, and we have answered them, or, rather, as many as we are able, we boycott her; and she retires to bed, indignant, asking:
"“Why only seven hundred? Why not eight?”
"Nor is her range of inquiry what you would call narrow or circumscribed at all. It embraces most subjects that are known as yet to civilisation, from abstract theology to cats; from the failure of marriage to chocolate, and why you must not take it out and look at it when you have once put it inside your mouth.
"She has her own opinion, too, about most of these matters, and expresses it with a freedom which is apt to shock respectably-brought-up folk. I am not over-orthodox myself, but she staggers even me at times. Her theories are too advanced for me at present."
He describes further conversation between himself and the little niece.
"Confound the child! I can’t make out where children get their notions from, confounded little nuisances!
"Let me see, what was I writing about? Oh! I know, “Tea-kettles.” Yes, it ought to be rather an interesting subject, “Tea-kettles.” I should think a man might write a very good article on “Tea-kettles.” I must have a try at it one of these days!"
Nice illustrations.
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October 08, 2020 - October 08, 2020.
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A PATHETIC STORY
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"“OH! I WANT YOU TO WRITE the pathetic story for the Christmas number, if you will, old man,” said the editor of the —— Weekly Journal to me, as I poked my head into his den one sunny July morning, some years ago. “Thomas is anxious to have the comic sketch. He said he overheard a joke last week, that he thinks he can work up. I expect I shall have to do the cheerful love story about the man that everybody thinks is dead, and that turns up on Christmas eve and marries the girl, myself. I was hoping to get out of it this time, but I’m afraid I can’t. Then I shall get Miggs to do the charitable appeal business. I think he’s the most experienced man we have now for that; and Skittles can run off the cynical column, about the Christmas bills, and the indigestion: he’s always very good in a cynical article. Skittles is; he’s got just the correct don’t-know-what-he-means-himself sort of touch for it, if you understand.”"
Unable to come into a mood to write the pathetic story, he consulted a successful author, who talked about the artist who grows with noble aspirations, but then falls for temptations of worldly success.
"“And the spirit of the artist that is handmaiden to the spirit of the prophet departed from him, and he grew into the clever huckster, the smart tradesman, whose only desire was to discover the public taste that he might pander to it."
"It was a very sad story, but not exactly the sort of sad story, I felt, that the public wants in a Christmas number. So I had to fall back upon the broken-hearted maiden, after all!"
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October 08, 2020 - October 08, 2020.
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THE NEW UTOPIA
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THE NEW UTOPIA
About someone who sleeps through the "GREAT SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF 1899.", for ten years before being discovered and thence left in a museum as an experiment, and wakes up in the new utopia of equality.
Turns out it was only a nightmare. But quite a horror, at that.
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"1891 - I had spent an extremely interesting evening. I had dined with some very "advanced" friends of mine at the "National Socialist Club". We had had an excellent dinner: the pheasant, stuffed with truffles, was a poem; and when I say that the '49 Chateau Lafitte was worth the price we had to pay for it, I do not see what more I can add in its favour."
Notice the name of the club. Is it only the name that's connecting it with the then unimaginable future, now infamous past, party?
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"I listened very attentively while my friends explained how, for the thousands of centuries during which it had existed before they came, the world had been going on all wrong, and how, in the course of the next few years or so, they meant to put it right.
"Equality of all mankind was their watchword--perfect equality in all things--equality in possessions, and equality in position and influence, and equality in duties, resulting in equality in happiness and contentment.
"The world belonged to all alike, and must be equally divided. Each man's labour was the property, not of himself, but of the State which fed and clothed him, and must be applied, not to his own aggrandisement, but to the enrichment of the race.
"Individual wealth--the social chain with which the few had bound the many, the bandit's pistol by which a small gang of rob- bers had thieved--must be taken from the hands that too long had held it.
"Social distinctions--the barriers by which the rising tide of humanity had hitherto been fretted and restrained--must be for ever swept aside. The human race must press onward to its destiny (whatever that might be), not as at present, a scattered horde, scrambling, each man for himself, over the broken ground of un- equal birth and fortune--the soft sward reserved for the feet of the pampered, the cruel stones reserved for the feet of the cursed,--but an ordered army, marching side by side over the level plain of equity and equality.
"The great bosom of our Mother Earth should nourish all her children, like and like; none should be hungry, none should have too much. The strong man should not grasp more than the weak; the clever should not scheme to seize more than the simple. The earth was man's, and the fulness thereof; and among all mankind it should be portioned out in even shares. All men were equal by the laws of man.
"With inequality comes misery, crime, sin, selfishness, arrogance, hypocrisy. In a world in which all men were equal, there would exist no temptation to evil, and our natural nobility would assert itself."
"We raised our glasses and drank to EQUALITY, sacred EQUALITY; and then ordered the waiter to bring us Green Char- treuse and more cigars."
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""What's the matter?" he asked; "anything disturbed you?"
""No," I said; "I always wake up like this, when I feel I've had enough sleep. What century is this?"
""This," he said, "is the twenty-ninth century. You have been asleep for just one thousand years."
""Ah! well, I feel all the better for it," I replied, getting down off the table. "There's nothing like having one's sleep out."
""I take it you are going to do the usual thing." said the old gentleman to me, as I proceeded to put on my clothes, which had been lying beside me in the case. "You'll want me to walk round the city with you, and explain all the changes to you, while you ask questions and make silly remarks?"
""Yes," I replied, "I suppose that's what I ought to do.""
"Everyone was dressed, as was also my guide, in a pair of grey trousers, and a grey tunic, buttoning tight round the neck and fastened round the waist by a belt. Each man was clean shaven, and each man had black hair.
"I said:
""Are all men twins?"
""Twins! Good gracious, no!" answered my guide. "Whatever made you fancy that?"
""Why, they all look so much alike," I replied; "and they've all got black hair!"
""Oh; that's the regulation colour for hair," explained my companion: "we've all got black hair. If a man's hair is not black naturally, he has to have it dyed black."
""Why?" I asked. "Why!" retorted the old gentleman, somewhat irritably.
""Why, I thought you understood that all men were now equal. What would become of our equality if one man or woman were allowed to swagger about in golden hair, while another had to put up with carrots?"
"He said that they had found they could not maintain their equality when people were allowed to wash themselves. Some people washed three or four times a day, while others never touched soap and water from one year's end to the other, and in consquence there got to be two distinct classes, the Clean and the Dirty. All the old class prejudices began to be revived. The clean despised the dirty, and the dirty hated the clean. So, to end dissension, the State decided to do the washing itself, and each citizen was now washed twice a day by government-appointed officials; and private washing was prohibited."
Further descriptions of living arrangements are so like what one yt video showed about a factory in China, it's not as funny as the author thought, if he did.
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For that matter, further description is all horror - abolishing not only marriage but love, breeding of humans no different from that of cattle, children taken at birth by state and brought up until they finish their state selected training at twenty, country all market garden with rectangular roads and canals, world all one language and no variety, anyone better has an arm or a leg or head to lose! No literature and no art, either. No sports, of course.
"I looked at the faces of the men and women that were passing. There was a patient, almost pathetic, expression upon them all. I wondered where I had seen that look before; it seemed familiar to me.
"All at once I remembered. It was just the quiet, troubled, wondering expression that I had always noticed upon the faces of the horses and oxen that we used to breed and keep in the old world."
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September 21, 2020 - September 21, 2020.
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October 08, 2020 - October 08, 2020.
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