The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow Part 21

"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 s.p.a.ce, all of us. The Ma.s.ses sneer at the Cla.s.ses. The morals of the Cla.s.ses are shocking. If only the Cla.s.ses would consent as a body to be taught behaviour by a Committee of the Ma.s.ses, how very much better it would be for them. If only the Cla.s.ses would neglect their own interests and devote themselves to the welfare of the Ma.s.ses, the Ma.s.ses would be more pleased with them.

The Cla.s.ses sneer at the Ma.s.ses. If only the Ma.s.ses would follow the advice given them by the Cla.s.ses; if only they would be thrifty on their ten s.h.i.+llings 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, "G.o.d bless the Squire and his relations," and would consent to be kept in their proper stations, all things would go swimmingly--for the Cla.s.ses.

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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.s 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?"