Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (431 page)

All the labour of our life is centred round our flesh-pots. On the altar of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind. For a mess of pottage we sell our birthright.

Oh! Children of Israel, saw you not the long punishment you were preparing for yourselves, when in your wilderness you set up the image of the Calf, and fell before it, crying—”This shall be our God.”

You would have veal. Thought you never of the price man pays for Veal? The servants of the Golden Calf! I see them, stretched before my eyes, a weary, endless throng. I see them toiling in the mines, the black sweat on their faces. I see them in sunless cities, silent, and grimy, and bent. I see them, ague-twisted, in the rain-soaked fields. I see them, panting by the furnace doors. I see them, in loin-cloth and necklace, the load upon their head. I see them in blue coats and red coats, marching to pour their blood as an offering on the altar of the Calf. I see them in homespun and broadcloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I see them in cap and apron, the servants of the Calf. They swarm on the land and they dot the sea. They are chained to the anvil and counter; they are chained to the bench and the desk. They make ready the soil, they till the fields where the Golden Calf is born. They build the ship, and they sail the ship that carries the Golden Calf. They fashion the pots, they mould the pans, they carve the tables, they turn the chairs, they dream of the sauces, they dig for the salt, they weave the damask, they mould the dish to serve the Golden Calf.

The work of the world is to this end, that we eat of the Calf. War and Commerce, Science and Law! what are they but the four pillars supporting the Golden Calf? He is our God. It is on his back that we have journeyed from the primeval forest, where our ancestors ate nuts and fruit. He is our God. His temple is in every street. His blue-robed priest stands ever at the door, calling to the people to worship. Hark! his voice rises on the gas-tainted air—”Now’s your time! Now’s your time! Buy! Buy! ye people. Bring hither the sweat of your brow, the sweat of your brain, the ache of your heart, buy Veal with it. Bring me the best years of your life. Bring me your thoughts, your hopes, your loves; ye shall have Veal for them. Now’s your time! Now’s your time! Buy! Buy!”

Oh! Children of Israel, was Veal, even with all its trimmings, quite worth the price?

And we! what wisdom have we learned, during the centuries? I talked with a rich man only the other evening. He calls himself a Financier, whatever that may mean. He leaves his beautiful house, some twenty miles out of London, at a quarter to eight, summer and winter, after a hurried breakfast by himself, while his guests still sleep, and he gets back just in time to dress for an elaborate dinner he himself is too weary or too preoccupied to more than touch. If ever he is persuaded to give himself a holiday it is for a fortnight in Ostend, when it is most crowded and uncomfortable. He takes his secretary with him, receives and despatches a hundred telegrams a day, and has a private telephone, through which he can speak direct to London, brought up into his bedroom.

I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention. Business men tell me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs without it. My own wonder always is, how any human being with the ordinary passions of his race can conduct his business, or even himself, creditably, within a hundred yards of the invention. I can imagine Job, or Griselda, or Socrates liking to have a telephone about them as exercise. Socrates, in particular, would have made quite a reputation for himself out of a three months’ subscription to a telephone. Myself, I am, perhaps, too sensitive. I once lived for a month in an office with a telephone, if one could call it life. I was told that if I had stuck to the thing for two or three months longer, I should have got used to it. I know friends of mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front of their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so much as answer it back. They tell me that at first they used to swear and shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed. That is what happens: you either break the telephone, or the telephone breaks you. You want to see a man two streets off. You might put on your hat, and be round at his office in five minutes. You are on the point of starting when the telephone catches your eye. You think you will ring him up to make sure he is in. You commence by ringing up some half-dozen times before anybody takes any notice of you whatever. You are burning with indignation at this neglect, and have left the instrument to sit down and pen a stinging letter of complaint to the Company when the ring-back re-calls you. You seize the ear trumpets, and shout —

“How is it that I can never get an answer when I ring? Here have I been ringing for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty times.” (This is a falsehood. You have rung only six times, and the “half-hour” is an absurd exaggeration; but you feel the mere truth would not be adequate to the occasion.) “I think it disgraceful,” you continue, “and I shall complain to the Company. What is the use of my having a telephone if I can’t get any answer when I ring? Here I pay a large sum for having this thing, and I can’t get any notice taken. I’ve been ringing all the morning. Why is it?”

Then you wait for the answer.

“What — what do you say? I can’t hear what you say.”

“I say I’ve been ringing here for over an hour, and I can’t get any reply,” you call back. “I shall complain to the Company.”

“You want what? Don’t stand so near the tube. I can’t hear what you say. What number?”

“Bother the number; I say why is it I don’t get an answer when I ring?”

“Eight hundred and what?”

You can’t argue any more, after that. The machine would give way under the language you want to make use of. Half of what you feel would probably cause an explosion at some point where the wire was weak. Indeed, mere language of any kind would fall short of the requirements of the case. A hatchet and a gun are the only intermediaries through which you could convey your meaning by this time. So you give up all attempt to answer back, and meekly mention that you want to be put in communication with four-five-seven-six.

“Four-nine-seven-six?” says the girl.

“No; four-five-seven-six.”

“Did you say seven-six or six-seven?”

“Six-seven — no! I mean seven-six: no — wait a minute. I don’t know what I do mean now.”

“Well, I wish you’d find out,” says the young lady severely. “You are keeping me here all the morning.”

So you look up the number in the book again, and at last she tells you that you are in connection; and then, ramming the trumpet tight against your ear, you stand waiting.

And if there is one thing more than another likely to make a man feel ridiculous it is standing on tip-toe in a corner, holding a machine to his head, and listening intently to nothing. Your back aches and your head aches, your very hair aches. You hear the door open behind you and somebody enter the room. You can’t turn your head. You swear at them, and hear the door close with a bang. It immediately occurs to you that in all probability it was Henrietta. She promised to call for you at half-past twelve: you were to take her to lunch. It was twelve o’clock when you were fool enough to mix yourself up with this infernal machine, and it probably is half-past twelve by now. Your past life rises before you, accompanied by dim memories of your grandmother. You are wondering how much longer you can bear the strain of this attitude, and whether after all you do really want to see the man in the next street but two, when the girl in the exchange-room calls up to know if you’re done.

“Done!” you retort bitterly; “why, I haven’t begun yet.”

“Well, be quick,” she says, “because you’re wasting time.”

Thus admonished, you attack the thing again. “ARE you there?” you cry in tones that ought to move the heart of a Charity Commissioner; and then, oh joy! oh rapture! you hear a faint human voice replying—”Yes, what is it?”

“Oh! Are you four-five-seven-six?”

“What?”

“Are you four-five-seven-six, Williamson?”

“What! who are you?”

“Eight-one-nine, Jones.”

“Bones?”

“No, JONES. Are you four-five-seven-six?”

“Yes; what is it?”

“Is Mr. Williamson in?”

“Will I what — who are you?”

“Jones! Is Mr. Williamson in?”

“Who?”

“Williamson. Will-i-am-son!”

“You’re the son of what? I can’t hear what you say.”

Then you gather yourself for one final effort, and succeed, by superhuman patience, in getting the fool to understand that you wish to know if Mr. Williamson is in, and he says, so it sounds to you, “Be in all the morning.”

So you snatch up your hat and run round.

“Oh, I’ve come to see Mr. Williamson,” you say.

“Very sorry, sir,” is the polite reply, “but he’s out.”

“Out? Why, you just now told me through the telephone that he’d be in all the morning.”

“No, I said, he ‘WON’T be in all the morning.’”

You go back to the office, and sit down in front of that telephone and look at it. There it hangs, calm and imperturbable. Were it an ordinary instrument, that would be its last hour. You would go straight down-stairs, get the coal-hammer and the kitchen-poker, and divide it into sufficient pieces to give a bit to every man in London. But you feel nervous of these electrical affairs, and there is a something about that telephone, with its black hole and curly wires, that cows you. You have a notion that if you don’t handle it properly something may come and shock you, and then there will be an inquest, and bother of that sort, so you only curse it.

That is what happens when you want to use the telephone from your end. But that is not the worst that the telephone can do. A sensible man, after a little experience, can learn to leave the thing alone. Your worst troubles are not of your own making. You are working against time; you have given instructions not to be disturbed. Perhaps it is after lunch, and you are thinking with your eyes closed, so that your thoughts shall not be distracted by the objects about the room. In either case you are anxious not to leave your chair, when off goes that telephone bell and you spring from your chair, uncertain, for the moment, whether you have been shot, or blown up with dynamite. It occurs to you in your weakness that if you persist in taking no notice, they will get tired, and leave you alone. But that is not their method. The bell rings violently at ten-second intervals. You have nothing to wrap your head up in. You think it will be better to get this business over and done with. You go to your fate and call back savagely —

“What is it? What do you want?”

No answer, only a confused murmur, prominent out of which come the voices of two men swearing at one another. The language they are making use of is disgraceful. The telephone seems peculiarly adapted for the conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary language sounds indistinct through it; but every word those two men are saying can be heard by all the telephone subscribers in London.

It is useless attempting to listen till they have done. When they are exhausted, you apply to the tube again. No answer is obtainable. You get mad, and become sarcastic; only being sarcastic when you are not sure that anybody is at the other end to hear you is unsatisfying.

At last, after a quarter of an hour or so of saying, “Are you there?” “Yes, I’m here,” “Well?” the young lady at the Exchange asks what you want.

“I don’t want anything,” you reply.

“Then why do you keep talking?” she retorts; “you mustn’t play with the thing.”

This renders you speechless with indignation for a while, upon recovering from which you explain that somebody rang you up.

“WHO rang you up?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I wish you did,” she observes.

Generally disgusted, you slam the trumpet up and return to your chair. The instant you are seated the bell clangs again; and you fly up and demand to know what the thunder they want, and who the thunder they are.

“Don’t speak so loud, we can’t hear you. What do you want?” is the answer.

“I don’t want anything. What do you want? Why do you ring me up, and then not answer me? Do leave me alone, if you can!”

“We can’t get Hong Kongs at seventy-four.”

“Well, I don’t care if you can’t.”

“Would you like Zulus?”

“What are you talking about?” you reply; “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Would you like Zulus — Zulus at seventy-three and a half?”

“I wouldn’t have ’em at six a penny. What are you talking about?”

“Hong Kongs — we can’t get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute” (the half-a-minute passes). “Are you there?”

“Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man.”

“We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights.”

“Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the wrong man. I’ve told you once.”

“Once what?”

“Why, that I am the wrong man — I mean that you are talking to the wrong man.”

“Who are you?”

“Eight-one-nine, Jones.”

“Oh, aren’t you one-nine-eight?”

“No.”

“Oh, good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the European crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another indictment against the telephone. I was engaged in an argument, which, if not in itself serious, was at least concerned with a serious enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of human riches; and from that highly moral discussion have I been lured, by the accidental sight of the word “telephone,” into the writing of matter which can have the effect only of exciting to frenzy all critics of the New Humour into whose hands, for their sins, this book may come. Let me forget my transgression and return to my sermon, or rather to the sermon of my millionaire acquaintance.

It was one day after dinner, we sat together in his magnificently furnished dining-room. We had lighted our cigars at the silver lamp. The butler had withdrawn.

“These cigars we are smoking,” my friend suddenly remarked, a propos apparently of nothing, “they cost me five shillings apiece, taking them by the thousand.”