Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (484 page)

The telephone was hailed as a tremendous advance towards the millennium. The idea then current was that, one by one, the world’s troubles were disappearing. But for a long while, it saved time and temper to take a cab and go round and see the man. Electric lighting was still in the experimental stage; and for some reason got itself mixed up with Bradlaugh and atheism: maybe, because it used to go out suddenly, a phenomenon attributed by many to the wrath of God. A judge of the High Court was much applauded for denouncing it from the Bench, and calling for tallow candles. A wave of intellectuality passed over England in the later ‘eighties. A popular form of entertainment was the Spelling-Bee. The competitors sat in rows upon the platform, while the body of the hall would be filled with an excited audience, armed with dictionaries. Every suburb had its amateur Parliament, with real Liberals and Conservatives. At Chelsea, where we met over a coffee shop in Flood Street, we had an Irish party, which was always being “suspended”: when it would depart, cursing us, to sing the “Marseillaise,” and “The Wearin’ of the Green,” in the room below. Rowdy young men and women — of the sort that nowadays go in for night clubs and jazz dancing — filled the ranks of the Fabian Society; and revelled in evenings at Essex Hall. They argued with the Webbs, and interrupted Shaw. Wells had always plenty to say, but was not an orator. He would lose his head when contradicted, and wave his arms about. Shaw’s plays always led to scenes on the first night. At “Widowers’ Houses,” there was a free fight in the gallery. Shaw made a speech that had the effect of reconciling both his friends and enemies in a united desire to lynch him. The Salvation Army came as a great shock to the Press. It was the Salvation Army’s “vulgarity,” its “cheap sentiment” that wounded the fine feelings of Fleet Street. Squire Bancroft was the first citizen of credit and renown to champion the Salvation Army. Fleet Street rubbed its eyes. It had always thought the Bancrofts so respectable. But gradually the abuse died down.

Soho, when I was a young man, was the haunt of revolutionaries. I came to know a few of them. When the revolutionary is not revolutionizing, he loves a sentimental song, or a pathetic recitation: will accept the proffered cigar and grow reminiscent over a tenpenny bottle of
vin ordinaire
. What I admired about them was their scorn of all pretences. Fourpence laid out at any barber’s in the neighbourhood might have put the police off the scent. They despised such subterfuge. Their very trousers were revolutionary. Except on the legs of the conspirators’ chorus in “Madame Angot,” one never saw the like. I thought, at times, of suggesting to them that they should wear masks and carry dark lanterns. I believe, if I had done so, it would have appealed to them. It could have made no practical difference; and would have added a final touch of picturesqueness.

A little while before the war, I renewed acquaintance with the Russian revolutionary, this time at the house of Prince Kropotkin, in Brighton. Prince Kropotkin himself was a kindly, dapper little gentleman of aristocratic appearance, but his compatriots, who came to visit him, there was no mistaking. The sight of them, as they passed by, struck terror to the stoutest hearts of Kemp Town. There was one gentleman with a beard down to his waist and a voice that shook the ornaments upon the mantelpiece. He belonged to a new religious sect that held it wrong, among other things, to destroy house flies; but was less scrupulous, I gathered, regarding the existence of the
petite bourgeoisie
. Alas! even the best of us are not always consistent. During the war, I have listened to members of humanitarian societies chortling over the thought that German babies were being starved to death.

I fancy the At Home has died out. Anyhow one hopes so. It was a tiresome institution. Good women had a special afternoon: “At Home every Thursday.” Sometimes it was every other Thursday, or every first Friday, or third Monday. One’s brain used to reel, trying to remember them. Most often, one turned up on the wrong day. Poor ladies would remain in all the afternoon, sitting in the drawing-room in all their best clothes, surrounded by expensive refreshments; and not a soul to speak to. In my mother’s day, the morning was the fashionable time for calls. There were always cake and biscuits in a silver basket, and port and sherry on the side-board. They used to talk about the servants, and how things were going from bad to worse.

Douglas Sladen was the most successful At Home giver that I ever knew. Half “Who’s Who” must have come to his receptions at Addison Mansions from ten-thirty to the dawn. He had a wonderful way when he introduced you of summarizing your career, opinions, and general character in half-a-dozen sentences, giving you like information concerning the other fellow — or fellowess. You knew what crimes and follies to avoid discussing, what talents and virtues it would be kind to drag into the conversation.

Science informs us that another Glacial period is on the way — that sooner or later the now temperate zone will again be buried under ice. But, for the moment, we would seem to be heading the other way. Snow-drifts in the London streets were common in my early winters. Often the bridges were impassable, till an army of sweepers had cleared a passage. I have watched the sleighs, with their jingling bells, racing along the Embankment. One year, we had six weeks of continuous skating. There was quite a fair on the Serpentine, and a man with a dog crossed the Thames on foot at Lambeth. Fogs were something like fogs in those days. One, I remember, lasted exactly a week. Gas flares roared at Charing Cross and Hyde Park Corner. From the other side of the road they looked like distant lighthouses. Link-boys, waving their burning torches, plied for hire; and religious fanatics went to and fro, invisible, proclaiming the end of the world.

On a morning in 1896, a line of weird-shaped vehicles, the like of which London had never seen before, stood drawn up in Northumberland Avenue outside the Hotel Metropole. They were the new horseless carriages, called automobiles, about which we had heard much talk. Lawson, a company promoter, who claimed to have invented the safety bicycle, had got them together. The law, insisting that every mechanically propelled vehicle should be preceded by a man carrying a red flag, had expired the day before; and at nine o’clock we started for Brighton. I shared a high two-seater with the editor of a financial journal, a gentleman named Duguid. We were fifth in the procession. Our driver, a large man, sat perched up on a dicky just in front of us, and our fear throughout the journey was, lest he should fall backwards, and bury us. An immense crowd had gathered, and until we were the other side of Croydon it was necessary for mounted police to clear a way for us. At Purley the Brighton coach overtook us, and raced us into Reigate. By the time we reached Crawley, half our number had fallen out for repairs and alterations. We were to have been received at Brighton by the Mayor and Corporation and lunched at the Grand Hotel. The idea had been that somewhere between twelve and one the whole twenty-five of us would come sweeping down the Preston road amid enthusiastic cheers. It was half-past three before the first of us appeared. At lengthening intervals some half-a-dozen others straggled in (Duguid and myself were, I think, the last), to be received with sarcasm and jeers. We washed ourselves — a tedious operation — and sat down to an early dinner. Little Lawson made a witty speech. All the Vested Interests of the period — railway companies; livery stable keepers, and horse dealers; the Grand Junction Canal; the Amalgamated Society of Bath-chair Proprietors, and so forth, were, of course, all up in arms against him. One petition, praying Parliament to put its foot down upon the threatened spoiling of the countryside, was signed “Friends of the Horse.” It turned out to be from the Worshipful Company of Whipmakers. Some credit is due to the motorists of those days. It was rarely that one reached one’s destination. As a matter of fact, only the incurable optimist ever tried to. The common formula was: “Oh, let’s start off, and see what happens.” Generally, one returned in a hired fly. Everywhere along the country roads, one came across them: some drawn up against the grass, others helplessly blocking the way. Beside them, dejected females sitting on a rug. Underneath, a grimy man, blaspheming: another running round and treading on him. Experienced wives took their knitting and a camp stool. Very young men with a mechanical turn of mind got enjoyment out of them, apparently. At the slightest sign of trouble, they would take the whole thing to pieces, and spread it out upon the roadside. Some cheerful old lady, an aunt presumably, would be grovelling on her hands and knees, with her mouth full of screws, looking for more. Passing later in the evening, one would notice the remains piled up against the hedge with a lantern hung on to it. At first, we wore masks and coloured goggles. Horses were terrified when they met us. We had to stop the engine and wait. I remember one old farmer with a very restive filly. Of course we were all watching him. “If you ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “wouldn’t mind turning your faces the other way, maybe I’d get her past.”

They were of strange and awful shapes, at the beginning. There was one design supposed to resemble a swan; but, owing to the neck being short, it looked more like a duck: that is, if it looked like anything. To fill the radiator, you unscrewed its head and poured the water down its neck; and as you drove the screw would work loose, and the thing would turn round and look at you out of one eye. Others were shaped like canoes and gondolas. One firm brought out a dragon. It had a red tongue, and you hung the spare wheel on its tail.

Flying-machines, properly speaking, came in with the war. We used to have balloon ascents from the Crystal Palace on fine Thursdays. You paid a guinea to go up and took your chance as to where you would come down. Most of them came home the next morning with a cold. Now the journey from London to Paris takes two hours. Thus the wheels go round; and to quote from a once popular poet: “Ever the right comes uppermost, and ever is justice done.”

Chapter VI

MORE LITERARY REMINISCENCES

“Three Men in a Boat. To say nothing of the dog,” I wrote at Chelsea Gardens, up ninety-seven stairs. But the view was worth it. We had a little circular drawing-room — I am speaking now as a married man — nearly all window, suggestive of a lighthouse, from which we looked down upon the river, and over Battersea Park to the Surrey hills beyond, with the garden of old Chelsea Hospital just opposite. Fourteen shillings a week we paid for that flat: two reception-rooms, three bedrooms and a kitchen. One was passing rich in those days on three hundred a year: kept one’s servant, and sipped one’s Hennessy’s “Three Star” at four and twopence the bottle. I had known Chelsea Gardens for some time. Rose Norreys, the actress, had a flat there, and gave Sunday afternoon parties. She was playing then at the Court Theatre with Arthur Cecil and John Clayton. Half young Bohemia used to squeeze itself into her tiny drawing-room, and overflow into the kitchen. Bald or grey-headed they are now, those of them that are left. Bernard Partridge and myself were generally the last to leave. One could not help loving her. She was a strange spiritual little creature. She would have made a wonderful Joan of Arc. She never seemed to grow up. I was rehearsing a play at the Vaudeville Theatre, when a boy slipped into my hand the last letter I had from her. The boy never said whom it was from; and I did not open it till the end of the act, some two hours later. It was written in pencil, begging me to come to her at once. She had rooms in Great Portland Street in a house covered with ivy. A small crowd was round the door when I got there; and I learned she had just been taken away to Colney Hatch asylum. I never could bring myself to go and see her there. She had kind women friends — Mrs. Jopling Rowe, the artist, was one — who watched over her. I pray her forgiveness.

I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I never have been sure about it. In the Middle Ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged. There was to be “humorous relief”; but the book was to have been “The Story of the Thames,” its scenery and history. Somehow it would not come. I was just back from my honeymoon, and had the feeling that all the world’s troubles were over. About the “humorous relief” I had no difficulty. I decided to write the “humorous relief” first — get it off my chest, so to speak. After which, in sober frame of mind, I could tackle the scenery and history. I never got there. It seemed to be all “humorous relief.” By grim determination I succeeded, before the end, in writing a dozen or so slabs of history and working them in, one to each chapter, and F. W. Robinson, who was publishing the book serially, in
Home Chimes
, promptly slung them out, the most of them. From the beginning he had objected to the title and had insisted upon my thinking of another. And half-way through I hit upon “Three Men in a Boat,” because nothing else seemed right.

There wasn’t any dog. I did not possess a dog in those days. Neither did George. Nor did Harris. As a boy I had owned pets innumerable. There was a baby water-rat I had caught in a drain. He lived most of his time in my breast pocket. I would take him to school with me; and he would sit with his head poking out between my handkerchief and my coat so that nobody could see him but myself, and look up at me with adoring eyes. Next to my mother, I loved him more than anybody in the world. The other boys complained of him after a time, but I believe it was only jealousy. I never smelt anything. And then there was a squirrel — an orphan — that I persuaded a white rabbit to adopt, until he bit one of his foster-brothers; and a cat that used to come to the station to meet me. But it never ran to a dog. Montmorency I evolved out of my inner consciousness. There is something of the dog, I take it, in most Englishmen. Dog friends that I came to know later have told me he was true to life.

Indeed, now I come to think of it, the book really was a history. I did not have to imagine or invent. Boating up and down the Thames had been my favourite sport ever since I could afford it. I just put down the things that happened.