The Angel and the Author - and others

by Jerome Klapka Jerome

  A lady of repute writes to a magazine that she once occupied for a season a wainscotted room in an old manor house. On several occasions she awoke in the night: each time to witness the same ghostly performance. Four gentlemen sat round a table playing cards. Suddenly one of them sprang to his feet and plunged a dagger into the back of his partner. The lady does not say so: one presumes it was his partner. I have, myself, when playing bridge, seen an expression on my partner's face that said quite plainly:

  "I would like to murder you."

  I have not the memory for bridge. I forget who it was that, last trick but seven, played the two of clubs. I thought it was he, my partner. I thought it meant that I was to take an early opportunity of forcing trumps. I don't know why I thought so, I try to explain why I thought so. It sounds a silly argument even to myself; I feel I have not got it quite right. Added to which it was not my partner who played the two of clubs, it was Dummy. If I had only remembered this, and had concluded from it―as I ought to have done―that my partner had the ace of diamonds―as otherwise why did he pass my knave?―we might have saved the odd trick. I have not the head for bridge. It is only an ordinary head―mine. I have no business to play bridge.

  [Why not, occasionally, a cheerful Ghost.]

  But to return to our ghosts. These four gentlemen must now and again, during their earthly existence, have sat down to a merry game of cards. There must have been evenings when nobody was stabbed. Why choose an unpleasant occasion to harp exclusively upon it? Why do ghosts never give a cheerful show? The lady who was poisoned! there must have been other evenings in her life. Why does she not show us "The first meeting": when he gave her the violets and said they were like her eyes? He wasn't always poisoning her. There must have been a period before he ever thought of poisoning her. Cannot these ghosts do something occasionally in what is termed "the lighter vein"? If they haunt a forest glade, it is to perform a duel to the death, or an assassination. Why cannot they, for a change, give us an old-time picnic, or "The hawking party," which, in Elizabethan costume, should make a pretty picture? Ghostland would appear to be obsessed by the spirit of the Scandinavian drama: murders, suicides, ruined fortunes, and broken hearts are the only material made use of. Why is not a dead humorist allowed now and then to write the sketch? There must be plenty of dead comic lovers; why are they never allowed to give a performance?

  [Where are the dead Humorists?]

  A cheerful person contemplates death with alarm. What is he to do in this land of ghosts? there is no place for him. Imagine the commonplace liver of a humdrum existence being received into ghostland. He enters nervous, shy, feeling again the new boy at school. The old ghosts gather round him.

  "How do you come here―murdered?"

  "No, at least, I don't think so."

  "Suicide?

  "No―can't remember the name of it now. Began with a chill on the liver, I think."

  The ghosts are disappointed. But a happy suggestion is made. Perhaps he was the murderer; that would be even better. Let him think carefully; can he recollect ever having committed a murder? He racks his brains in vain, not a single murder comes to his recollection. He never forged a will. Doesn't even know where anything is hid. Of what use will he be in ghostland? One pictures him passing the centuries among a moody crowd of uninteresting mediocrities, brooding perpetually over their wasted lives. Only the ghosts of ladies and gentlemen mixed up in crime have any "show" in ghostland.

  [The Spirit does not shine as a Conversationalist.]

  I feel an equal dissatisfaction with the spirits who are supposed to return to us and communicate with us through the medium of three-legged tables. I do not deny the possibility that spirits exist. I am even willing to allow them their three-legged tables. It must be confessed it is a clumsy method. One cannot help regretting that during all the ages they have not evolved a more dignified system. One feels that the three-legged table must hamper them. One can imagine an impatient spirit getting tired of spelling out a lengthy story on a three-legged table. But, as I have said, I am willing to assume that, for some spiritual reason unfathomable to my mere human intelligence, that three-legged table is essential. I am willing also to accept the human medium. She is generally an unprepossessing lady running somewhat to bulk. If a gentleman, he so often has dirty finger-nails, and smells of stale beer. I think myself it would be so much simpler if the spirit would talk to me direct; we could get on quicker. But there is that about the medium, I am told, which appeals to a spirit. Well, it is his affair, not mine, and I waive the argument. My real stumbling-block is the spirit himself―the sort of conversation that, when he does talk, he indulges in. I cannot help feeling that his conversation is not worth the paraphernalia. I can talk better than that myself.

  The late Professor Huxley, who took some trouble over this matter, attended some half-dozen seances, and then determined to attend no more.

  "I have," he said, "for my sins to submit occasionally to the society of live bores. I refuse to go out of my way to spend an evening in the dark with dead bores."

  The spiritualists themselves admit that their table-rapping spooks are precious dull dogs; it would be difficult, in face of the communications recorded, for them to deny it. They explain to us that they have not yet achieved communication with the higher spiritual Intelligences. The more intelligent spirits―for some reason that the spiritualists themselves are unable to explain―do not want to talk to them, appear to have something else to do. At present―so I am told, and can believe―it is only the spirits of lower intelligence that care to turn up on these evenings. The spiritualists argue that, by continuing, the higher-class spirits will later on be induced to "come in." I fail to follow the argument. It seems to me that we are frightening them away. Anyhow, myself I shall wait awhile.

  When the spirit comes along that can talk sense, that can tell me something I don't know, I shall be glad to meet him. The class of spirit that we are getting just at present does not appeal to me. The thought of him―the reflection that I shall die and spend the rest of eternity in his company―does not comfort me.

  [She is now a Believer.]

  A lady of my acquaintance tells me it is marvellous how much these spirits seem to know. On her very first visit, the spirit, through the voice of the medium―an elderly gentleman residing obscurely in Clerkenwell―informed her without a moment's hesitation that she possessed a relative with the Christian name of George. (I am not making this up―it is real.) This gave her at first the idea that spiritualism was a fraud. She had no relative named George―at least, so she thought. But a morning or two later her husband received a letter from Australia. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, as he glanced at the last page, "I had forgotten all about the poor old beggar."

  "Whom is it from?" she asked.

  "Oh, nobody you know―haven't seen him myself for twenty years―a third or fourth cousin of mine―George―"

  She never heard the surname, she was too excited. The spirit had been right from the beginning; she HAD a relative named George. Her faith in spiritualism is now as a rock.

  There are thousands of folk who believe in Old Moore's Almanac. My difficulty would be not to believe in the old gentleman. I see that for the month of January last he foretold us that the Government would meet with determined and persistent opposition. He warned us that there would be much sickness about, and that rheumatism would discover its old victims. How does he know these things? Is it that the stars really do communicate with him, or does he "feel it in his bones," as the saying is up North?

  During February, he mentioned, the weather would be unsettled. He concluded:

  "The word Taxation will have a terrible significance for both Government and people this month."

  Really, it is quite uncanny. In March:

  "Theatres will do badly during the month."

  There seems to be no keeping anything from Old Moore. In April "much dissatisfaction will be expressed among Post Office employees." That sounds probable, on
the face of it. In any event, I will answer for our local postman.

  In May "a wealthy magnate is going to die." In June there is going to be a fire. In July "Old Moore has reason to fear there will be trouble."

  I do hope he may be wrong, and yet somehow I feel a conviction that he won't be. Anyhow, one is glad it has been put off till July.

  In August "one in high authority will be in danger of demise." In September "zeal" on the part of persons mentioned "will outstrip discretion." In October Old Moore is afraid again. He cannot avoid a haunting suspicion that "Certain people will be victimized by extensive fraudulent proceedings."

  In November "the public Press will have its columns full of important news." The weather will be "adverse," and "a death will occur in high circles." This makes the second in one year. I am glad I do not belong to the higher circles.

  [How does he do it?]

  In December Old Moore again foresees trouble, just when I was hoping it was all over. "Frauds will come to light, and death will find its victims."

  And all this information is given to us for a penny.

  The palmist examines our hand. "You will go a journey," he tells us. It is marvellous! How could he have known that only the night before we had been discussing the advisability of taking the children to Margate for the holidays?

  "There is trouble in store for you," he tells us, regretfully, "but you will get over it." We feel that the future has no secret hidden from him.

  We have "presentiments" that people we love, who are climbing mountains, who are fond of ballooning, are in danger.

  The sister of a friend of mine who went out to the South African War as a volunteer had three presentiments of his death. He came home safe and sound, but admitted that on three distinct occasions he had been in imminent danger. It seemed to the dear lady a proof of everything she had ever read.

  Another friend of mine was waked in the middle of the night by his wife, who insisted that he should dress himself and walk three miles across a moor because she had had a dream that something terrible was happening to a bosom friend of hers. The bosom friend and her husband were rather indignant at being waked at two o'clock in the morning, but their indignation was mild compared with that of the dreamer on learning that nothing was the matter. From that day forward a coldness sprang up between the two families.

  I would give much to believe in ghosts. The interest of life would be multiplied by its own square power could we communicate with the myriad dead watching us from their mountain summits. Mr. Zangwill, in a poem that should live, draws for us a pathetic picture of blind children playing in a garden, laughing, romping. All their lives they have lived in darkness; they are content. But, the wonder of it, could their eyes by some miracle be opened!

  [Blind Children playing in a World of Darkness.]

  May not we be but blind children, suggests the poet, living in a world of darkness―laughing, weeping, loving, dying―knowing nothing of the wonder round us?

  The ghosts about us, with their god-like faces, it might be good to look at them.

  But these poor, pale-faced spooks, these dull-witted, table-thumping spirits: it would be sad to think that of such was the kingdom of the Dead.

  CHAPTER XVII

  [parents and Their Teachers.]

  My heart has been much torn of late, reading of the wrongs of Children. It has lately been discovered that Children are being hampered and harassed in their career by certain brutal and ignorant persons called, for want of a better name, parents. The parent is a selfish wretch who, out of pure devilment, and without consulting the Child itself upon the subject, lures innocent Children into the world, apparently for the purpose merely of annoying them. The parent does not understand the Child when he has got it; he does not understand anything, not much. The only person who understands the Child is the young gentleman fresh from College and the elderly maiden lady, who, between them, produce most of the literature that explains to us the Child.

  The parent does not even know how to dress the Child. The parent will persist in dressing the Child in a long and trailing garment that prevents the Child from kicking. The young gentleman fresh from College grows almost poetical in his contempt. It appears that the one thing essential for the health of a young child is that it should have perfect freedom to kick. Later on the parent dresses the Child in short clothes, and leaves bits of its leg bare. The elderly maiden Understander of Children, quoting medical opinion, denounces us as criminals for leaving any portion of that precious leg uncovered. It appears that the partially uncovered leg of childhood is responsible for most of the disease that flesh is heir to.

  Then we put it into boots. We "crush its delicately fashioned feet into hideous leather instruments of torture." That is the sort of phrase that is hurled at us! The picture conjured up is that of some fiend in human shape, calling itself a father, seizing some helpless cherub by the hair, and, while drowning its pathetic wails for mercy beneath roars of demon laughter, proceeding to bind about its tender bones some ancient curiosity dug from the dungeons of the Inquisition.

  If the young gentleman fresh from College or the maiden lady Understander could be, if only for a month or two, a father! If only he or she could guess how gladly the father of limited income would reply,

  "My dear, you are wrong in saying that the children must have boots. That is an exploded theory. The children must not have boots. I refuse to be a party to crushing their delicately fashioned feet into hideous leather instruments of torture. The young gentleman fresh from College and the elderly maiden Understander have decided that the children must not have boots. Do not let me hear again that out-of-date word―boots."

  If there were only one young gentleman fresh from College, one maiden lady Understander teaching us our duty, life would be simpler. But there are so many young gentlemen from College, so many maiden lady Understanders, on the job―if I may be permitted a vulgarism; and as yet they are not all agreed. It is distracting for the parent anxious to do right. We put the little dears into sandals, and then at once other young gentlemen from College, other maiden lady Understanders, point to us as would-be murderers. Long clothes are fatal, short clothes are deadly, boots are instruments of torture, to allow children to go about with bare feet shows that we regard them as Incumbrances, and, with low cunning, are seeking to be rid of them.

  [Their first attempt.]

  I knew a pair of parents. I am convinced, in spite of all that can be said to the contrary, they were fond of their Child; it was their first. They were anxious to do the right thing. They read with avidity all books and articles written on the subject of Children. They read that a Child should always sleep lying on its back, and took it in turns to sit awake o' nights to make sure that the Child was always right side up.

  But another magazine told them that Children allowed to sleep lying on their backs grew up to be idiots. They were sad they had not read of this before, and started the Child on its right side. The Child, on the contrary, appeared to have a predilection for the left, the result being that neither the parents nor the baby itself for the next three weeks got any sleep worth speaking of.

  Later on, by good fortune, they came across a treatise that said a Child should always be allowed to choose its own position while sleeping, and their friends persuaded them to stop at that―told them they would never strike a better article if they searched the whole British Museum Library. It troubled them to find that Child sometimes sleeping curled up with its toe in its mouth, and sometimes flat on its stomach with its head underneath the pillow. But its health and temper were decidedly improved.

  [The Parent can do no right.]

  There is nothing the parent can do right. You would think that now and then he might, if only by mere accident, blunder into sense. But, no, there seems to be a law against it. He brings home woolly rabbits and indiarubber elephants, and expects the Child to be contented "forsooth" with suchlike aids to its education. As a matter of fact, the Child is content: it ba
ngs its own head with the woolly rabbit and does itself no harm; it tries to swallow the indiarubber elephant; it does not succeed, but continues to hope. With that woolly rabbit and that indiarubber elephant it would be as happy as the day is long if only the young gentleman from Cambridge would leave it alone, and not put new ideas into its head. But the gentleman from Cambridge and the maiden lady Understander are convinced that the future of the race depends upon leaving the Child untrammelled to select its own amusements. A friend of mine, during his wife's absence once on a visit to her mother, tried the experiment.

  The Child selected a frying-pan. How it got the frying-pan remains to this day a mystery. The cook said "frying-pans don't walk upstairs." The nurse said she should be sorry to call anyone a liar, but that there was commonsense in everything. The scullery-maid said that if everybody did their own work other people would not be driven beyond the limits of human endurance; and the housekeeper said that she was sick and tired of life. My friend said it did not matter. The Child clung to the frying-pan with passion. The book my friend was reading said that was how the human mind was formed: the Child's instinct prompted it to seize upon objects tending to develop its brain faculty. What the parent had got to do was to stand aside and watch events.

  The Child proceeded to black everything about the nursery with the bottom of the frying-pan. It then set to work to lick the frying-pan clean. The nurse, a woman of narrow ideas, had a presentiment that later on it would be ill. My friend explained to her the error the world had hitherto committed: it had imagined that the parent knew a thing or two that the Child didn't. In future the Children were to do their bringing up themselves. In the house of the future the parents would be allotted the attics where they would be out of the way. They might occasionally be allowed down to dinner, say, on Sundays.