Jerome K. Jerome

“ Robina maintained; “Dick used to, I used to. It is a common fault with children.”
“I know it is,” I answered. “I did not want a child with common faults. I wanted something all my own. I wanted you, Robina, to be my ideal daughter. I had a girl in my mind that I am sure would have been charming. You are not a bit like her. I don’t say she was perfect, she had her failings, but they were such delightful failings—much better than yours, Robina. She had a temper—a woman without a temper is insipid; but it was that kind of temper that made you love her all the more. Yours doesn’t, Robina. ”

“ Dick is a man, and a man—well, never mind about a man. You, Veronica, must never forget that you’re a lady. Justice must not be looked for in this world. Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve. More often they don’t. There seems to be no rule. Follow the dictates of your conscience, Veronica, and blow—I mean be indifferent to the consequences. Sometimes you’ll come out all right, and sometimes you won’t. But the beautiful sensation will always be with you: I did right. Things have turned out unfortunately: but that’s not my fault. ”

“ Robina had surprised me. I admit it. I thought I knew the sex better.
“Any girl would,” said Robina. “He’d be worth it.”
“It would be a new idea,” I mused. “Gott im Himmel! what a new world might it not create!” The fancy began to take hold of me. “Love no longer blind. Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool—sport of gods and men. Love no longer passion’s slave. His bonds broken, the senseless bandage flung aside. Love helping life instead of muddling it. ”

“ I feel so sorry for Dick—for the tens of thousands of happy, healthy, cared-for lads of whom Dick is the type. There must be millions of youngsters in the world who have never known hunger, except as an appetiser to their dinner; who have never felt what it was to be tired, without the knowledge that a comfortable bed was awaiting them.
To the well-to-do man or woman life is one perpetual nursery. ”

“ We will call him X. Can you imagine young X coming to you and saying: ‘My dear Robina, you have many excellent qualities. You can be amiable—so long as you are having your own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just horrid. You are very kind—to those who are willing for you to be kind to them in your own way, which is not always their way. You can be quite unselfish—when you happen to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent. You are capable and clever, but, like most capable and clever people, impatient and domineering; highly energetic when not feeling lazy ”

“ Veronica demanded. “You can feel my waistband if you don’t believe me.”
“You said just now you had had your lunch,” Dick argued.
“I know I did,” Veronica admitted. “One minute you are told that it is wicked to tell lies; the next—”
“Veronica!” Robina interrupted threateningly.
“It’s easy for you,” retorted Veronica. “You are not a growing child. You don’t feel it.”
“The least you can do,” said Robina, “is to keep silence.”
“What’s the good,” said Veronica—not without reason. “You’ll tell them when I’ve gone to bed, and can’t put in a word for myself. Everything is always my fault. ”

“ Now and again some restless little man, wearying of the smug nursery, will run out past the garden gate, and down the long white road; will find the North Pole or, failing that, the South Pole, or where the Nile rises, or how it feels to fly; will climb the Mountains of the Moon—do anything, go anywhere, to escape from Nurse Civilisation’s everlasting apron strings. ”

“ Robina was compelled to admit.
“There are other faults she might have had and welcome,” I pointed out; “faults I could have taken an interest in and liked her all the better for. You children are so obstinate. You will choose your own faults. Veronica is not truthful always. I wanted a family of little George Washingtons, who could not tell a lie. Veronica can. To get herself out of trouble—and provided there is any hope of anybody believing her—she does.” ”

“ He cannot help forgetting things.”
“Well, I can’t help forgetting things,” insisted Veronica.
“You find it hard,” explained Robina kindly; “but if you keep on trying you will succeed. You will get more thoughtful. I used to be forgetful and do foolish things once, when I was a little girl.”
“Good thing for us if we was all literary,” suggested Veronica.
“If we ‘were’ all literary,” Robina corrected her. “But you see we are not. You and I and Dick, we are just ordinary mortals. We must try and think, and be sensible. ”

“ I think, Robina, that the fellows who draw the pictures for the comic journals of the man in his night-shirt with the squalling baby in his arms must all be single men. The married man sees only sadness in the design. It is not the mere discomfort. If the little creature were ill or in pain we should not think of that. It is the reflection that we, who meant so well, have brought into the world just an ordinary fretful human creature with a nasty temper of its own: that is the tragedy, Robina. And then you grew into a little girl. ”

“ I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard; and I don’t think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethelbertha. I have gathered that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn’t like anybody much—except, of course, when it is her duty. She does not seem to have the time. Man is born to trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself accustomed to the feeling. But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up to the pursuit of trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in life. She appears to regard it as the only calling worthy a Christian woman. I found her alone one afternoon. ”

“ They are wakened in the morning—not too early, not till the nursery has been swept out and made ready, and the fire lighted—awakened gently with a cup of tea to give them strength and courage for this great business of getting up—awakened with whispered words, lest any sudden start should make their little heads ache—the blinds carefully arranged to exclude the naughty sun, which otherwise might shine into their little eyes and make them fretful. ”

“ It was not till I had talked to Veronica for a quarter of an hour, and had told her that you would most certainly communicate with the police, and that she would have to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her story, that I got any sense at all out of her.”
“What was the sense you did get out of her?” I asked.
“Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth,” said Robina—“the child does not seem to possess a proper conscience. What she will grow up like, if something does not happen to change her, it is awful to think.” ”

“ That explosion of Youth’s pent-up forces that we term Love serves to the making of man and woman. It does not die, it takes new shape. The blossom fades as the fruit forms. The passion passes to give place to peace. The trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the husband.”
“But the failures,” Robina persisted; “I do not mean the silly or the wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another, only to end in disliking—almost hating one another. ”

“ Robina looked astonished.
“You, Robina, were the most disappointing,” I complained. “Dick was a boy. One does not calculate upon boy angels; and by the time Veronica arrived I had got more used to things. But I was so excited when you came. The Little Mother and I would steal at night into the nursery. ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ the Little Mother would whisper, ‘to think it all lies hidden there: the little tiresome child, the sweetheart they will one day take away from us, the wife, the mother?’ ‘I am glad it is a girl,’ I would whisper; ‘I shall be able to watch her grow into womanhood. ”

“ Veronica’s argument, temperately and courteously expressed, I admit, came practically to this:
“I may have acted without sufficient knowledge to guide me. My education has not, perhaps, on the whole, been ordered wisely. Subjects that I feel will never be of the slightest interest or consequence to me have been insisted upon with almost tiresome reiteration. Matters that should be useful and helpful to me—gunpowder, to take but one example—I have been left in ignorance concerning. About all that I say nothing; people have done their best according to their lights, no doubt. ”

“ I wonder to myself sometimes, Is literature to the general reader ever anything more than a fairy-tale? We write with our heart’s blood, as we put it. We ask our conscience, Is it right thus to lay bare the secrets of our souls? The general reader does not grasp that we are writing with our heart’s blood: to him it is just ink. He does not believe we are laying bare the secrets of our souls: he takes it we are just pretending. “Once upon a time there lived a girl named Angelina who loved a party by the name of Edwin.” ”

“ We do not make each other happy. Happiness is the gift of the gods, not of man. The secret lies within you, not without. What remains to you will depend not upon what you thought, but upon what you are. If behind the lover there was the man—behind the impossible goddess of his love-sick brain some honest, human woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you. ”

“ The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too.
“Life’s a difficult problem, Veronica,” I allowed. “Things are not as they ought to be, I admit it. But one must not despair. Something’s got to be done.”
“It’s jolly hard on some of us,” said Veronica. “Strive as you may, you can’t please everyone. And if you just as much as stand up for yourself, oh, crikey!”
“The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica,” I said, “is to bring up the child in the way that it should go. It isn’t easy work, and occasionally irritability may creep in.” ”

“ You didn’t bother about the kitchen. There must be a kitchen, of course. You proceed to search for the kitchen. When you find it she is worried because it is the opposite end of the house to the dining-room. You point out to her the advantage of being away from the smell of the cooking. At that she gets personal: tells you that you are the first to grumble when the dinner is cold; and in her madness accuses the whole male sex of being impractical. The mere sight of an empty house makes a woman fretful.
Of course the stove is wrong. The kitchen stove always is wrong. ”

“ Or some queer little woman, wondering where the people come from, will run and run till she comes to the great town, watch in wonder the strange folk that sweat and groan—the peaceful nursery, with the toys, the pretty frocks never quite the same again to her.
But to the nineteen-twentieths of the well-to-do the world beyond the nursery is an unknown land. Terrible things occur out there to little men and women who have no pretty nursery to live in. People push and shove you about, will even tread on your toes if you are not careful. ”

“ Robina is, perhaps, a trifle over-sympathetic where animals are concerned. I remember, when they were children, her banging Dick over the head with the nursery bellows because he would not agree to talk in a whisper for fear of waking the cat. You can, of course, overdo kindness to animals, but it is a fault on the right side; and, as a rule, I do not discourage her. Veronica was allowed to remain, owing to her bad knee. It is a most unfortunate affliction. It comes on quite suddenly. There is nothing to be seen; but the child’s face while she is suffering from it would move a heart of stone. ”

“ I was wrong in thinking Miss Janie not a pretty girl. Hers is that type of beauty that escapes attention by its own perfection. It is the eccentric, the discordant, that arrests the roving eye. To harmony one has to attune oneself.
“I believe,” said Miss Janie, as she drew away, wiping her cheek, “one could teach that donkey anything.” ”

“ It is the act of a philosopher.”
I wanted to keep him in good humour. I had three things to talk to him about: the cow, the donkey, and Dick.
“No, it wasn’t,” he answered. “A philosopher would have remained a stockbroker and been just as happy. Philosophy does not depend upon environment. You put the philosopher down anywhere. It is all the same to him, he takes his philosophy with him. You can suddenly tell him he is an emperor, or give him penal servitude for life. He goes on being a philosopher just as if nothing had happened. We have an old tom-cat. The children lead it an awful life. ”

“ I’m not quite sure what fool it was who described a bore as a man who talked about himself. As a matter of fact it is the only subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make interesting. There’s a man I know; he makes a fortune out of a patent food for infants. He began life as a dairy farmer, and hit upon it quite by accident. When he talks about the humours of company promoting and the tricks of the advertising agent he is amusing. I have sat at his table, when he was a bachelor, and listened to him by the hour with enjoyment. ”

“ Robina replied, with unnecessary severity as I thought, that an architect, if anyone, might have known the difference between the right side of a house and the wrong; but presumed that youth and inexperience could always be pleaded as excuse for stupidity. I cannot myself see why Robina should have been so much annoyed. Labour, as Robina had been explaining to Veronica only a few hours before, exalts a woman. In olden days, ladies—the highest in the land—were proud, not ashamed, of their ability to perform domestic duties. ”

“ The lover’s delight is to yield, not to claim. The crown of motherhood is pain. To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the man’s ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses—the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, womanhood. ”

“ That pencil is the only one I can write with.”
“I didn’t mean the pencil,” explained Veronica. “I was wondering if I had got your literary temper.”
It is puzzling, when you come to think of it, this estimate accorded by the general public to the littérateur. It stands to reason that the man who writes books, explaining everything and putting everybody right, must be himself an exceptionally clever man; else how could he do it! The thing is pure logic. Yet to listen to Robina and her like you might think we had not sense enough to run ourselves, as the saying is—let alone running the universe. ”

“ Now then, Captain, game in your hands,” said Dick.
We gathered round. The children left their play. It was a pretty picture: the bright young faces, eager with expectation, the old worn veteran squinting down his cue, as if afraid that watching Malooney’s play might have given it the squirms.
“Now follow this,” I whispered to Malooney. “Don’t notice merely what he does, but try and understand why he does it. Any fool—after a little practice, that is—can hit a ball. But why do you hit it? What happens after you’ve hit it? ”

“ In the perfect world the thinker would be worth more than the mere jester. In the perfect world the farmer would be worth more than the stockbroker. In making the exchange I had to write myself down. I earn less money, but get more enjoyment out of life. I used to be able to afford champagne, but my liver was always wrong, and I dared not drink it. Now I cannot afford champagne, but I enjoy my beer. That is my theory, that we are all of us entitled to payment according to our market value, neither more nor less. ”

“ I agreed. “Other people’s troubles can always be amusing. As it is, I shall be in a state of anxiety for the next six months, wondering, every moment that she is out of my sight, what new devilment she is up to. The Little Mother will be worried out of her life, unless we can keep it from her.”
“Children will be children,” murmured Robina, meaning to be comforting.
“That is what I am complaining of, Robina. We are always hoping that ours won’t be. She is full of faults, Veronica, and they are not always nice faults. She is lazy—lazy is not the word for it.” ”

“ You might fancy them fractious children, always crying for the other child’s bun. There is really no reason for its being such a good field, except its own pluck. It faces the east, and the wood for half the day hides it from the sun; but it makes the best of everything, and even on the greyest day it seems to be smiling at you. ‘Some happy-hearted Mother Thing—a singer of love songs the while she toiled,’ he will have it, must lie sleeping there. By-the-bye, what a jolly field Janie would make! Don’t you think so, Dad?
“What the dickens, Dad, have you done to Veronica? ”

“ I feel that he has behaved disgracefully, wasting his time and my money.”
“He is going to turn over a new leaf;” said Robina: “I am sure he will make an excellent farmer.”
“I did not want a farmer,” I explained; “I wanted a Prime Minister. Children, Robina, are very disappointing. Veronica is all wrong. I like a mischievous child. I like reading stories of mischievous children: they amuse me. But not the child who puts a pound of gunpowder into a red-hot fire, and escapes with her life by a miracle.” ”