THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.(一个浪子的随想)

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THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

THE IDLE THOUGHTS

OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

by JEROME K. JEROME.

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

PREFACE

One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in MS. having

observed that they were not half bad, and some of my relations having

promised to buy the book if it ever came out, I feel I have no right to

longer delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, public demand, I

perhaps should not have ventured to offer these mere "idle thoughts" of

mine as mental food for the English-speaking peoples of the earth. What

readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and

elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously

recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that

when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this

up for half an hour. It will be a change.

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

ON BEING IDLE.

Now, this is a subject on which I flatter myself I really am _au fait_.

The gentleman who, when I was young, bathed me at wisdom's font for

nine guineas a term--no extras--used to say he never knew a boy who

could do less work in more time; and I remember my poor grandmother

once incidentally observing, in the course of an instruction upon the use of

the Prayer-book, that it was highly improbable that I should ever do much

that I ought not to do, but that she felt convinced beyond a doubt that I

should leave undone pretty well everything that I ought to do.

I am afraid I have somewhat belied half the dear old lady's prophecy.

Heaven help me! I have done a good many things that I ought not to have

done, in spite of my laziness. But I have fully confirmed the accuracy of

her judgment so far as neglecting much that I ought not to have neglected

is concerned. Idling always has been my strong point. I take no credit to

myself in the matter--it is a gift. Few possess it. There are plenty of lazy

people and plenty of slow-coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. He is not

a man who slouches about with his hands in his pockets. On the contrary,

his most startling characteristic is that he is always intensely busy.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of

work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do.

Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one.

Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was taken very ill--I

never could see myself that much was the matter with me, except that I

had a beastly cold. But I suppose it was something very serious, for the

doctor said that I ought to have come to him a month before, and that if it

(whatever it was) had gone on for another week he would not have

answered for the consequences. It is an extraordinary thing, but I never

knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpired that another

day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide,

philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama--he always comes

upon the scene just, and only just, in the nick of time. It is Providence, that

is what it is.

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

Well, as I was saying, I was very ill and was ordered to Buxton for a

month, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the while that I

was there. "Rest is what you require," said the doctor, "perfect rest."

It seemed a delightful prospect. "This man evidently understands my

complaint," said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time--a four weeks'

_dolce far niente_ with a dash of illness in it. Not too much illness, but

just illness enough--just sufficient to give it the flavor of suffering and

make it poetical. I should get up late, sip chocolate, and have my breakfast

in slippers and a dressing-gown. I should lie out in the garden in a

hammock and read sentimental novels with a melancholy ending, until the

books should fall from my listless hand, and I should recline there,

dreamily gazing into the deep blue of the firmament, watching the fleecy

clouds floating like white-sailed ships across its depths, and listening to

the joyous song of the birds and the low rustling of the trees. Or, on

becoming too weak to go out of doors, I should sit propped up with

pillows at the open window of the ground-floor front, and look wasted and

interesting, so that all the pretty girls would sigh as they passed by.

And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the Colonnade to

drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then, and

was rather taken with the idea. "Drinking the waters" sounded fashionable

and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I should like them. But, ugh! after the

first three or four mornings! Sam Weller's description of them as "having a

taste of warm flat-irons" conveys only a faint idea of their hideous

nauseousness. If anything could make a sick man get well quickly, it

would be the knowledge that he must drink a glassful of them every day

until he was recovered. I drank them neat for six consecutive days, and

they nearly killed me; but after then I adopted the plan of taking a stiff

glass of brandy-and-water immediately on the top of them, and found

much relief thereby. I have been informed since, by various eminent

medical gentlemen, that the alcohol must have entirely counteracted the

effects of the chalybeate properties contained in the water. I am glad I was

lucky enough to hit upon the right thing.

But "drinking the waters" was only a small portion of the torture I

experienced during that memorable month--a month which was, without

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

exception, the most miserable I have ever spent. During the best part of it I

religiously followed the doctor's mandate and did nothing whatever,

except moon about the house and garden and go out for two hours a day in

a Bath chair. That did break the monotony to a certain extent. There is

more excitement about Bath-chairing--especially if you are not used to the

exhilarating exercise--than might appear to the casual observer. A sense of

danger, such as a mere outsider might not understand, is ever present to

the mind of the occupant. He feels convinced every minute that the whole

concern is going over, a conviction which becomes especially lively

whenever a ditch or a stretch of newly macadamized road comes in sight.

Every vehicle that passes he expects is going to run into him; and he never

finds himself ascending or descending a hill without immediately

beginning to speculate upon his chances, supposing--as seems extremely

probable--that the weak-kneed controller of his destiny should let go.

But even this diversion failed to enliven after awhile, and the _ennui_

became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving way under it. It is not

a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to tax it too far. So

somewhere about the twentieth morning I got up early, had a good

breakfast, and walked straight off to Hayfield, at the foot of the Kinder

Scout--a pleasant, busy little town, reached through a lovely valley, and

with two sweetly pretty women in it. At least they were sweetly pretty then;

one passed me on the bridge and, I think, smiled; and the other was

standing at an open door, making an unremunerative investment of kisses

upon a red-faced baby. But it is years ago, and I dare say they have both

grown stout and snappish since that time. Coming back, I saw an old man

breaking stones, and it roused such strong longing in me to use my arms

that I offered him a drink to let me take his place. He was a kindly old man

and he humored me. I went for those stones with the accumulated energy

of three weeks, and did more work in half an hour than he had done all

day. But it did not make him jealous.

Having taken the plunge, I went further and further into dissipation,

going out for a long walk every morning and listening to the band in the

pavilion every evening. But the days still passed slowly notwithstanding,

and I was heartily glad when the last one came and I was being whirled

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London with its stern work and

life. I looked out of the carriage as we rushed through Hendon in the

evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mighty city seemed to warm my

heart, and when, later on, my cab rattled out of St. Pancras' station, the old

familiar roar that came swelling up around me sounded the sweetest music

I had heard for many a long day.

I certainly did not enjoy that month's idling. I like idling when I ought

not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. That is my pig-

headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire,

calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped highest with

letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle

longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work before me.

And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the

morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie an extra

half-hour in bed.

Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for five

minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of a

Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly? There are

some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utter impossibility.

If eight o'clock happens to be the time that they should turn out, then they

lie till half-past. If circumstances change and half-past eight becomes early

enough for them, then it is nine before they can rise. They are like the

statesman of whom it was said that he was always punctually half an hour

late. They try all manner of schemes. They buy alarm-clocks (artful

contrivances that go off at the wrong time and alarm the wrong people).

They tell Sarah Jane to knock at the door and call them, and Sarah Jane

does knock at the door and does call them, and they grunt back "awri" and

then go comfortably to sleep again. I knew one man who would actually

get out and have a cold bath; and even that was of no use, for afterward he

would jump into bed again to warm himself.

I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once got out. It

is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that I find so hard, and

no amount of over-night determination makes it easier. I say to myself,

after having wasted the whole evening, "Well, I won't do any more work

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

to-night; I'll get up early to-morrow morning;" and I am thoroughly

resolved to do so--then. In the morning, however, I feel less enthusiastic

about the idea, and reflect that it would have been much better if I had

stopped up last night. And then there is the trouble of dressing, and the

more one thinks about that the more one wants to put it off.

It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic grave, where we stretch our

tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest. "0 bed, 0 bed,

delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head," as sang poor Hood,

you are a kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls. Clever and foolish,

naughty and good, you take us all in your motherly lap and hush our

wayward crying. The strong man full of care--the sick man full of pain--

the little maiden sobbing for her faithless lover--like children we lay our

aching heads on your white bosom, and you gently soothe us off to by-by.

Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us.

How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those

hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie, like

living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so

slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more hideous nights

when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now

and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer

beating out the life that we are watching.

But enough of beds and bedrooms. I have kept to them too long, even

for an idle fellow. Let us come out and have a smoke. That wastes time

just as well and does not look so bad. Tobacco has been a blessing to us

idlers. What the civil-service clerk before Sir Walter's time found to

occupy their minds with it is hard to imagine. I attribute the quarrelsome

nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing

weed. They had no work to do and could not smoke, and the consequence

was they were forever fighting and rowing. If, by any extraordinary

chance, there was no war going, then they got up a deadly family feud

with the next-door neighbor, and if, in spite of this, they still had a few

spare moments on their hands, they occupied them with discussions as to

whose sweetheart was the best looking, the arguments employed on both

sides being battle-axes, clubs, etc. Questions of taste were soon decided in

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

those days. When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three

paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to

live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got

out, he met a man and broke his head--the other man's head, I mean--then

that proved that his--the first fellow's--girl was a pretty girl. But if the

other fellow broke _his_ head--not his own, you know, but the other

fellow's--the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course

the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow

who--well, if he broke his head, then _his_ girl--not the other fellow's, but

the fellow who _was_ the-- Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl

was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl,

but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism.

Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out among

themselves.

They do it very well. They are getting to do all our work. They are

doctors, and barristers, and artists. They manage theaters, and promote

swindles, and edit newspapers. I am looking forward to the time when we

men shall have nothing to do but lie in bed till twelve, read two novels a

day, have nice little five-o'clock teas all to ourselves, and tax our brains

with nothing more trying than discussions upon the latest patterns in

trousers and arguments as to what Mr. Jones' coat was made of and

whether it fitted him. It is a glorious prospect--for idle fellows.

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

ON BEING IN LOVE.

You've been in love, of course! If not you've got it to come. Love is

like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we

take it only once. One never need be afraid of catching it a second time.

The man who has had it can go into the most dangerous places and play

the most foolhardy tricks with perfect safety. He can picnic in shady

woods, ramble through leafy aisles, and linger on mossy seats to watch the

sunset. He fears a quiet country-house no more than he would his own

club. He can join a family party to go down the Rhine. He can, to see the

last of a friend, venture into the very jaws of the marriage ceremony itself.

He can keep his head through the whirl of a ravishing waltz, and rest

afterward in a dark conservatory, catching nothing more lasting than a cold.

He can brave a moonlight walk adown sweet-scented lanes or a twilight

pull among the somber rushes. He can get over a stile without danger,

scramble through a tangled hedge without being caught, come down a

slippery path without falling. He can look into sunny eyes and not be

dazzled. He listens to the siren voices, yet sails on with unveered helm. He

clasps white hands in his, but no electric "Lulu"-like force holds him

bound in their dainty pressure.

No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow

on the same heart. Love's handmaids are our life-long friends. Respect,

and admiration, and affection, our doors may always be left open for, but

their great celestial master, in his royal progress, pays but one visit and

departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of--but we never love

again. A man's heart is a firework that once in its time flashes heavenward.

Meteor-like, it blazes for a moment and lights with its glory the whole

world beneath. Then the night of our sordid commonplace life closes in

around it, and the burned-out case, falling back to earth, lies useless and

uncared for, slowly smoldering into ashes. Once, breaking loose from our

prison bonds, we dare, as mighty old Prometheus dared, to scale the

Olympian mount and snatch from Phoebus' chariot the fire of the gods.

THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW.

Happy those who, hastening down again ere it dies out, can kindle their

earthly altars at its flame. Love is too pure a light to burn long among the

noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as

a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection.

And, after all, that warming glow is more suited to our cold little back

parlor of a world than is the burning spirit love. Love should be the vestal

fire of some mighty temple--some vast dim fane whose organ music is the

rolling of the spheres. Affection will burn cheerily when the white flame

of love is flickered out. Affection is a fire that can be fed from day to day

and be piled up ever higher as the wintry years draw nigh. Old men and

women can sit by it with their thin hands clasped, the little children can

nestle down in front, the friend and neighbor has his welcome corner by its

side, and even shaggy Fido and sleek Titty can toast their noses at the bars.

Let us heap the coals of kindness upon that fire. Throw on your

pleasant words, your gentle pressures of the hand, your thoughtful and

unselfish deeds. Fan it with good-humor, patience, and forbearance. You

can let the wind blow and the rain fall unheeded then, for your hearth will

be warm and bright, and the faces round it will make sunshine in spite of

the clouds without.

I am afraid, dear Edwin and Angelina, you expect too much from love.

You think there is enough of your little hearts to feed this fierce, devouring

passion for all your long lives. Ah, young folk! don't rely too much upon

that unsteady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle as the months roll on,

and there is no replenishing the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and

disappointment. To each it will seem that it is the other who is growing

colder. Edwin sees with bitterness that Angelina no longer runs to the gate

to meet him, all smiles and blushes; and when he has a cough now she

doesn't begin to cry and, putting her arms round his neck, say that she

cannot live without him. The most she will probably do is to suggest a

lozenge, and even that in a tone implying that it is the noise more than

anything else she is anxious to get rid of.

Poor little Angelina, too, sheds silent tears, for Edwin has given up

carrying her old handkerchief in the inside pocket of his waistcoat.

Both are astonished at the falling off in the other one, but neither sees

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THEIDLETHOUGHTSOFANIDLEFELLOW.1THEIDLETHOUGHTSOFANIDLEFELLOW.byJEROMEK.JEROME.THEIDLETHOUGHTSOFANIDLEFELLOW.2PREFACEOneortwofriendstowhomIshowedthesepapersinMS.havingobservedthattheywerenothalfbad,andsomeofmyrelationshavingpromisedtobuythebookifitevercameout,IfeelIhavenorighttolongerdelayitsissue.Bu...

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