TEA-TABLE TALK(茶桌上的谈话)

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TEA-TABLE TALK

by Jerome K. Jerome

TEA-TABLE TALK

CHAPTER I

"They are very pretty, some of them," said the Woman of the World;

"not the sort of letters I should have written myself."

"I should like to see a love-letter of yours," interrupted the Minor Poet.

"It is very kind of you to say so," replied the Woman of the World. "It

never occurred to me that you would care for one."

"It is what I have always maintained," retorted the Minor Poet; "you

have never really understood me."

"I believe a volume of assorted love-letters would sell well," said the

Girton Girl; "written by the same hand, if you like, but to different

correspondents at different periods. To the same person one is bound,

more or less, to repeat oneself."

"Or from different lovers to the same correspondent," suggested the

Philosopher. "It would be interesting to observe the response of various

temperaments exposed to an unvaried influence. It would throw light on

the vexed question whether the qualities that adorn our beloved are her

own, or ours lent to her for the occasion. Would the same woman be

addressed as 'My Queen!' by one correspondent, and as 'Dear Popsy

Wopsy!' by another, or would she to all her lovers be herself?"

"You might try it," I suggested to the Woman of the World, "selecting,

of course, only the more interesting."

"It would cause so much unpleasantness, don't you think?" replied the

Woman of the World. "Those I left out would never forgive me. It is

always so with people you forget to invite to a funeral--they think it is

done with deliberate intention to slight them."

"The first love-letter I ever wrote," said the Minor Poet, "was when I

was sixteen. Her name was Monica; she was the left-hand girl in the

third joint of the crocodile. I have never known a creature so ethereally

beautiful. I wrote the letter and sealed it, but I could not make up my

mind whether to slip it into her hand when we passed them, as we usually

did on Thursday afternoons, or to wait for Sunday."

"There can be no question," murmured the Girton Girl abstractedly,

TEA-TABLE TALK

"the best time is just as one is coming out of church. There is so much

confusion; besides, one has one's Prayer-book--I beg your pardon."

"I was saved the trouble of deciding," continued the Minor Poet. "On

Thursday her place was occupied by a fat, red-headed girl, who replied to

my look of inquiry with an idiotic laugh, and on Sunday I searched the

Hypatia House pews for her in vain. I learnt subsequently that she had

been sent home on the previous Wednesday, suddenly. It appeared that I

was not the only one. I left the letter where I had placed it, at the bottom

of my desk, and in course of time forgot it. Years later I fell in love

really. I sat down to write her a love-letter that should imprison her as by

some subtle spell. I would weave into it the love of all the ages. When

I had finished it, I read it through and was pleased with it. Then by an

accident, as I was going to seal it, I overturned my desk, and on to the

floor fell that other love-letter I had written seven years before, when a

boy. Out of idle curiosity I tore it open; I thought it would afford me

amusement. I ended by posting it instead of the letter I had just

completed. It carried precisely the same meaning; but it was better

expressed, with greater sincerity, with more artistic simplicity."

"After all," said the Philosopher, "what can a man do more than tell a

woman that he loves her? All the rest is mere picturesque amplification,

on a par with the 'Full and descriptive report from our Special

Correspondent,' elaborated out of a three-line telegram of Reuter's."

"Following that argument," said the Minor Poet, "you could reduce

'Romeo and Juliet' to a two-line tragedy -

Lass and lad, loved like mad;

Silly muddle, very sad."

"To be told that you are loved," said the Girton Girl, "is only the

beginning of the theorem--its proposition, so to speak."

"Or the argument of the poem," murmured the Old Maid.

"The interest," continued the Girton Girl, "lies in proving it--why does

he love me?"

"I asked a man that once," said the Woman of the World. "He said it

was because he couldn't help it. It seemed such a foolish answer-- the

sort of thing your housemaid always tells you when she breaks your

TEA-TABLE TALK

favourite teapot. And yet, I suppose it was as sensible as any other."

"More so," commented the Philosopher. "It is the only possible

explanation."

"I wish," said the Minor Poet, "it were a question one could ask of

people without offence; I so often long to put it. Why do men marry

viragoes, pimply girls with incipient moustaches? Why do beautiful

heiresses choose thick-lipped, little men who bully them? Why are old

bachelors, generally speaking, sympathetic, kind-hearted men; and old

maids, so many of them, sweet-looking and amiable?"

"I think," said the Old Maid, "that perhaps--" But there she stopped.

"Pray go on," said the Philosopher. "I shall be so interested to have

your views."

"It was nothing, really," said the Old Maid; "I have forgotten."

"If only one could obtain truthful answers," the Minor Poet, "what a

flood of light they might let fall on the hidden half of life!"

"It seems to me," said the Philosopher, "that, if anything, Love is being

exposed to too much light. The subject is becoming vulgarised. Every

year a thousand problem plays and novels, poems and essays, tear the

curtain from Love's Temple, drag it naked into the market-place for

grinning crowds to gape at. In a million short stories, would-be comic,

would-be serious, it is handled more or less coarsely, more or less

unintelligently, gushed over, gibed and jeered at. Not a shred of self-

respect is left to it. It is made the central figure of every farce, danced

and sung round in every music-hall, yelled at by gallery, guffawed at by

stalls. It is the stock-in-trade of every comic journal. Could any god,

even a Mumbo Jumbo, so treated, hold its place among its votaries?

Every term of endearment has become a catchword, every caress mocks us

from the hoardings. Every tender speech we make recalls to us even

while we are uttering it a hundred parodies. Every possible situation has

been spoilt for us in advance by the American humorist."

"I have sat out a good many parodies of 'Hamlet,'" said the Minor Poet,

"but the play still interests me. I remember a walking tour I once took in

Bavaria. In some places the waysides are lined with crucifixes that are

either comic or repulsive. There is a firm that turns them out by

TEA-TABLE TALK

machinery. Yet, to the peasants who pass by, the Christ is still beautiful.

You can belittle only what is already contemptible." "Patriotism is a

great virtue," replied the Philosopher: "the Jingoes have made it

ridiculous."

"On the contrary," said the Minor Poet, "they have taught us to

distinguish between the true and the false. So it is with love. The more it

is cheapened, ridiculed, employed for market purposes, the less the

inclination to affect it--to be in love with love, as Heine admitted he was,

for its own sake."

"Is the necessity to love born in us," said the Girton Girl, "or do we

practise to acquire it because it is the fashion--make up our mind to love,

as boys learn to smoke, because every other fellow does it, and we do not

like to be peculiar?"

"The majority of men and women," said the Minor Poet, "are

incapable of love. With most it is a mere animal passion, with others a

mild affection."

"We talk about love," said the Philosopher, "as though it were a known

quantity. After all, to say that a man loves is like saying that he paints or

plays the violin; it conveys no meaning until we have witnessed his

performance. Yet to hear the subject discussed, one might imagine the

love of a Dante or a society Johnny, of a Cleopatra or a Georges Sand, to

be precisely the same thing."

"It was always poor Susan's trouble," said the Woman of the World;

"she could never be persuaded that Jim really loved her. It was very sad,

because I am sure he was devoted to her, in his way. But he could not do

the sort of things she wanted him to do; she was so romantic. He did try.

He used to go to all the poetical plays and study them. But he hadn't the

knack of it and he was naturally clumsy. He would rush into the room

and fling himself on his knees before her, never noticing the dog, so that,

instead of pouring out his heart as he had intended, he would have to start

off with, 'So awfully sorry! Hope I haven't hurt the little beast?' Which

was enough to put anybody out."

"Young girls are so foolish," said the Old Maid; "they run after what

glitters, and do not see the gold until it is too late. At first they are all

TEA-TABLE TALK

eyes and no heart."

"I knew a girl," I said, "or, rather, a young married woman, who was

cured of folly by the homoeopathic method. Her great trouble was that

her husband had ceased to be her lover."

"It seems to me so sad," said the Old Maid. "Sometimes it is the

woman's fault, sometimes the man's; more often both. The little

courtesies, the fond words, the tender nothings that mean so much to those

that love--it would cost so little not to forget them, and they would make

life so much more beautiful."

"There is a line of common sense running through all things," I replied;

"the secret of life consists in not diverging far from it on either side. He

had been the most devoted wooer, never happy out of her eyes; but before

they had been married a year she found to her astonishment that he could

be content even away from her skirts, that he actually took pains to render

himself agreeable to other women. He would spend whole afternoons at

his club, slip out for a walk occasionally by himself, shut himself up now

and again in his study. It went so far that one day he expressed a distinct

desire to leave her for a week and go a-fishing with some other men. She

never complained--at least, not to him." "That is where she was foolish,"

said the Girton Girl. "Silence in such cases is a mistake. The other

party does not know what is the matter with you, and you yourself--your

temper bottled up within-- become more disagreeable every day."

"She confided her trouble to a friend," I explained.

"I so dislike people who do that," said the Woman of the World.

"Emily never would speak to George; she would come and complain about

him to me, as if I were responsible for him: I wasn't even his mother.

When she had finished, George would come along, and I had to listen to

the whole thing over again from his point of view. I got so tired of it at last

that I determined to stop it."

"How did you succeed?" asked the Old Maid, who appeared to be

interested in the recipe.

"I knew George was coming one afternoon," explained the Woman of

the World, "so I persuaded Emily to wait in the conservatory. She

thought I was going to give him good advice; instead of that I sympathised

TEA-TABLE TALK

with him and encouraged him to speak his mind freely, which he did. It

made her so mad that she came out and told him what she thought of him.

I left them at it. They were both of them the better for it; and so was I."

"In my case," I said, "it came about differently. Her friend explained

to him just what was happening. She pointed out to him how his neglect

and indifference were slowly alienating his wife's affections from him.

He argued the subject.

"'But a lover and a husband are not the same,' he contended; 'the

situation is entirely different. You run after somebody you want to

overtake; but when you have caught him up, you settle down quietly and

walk beside him; you don't continue shouting and waving your

handkerchief after you have gained him.'

"Their mutual friend presented the problem differently."

"'You must hold what you have won,' she said, 'or it will slip away

from you. By a certain course of conduct and behaviour you gained a

sweet girl's regard; show yourself other than you were, how can you

expect her to think the same of you?'

"'You mean,' he inquired, 'that I should talk and act as her husband

exactly as I did when her lover?'

"'Precisely,' said the friend 'why not?'

"'It seems to me a mistake,' he grumbled.

"'Try it and see,' said the friend.

"'All right,' he said, 'I will.' And he went straight home and set to

work."

"Was it too late," asked the Old Maid, "or did they come together

again?"

"For the next mouth," I answered, "they were together twenty-four

hours of the day. And then it was the wife who suggested, like the poet

in Gilbert's Fatience, the delight with which she would welcome an

occasional afternoon off."

"He hung about her while she was dressing in the morning. Just as

she had got her hair fixed he would kiss it passionately and it would come

down again. All meal-time he would hold her hand under the table and

insist on feeding her with a fork. Before marriage he had behaved once

TEA-TABLE TALK

or twice in this sort of way at picnics; and after marriage, when at

breakfast-time he had sat at the other end of the table reading the paper or

his letters, she had reminded him of it reproachfully. The entire day he

never left her side. She could never read a book; instead, he would read

to her aloud, generally Browning' poems or translations from Goethe.

Reading aloud was not an accomplishment of his, but in their courting

days she had expressed herself pleased at his attempts, and of this he took

care, in his turn, to remind her. It was his idea that if the game were

played at all, she should take a hand also. If he was to blither, it was only

fair that she should bleat back. As he explained, for the future they

would both be lovers all their life long; and no logical argument in reply

could she think of. If she tried to write a letter, he would snatch away the

paper her dear hands were pressing and fall to kissing it--and, of course,

smearing it. When he wasn't giving her pins and needles by sitting on

her feet he was balancing himself on the arm of her chair and occasionally

falling over on top of her. If she went shopping, he went with her and

made himself ridiculous at the dressmaker's. In society he took no notice

of anybody but of her, and was hurt if she spoke to anybody but to him.

Not that it was often, during that month, that they did see any society;

most invitations he refused for them both, reminding her how once upon a

time she had regarded an evening alone with him as an entertainment

superior to all others. He called her ridiculous names, talked to her in

baby language; while a dozen times a day it became necessary for her to

take down her back hair and do it up afresh. At the end of a month, as I

have said, it was she who suggested a slight cessation of affection."

"Had I been in her place," said the Girton Girl, "it would have been a

separation I should have suggested. I should have hated him for the rest

of my life."

"For merely trying to agree with you?" I said.

"For showing me I was a fool for ever having wanted his affection,"

replied the Girton Girl.

"You can generally," said the Philosopher, "make people ridiculous by

taking them at their word."

"Especially women," murmured the Minor Poet.

TEA-TABLE TALK

"I wonder," said the Philosopher, "is there really so much difference

between men and women as we think? What there is, may it not be the

result of Civilisation rather than of Nature, of training rather than of

instinct?"

"Deny the contest between male and female, and you deprive life of

half its poetry," urged the Minor Poet.

"Poetry," returned the Philosopher, "was made for man, not man for

poetry. I am inclined to think that the contest you speak of is somewhat

in the nature of a 'put-up job' on the part of you poets. In the same way

newspapers will always advocate war; it gives them something to write

about, and is not altogether unconnected with sales. To test Nature's

original intentions, it is always safe to study our cousins the animals.

There we see no sign of this fundamental variation; the difference is

merely one of degree."

"I quite agree with you," said the Girton Girl. "Man, acquiring

cunning, saw the advantage of using his one superiority, brute strength, to

make woman his slave. In all other respects she is undoubtedly his

superior."

"In a woman's argument," I observed, "equality of the sexes invariably

does mean the superiority of woman."

"That is very curious," added the Philosopher. "As you say, a woman

never can be logical."

"Are all men logical?" demanded the Girton Girl.

"As a class," replied the Minor Poet, "yes."

TEA-TABLE TALK

CHAPTER II

"What woman suffers from," said the Philosopher, "is over-praise. It

has turned her head."

"You admit, then, that she has a head?" demanded the Girton Girl.

"It has always been a theory of mine," returned the Philosopher, "that

by Nature she was intended to possess one. It is her admirers who have

always represented her as brainless."

"Why is it that the brainy girl invariably has straight hair?" asked the

Woman of the World.

"Because she doesn't curl it," explained the Girton Girl. She spoke

somewhat snappishly, it seemed to me.

"I never thought of that," murmured the Woman of the World.

"It is to be noted in connection with the argument," I ventured to

remark, "that we hear but little concerning the wives of intellectual men.

When we do, as in the case of the Carlyles, it is to wish we did not."

"When I was younger even than I am now," said the Minor Poet, "I

thought a good deal of marriage--very young men do. My wife, I told

myself, must be a woman of mind. Yet, curiously, of all the women I

have ever loved, no single one has been remarkable for intellect-- present

company, as usual, of course excepted."

"Why is it," sighed the Philosopher, "that in the most serious business

of our life, marriage, serious considerations count for next to nothing? A

dimpled chin can, and often does, secure for a girl the best of husbands;

while virtue and understanding combined cannot be relied upon to obtain

her even one of the worst."

"I think the explanation is," replied the Minor Poet, "that as regards, let

us say, the most natural business of our life, marriage, our natural instincts

alone are brought into play. Marriage--clothe the naked fact in what

flowers of rhetoric we will- -has to do with the purely animal part of our

being. The man is drawn towards it by his primeval desires; the woman

by her inborn craving towards motherhood."

The thin, white hands of the Old Maid fluttered, troubled, where they

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TEA-TABLETALK1TEA-TABLETALKbyJeromeK.JeromeTEA-TABLETALK2CHAPTERI"Theyareverypretty,someofthem,"saidtheWomanoftheWorld;"notthesortoflettersIshouldhavewrittenmyself.""Ishouldliketoseealove-letterofyours,"interruptedtheMinorPoet."Itisverykindofyoutosayso,"repliedtheWomanoftheWorld."Itneveroccurredtome...

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