Idle Ideas in 1905. Jerome Klapka Jerome

avoid sitting next to another lady novelist, whom she hated.

      One has to shift oneself, sometimes, on these occasions. A newspaper man came up to me last Ninth of November at the Mansion House.

      “Would you mind changing seats with me?” he asked. “It’s a bit awkward. They’ve put me next to my first wife.”

      I had a troubled evening myself once long ago. I accompanied a young widow lady to a musical At Home, given by a lady who had more acquaintances than she knew. We met the butler at the top of the stairs. My friend spoke first:

      “Say Mrs. Dash and – ”

      The butler did not wait for more – he was a youngish man – but shouted out:

      “Mr. and Mrs. Dash.”

      “My dear! how very quiet you have kept!” cried our hostess delighted. “Do let me congratulate you.”

      The crush was too great and our hostess too distracted at the moment for any explanations. We were swept away, and both of us spent the remainder of the evening feebly protesting our singleness.

      If it had happened on the stage it would have taken us the whole play to get out of it. Stage people are not allowed to put things right when mistakes are made with their identity. If the light comedian is expecting a plumber, the first man that comes into the drawing-room has got to be a plumber. He is not allowed to point out that he never was a plumber; that he doesn’t look like a plumber; that no one not an idiot would mistake him for a plumber. He has got to be shut up in the bath-room and have water poured over him, just as if he were a plumber – a stage plumber, that is. Not till right away at the end of the last act is he permitted to remark that he happens to be the new curate.

      I sat out a play once at which most people laughed. It made me sad. A dear old lady entered towards the end of the first act. We knew she was the aunt. Nobody can possibly mistake the stage aunt – except the people on the stage. They, of course, mistook her for a circus rider, and shut her up in a cupboard. It is what cupboards seem to be reserved for on the stage. Nothing is ever put in them excepting the hero’s relations. When she wasn’t in the cupboard she was in a clothes basket, or tied up in a curtain. All she need have done was to hold on to something while remarking to the hero:

      “If you’ll stop shouting and jumping about for just ten seconds, and give me a chance to observe that I am your maiden aunt from Devonshire, all this tomfoolery can be avoided.”

      That would have ended it. As a matter of fact that did end it five minutes past eleven. It hadn’t occurred to her to say it before.

      In real life I never knew but of one case where a man suffered in silence unpleasantness he could have ended with a word; and that was the case of the late Corney Grain. He had been engaged to give his entertainment at a country house. The lady was a nouvelle riche of snobbish instincts. She left instructions that Corney Grain when he arrived was to dine with the servants. The butler, who knew better, apologised; but Corney was a man not easily disconcerted. He dined well, and after dinner rose and addressed the assembled company.

      “Well, now, my good friends,” said Corney, “if we have all finished, and if you are all agreeable, I shall be pleased to present to you my little show.”

      The servants cheered. The piano was dispensed with. Corney contrived to amuse his audience very well for half-an-hour without it. At ten o’clock came down a message: Would Mr. Corney Grain come up into the drawing-room. Corney went. The company in the drawing-room were waiting, seated.

      “We are ready, Mr. Grain,” remarked the hostess.

      “Ready for what?” demanded Corney.

      “For your entertainment,” answered the hostess.

      “But I have given it already,” explained Corney; “and my engagement was for one performance only.”

      “Given it! Where? When?”

      “An hour ago, downstairs.”

      “But this is nonsense,” exclaimed the hostess.

      “It seemed to me somewhat unusual,” Corney replied; “but it has always been my privilege to dine with the company I am asked to entertain. I took it you had arranged a little treat for the servants.”

      And Corney left to catch his train.

      Another entertainer told me the following story, although a joke against himself. He and Corney Grain were sharing a cottage on the river. A man called early one morning to discuss affairs, and was talking to Corney in the parlour, which was on the ground floor. The window was open. The other entertainer – the man who told me the story – was dressing in the room above. Thinking he recognised the voice of the visitor below, he leant out of his bedroom window to hear better. He leant too far, and dived head foremost into a bed of flowers, his bare legs – and only his bare legs – showing through the open window of the parlour.

      “Good gracious!” exclaimed the visitor, turning at the moment and seeing a pair of wriggling legs above the window sill; “who’s that?”

      Corney fixed his eyeglass and strolled to the window.

      “Oh, it’s only What’s-his-name,” he explained. “Wonderful spirits. Can be funny in the morning.”

      SHOULD WOMEN BE BEAUTIFUL?

      Pretty women are going to have a hard time of it later on. Hitherto, they have had things far too much their own way. In the future there are going to be no pretty girls, for the simple reason there will be no plain girls against which to contrast them. Of late I have done some systematic reading of ladies’ papers. The plain girl submits to a course of “treatment.” In eighteen months she bursts upon Society an acknowledged beauty. And it is all done by kindness. One girl writes:

      “Only a little while ago I used to look at myself in the glass and cry. Now I look at myself and laugh.”

      The letter is accompanied by two photographs of the young lady. I should have cried myself had I seen her as she was at first. She was a stumpy, flat-headed, squat-nosed, cross-eyed thing. She did not even look good. One virtue she appears to have had, however. It was faith. She believed what the label said, she did what the label told her. She is now a tall, ravishing young person, her only trouble being, I should say, to know what to do with her hair – it reaches to her knees and must be a nuisance to her. She would do better to give some of it away. Taking this young lady as a text, it means that the girl who declines to be a dream of loveliness does so out of obstinacy. What the raw material may be does not appear to matter. Provided no feature is absolutely missing, the result is one and the same.

      Arrived at years of discretion, the maiden proceeds to choose the style of beauty she prefers. Will she be a Juno, a Venus, or a Helen? Will she have a Grecian nose, or one tip-tilted like the petal of a rose? Let her try the tip-tilted style first. The professor has an idea it is going to be fashionable. If afterwards she does not like it, there will be time to try the Grecian. It is difficult to decide these points without experiment.

      Would the lady like a high or a low forehead? Some ladies like to look intelligent. It is purely a matter of taste. With the Grecian nose, the low broad forehead perhaps goes better. It is more according to precedent. On the other hand, the high brainy forehead would be more original. It is for the lady herself to select.

      We come to the question of eyes. The lady fancies a delicate blue, not too pronounced a colour – one of those useful shades that go with almost everything. At the same time there should be depth and passion. The professor understands exactly the sort of eye the lady means. But it will be expensive. There is a cheap quality; the professor does not recommend it. True that it passes muster by gaslight, but the sunlight shows it up. It lacks tenderness, and at the price you can hardly expect it to contain much hidden meaning. The professor advises the melting, Oh-George-take-me-in-your-arms-and-still-my-foolish-fears brand. It costs a little more, but it pays for itself in the end.

      Perhaps it will be best, now the eye has been fixed upon, to discuss the question of the hair. The professor opens his book of patterns. Maybe the lady is of a wilful disposition. She loves to run laughing through the woods during exceptionally