Tea table Talk
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Jerome K. Jerome >> Tea table Talk
The Old Maid shuddered visibly. "What a terrible idea!" she said.
"To us," replied the Minor Poet; "not to those who will come after
us. The child dreads manhood. To Abraham, roaming the world with
his flocks, the life of your modern City man, chained to his office
from ten to four, would have seemed little better than penal
servitude."
"My sympathies are with the Abrahamitical ideal," observed the
Philosopher.
"Mine also," agreed the Minor Poet. "But neither you nor I
represent the tendency of the age. We are its curiosities. We, and
such as we, serve as the brake regulating the rate of progress. The
genius of species shows itself moving in the direction of the
organised community--all life welded together, controlled by one
central idea. The individual worker is drawn into the factory.
Chippendale today would have been employed sketching designs; the
chair would have been put together by fifty workers, each one
trained to perfection in his own particular department. Why does
the hotel, with its five hundred servants, its catering for three
thousand mouths, work smoothly, while the desirable family
residence, with its two or three domestics, remains the scene of
waste, confusion, and dispute? We are losing the talent of living
alone; the instinct of living in communities is driving it out."
"So much the worse for the community," was the comment of the
Philosopher. "Man, as Ibsen has said, will always be at his
greatest when he stands alone. To return to our friend Abraham,
surely he, wandering in the wilderness, talking with his God, was
nearer the ideal than the modern citizen, thinking with his morning
paper, applauding silly shibboleths from a theatre pit, guffawing at
coarse jests, one of a music-hall crowd? In the community it is the
lowest always leads. You spoke just now of all the world inviting
Samuel Johnson to its dish of tea. How many read him as compared to
the number of subscribers to the Ha'penny Joker? This 'thinking in
communities,' as it is termed, to what does it lead? To mafficking
and Dreyfus scandals. What crowd ever evolved a noble idea? If
Socrates and Galileo, Confucius and Christ had 'thought in
communities,' the world would indeed be the ant-hill you appear to
regard as its destiny."
"In balancing the books of life one must have regard to both sides
of the ledger," responded the Minor Poet. "A crowd, I admit, of
itself creates nothing; on the other hand, it receives ideals into
its bosom and gives them needful shelter. It responds more readily
to good than to evil. What greater stronghold of virtue than your
sixpenny gallery? Your burglar, arrived fresh from jumping on his
mother, finds himself applauding with the rest stirring appeals to
the inborn chivalry of man. Suggestion that it was right or proper
under any circumstances to jump upon one's mother he would at such
moment reject with horror. 'Thinking in communities' is good for
him. The hooligan, whose patriotism finds expression in squirting
dirty water into the face of his coster sweetheart: the
boulevardiere, primed with absinth, shouting 'Conspuez les Juifs!'--
the motive force stirring them in its origin was an ideal. Even
into making a fool of itself, a crowd can be moved only by
incitement of its finer instincts. The service of Prometheus to
mankind must not be judged by the statistics of the insurance
office. The world as a whole has gained by community, will attain
its goal only through community. From the nomadic savage by the
winding road of citizenship we have advanced far. The way winds
upward still, hidden from us by the mists, but along its tortuous
course lies our track into the Promised Land. Not the development
of the individual--that is his own concern--but the uplifting of the
race would appear to be the law. The lonely great ones, they are
the shepherds of the flock--the servants, not the masters of the
world. Moses shall die and be buried in the wilderness, seeing only
from afar the resting-place of man's tired feet. It is unfortunate
that the Ha'penny Joker and its kind should have so many readers.
Maybe it teaches those to read who otherwise would never read at
all. We are impatient, forgetting that the coming and going of our
generations are but as the swinging of the pendulum of Nature's
clock. Yesterday we booked our seats for gladiatorial shows, for
the burning of Christians, our windows for Newgate hangings. Even
the musical farce is an improvement upon that--at least, from the
humanitarian point of view."
"In the Southern States of America," observed the Philosopher,
sticking to his guns, "they run excursion trains to lynching
exhibitions. The bull-fight is spreading to France, and English
newspapers are advocating the reintroduction of bear-baiting and
cock-fighting. Are we not moving in a circle?"
"The road winds, as I have allowed," returned the Minor Poet; "the
gradient is somewhat steep. Just now, maybe, we are traversing a
backward curve. I gain my faith by pausing now and then to look
behind. I see the weary way with many a downward sweep. But we are
climbing, my friend, we are climbing."
"But to such a very dismal goal, according to your theory," grumbled
the Old Maid. "I should hate to feel myself an insect in a hive, my
little round of duties apportioned to me, my every action regulated
by a fixed law, my place assigned to me, my very food and drink, I
suppose, apportioned to me. Do think of something more cheerful."
The Minor Poet laughed. "My dear lady," he replied, "it is too
late. The thing is already done. The hive already covers us, the
cells are in building. Who leads his own life? Who is master of
himself? What can you do but live according to your income in, I am
sure, a very charming little cell; buzz about your little world with
your cheerful, kindly song, helping these your fellow insects here,
doing day by day the useful offices apportioned to you by your
temperament and means, seeing the same faces, treading ever the same
narrow circle? Why do I write poetry? I am not to blame. I must
live. It is the only thing I can do. Why does one man live and die
upon the treeless rocks of Iceland, another labour in the vineyards
of the Apennines? Why does one woman make matches, ride in a van to
Epping Forest, drink gin, and change hats with her lover on the
homeward journey; another pant through a dinner-party and half a
dozen receptions every night from March to June, rush from country
house to fashionable Continental resort from July to February, dress
as she is instructed by her milliner, say the smart things that are
expected of her? Who would be a sweep or a chaperon, were all roads
free? Who is it succeeds in escaping the law of the hive? The
loafer, the tramp. On the other hand, who is the man we respect and
envy? The man who works for the community, the public-spirited man,
as we call him; the unselfish man, the man who labours for the
labour's sake and not for the profit, devoting his days and nights
to learning Nature's secrets, to acquiring knowledge useful to the
race. Is he not the happiest, the man who has conquered his own
sordid desires, who gives himself to the public good? The hive was
founded in dark days before man knew; it has been built according to
false laws. This man will have a cell bigger than any other cell;
all the other little men shall envy him; a thousand fellow-crawling
mites shall slave for him, wear out their lives in wretchedness for
him and him alone; all their honey they shall bring to him; he shall
gorge while they shall starve. Of what use? He has slept no
sounder in his foolishly fanciful cell. Sleep is to tired eyes, not
to silken coverlets. We dream in Seven Dials as in Park Lane. His
stomach, distend it as he will--it is very small--resents being
distended. The store of honey rots. The hive was conceived in the
dark days of ignorance, stupidity, brutality. A new hive shall
arise."
"I had no idea," said the Woman of the World, "you were a
Socialist."
"Nor had I," agreed the Minor Poet, "before I began talking."
"And next Wednesday," laughed the Woman of the World; "you will be
arguing in favour of individualism."
"Very likely," agreed the Minor Poet. "'The deep moans round with
many voices.'"
"I'll take another cup of tea," said the Philosopher.