Jerome Jerome - Tommy and Co

Mr. Peters was genuinely grateful, as well he might be, and would consent to any suggestion that Miss Ramsbotham might make; felt he had behaved shabbily, was very much ashamed of himself, would be guided in all things by Miss Ramsbotham, whom he should always regard as the truest of friends, and so on.

Miss Ramsbotham's suggestion was this: Mr. Peters, no more robust of body than of mind, had been speaking for some time past of travel. Having nothing to do now but to wait for briefs, why not take this opportunity of visiting his only well-to-do relative, a Canadian farmer. Meanwhile, let Miss Peggy leave the bun shop and take up her residence in Miss Ramsbotham's flat. Let there be no engagement--merely an understanding. The girl was pretty, charming, good, Miss Ramsbotham felt sure; but--well, a little education, a little training in manners and behaviour would not be amiss, would it? If, on returning at the end of six months or a year, Mr. Peters was still of the same mind, and Peggy also wishful, the affair would be easier, would it not?

There followed further expressions of eternal gratitude. Miss Ramsbotham swept all such aside. It would be pleasant to have a bright young girl to live with her; teaching, moulding such an one would be a pleasant occupation.

And thus it came to pass that Mr. Reginald Peters disappeared for a while from Bohemia, to the regret of but few, and there entered into it one Peggy Nutcombe, as pretty a child as ever gladdened the eye of man. She had wavy, flaxen hair, a complexion that might have been manufactured from the essence of wild roses, the nose that Tennyson bestows upon his miller's daughter, and a mouth worthy of the Lowther Arcade in its days of glory. Add to this the quick grace of a kitten, with the appealing helplessness of a baby in its first short frock, and you will be able to forgive Mr. Reginald Peters his faithlessness. Bohemia looked from one to the other--from the fairy to the woman--and ceased to blame. That the fairy was as stupid as a camel, as selfish as a pig, and as lazy as a nigger Bohemia did not know; nor--so long as her figure and complexion remained what it was--would its judgment have been influenced, even if it had. I speak of the Bohemian male.

But that is just what her figure and complexion did not do. Mr. Reginald Peters, finding his uncle old, feeble, and inclined to be fond, deemed it to his advantage to stay longer than he had intended. Twelve months went by. Miss Peggy was losing her kittenish grace, was becoming lumpy. A couple of pimples--one near the right-hand corner of her rosebud mouth, and another on the left-hand side of her tip-tilted nose--marred her baby face. At the end of another six months the men called her plump, and the women fat. Her walk was degenerating into a waddle; stairs caused her to grunt. She took to breathing with her mouth, and Bohemia noticed that her teeth were small, badly coloured, and uneven. The pimples grew in size and number. The cream and white of her complexion was merging into a general yellow. A certain greasiness of skin was manifesting itself. Babyish ways in connection with a woman who must have weighed about eleven stone struck Bohemia as incongruous. Her manners, judged alone, had improved. But they had not improved her. They did not belong to her; they did not fit her. They sat on her as Sunday broadcloth on a yokel. She had learned to employ her "h's" correctly, and to speak good grammar. This gave to her conversation a painfully artificial air. The little learning she had absorbed was sufficient to bestow upon her an angry consciousness of her own invincible ignorance.

Meanwhile, Miss Ramsbotham had continued upon her course of rejuvenation. At twenty-nine she had looked thirty-five; at thirty-two she looked not a day older than five-and-twenty. Bohemia felt that should she retrograde further at the same rate she would soon have to shorten her frocks and let down her hair. A nervous excitability had taken possession of her that was playing strange freaks not only with her body, but with her mind. What it gave to the one it seemed to take from the other. Old friends, accustomed to enjoy with her the luxury of plain speech, wondered in vain what they had done to offend her. Her desire was now towards new friends, new faces. Her sense of humour appeared to be departing from her; it became unsafe to jest with her. On the other hand, she showed herself greedy for admiration and flattery. Her former chums stepped back astonished to watch brainless young fops making their way with her by complimenting her upon her blouse, or whispering to her some trite nonsense about her eyelashes. From her work she took a good percentage of her brain power to bestow it on her clothes. Of course, she was successful. Her dresses suited her, showed her to the best advantage. Beautiful she could never be, and had sense enough to know it; but a charming, distinguished-looking woman she had already become. Also, she was on the high road to becoming a vain, egotistical, commonplace woman.

It was during the process of this, her metamorphosis, that Peter Hope one evening received a note from her announcing her intention of visiting him the next morning at the editorial office of Good Humour. She added in a postscript that she would prefer the interview to be private.

Punctually to the time appointed Miss Ramsbotham arrived. Miss Ramsbotham, contrary to her custom, opened conversation with the weather. Miss Ramsbotham was of opinion that there was every possibility of rain. Peter Hope's experience was that there was always possibility of rain.

"How is the Paper doing?" demanded Miss Ramsbotham.

The Paper--for a paper not yet two years old--was doing well. "We expect very shortly--very shortly indeed," explained Peter Hope, "to turn the corner."

"Ah! that 'corner,'" sympathised Miss Ramsbotham.

"I confess," smiled Peter Hope, "it doesn't seem to be exactly a right-angled corner. One reaches it as one thinks. But it takes some getting round--what I should describe as a cornery corner."

"What you want," thought Miss Ramsbotham, "are one or two popular features."

"Popular features," agreed Peter guardedly, scenting temptation, "are not to be despised, provided one steers clear of the vulgar and the commonplace."

"A Ladies' Page!" suggested Miss Ramsbotham--"a page that should make the woman buy it. The women, believe me, are going to be of more and more importance to the weekly press."

"But why should she want a special page to herself?" demanded Peter Hope. "Why should not the paper as a whole appeal to her?"

"It doesn't," was all Miss Ramsbotham could offer in explanation.

"We give her literature and the drama, poetry, fiction, the higher politics, the--"

"I know, I know," interrupted Miss Ramsbotham, who of late, among other failings new to her, had developed a tendency towards impatience; "but she gets all that in half a dozen other papers. I have thought it out." Miss Ramsbotham leaned further across the editorial desk and sunk her voice unconsciously to a confidential whisper. "Tell her the coming fashions. Discuss the question whether hat or bonnet makes you look the younger. Tell her whether red hair or black is to be the new colour, what size waist is being worn by the best people. Oh, come!" laughed Miss Ramsbotham in answer to Peter's shocked expression; "one cannot reform the world and human nature all at once. You must appeal to people's folly in order to get them to listen to your wisdom. Make your paper a success first. You can make it a power afterwards."

"But," argued Peter, "there are already such papers--papers devoted to--to that sort of thing, and to nothing else."

"At sixpence!" replied the practical Miss Ramsbotham. "I am thinking of the lower middle-class woman who has twenty pounds a year to spend on dress, and who takes twelve hours a day to think about it, poor creature. My dear friend, there is a fortune in it. Think of the advertisements."