Jerome Jerome - They and I

"Well, then, it was his fault," argued Robina. "If he was silly enough to like her faults, and encourage her in them―"

"What could he have done," I asked, "even if he had seen them? A lover does not point out his mistress's shortcomings to her."

"Much the more sensible plan if he did," insisted Robina. "Then if she cared for him she could set to work to cure herself."

"You would like it?" I said; "you would appreciate it in your own case? Can you imagine young Bute―?"

"Why young Bute?" demanded Robina; "what's he got to do with it?"

"Nothing," I answered; "except that he happens to be the first male creature you have ever come across since you were six that you haven't flirted with."

"I don't flirt with them," said Robina; "I merely try to be nice to them."

"With the exception of young Bute," I persisted.

"He irritates me," Robina explained.

"I was reading," I said, "the other day, an account of the marriage customs prevailing among the Lower Caucasians. The lover takes his stand beneath his lady's window, and, having attracted her attention, proceeds to sing. And if she seems to like it―if she listens to it without getting mad, that means she doesn't want him. But if she gets upset about it―slams down the window and walks away, then it's all right. I think it's the Lower Caucasians."

"Must be a very silly people," said Robina; "I suppose a pail of water would be the highest proof of her affection he could hope for."

"A complex being, man," I agreed. "We will call him X. Can you imagine young X coming to you and saying: 'My dear Robina, you have many excellent qualities. You can be amiable―so long as you are having your own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just horrid. You are very kind―to those who are willing for you to be kind to them in your own way, which is not always their way. You can be quite unselfish―when you happen to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent. You are capable and clever, but, like most capable and clever people, impatient and domineering; highly energetic when not feeling lazy; ready to forgive the moment your temper is exhausted. You are generous and frank, but if your object could only be gained through meanness or deceit you would not hesitate a moment longer than was necessary to convince yourself that the circumstances justified the means. You are sympathetic, tender-hearted, and have a fine sense of justice; but I can see that tongue of yours, if not carefully watched, wearing decidedly shrewish. You have any amount of grit. A man might go tiger-hunting with you―with no one better; but you are obstinate, conceited, and exacting. In short, to sum you up, you have all the makings in you of an ideal wife combined with faults sufficient to make a Socrates regret he'd ever married you.'"

"Yes, I would!" said Robina, springing to her feet. I could not see her face, but I knew there was the look upon it that made Primgate want to paint her as Joan of Arc; only it would never stop long enough. "I'd love him for talking like that. And I'd respect him. If he was that sort of man I'd pray God to help me to be the sort of woman he wanted me to be. I'd try. I'd try all day long. I would!"

"I wonder," I said. Robina had surprised me. I admit it. I thought I knew the sex better.

"Any girl would," said Robina. "He'd be worth it."

"It would be a new idea," I mused. "Gott im Himmel! what a new world might it not create!" The fancy began to take hold of me. "Love no longer blind. Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool―sport of gods and men. Love no longer passion's slave. His bonds broken, the senseless bandage flung aside. Love helping life instead of muddling it. Marriage, the foundation of civilisation, no longer reared upon the sands of lies and illusions, but grappled to the rock of truth―reality. Have you ever read 'Tom Jones?'" I said.

"No," answered Robina; "I've always heard it wasn't a nice book."

"It isn't," I said. "Man isn't a nice animal, not all of him. Nor woman either. There's a deal of the beast in man. What can you expect? Till a few paltry thousands of years ago he WAS a beast, fighting with other beasts, his fellow denizens of the woods and caves; watching for his prey, crouched in the long grass of the river's bank, tearing it with claws and teeth, growling as he ate. So he lived and died through the dim unnamed ages, transmitting his beast's blood, his bestial instincts, to his offspring, growing ever stronger, fiercer, from generation to generation, while the rocks piled up their strata and the oceans shaped their beds. Moses! Why, Lord Rothschild's great-grandfather, a few score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with him. Babylon! It is a modern city, fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to alteration of traffic routes. History! it is a tale of to-day. Man was crawling about the world on all fours, learning to be an animal for millions of years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him. It is only during the last few centuries that he has been trying to be a man. Our modern morality! Why, compared with the teachings of nature, it is but a few days old. What do you expect? That he shall forget the lessons of the aeons at the bidding of the hours?"

"Then you advise me to read 'Tom Jones'?" said Robina.

"Yes," I said, "I do. I should not if I thought you were still a child, knowing only blind trust, or blind terror. The sun is not extinguished because occasionally obscured by mist; the scent of the rose is not dead because of the worm in the leaf. A healthy rose can afford a few worms―has got to, anyhow. All men are not Tom Joneses. The standard of masculine behaviour continues to go up: many of us make fine efforts to conform to it, and some of us succeed. But the Tom Jones is there in all of us who are not anaemic or consumptive. And there's no sense at all in getting cross with us about it, because we cannot help it. We are doing our best. In another hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes well, we shall be the perfect man. And seeing our early training, I flatter myself that, up to the present, we have done remarkably well."

"Nothing like being satisfied with oneself," said Robina.

"I'm not satisfied," I said; "I'm only hopeful. But it irritates me when I hear people talk as though man had been born a white-souled angel and was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner. That seems to me the way to discourage him. What he wants is bucking up; somebody to say to him, 'Bravo! why, this is splendid! Just think, my boy, what you were, and that not so very long ago―an unwashed, hairy savage; your law that of the jungle, your morals those of the rabbit-warren. Now look at yourself―dressed in your little shiny hat, your trousers neatly creased, walking with your wife to church on Sunday! Keep on―that's all you've got to do. In a few more centuries your own mother Nature won't know you.

"You women," I continued; "why, a handful of years ago we bought and sold you, kept you in cages, took the stick to you when you were not spry in doing what you were told. Did you ever read the history of Patient Griselda?"

"Yes," said Robina, "I have." I gathered from her tone that the Joan of Arc expression had departed. Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that particular moment I should have suggested Katherine―during the earlier stages―listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio. "Are you suggesting that all women should take her for a model?"

"No," I said, "I'm not. Though were we living in Chaucer's time I might; and you would not think it even silly. What I'm impressing upon you is that the human race has yet a little way to travel before the average man can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King Arthur―the King Arthur of the poetical legend, I mean. Don't be too impatient with him."