There is my new spring suit, too. A beautiful suit it was, and now it is hanging up so bespattered with mud I can’t bear to look at it.
That was Jim’s fault, that was. I should never have gone out in it that night if it had not been for him. I was just trying it on when he came in. He threw up his arms with a wild yell the moment be caught sight of it, and exclaimed that he had “got ’em again!”
I said: “Does it fit all right behind?”
“Spiffin, old man,” he replied. And then he wanted to know if I was coming out.
I said “no” at first, but he overruled me. He said that a man with a suit like that bad no right to stop indoors. “Every citizen,” said he, “owes a duty to the public. Each one should contribute to the general happiness as far as lies in his power. Come out and give the girls a treat.”
Jim is slangy. I don’t know where he picks it up. It certainly is not from me.
I said: “Do you think it will really please ’em?” He said it would be like a day in the country to them.
That decided me.[9] It was a lovely evening and I went.
When I got home I undressed and rubbed myself down with whisky, put my feet in hot water and a mustard-plaster on my chest, had a basin of gruel and a glass of hot brandy-and-water, tallowed my nose, and went to bed.
These prompt and vigorous measures, aided by a naturally strong constitution, were the means of preserving my life; but as for the suit! Well, there, it isn’t a suit; it’s a splash-board.
And I did fancy that suit, too. But that’s just the way. I never do get particularly fond of anything in this world but what something dreadful happens to it. I had a tame rat when I was a boy, and I loved that animal as only a boy would love an old water-rat; and one day it fell into a large dish of gooseberry-fool that was standing to cool in the kitchen, and nobody knew what had become of the poor creature until the second helping[10].
I do hate wet weather in town. At least, it is not so much the wet as the mud that I object to. Somehow or other I seem to possess an irresistible alluring power over mud. I have only to show myself in the street on a muddy day to be half-smothered by it. It all comes of being so attractive[11], as the old lady said when she was struck by lightning. Other people can go out on dirty days and walk about for hours without getting a speck upon themselves; while if I go across the road I come back a perfect disgrace to be seen (as in my boyish days my poor dear mother tried often to tell me). If there were only one dab of mud to be found in the whole of London, I am convinced I should carry it off from all competitors.
I wish I could return the affection, but I fear I never shall be able to. I have a horror of what they call the “London particular.” I feel miserable and muggy all through a dirty day, and it is quite a relief to pull one’s clothes off and get into bed, out of the way of it all. Everything goes wrong in wet weather. I don’t know how it is, but there always seem to me to be more people, and dogs, and perambulators, and cabs, and carts about in wet weather than at any other time, and they all get in your way more, and everybody is so disagreeable[12] – except myself – and it does make me so wild. And then, too, somehow I always find myself carrying more things in wet weather than in dry; and when you have a bag, and three parcels, and a newspaper, and it suddenly comes on to rain, you can’t open your umbrella.
Which reminds me of another phase of the weather that I can’t bear, and that is April weather (so called because it always comes in May). Poets think it very nice. As it does not know its own mind five minutes together[13], they liken it to a woman; and it is supposed to be very charming on that account. I don’t appreciate it, myself. Such lightning-change business may be all very agreeable in a girl. It is no doubt highly delightful to have to do with a person who grins one moment about nothing at all, and snivels the next for precisely the same cause, and who then giggles, and then sulks, and who is rude, and affectionate, and bad-tempered, and jolly, and boisterous, and silent, and passionate, and cold, and stand-offish, and flopping, all in one minute (mind, I don’t say this. It is those poets. And they are supposed to be connoisseurs of this sort of thing); but in the weather the disadvantages of the system are more apparent. A woman’s tears do not make one wet, but the rain does; and her coldness does not lay the foundations of asthma and rheumatism, as the east wind is apt to. I can prepare for and put up with a regularly bad day, but these ha’porth-of-all-sorts kind[14] of days do not suit me. It aggravates me to see a bright blue sky above me when I am walking along wet through, and there is something so exasperating about the way the sun comes out smiling after a drenching shower, and seems to say: “Lord love you, you don’t mean to say you’re wet? Well, I am surprised. Why, it was only my fun.”
They don’t give you time to open or shut your umbrella in an English April, especially if it is an “automaton” one – the umbrella, I mean, not the April.
I bought an “automaton” once in April, and I did have a time with it! I wanted an umbrella, and I went into a shop in the Strand and told them so, and they said:
“Yes, sir. What sort of an umbrella would you like?”
I said I should like one that would keep the rain off, and that would not allow itself to be left behind in a railway carriage.
“Try an ‘automaton,’” said the shopman.
“What’s an ‘automaton’?” said I.
“Oh, it’s a beautiful arrangement,” replied the man, with a touch of enthusiasm. “It opens and shuts itself.”
I bought one and found that he was quite correct. It did open and shut itself. I had no control over it whatever. When it began to rain, which it did that season every alternate five minutes, I used to try and get the machine to open, but it would not budge; and then I used to stand and struggle with the wretched thing, and shake it, and swear at it, while the rain poured down in torrents. Then the moment the rain ceased the absurd thing would go up suddenly with a jerk and would not come down again; and I had to walk about under a bright blue sky, with an umbrella over my head, wishing that it would come on to rain again, so that it might not seem that I was insane.
When it did shut it did so unexpectedly and knocked one’s hat off.
I don’t know why it should be so, but it is an undeniable fact that there is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losing his hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one’s back on suddenly becoming aware that one’s head is bare is among the most bitter ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the wild chase after it[15], accompanied by an excitable small dog, who thinks it is a game, and in the course of which you are certain to upset three or four innocent children – to say nothing of their mothers – butt a fat old gentleman on to the top of a perambulator, and carom off a ladies’ seminary into the arms of a wet sweep.
After this, the idiotic hilarity of the spectators and the disreputable appearance of the hat when recovered appear but of minor importance.
Altogether, what between March winds, April showers, and the entire absence of May flowers, spring is not a success in cities[16]. It is all very well in the country, as I have said, but in towns whose population is anything over ten thousand it most certainly ought to be abolished. In the world’s grim workshops it is like the children – out of place. Neither shows to advantage amid the dust and din. It seems so sad to see the little dirt-grimed brats try to play in the noisy courts and muddy streets. Poor little uncared-for, unwanted human atoms, they are not children. Children are bright-eyed, chubby, and shy. These are dingy, screeching elves, their tiny faces seared and withered, their baby laughter cracked and hoarse.
11
It all comes of being so attractive – (
13
it does not know its own mind five minutes together – (
14
ha’porth-of-all-sorts kind – (