Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green

Transcribed from the 1920 J. W. Arrowsmith edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
by JEROME K. JEROME author of “three men in a boat” “three men on the bummel,” “novel notes” “the idle thoughts of an idle fellow,” etc.
BRISTOL J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Quay Street LONDON Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Limited 1920
Contents:
Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad An item of Fashionable Intelligence Blasé Billy The Choice of Cyril Harjohn The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway Portrait of a Lady The Man Who Would Manage The Man Who Lived For Others A Man of Habit The Absent-minded Man A Charming Woman Whibley’s Spirit The Man Who Went Wrong The Hobby Rider The Man Who Did Not Believe In Luck Dick Dunkerman’s Cat The Minor Poet’s Story The Degeneration of Thomas Henry The City of The Sea Driftwood
La-ven-der’s blue, did-dle, did-dle! La-ven-der’s green; When I am king, did-dle, did-dle! You shall be queen. Call up your men, did-dle, did-dle! Set them to work; Some to the plough, did-dle, did-dle! Some to the cart. Some to make hay, did-dle, did-dle! Some to cut corn; While you and I, did-dle, did-dle! Keep ourselves warm.
The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently. Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible. Reginald Blake was as typical a specimen of the well-bred cad as one could hope to find between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner. Vicious without passion, and possessing brain without mind, existence presented to him no difficulties, while his pleasures brought him no pains. His morality was bounded by the doctor on the one side, and the magistrate on the other. Careful never to outrage the decrees of either, he was at forty-five still healthy, though stout; and had achieved the not too easy task of amassing a fortune while avoiding all risk of Holloway. He and his wife, Edith ( née Eppington), were as ill-matched a couple as could be conceived by any dramatist seeking material for a problem play. As they stood before the altar on their wedding morn, they might have been taken as symbolising satyr and saint. More than twenty years his junior, beautiful with the beauty of a Raphael’s Madonna, his every touch of her seemed a sacrilege. Yet once in his life Mr. Blake played the part of a great gentleman; Mrs. Blake, on the same occasion, contenting herself with a singularly mean rôle —mean even for a woman in love.