It may seem foolish to suppose that any one could derive amusement from a day so idly spent, but those who risk this assumption labour under the misfortune of not having known Toole. His gaiety, when he was in the right mood, was infectious and irresistible, and yet, like all men of such exuberant high spirits, he was subject at times to moods of the deepest depression, moods which grew upon him in those sadder and later days of his life when he was deprived of the constant companionship of his comrades, which meant to him all in all. But even his most sorrowful moments sometimes yielded, on the sudden call of a remembered incident, to a quick recovery of the laughter that he loved, and the unpremeditated juxtaposition of feelings which he exhibited on such occasions was sometimes almost grotesque in their contrast.
I remember on the death of his wife he asked me if I would drive with him to the funeral, and I called for him at his house in Maida Vale, where we sat silently side by side in the little room adjoining the hall awaiting the arrival of the carriage. The tears were slowly coursing down his cheek, and I knew that many painful memories were thronging his brain, for his son and his daughter had already passed away, and by this final loss the last link with his domestic life was severed. And yet suddenly, as we were sitting there, a smile flitted across his face, and a laughing light came into those affectionate brown eyes that only a moment before had been filled with tears.
“I don’t know why it has come into my mind now, Joe,” he said; “I suppose it ought not to, but I must tell you. I was having dinner once at Dumfries in a company of commercial travellers, and before the covers were removed the chairman rose and said, ‘Mr. Macfarlane, as you are nearest the window, perhaps you will ask God’s blessing on this feast.’”
This little incident may be taken as entirely typical of the man, typical of his absolute simplicity, of his total inability to range his feelings with the ordered decorum which conventional propriety demands. In another moment he was back again amid the more painful memories of his life, and within a few minutes we were on our way to the cemetery.
Numberless occasions of idle hours spent in Toole’s company I could recall, but they must all be shorn of the presence of the comedian himself, whose incomparable temperament as a humorist gave them point and zest. One day I remember, a day of an early spring, he had a fancy that we should journey towards Hampstead, and accordingly we drove till we reached the well-known tea-gardens of the Spaniard’s Inn on the road towards Highgate. The gardens were deserted, and a bleak wind was blowing through the empty bowers, inhabited on that morning only by a little boy who, with a small and, as it seemed to us, inadequate little broom, was dusting the seats in preparation for the influx of visitors that would come later in the season.
This small boy was of almost forbidding mien and decidedly surly in manner, but these external evidences of discouragement seemed only to fire Toole in his desire to make his better acquaintance. He complimented the urchin upon his dexterous use of the broom, a compliment to which the surly boy vouchsafed no audible reply. Toole, entirely undaunted, persisted in his overtures of friendship.
“That’s right, my lad,” he cried, “use your broom, and when you go to bed at night hang it up by the side of your bed.”
This injunction, so entirely unsolicited, seemed to rouse the boy’s ire, and his dormant powers of speech suddenly returning, he inquired of Toole, in tones that were almost indignant, “Why should I?”
“Because,” answered Toole, with a persuasive manner that seemed to convey a convincing argument, “if by chance you should wake in the night, there’s your little broom.”
The boy, to do him justice, seemed by no means appeased by this obvious explanation, and reverted again to his aimless occupation of dusting the vacant seats of the untenanted bowers of the tea-gardens. Whereupon Toole, still undefeated, attacked the citadel from another quarter.