The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

by Jerome K. Jerome

The change from joy to grief on the part of Dorothea was distinctly dramatic. Even Smith, accustomed to storm, was nonplussed at the suddenness of the attack upon him.

Dorothea’s sorrow lasted longer than I had expected. I promised her another doll. But it seemed she did not want another; that was the only doll she would ever care for so long as life lasted; no other doll could ever take its place; no other doll would be to her what that doll had been. These little people are so absurd: as if it could matter whether you loved one doll or another, when all are so much alike! They have curly hair, and pink-and-white complexions, big eyes that open and shut, a little red mouth, two little hands. Yet these foolish little people! they will love one, while another they will not look upon. I find the best plan is not to reason with them, but to sympathize. Later on—but not too soon—introduce to them another doll. They will not care for it at first, but in time they will come to take an interest in it. Of course, it cannot make them forget the first doll; no doll ever born in Lowther Arcadia could be as that, but still— It is many weeks before they forget entirely the first love.

We buried Dolly in the country under the yew tree. A friend of mine who plays the fiddle came down on purpose to assist. We buried her in the hot spring sunshine, while the birds from shady nooks sang joyously of life and love. And our chief mourner cried real tears, just for all the world as though it were not the fate of dolls, sooner or later, to get broken—the little fragile things, made for an hour, to be dressed and kissed; then, paintless and stript, to be thrown aside on the nursery floor. Poor little dolls! I wonder do they take themselves seriously, not knowing the springs that stir their sawdust bosoms are but clockwork, not seeing the wires to which they dance? Poor little marionettes! do they talk together, I wonder, when the lights of the booth are out?

You, little sister doll, were the heroine. You lived in the white-washed cottage, all honeysuckle and clematis without—earwiggy and damp within, maybe. How pretty you always looked in your simple, neatly-fitting print dress. How good you were! How nobly you bore your poverty. How patient you were under your many wrongs. You never harboured an evil thought, a revengeful wish—never, little doll? Were there never moments when you longed to play the wicked woman’s part, live in a room with many doors, be-clad in furs and jewels, with lovers galore at your feet? In those long winter evenings? the household work is done—the greasy dishes washed, the floor scrubbed; the excellent child is asleep in the corner; the one-and-elevenpenny lamp sheds its dismal light on the darned table-cloth; you sit, busy at your coarse sewing, waiting for Hero Dick, knowing—guessing, at least, where he is—! Yes, dear, I remember your fine speeches, when you told her, in stirring language the gallery cheered to the echo, what you thought of her and of such women as she; when, lifting your hand to heaven, you declared you were happier in your attic, working your fingers to the bone, than she in her gilded salon—I think “gilded salon” was the term, was it not?—furnished by sin. But speaking of yourself, weak little sister doll, not of your fine speeches, the gallery listening, did you not, in your secret heart, envy her? Did you never, before blowing out the one candle, stand for a minute in front of the cracked glass, and think to yourself that you, too, would look well in low-cut dresses from Paris, the diamonds flashing on your white smooth skin? Did you never, toiling home through the mud, bearing your bundle of needlework, feel bitter with the wages of virtue, as she splashed you, passing by in her carriage? Alone, over your cup of weak tea, did you never feel tempted to pay the price for champagne suppers, and gaiety, and admiration? Ah, yes, it is easy for folks who have had their good time, to prepare copybooks for weary little inkstained fingers, longing for play. The fine maxims sound such cant when we are in that mood, do they not? You, too, were young and handsome: did the author of the play think you were never hungry for the good things of life? Did he think that reading tracts to crotchety old women was joy to a full-blooded girl in her twenties? Why should she have all the love, and all the laughter? How fortunate that the villain, the Wicked Baronet, never opened the cottage door at that moment, eh, dear! He always came when you were strong, when you felt that you could denounce him, and scorn his temptations. Would that the villain came to all of us at such time; then we would all, perhaps, be heroes and heroines.

Ah well, it was only a play: it is over now. You and I, little tired dolls, lying here side by side, waiting to know our next part, we can look back and laugh. Where is she, this wicked dolly, that made such a stir on our tiny stage? Ah, here you are, Madam; I thought you could not be far; they have thrown us all into this corner together. But how changed you are, Dolly: your paint rubbed off, your golden hair worn to a wisp. No wonder; it was a trying part you had to play. How tired you must have grown of the glare and the glitter! And even hope was denied you. The peace you so longed for you knew you had lost the power to enjoy. Like the girl bewitched in the fairy tale, you knew you must dance ever faster and faster, with limbs growing palsied, with face growing ashen, and hair growing grey, till Death should come to release you; and your only prayer was he might come ere your dancing grew comic.

Like the smell of the roses to Nancy, hawking them through the hot streets, must the stifling atmosphere of love have been to you. The song of passion, how monotonous in your ears, sung now by the young and now by the old; now shouted, now whined, now shrieked; but ever the one strident tune. Do you remember when first you heard it? You dreamt it the morning hymn of Heaven. You came to think it the dance music of Hell, ground from a cracked hurdy-gurdy, lent out by the Devil on hire.

An evil race we must have seemed to you, Dolly Faustine, as to some Old Bailey lawyer. You saw but one side of us. You lived in a world upside down, where the leaves and the blossoms were hidden, and only the roots saw your day. You imagined the worm-beslimed fibres the plant, and all things beautiful you deemed cant. Chivalry, love, honour! how you laughed at the lying words. You knew the truth—as you thought: aye, half the truth. We were swine while your spell was upon us, Daughter of Circe, and you, not knowing your island secret, deemed it our natural shape.

No wonder, Dolly, your battered waxen face is stamped with an angry sneer. The Hero, who eventually came into his estates amid the plaudits of the Pit, while you were left to die in the streets! you remembered, but the house had forgotten those earlier scenes in always wicked Paris. The good friend of the family, the breezy man of the world, the Deus ex Machina of the play, who was so good to everybody, whom everybody loved! aye, you loved him once—but that was in the Prologue. In the Play proper, he was respectable. (How you loathed that word, that meant to you all you vainly longed for!) To him the Prologue was a period past and dead; a memory, giving flavour to his life. To you, it was the First Act of the Play, shaping all the others. His sins the house had forgotten: at yours, they held up their hands in horror. No wonder the sneer lies on your waxen lips.

Never mind, Dolly; it was a stupid house. Next time, perhaps, you will play a better part; and then they will cheer, instead of hissing you. You were wasted, I am inclined to think, on modern comedy. You should have been cast for the heroine of some old-world tragedy. The strength of character, the courage, the power of self-forgetfulness, the enthusiasm were yours: it was the part that was lacking. You might have worn the mantle of a Judith, a Boadicea, or a Jeanne d’Arc, had such plays been popular in your time. Perhaps they, had they played in your day, might have had to be content with such a part as yours. They could not have played the meek heroine, and what else would there have been for them in modern drama? Catherine of Russia! had she been a waiter’s daughter in the days of the Second Empire, should we have called her Great? The Magdalene! had her lodging in those days been in some bye-street of Rome instead of in Jerusalem, should we mention her name in our churches?

You were necessary, you see, Dolly, to the piece. We cannot all play heroes and heroines. There must be wicked people in the play, or it would not interest. Think of it, Dolly, a play where all the women were virtuous, all the men honest! We might close the booth; the world would be as dull as an oyster-bed. Without you wicked folk there would be no good. How should we have known and honoured the heroine’s worth, but by contrast with your worthlessness? Where would have been her fine speeches, but for you to listen to them? Where lay the hero’s strength, but in resisting temptation of you? Had not you and the Wicked Baronet between you robbed him of his estates, falsely accused him of crime, he would have lived to the end of the play an idle, unheroic, incomplete existence. You brought him down to poverty; you made him earn his own bread—a most excellent thing for him; gave him the opportunity to play the man. But for your conduct in the Prologue, of what value would have been that fine scene at the end of the Third Act, that stirred the house to tears and laughter? You and your accomplice, the Wicked Baronet, made the play possible. How would Pit and Gallery have known they were virtuous, but for the indignation that came to them, watching your misdeeds? Pity, sympathy, excitement, all that goes to the making of a play, you were necessary for. It was ungrateful of the house to hiss you.