章节正文
Sometimes the servant-girl is good and faithful, and then she is
Irish. All good servant-girls on the stage are Irish.
All the male visitors are expected to kiss the stage servant-girl when
they come into the house, and to dig her in the ribs and to say: "Do
you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice girl--click." They
always say this, and she likes it.
Many years ago, when we were young, we thought we would see if things
were the same off the stage, and the next time we called at a certain
friend's house we tried this business on.
She wasn't quite so dazzlingly beautiful as they are on the stage, but
we passed that. She showed us up into the drawing-room, and then said
she would go and tell her mistress we were there.
We felt this was the time to begin. We skipped between her and the
door. We held our hat in front of us, cocked our head on one side,
and said: "Don't go! don't go!"
The girl seemed alarmed. We began to get a little nervous ourselves,
but we had begun it and we meant to go through with it.
We said, "Do you know, Jane" (her name wasn't Jane, but that wasn't
our fault), "do you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice
girl," and we said "click," and dug her in the ribs with our elbow,
and then chucked her under the chin. The whole thing seemed to fall
flat. There was nobody there to laugh or applaud. We wished we
hadn't done it. It seemed stupid when you came to think of it. We
began to feel frightened. The business wasn't going as we expected;
but we screwed up our courage and went on.
We put on the customary expression of comic imbecility and beckoned
the girl to us. We have never seen this fail on the stage.
But this girl seemed made wrong. She got behind the sofa and screamed
"Help!"
We have never known them to do this on the stage, and it threw us out
in our plans. We did not know exactly what to do. We regretted that
we had ever begun this job and heartily wished ourselves out of it.
But it appeared foolish to pause then, when we were more than half-way
through, and we made a rush to get it over.
We chivvied the girl round the sofa and caught her near the door and
kissed her. She scratched our face, yelled police, murder, and fire,
and fled from the room.
Our friend came in almost immediately. He said:
"I say, J., old man, are you drunk?"
We told him no, that we were only a student of the drama. His wife
then entered in a toweringpassion. She didn't ask us if we were
drunk. She said:
"How dare you come here in this state!"
We endeavored unsuccessfully to induce her to believe that we were
sober, and we explained that our course of conduct was what was always
pursued on the stage.
She said she didn't care what was done on the stage, it wasn't going
to be pursued in her house; and that if her husband's friends couldn't
behave as gentlemen they had better stop away.
The following morning we received a letter from a firm of solicitors
in Lincoln's Inn with reference, so they put it, to the brutal and
unprovoked assault committed by us on the previous afternoon upon the
person of their client, Miss Matilda Hemmings. The letter stated that
we had punched Miss Hemmings in the side, struck her under the chin,
and afterward, seizing her as she was leaving the room, proceeded to
commit a gross assault, into the particulars of which it was needless
for them to enter at greater length.
It added that if we were prepared to render an ample written apology
and to pay 50 pounds compensation, they would advise their client,
Miss Matilda Hemmings, to allow the matter to drop; otherwise criminal
proceedings would at once be commenced against us.
We took the letter to our own solicitors and explained the
circumstances to them. They said it seemed to be a very sad case, but
advised us to pay the 50 pounds, and we borrowed the money and did so.
Since then we have lost faith, somehow, in the British drama as a
guide to the conduct of life.
THE CHILD.
It is nice and quiet and it talks prettily.
We have come across real infants now and then in the course of visits
to married friends; they have been brought to us from outlying parts
of the house and introduced to us for our edification; and we have
found them gritty and sticky. Their boots have usually been muddy,
and they have wiped them up against our new trousers. And their hair
has suggested the idea that they have been standing on their heads in
the dust-bin.
And they have talked to us--but not prettily, not at all--rather rude
we should call it.
But the stage child is very different. It is clean and tidy. You can
touch it anywhere and nothing comes off. Its face glows with soap and
water. From the appearance of its hands it is evident that mud-pies
and tar are joys unknown to it. As for its hair, there is something
uncanny about its smoothness and respectability. Even its boot-laces
are done up.
We have never seen anything like the stage child outside a theater
excepting one--that was on the pavement in front of a tailor's shop in
Tottenham Court Road. He stood on a bit of round wood, and it was
fifteen and nine, his style.
We thought in our ignorance prior to this that there could not be
anything in the world like the stage child, but you see we were
mistaken.
The stage child is affectionate to its parents and its nurse and is
respectful in its demeanor toward those whom Providence has placed in
authority over it; and so far it is certainly much to be preferred to
the real article. It speaks of its male and female progenitors as
"dear, dear papa" and "dear, dear mamma," and it refers to its nurse
as "darling nursey." We are connected with a youthful child
ourselves--a real one--a nephew. He alludes to his father (when his
father is not present) as "the old man," and always calls the nurse
"old nut-crackers." Why cannot they make real children who say "dear,
dear mamma" and "dear, dear papa?"
The stage child is much superior to the live infant in every way. The
stage child does not go rampaging about a house and screeching and
yelling till nobody knows whether they are on their heads or their
heels.
A stage child does not get up at five o'clock in the morning to
practice playing on a penny whistle. A stage child never wants a
bicycle and drives you mad about it. A stage child does not ask
twenty complicated questions a minute about things that you don't
understand, and then wind up by asking why you don't seem to know
anything, and why wouldn't anybody teach you anything when you were a
little boy.
The stage child does not wear a hole in the seat of its knickerbockers
and have to have a patch let in. The stage child comes downstairs on
its feet.
The stage child never brings home six other children to play at horses
in the front garden, and then wants to know if they can all come in to
tea. The stage child never has the wooping-cough, and the measles,
and every other disease that it can lay its hands on, and be laid up
with them one after the other and turn the house upside down.
The stage child's department in the scheme of life is to harrow up its
mother's feelings by ill-timed and uncalled-for questions about its
father. It always wants to know, before a roomful of people, where
"dear papa" is, and why he has left dear mamma; when, as all the
guests know, the poor man is doing his two years' hard or waiting to
be hanged. It makes everybody so uncomfortable.
It is always harrowing up somebody--the stage child; it really ought
not to be left about as it is. When it has done upsetting its mother
it fishes out some broken-hearted maid, who has just been cruelly
severed forever from her lover, and asks her in a high falsetto voice
why she doesn't get married, and prattles to her about love, and
domestic bliss, and young men, and any other subject it can think of
particularly calculated to lacerate the poor girl's heart until her
brain nearly gives way.
After that it runs amuck up and down the whole play and makes
everybody sit up all round. It asks eminently respectable old maids
if they wouldn't like to have a baby; and it wants to know why
bald-headed old men have left off wearing hair, and why other old
gentlemen have red noses and if they were always that color.
In some plays it so happens that the less said about the origin and
source of the stage child the better; and in such cases nothing will
appear so important to that contrary brat as to know, in the middle of
an evening-party, who its father was!
Everybody loves the stage child. They catch it up in their bosoms
every other minute and weep over it. They take it in turns to do
this.
Nobody--on the stage, we mean--ever has enough of the stage child.
Nobody ever tells the stage child to "shut up" or to "get out of
this." Nobody ever clumps the stage child over the head.
When the real child goes to the theater it must notice these things
and wish it were a stage child.
The stage child is much admired by the audience. Its pathos makes
them weep; its tragedy thrills them; its declamation--as for instance
when it takes the center of the stage and says it will kill the wicked
man, and the police, and everybody who hurts its mar--stirs them like
a trumpet note; and its light comedy is generally held to be the most
truly humorous thing in the whole range of dramatic art.
But there are some people so strangely constituted that they do not
appreciate the stage child; they do not comprehend its uses; they do
not understand its beauties. We should not be angry with them. We
should the rather pity them.
We ourselves had a friend once who suffered from this misfortune. He
was a married man, and Providence had been very gracious, very good to
him: he had been blessed with eleven children, and they were all
growing up well and strong.
The "baby" was eleven weeks old, and then came the twins, who were
getting on for fifteen months and were cutting their double teeth
nicely. The youngest girl was three; there were five boys aged seven,
eight, nine, ten, and twelve respectively--good enough lads,
but--well, there, boys will be boys, you know; we were just the same
ourselves when we were young. The two eldest were both very pleasant
girls, as their mother said; the only pity was that they would quarrel
so with each other.
We never knew a healthier set of boys and girls. They were so full of
energy and dash.
Our friend was very much out of sorts one evening when we called on
him. It was holiday-time and wet weather. He had been at home all
day, and so had all the children. He was telling his wife when we
entered the room that if the holidays were to last much longer and
those twins did not hurry up and get their teeth quickly, he should
have to go away and join the County Council. He could not stand the
racket.
His wife said she could not see what he had to complain of. She was
sure better-hearted children no man could have.
Our friend said he didn't care a straw about their hearts. It was
their legs and arms and lungs that were driving him crazy.
He also said that he would go out with us and get away from it for a
bit, or he should go mad.
He proposed a theater, and we accordingly made our way toward the
Strand. Our friend, in closing the door behind him, said he could not
tell us what a relief it was to get away from those children. He said
he loved children very much indeed, but that it was a mistake to have
too much of anything, however much you liked it, and that he had come
to the conclusion that twenty-two hours a day of them was enough for
any one.
He said he did not want to see another child or hear another child
until he got home. He wanted to forget that there were such things as
children in the world.
We got up to the Strand and dropped into the first theater we came to.
The curtain went up, and on the stage was a small child standing in
its nightshirt and screaming for its mother.
Our friend looked, said one word and bolted, and we followed.
Irish. All good servant-girls on the stage are Irish.
All the male visitors are expected to kiss the stage servant-girl when
they come into the house, and to dig her in the ribs and to say: "Do
you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice girl--click." They
always say this, and she likes it.
Many years ago, when we were young, we thought we would see if things
were the same off the stage, and the next time we called at a certain
friend's house we tried this business on.
She wasn't quite so dazzlingly beautiful as they are on the stage, but
we passed that. She showed us up into the drawing-room, and then said
she would go and tell her mistress we were there.
We felt this was the time to begin. We skipped between her and the
door. We held our hat in front of us, cocked our head on one side,
and said: "Don't go! don't go!"
The girl seemed alarmed. We began to get a little nervous ourselves,
but we had begun it and we meant to go through with it.
We said, "Do you know, Jane" (her name wasn't Jane, but that wasn't
our fault), "do you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice
girl," and we said "click," and dug her in the ribs with our elbow,
and then chucked her under the chin. The whole thing seemed to fall
flat. There was nobody there to laugh or applaud. We wished we
hadn't done it. It seemed stupid when you came to think of it. We
began to feel frightened. The business wasn't going as we expected;
but we screwed up our courage and went on.
We put on the customary expression of comic imbecility and beckoned
the girl to us. We have never seen this fail on the stage.
But this girl seemed made wrong. She got behind the sofa and screamed
"Help!"
We have never known them to do this on the stage, and it threw us out
in our plans. We did not know exactly what to do. We regretted that
we had ever begun this job and heartily wished ourselves out of it.
But it appeared foolish to pause then, when we were more than half-way
through, and we made a rush to get it over.
We chivvied the girl round the sofa and caught her near the door and
kissed her. She scratched our face, yelled police, murder, and fire,
and fled from the room.
Our friend came in almost immediately. He said:
"I say, J., old man, are you drunk?"
We told him no, that we were only a student of the drama. His wife
then entered in a toweringpassion. She didn't ask us if we were
drunk. She said:
"How dare you come here in this state!"
We endeavored unsuccessfully to induce her to believe that we were
sober, and we explained that our course of conduct was what was always
pursued on the stage.
She said she didn't care what was done on the stage, it wasn't going
to be pursued in her house; and that if her husband's friends couldn't
behave as gentlemen they had better stop away.
The following morning we received a letter from a firm of solicitors
in Lincoln's Inn with reference, so they put it, to the brutal and
unprovoked assault committed by us on the previous afternoon upon the
person of their client, Miss Matilda Hemmings. The letter stated that
we had punched Miss Hemmings in the side, struck her under the chin,
and afterward, seizing her as she was leaving the room, proceeded to
commit a gross assault, into the particulars of which it was needless
for them to enter at greater length.
It added that if we were prepared to render an ample written apology
and to pay 50 pounds compensation, they would advise their client,
Miss Matilda Hemmings, to allow the matter to drop; otherwise criminal
proceedings would at once be commenced against us.
We took the letter to our own solicitors and explained the
circumstances to them. They said it seemed to be a very sad case, but
advised us to pay the 50 pounds, and we borrowed the money and did so.
Since then we have lost faith, somehow, in the British drama as a
guide to the conduct of life.
THE CHILD.
It is nice and quiet and it talks prettily.
We have come across real infants now and then in the course of visits
to married friends; they have been brought to us from outlying parts
of the house and introduced to us for our edification; and we have
found them gritty and sticky. Their boots have usually been muddy,
and they have wiped them up against our new trousers. And their hair
has suggested the idea that they have been standing on their heads in
the dust-bin.
And they have talked to us--but not prettily, not at all--rather rude
we should call it.
But the stage child is very different. It is clean and tidy. You can
touch it anywhere and nothing comes off. Its face glows with soap and
water. From the appearance of its hands it is evident that mud-pies
and tar are joys unknown to it. As for its hair, there is something
uncanny about its smoothness and respectability. Even its boot-laces
are done up.
We have never seen anything like the stage child outside a theater
excepting one--that was on the pavement in front of a tailor's shop in
Tottenham Court Road. He stood on a bit of round wood, and it was
fifteen and nine, his style.
We thought in our ignorance prior to this that there could not be
anything in the world like the stage child, but you see we were
mistaken.
The stage child is affectionate to its parents and its nurse and is
respectful in its demeanor toward those whom Providence has placed in
authority over it; and so far it is certainly much to be preferred to
the real article. It speaks of its male and female progenitors as
"dear, dear papa" and "dear, dear mamma," and it refers to its nurse
as "darling nursey." We are connected with a youthful child
ourselves--a real one--a nephew. He alludes to his father (when his
father is not present) as "the old man," and always calls the nurse
"old nut-crackers." Why cannot they make real children who say "dear,
dear mamma" and "dear, dear papa?"
The stage child is much superior to the live infant in every way. The
stage child does not go rampaging about a house and screeching and
yelling till nobody knows whether they are on their heads or their
heels.
A stage child does not get up at five o'clock in the morning to
practice playing on a penny whistle. A stage child never wants a
bicycle and drives you mad about it. A stage child does not ask
twenty complicated questions a minute about things that you don't
understand, and then wind up by asking why you don't seem to know
anything, and why wouldn't anybody teach you anything when you were a
little boy.
The stage child does not wear a hole in the seat of its knickerbockers
and have to have a patch let in. The stage child comes downstairs on
its feet.
The stage child never brings home six other children to play at horses
in the front garden, and then wants to know if they can all come in to
tea. The stage child never has the wooping-cough, and the measles,
and every other disease that it can lay its hands on, and be laid up
with them one after the other and turn the house upside down.
The stage child's department in the scheme of life is to harrow up its
mother's feelings by ill-timed and uncalled-for questions about its
father. It always wants to know, before a roomful of people, where
"dear papa" is, and why he has left dear mamma; when, as all the
guests know, the poor man is doing his two years' hard or waiting to
be hanged. It makes everybody so uncomfortable.
It is always harrowing up somebody--the stage child; it really ought
not to be left about as it is. When it has done upsetting its mother
it fishes out some broken-hearted maid, who has just been cruelly
severed forever from her lover, and asks her in a high falsetto voice
why she doesn't get married, and prattles to her about love, and
domestic bliss, and young men, and any other subject it can think of
particularly calculated to lacerate the poor girl's heart until her
brain nearly gives way.
After that it runs amuck up and down the whole play and makes
everybody sit up all round. It asks eminently respectable old maids
if they wouldn't like to have a baby; and it wants to know why
bald-headed old men have left off wearing hair, and why other old
gentlemen have red noses and if they were always that color.
In some plays it so happens that the less said about the origin and
source of the stage child the better; and in such cases nothing will
appear so important to that contrary brat as to know, in the middle of
an evening-party, who its father was!
Everybody loves the stage child. They catch it up in their bosoms
every other minute and weep over it. They take it in turns to do
this.
Nobody--on the stage, we mean--ever has enough of the stage child.
Nobody ever tells the stage child to "shut up" or to "get out of
this." Nobody ever clumps the stage child over the head.
When the real child goes to the theater it must notice these things
and wish it were a stage child.
The stage child is much admired by the audience. Its pathos makes
them weep; its tragedy thrills them; its declamation--as for instance
when it takes the center of the stage and says it will kill the wicked
man, and the police, and everybody who hurts its mar--stirs them like
a trumpet note; and its light comedy is generally held to be the most
truly humorous thing in the whole range of dramatic art.
But there are some people so strangely constituted that they do not
appreciate the stage child; they do not comprehend its uses; they do
not understand its beauties. We should not be angry with them. We
should the rather pity them.
We ourselves had a friend once who suffered from this misfortune. He
was a married man, and Providence had been very gracious, very good to
him: he had been blessed with eleven children, and they were all
growing up well and strong.
The "baby" was eleven weeks old, and then came the twins, who were
getting on for fifteen months and were cutting their double teeth
nicely. The youngest girl was three; there were five boys aged seven,
eight, nine, ten, and twelve respectively--good enough lads,
but--well, there, boys will be boys, you know; we were just the same
ourselves when we were young. The two eldest were both very pleasant
girls, as their mother said; the only pity was that they would quarrel
so with each other.
We never knew a healthier set of boys and girls. They were so full of
energy and dash.
Our friend was very much out of sorts one evening when we called on
him. It was holiday-time and wet weather. He had been at home all
day, and so had all the children. He was telling his wife when we
entered the room that if the holidays were to last much longer and
those twins did not hurry up and get their teeth quickly, he should
have to go away and join the County Council. He could not stand the
racket.
His wife said she could not see what he had to complain of. She was
sure better-hearted children no man could have.
Our friend said he didn't care a straw about their hearts. It was
their legs and arms and lungs that were driving him crazy.
He also said that he would go out with us and get away from it for a
bit, or he should go mad.
He proposed a theater, and we accordingly made our way toward the
Strand. Our friend, in closing the door behind him, said he could not
tell us what a relief it was to get away from those children. He said
he loved children very much indeed, but that it was a mistake to have
too much of anything, however much you liked it, and that he had come
to the conclusion that twenty-two hours a day of them was enough for
any one.
He said he did not want to see another child or hear another child
until he got home. He wanted to forget that there were such things as
children in the world.
We got up to the Strand and dropped into the first theater we came to.
The curtain went up, and on the stage was a small child standing in
its nightshirt and screaming for its mother.
Our friend looked, said one word and bolted, and we followed.
- faithful [´feiθfəl]
a.忠实的；可靠的 (初中英语单词) - mistress [´mistris] n.女主人；情妇；女能手 (初中英语单词)
- nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- reference [´refərəns] n.参考；参照；出处 (初中英语单词)
- assault [ə´sɔ:lt] vt.袭击；殴打 n.攻击 (初中英语单词)
- previous [´pri:viəs] a.先，前，以前的 (初中英语单词)
- advise [əd´vaiz] vt.忠告；建议；通知 (初中英语单词)
- otherwise [´ʌðəwaiz] ad.另外 conj.否则 (初中英语单词)
- trousers [´trauzəz] n.裤子，长裤 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- evident [´evidənt] a.明显的，明白的 (初中英语单词)
- ignorance [´ignərəns] n.无知，愚昧 (初中英语单词)
- female [´fi:meil] a.女(性)的 n.女人 (初中英语单词)
- youthful [´ju:θfəl] a.年轻的；青年的 (初中英语单词)
- nephew [´nevju:, ´nɛfju] n.侄子；外甥 (初中英语单词)
- infant [´infənt] n.&a.婴(幼)儿 (初中英语单词)
- whistle [´wisəl] v.吹哨 n.口哨；汽笛 (初中英语单词)
- complicated [´kɔmplikeitid] a.结构复杂的；难懂的 (初中英语单词)
- downstairs [,daun´steəz] ad.在楼下 a.楼下的 (初中英语单词)
- scheme [ski:m] n.计划；阴谋，诡计 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- origin [´ɔridʒin] n.起源；由来；出身 (初中英语单词)
- contrary [´kɔntrəri] a.相反的 n.相反 (初中英语单词)
- audience [´ɔ:diəns] n.听众；观众；接见 (初中英语单词)
- tragedy [´trædʒidi] n.悲剧；惨案；灾难 (初中英语单词)
- dramatic [drə´mætik] a.戏剧的；戏剧般的 (初中英语单词)
- strangely [´streindʒli] ad.奇怪地；陌生地 (初中英语单词)
- gracious [´greiʃəs] a.和蔼可亲的；任慈的 (初中英语单词)
- complain [kəm´plein] vi.抱怨，叫屈；控诉 (初中英语单词)
- accordingly [ə´kɔ:diŋli] ad.因此；从而；依照 (初中英语单词)
- relief [ri´li:f] n.救济；援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- conclusion [kən´klu:ʒən] n.结束；结论；推论 (初中英语单词)
- customary [´kʌstəməri] a.通常的；惯例的 (高中英语单词)
- heartily [´hɑ:tili] ad.衷心地；亲切地 (高中英语单词)
- client [´klaiənt] n.委托人；顾客 (高中英语单词)
- compensation [,kɔmpen´seiʃən] n.补偿，赔偿 (高中英语单词)
- pavement [´peivmənt] n.路面；铺筑材料 (高中英语单词)
- affectionate [ə´fekʃənit] a.亲爱的 (高中英语单词)
- uncalled-for [ʌn´kɔ:ldfɔ:] a.多余的；不适宜的 (高中英语单词)
- respectable [ri´spektəbəl] a.可敬的；有身价的 (高中英语单词)
- trumpet [´trʌmpit] n.喇叭；小号 (高中英语单词)
- comedy [´kɔmidi] n.喜剧；喜剧场面 (高中英语单词)
- comprehend [,kɔmpri´hend] vt.了解；领会；包含 (高中英语单词)
- misfortune [mis´fɔ:tʃən] n.不幸；灾祸 (高中英语单词)
- eldest [´eldist] a.最年长的 (高中英语单词)
- applaud [ə´plɔ:d] v.鼓掌赞成；称赞 (英语四级单词)
- towering [´tauəriŋ] a.高耸的；强烈的 (英语四级单词)
- brutal [´bru:tl] a.兽性的；残暴的 (英语四级单词)
- providence [´prɔvidəns] n.天意，天命，上帝 (英语四级单词)
- upside [´ʌpsaid] n.上边，上段，上部 (英语四级单词)
- humorous [´hju:mərəs] a.富于幽默的，诙谐的 (英语四级单词)
- blessed [´blesid] a.享福的；神圣的 (英语四级单词)
- sticky [´stiki] a.胶粘的；顽固的 (英语六级单词)
- harrow [´hærəu] n.&v.耙(地) (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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