Transcribed from the 1920 J. W. Arrowsmith edition by DavidPrice,
by
JEROME K. JEROME
author of “three men in aboat”
“three men on the bummel,”“novel notes”
“the idle thoughts of an idlefellow,” 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 charactersare clearly defined, and act consistently. Nature, alwaysinartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible. Reginald Blake was as typical a specimen of the well-bred cad asone could hope to find between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde ParkCorner. Vicious without passion, and possessing brainwithout mind, existence presented to him no difficulties, whilehis pleasures brought him no pains. His morality wasbounded by the doctor on the one side, and the magistrate on theother. Careful never to outrage the decrees of either, hewas at forty-five still healthy, though stout; and had achievedthe not too easy task of amassing a fortune while avoiding allrisk of Holloway. He and his wife, Edith (néeEppington), were as ill-matched a couple as could be conceived byany dramatist seeking material for a problem play. As theystood before the altar on their wedding morn, they might havebeen taken as symbolising satyr and saint. More than twentyyears his junior, beautiful with the beauty of a Raphael’sMadonna, his every touch of her seemed a sacrilege. Yetonce in his life Mr. Blake played the part of a great gentleman;Mrs. Blake, on the same occasion, contenting herself with asingularly mean rôle—mean even for a woman inlove.
The affair, of course, had been a marriage ofconvenience. Blake, to do him justice, had made no pretenceto anything beyond admiration and regard. Few things growmonotonous sooner than irregularity. He would tickle hisjaded palate with respectability, and try for a change thecompanionship of a good woman. The girl’s face drewhim, as the moonlight holds a man who, bored by the noise, turnsfrom a heated room to press his forehead to thewindow-pane. Accustomed to bid for what he wanted, heoffered his price. The Eppington family was poor andnumerous. The girl, bred up to the false notions of dutyinculcated by a narrow conventionality, and, feminine like, halfin love with martyrdom for its own sake,