On the Art of Making Up One's Mind E-Book

Jerome K. Jerome

• Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 150

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

"It is a theory of mine — wrong possibly, indeed I have so been informed—that we pick our way through life with too much care. We are forever looking down upon the ground. Maybe we do avoid a stumble or two over a stone or a brier, but also we miss the blue of the sky, the glory of the hills." Touching on such vital matters as The Inadvisability of Following Advice and The Disadvantage of Not Getting What One Wants, Jerome K. Jerome presents a buoyant and timeless philosophy of life. With his characteristically charming, anecdotal style, the celebrated wit—and author of Three Men in a Boat and The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow — brings fresh energy to the everyday and expounds with humour and insight on more profound concerns. Written twelve years after The Idle Thoughts, at a time when Jerome had firmly established himself as one of the leading literary voices of his generation, these meditations bear the mark of the mature man: reflective, droll, and always entertaining.

Leseprobe

On the Art of Making up One’s Mind

‘on’

Jerome K. Jerome

Foreword byJoseph Connolly

‘on’

Published by Hesperus Press Limited 4 Rickett Street, London sw6 iru

www.hesperus.press

First published in The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1898

This collection first published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2009

This ebook edition was published in 2025

Foreword © Joseph Connolly, 2009

The right of Joseph Connolly to be identified as author of the foreword to the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-84391-607-9

ISBN (e-book): 978-1-84391-934-6

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

Contents

Foreword

Joseph Connolly

On the Art of Making up One’s Mind

On the Art of Making Up One’s Mind

On the Disadvantage of Not Getting What One Wants

On the Exceptional Merit Attaching to the Things We Meant to Do

On the Time Wasted in Looking Before One Leaps

On the Inadvisability of Following Advice

Biographical note

Foreword

Joseph Connolly

‘By the Author of Three Men in a Boat’ – how Jerome K. Jerome so utterly loathed this (as he saw it) damnable accolade, plastered as it was across the covers and even the title pages of almost every one of his subsequent books. And even today, many would be surprised to know that he ever did write any- thing else – understandable really, when one considers that it was published in 1889, has never since been out of print, and no other work by Jerome has ever achieved anything close to its fame and eternal success (this true even in his lifetime, and hence his resentment of the constant reminder). Parallels exist: Arthur Conan Doyle came to regard Sherlock Holmes in much the same way, as did A.A. Milne with Winnie & Co. Baffling to the modern outlook – how can an author mind having created something deathless? In the case of Jerome, the answer is com- plex. His absolute hero and role-model was Charles Dickens (he suggests in his memoirs, My Life and Times, 1926, that as a child he encountered the Great Man in a London park, this leaving him with an indelible impression) and Jerome’s long, largely autobiographical novel Paul Kelver (1902) was ultimately a homage – his not wholly discreditable attempt at David Copperfield. But long before this time Jerome had been irre- vocably branded as ‘the Author of Three Men in a Boat’, and he came to regard this sobriquet solely as the robber of any claim to ‘seriousness’ in his sober and more thoughtful work, of which there was a great deal (and, latterly, rather too much). And while it might be going rather far to suggest that here was the clown who yearned to play Hamlet, it is nonetheless true that Jerome would instantly and gladly have traded in his entire body of work (including Three Men in a Boat) together with what reputation he possessed in return for the ultimate prize of having written just one single book that had changed men’s thinking. Iris Murdoch might well have understood: at the peak of her success in the 1970s she saw only regret in that she had failed to create a solitary character as memorable as any by Dickens.

But the tagline ‘by the Author of Three Men in a Boat’ Jerome saw as not just a lazy device in order to render his later work what these days would be termed more ‘marketable’, but as positively detrimental and counterproductive. The preview of his eventually extremely successful and serious play The Passing of the Third Floor Back proved a total disaster due to its billing as being ‘by the Author of …’, the audience having struggled through each of its three acts straining to detect something even remotely comical. In a foreword to an 1894 volume of stories, John Ingerfield, Jerome was moved to instruct the reader (and critic) not to judge them from the standpoint of humour, the earnestness almost painfully palpable within his gentle couching of language.

The truth is, of course, that while Jerome was a more than competent writer of drama and even of tragedy, it is in humour – arch, whimsical or riotous – that he excelled. He was not just a fine exponent of the form, but an absolute innovator – the true inventor, really, of what came to be dubbed ‘The New Humour’, and – because of its appealing slanginess and a directness star- tlingly ahead of its time – earned him the disparaging nickname ’Arry K. ’Arry from the rather snobbish Punch magazine. And if Three Men in a Boat was undeniably his finest hour, it was by no means his only. This novel was in fact his eighth published work, his inimitable (although much imitated) style having been firmly established three years earlier with a delightful collection of essays, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow – this title pre- empting a memorable few sentences from Three Men in a Boat: ‘I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me; the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.’ Well Jerome did get rid of it, only to replace it with more: a less inert idler never lived. But in common with many determined and hardworking people, Jerome rather enjoyed this image of being The Idler (later founding a periodical bearing that very title), but the plain truth is that he always worked with a ferocity that was very much driven by his fear of ever again being reduced to the penury of his very grim childhood (his background too he identified strongly with that of Dickens). These ‘Idle’ essays had previously been the star feature in a magazine called Home Chimes, and were very much the work of a carefree, talented and innovative humorist in his mid-20s, their audacity – in terms of both attitude and language – very funny, and often breathtaking. Jerome’s intention here was solely to divert and amuse, as he makes clear in the preface: ‘What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn’t elevate a cow.’ All this, it must be remembered, was many years before the Grossmiths’ The Diary of a Nobody, and when P.G. Wodehouse was five years old: the Victorians had never seen anything like it.

The essays that follow this foreword are taken from the lesser-known sequel The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow – though by sequel we should not infer that here was a rushed-out cashing-in on the rapid success of the initial collection. Twelve years separated the two, during which Jerome had published not just Three Men in a Boat but four separate plays, three books of essays and observations, two volumes of short stories and the better-known The Diary of a Pilgrimage, a novel based upon an actual journey – the dry run, as it were, for Three Men in a Boat (in all, he published forty books and plays). By the time The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow was published, Jerome was nearly forty and a great deal had happened in his life. He was happily married and very recently had become the father of a daughter. His fame was considerable, and the money he had amassed, in great part due to the already innumerable editions of Three Men in a Boat, had enabled him to set up and edit two magazines – The Idler, which came out monthly, and a weekly, To-Day. This latter magazine was sued for libel – a case too complicated to go into or even comprehend (even Jerome – never a great businessman – was utterly baffled by it), but the upshot was that although the plaintiff was awarded damages of just one farthing, Jerome had to bear his own costs in what had transpired to be the longest libel case ever heard at the Court of Queen’s Bench in the last fifty years. These costs,

£9000 (this in 1897) financially ruined him, and both the magazines folded. I mention this because a new sort of colouring now is discernible in each of the Second Thoughts, many more shades and nuances amid the humour – the title, of course, suggesting not just a sequel, but the reconsiderations of a much older man (a vein that runs through the essays like a stubborn and recurrent rheum). Indeed, in ‘On the Inadvisability of Following Advice’, there is what can only be a very rueful reflection on experience, despite the truth and comedy in it; ‘An old gentleman whose profession it was to give legal advice, and excellent legal advice he always gave’, has this to say:

‘My dear sir, if a villain stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. If he thereupon said, “Then I shall take it from you by brute force,” I should, old as I am, I feel convinced, reply to him, “Come on.” But if, on the other hand, he were to say to me, “Very well, then I shall take proceedings against you in the Court of Queen’s Bench to com- pel you to give it up to me,” I should at once take it from my pocket, press it into his hand, and beg him to say no more about the matter. And I should consider I was getting off cheaply.’

This essay is actually the funniest of the bunch, featuring as it does an irate gentleman’s encounter with an obstinate slot machine and a superb narration concerning a hopelessly inebriated carthorse – very much mainstream Jerome. The other essays here are rather gentler in form and approach and, Jerome would have you believe, written by a man considerably older than forty. This partial adoption of the traditional essayist’s attitude – that of a white-bearded sage passing on the wisdom of his accumulated years – contrasts well with the more than occasional purely Jeromian interruption, such as (in ‘On the Disadvantage of Not Getting What One Wants’) ‘One feels the modern Temple of Love must be a sort of Swan & Edgar’s’. The theme of this essay is common to most of them – that dreams are better than attainment. Jerome was proud of his achievements, but forever guilty about having and enjoying the fruits of them, constantly insisting that humble is always best – in substance as well as in behaviour. He is strong too on underlining his belief that youth and poverty are often preferable to wealth and experience (perhaps forgetting what poor youths such as he once was might have to say about that). Here is his musing on the subject of ‘Fate’ from ‘On the Exceptional Merit Attaching to the Things We Meant To Do’: ‘She flung us a few shillings and hope, where now she doles us out pounds and fears.’ The worst crime of all, though, he sees to be not complacency but vanity, his fear of succumbing to it always compelling him to (jocularly) belittle his success and the baubles it has brought him, if never his talent. Throughout these essays there is also an assumption that he, the author, is a world-wise man, while still prone to foolishness, addressing a peer. In ‘On the Art of Making Up One’s Mind’ he opens with a wholly amusing dialogue concerning the dithering of women, and then goes on to exhort his audience thus: ‘Come, my superior male friend…’. While this is only half ironical, it is not to suggest that he did regard women to be in any way inferior: on the contrary, he was constantly in awe of them. But he knew and was pleased with the fact that they were different, the gulf between the sexes providing a fathomless source of humour, observation and reflection. That said, he would always be happier in a roomful of likeminded gentlemen, much cigar smoke, burgundy and chops, rather than attending a polite recital.

At the time he wrote the essays in this book, Jerome was – despite his financial problems (which proved to be temporary) – a contented man. But the timbre of his writing was now and perceptibly beginning to alter. He had not, nor would he ever, abandon humour, and neither was he ashamed of being one of its foremost exponents. He found increasingly, however, that there were some thoughts within him to be expressed, some morals to be drawn, that simply could not be accomplished through comedy. These essays form the transitional stage, and are all the more interesting for that. The humour that remains did not become cynical, but it was demonstrably less zesty – and nor did he feel any more that every essay must close in lighter vein, or with the climax of a joke; rather that it should be thought- provoking, and even poignant. The philosophies he expounds here are neither particularly novel nor earth-shaking, but his skill as a writer comes strongly into play in the way in which these many truisms are imparted: he seduces the more than willing reader into having second thoughts. Which, at this stage of his life, was really all he meant.

On the Art of Making up One’s Mind

On the Art of Making Up One’s Mind

‘Now, which would you advise, dear? You see, with the red I shan’t be able to wear my magenta hat.’

‘Well then, why not have the grey?’

‘Yes – yes, I think the grey will be more useful.’ ‘It’s a good material.’

‘Yes, and it’s a pretty grey. You know what I mean, dear; not a common grey. Of course grey is always an uninteresting colour.’

‘It’s quiet.’

‘And then again, what I feel about the red is that it is so warm-looking. Red makes you feel warm even when you’re not warm. You know what I mean, dear!’

‘Well then, why not have the red? It suits you – red.’ ‘No, do you really think so?’

‘Well, when you’ve got a colour, I mean, of course!’

‘Yes, that is the drawback to red. No, I think, on the whole, the grey is safer.’

‘Then you will take the grey, madam?’ ‘Yes, I think I’d better, don’t you, dear?’ ‘I like it myself very much.’

‘And it is good wearing stuff. I shall have it trimmed with – oh! you haven’t cut it off, have you?’

‘I was just about to, madam.’

‘Well, don’t for a moment. Just let me have another look at the red. You see, dear, it has just occurred to me – that chinchilla would look so well on the red!’

‘So it would, dear!’

‘And, you see, I’ve got the chinchilla.’ ‘Then have the red. Why not?’

‘Well, there is the hat I’m thinking of.’

‘You haven’t anything else you could wear with that?’ ‘Nothing at all, and it would go so beautifully with the grey.

Yes, I think I’ll have the grey. It’s always a safe colour – grey.’

‘Fourteen yards I think you said, madam?’

‘Yes, fourteen yards will be enough; because I shall mix it with – one minute. You see, dear, if I take the grey I shall have nothing to wear with my black jacket.’

‘Won’t it go with grey?’

‘Not well – not so well as with red.’

‘I should have the red then. You evidently fancy it yourself.’ ‘No, personally I prefer the grey. But then one must think of

everything, and – good gracious! That’s surely not the right time?’ ‘No, madam, it’s ten minutes slow. We always keep our clocks

a little slow!’

‘And we were to have been at Madame Jannaway’s at a quarter past twelve. How long shopping does take! Why, whatever time did we start?’

‘About eleven, wasn’t it?’

‘Half past ten. I remember now, because, you know, we said we’d start at half past nine. We’ve been two hours already!’

‘And we don’t seem to have done much, do we?’

‘Done literally nothing, and I meant to have done so much. I must go to Madame Jannaway’s. Have you got my purse, dear? Oh, it’s all right, I’ve got it.’

‘Well, now you haven’t decided whether you’re going to have the grey or the red.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what I do want now. I had made up my mind a minute ago, and now it’s all gone again – oh yes, I remember, the red. Yes, I’ll have the red. No, I don’t mean the red, I mean the grey.’

‘You were talking about the red last time, if you remember, dear.’

‘Oh, so I was, you’re quite right. That’s the worst of shopping.

Do you know I get quite confused sometimes.’ ‘Then you will decide on the red, madam?’

‘Yes – yes, I shan’t do any better, shall I, dear? What do you think? You haven’t got any other shades of red, have you? This is such an ugly red.’

The shopman reminds her that she has seen all the other reds, and that this is the particular shade she selected and admired.

‘Oh, very well,’ she replies, with the air of one from whom all earthly cares are falling, ‘I must take that then, I suppose. I can’t be worried about it any longer. I’ve wasted half the morning already.’

Outside she recollects three insuperable objections to the red, and four unanswerable arguments why she should have selected the grey. She wonders would they change it, if she went back and asked to see the shopwalker? Her friend, who wants her lunch, thinks not.

‘That is what I hate about shopping,’ she says. ‘One never has time to really think.’

She says she shan’t go to that shop again.