Joking apart

The civilization of the Chinese is admittedly very old, and their forms of torture are supposed to be extremely subtle. Perhaps with great age has come the knowledge that the tortures which have occurred naturally to man since he first existed are not likely to be improved upon by those who wish to inconvenience their fellow-creatures. It is probable that the first human owner of a cave, gnawing his bone at the end of the family table, gnawed it in such a manner as to make some peculiar grating, slooping or gnashing sound which aroused the indignation of his hairy partner. It may almost be taken for granted that he forgot to help the stuffing. The rude physicians of that epoch would, in all likelihood, have testified that the cave ladies as a class were evasive and unruly, and that they would insist upon sitting round the fire capturing the parasites in one another’s tresses instead of coming to bed at the proper time. There can be no doubt that the children speedily acquired the habit of saying “What?” every few minutes, that the slaves hid things, that the dweller in the next cave was the earliest inventor of a musical instrument, and that the first door which the first man put to his cave in self-defence banged the first time it was left ajar.

It may therefore be, for all we know, that the subtle devices called Chinese tortures are quite modern arrangements adapted to a frailer generation, and that the real old, original Chinaman just left his victims to suffer unprotected in an ordinary household. The prevaricating, garrulous female prisoners were, perhaps, shut up for years with a gentleman who slooped at his meals, thus killing two birds with one stone. The children who asked “Wha-at?” when their questions were answered for the first time were immured with parents who said “Waddear?” at the end of an animated description of a day’s adventure. Prisoners of both sexes who left their clothes on the bathroom floor and never destroyed envelopes were served exclusively by maids who threw everything portable into the dustbin, except clothes, which they hung up in the wrong side of the wardrobe. People who laughed incessantly while they spoke kept house for those who grumphed and blew air through their cheeks at breakfast. They were a merry party in the prisons one way and another if you come to think of it!

And there was another very dreadful thing that I can hardly speak of. Taking one hundred as the maximum that anyone can understand of what is possible in human thought, the most loving hearts whose comprehension equalled, say, four, were given a love potion and immediately introduced to some lady or gentleman, equally tender and sincere, whose comprehension ran up sometimes as far as nine. This is not the same thing as being misunderstood. That is a grievance which no one really minds unless they are very hard at work altering their natural character; as, for instance, when the born miser who has forked out three-and-sixpence instead of two shillings, after heart-breaking struggles with himself, says bitterly, “It is so horrid of you to suggest that I don’t like giving money away. It hurts me far more than if you had accused me of something that I really do.” But to return to the ninepence and fourpence. It is not misunderstanding; it is what an earnest lady was heard saying at a party when the music stopped, “Of course I was never able to go quite all the way with John Stuart Mill.”

If that lady had been John Stuart Mill’s bosom friend he would have felt the remark as an awful blow. Can anything be more painful than for some one to refer to, let us say, the resemblance of the human skeleton to that of a pig and for his companion to reply with tears springing up from an injured, loving heart, “Oh, please don’t talk like that! I hate it when you say such things. As if there could be any resemblance!” Of course it doesn’t matter now and then, but if it is to go on all the time you can’t do much better with a thumb-screw. One need not go far to see tortured men and women with their dear ones simply dancing on their vitals. The sharp intake of Reginald’s breath is audible when Polly says at dinner, “My husband never can keep a toothbrush more than a fortnight, can you, Reggie? It gets in a perfectly impossible state. I have to——” etc. If Reggie tells a funny little story all about a spade—a story with a good point to it and quite impersonal—she will most probably blame him for vulgarity, yet his little story about the spade was as detached as a robin’s song in December. It is the personal touch in speech which only the unimaginative can hear unmoved. Men have complained that they were obliged to say indecent things themselves as a protection against hearing some one else say something less indecent in an indecent way. By their method they shut the others up.

“What does he mean?” a woman asked on one of these occasions.

“Well, Polly gets so gross when she begins to talk about ordinary things,” said Reginald, “that I have to shout out all I know about more difficult subjects for fear she should begin to attempt them.”

“What did I say that was gross?” asked Polly, opening her large eyes.

“I don’t want ever to remember what you said about the baby,” Reginald answered with haste. “Let us talk about something else quickly; rape, sacrilege, anything you like, but don’t mention the child’s toes again.”

“But Reginald——” protested his wife.

“Silence, woman!” commanded Reginald, and when he had gone out of the room Polly said that she was quite coming round to the idea that women ought to vote. Men cared nothing whatever about children and lots of other things. They were so utterly material, and political life ought to have an element of delicacy and refinement to keep it on the highest level. As a child Reginald had, of course, suffered the usual forms of infant torture. He used, as we all did, to come into the drawing-room to see visitors. His sisters became inured to this, although it bored them. They got a certain interest out of the visitor’s appearance and tricks of manner, which were all reproduced with merciless accuracy in the schoolroom afterwards; not ill-naturedly, but because they had been stored as sounds are stored on the phonograph. Reginald was more than bored; he suffered from the personal attentions of his mother and her guests. Personal remarks always hit his comfort like unpleasant sounds hit the sense of music. “Where have you been?” his mother would ask, which she would not have done if they had been alone, because she knew that there was practically nowhere to go except the park. Then began the old, old rigmarole: how he had grown, whom he was like, what form of exercise he took—there is no need to go into details, because we are all familiar with the stupid, tactless business. We have all sat and simmered while the little creatures stand kicking one foot against the other until we release them from our impertinence. Then his mother either repeated something he had told her in confidence the day before, or she made affected use of his schoolboy slang as if it were her own, or she blew his nose with her handkerchief, and showed off generally, and made him show off, and it was all beastly. He suffered incessantly from this showing off on everybody’s part. In his public-school days his sisters showed off when he came home. They borrowed his forms of speech. These were not his own to begin with, but they were the language of his tribe, and what was his by capture was theirs by theft, which is quite different and creates a false situation. He never got at these facts by himself, but he felt uneasy and strained. Later on he much preferred strangers to his own family, because they kept out of his bathroom and he was free to present his own idea of himself without the risk of some one remarking across the table, “Why, Reggie! You loathe poetry! How can you! You always said it was such humbug!” We can never alter or enlarge our tastes in the family circle. A strict record is kept of all our utterances, and they are brought up against us as if we had crossed the floor of the House of Commons. Strangers take all for gospel and do not know what we said last year.

But apart from Reggie’s little troubles, we all have our own. For instance, there is the torture by question. This is suitable for both men and women, and it is most effective, perhaps, when administered by women, because they have the pertinacity of insects and cannot be got rid of; slapping doesn’t destroy them. You may even burn sulphur, it doesn’t keep them off a bit. Remember, it was a poor, lorn widow who defeated the unjust judge. If her husband had been there he would have blushed and said, “Come away, Maria—it’s no good—he won’t listen.” But Maria lit once more upon the bald head of the judge and set up her interminable buzz, and lo! the thing was done.

The following scene illustrates how the torture by question is administered:

Scene. A cosy apartment (the only one in which there is a fire after breakfast) provided with a telephone. The meals are ordered for the day. You have seen about the children’s spring hats, you have telephoned for a man to see about the knife machine. “Seeing” stands for opening it to get out the knife which cook dropped in without thinking, and that means ten shillings, “for man’s time—rep. kn. mach.” There does not seem to be anything else to see about just at present, and you settle down to a bit of crochet or, perhaps, to some occupation which takes your whole thought, such as writing a story for the magazines.

Cook slides round the door and looks at you. At the sight of her, all your ideas get up and say they are afraid they must be going. Ideas don’t like cook, because she doesn’t like them. She has a heavy hand with them and they won’t settle.

“Yes, cook, what is it?” you ask.

“If you please’m, the butcher hasn’t veal to-day.”

“Hasn’t he?” you say patiently, “then tell him to raise some animal that he has got.”

You wait, pencil in hand, for her to go.

“What shall I order, m’m?” she insists. “The boy is waiting.”

You quickly review last week’s meals. The household has had cutlets, fish, fowl, steak and a good many other things. Some people dislike the insides of animals so we will not complete the list. Anyhow, they seem to have eaten everything that there is in the world, except veal. Your horizon is all veal. There doesn’t, in fact, seem to be anything but veal to eat, “without,” as cook says, you have just what you had yesterday. The sudden passionate anger of the interrupted flies to your head.

“I don’t care if it’s stewed missionary,” you stammer; “but I will have something new. Go away quickly and think of something.”

Cook, like the fly, takes wing as far as the kitchen dresser and returns; stands once more, as it were, washing her front legs in the doorway.

“May I telephone, please, m’m?” she inquires.

You sharpen your pencil meanwhile, and there is a faint rustle in the air as of lost ideas peeping round to see whether every one has gone.

“H’m, h’m (a little cough from the direction of the telephone). If you please’m, Jones says that the haddock isn’t very nice to-day; he has some nice turbot at two-and-sixpence.”

“Ask the silly idiot if he sends up turbot for his own nursery breakfast, will you,” is the only reply your indignation will afford. Goodness knows what all the haddock are about in these days; they always used to be “nice” at any time of year.

“Shall I tell him not to trouble about it, m’m?” she says, holding the receiver away from her ear.

“Oh, yes, don’t let him break up his health over it,” you say, and once more resume your work. Your quiet room is now, in your imagination, a seething, noisy mass of food, all of it quarrelling as to who shall climb on to the table at dinner.

“What shall I order for breakfast instead of the fish?” demands cook, lightly poised for flight beside the writing-table.

“Bacon,” you say, “bacon, bacon, bacon,” and you look up hoping to see a mess of squashed cook on the blotting-paper. But not at all. She is round the other side, tickling your left ear.

“The bacon’s finished to-day, m’m. Did you remember to order any more?”

“Are the hens all dead?” you inquire.

“Oh, no, m’m, I don’t think so.”

“Very well then, squeeze them and go away.”

And then when the same old scrambled eggs, too heavily salted, come up next morning for breakfast she will have the effrontery to say that you ordered them!

What does the perfect woman do in these circumstances? Does she put down her occupation and say, “Dear me, cook, what a pity, isn’t it! What shall we do?” and does cook reply, “It is a pity, isn’t it, m’m! I don’t know what to suggest, I’m sure. Would you like a nice egg?” and then does the perfect woman say, “Well, you know we had eggs yesterday, cook, but I don’t see what else we are to do. It’s very awkward. But you can’t have anything nicer than eggs, can you? Suppose you get some eggs, and if you tell me when they arrive I will come down and look at them.” I believe it is this quality that makes women easier to rear than men. You can’t kill them by ordinary methods.

There is one more form of torture which no quiet home ought to be without if there is a contemplative enemy to be destroyed. It is called the torture by vivacity. The sort of thing you get in this book, only worse. The victim is put down in any ordinary chair, rather too near the fire if possible, and then the torturer begins. “What plays did you see when you were up in town? Can’t remember! Well you are! You ought to have seen Such-and-such. Do you know the story? There’s a man who’s tremendously in love with a girl and she won’t have him. Eileen Protheroe takes the part—don’t you admire her? of course you do—what nonsense! Don’t try to be clever—that’s your way. Well, she’s absolutely splendid in this. She comes on in a wonderful dress of pale champagne with heliotrope, most beautifully draped, and her hair done wonderfully under a small hat. Well, she won’t have him, but she tries for Tom—let me see—what is his name? What was the name of that friend of yours whom you used to see sometimes in Buxton? Awfully smart, in a brown suit—oh, you must remember—Well, this man reminded me of him—you must know whom I mean—don’t be silly. Anyhow this man is just like him——”

My pen has fallen off the table in a fit and is panting on the mat, protesting that it cannot run another inch.