Part 2
The young lift-man in a City office who threw a passenger out of his lift the other morning and was fined for the offence was undoubtedly in the wrong. It was a question of "Please." The complainant, entering the lift, said, "Top." The lift-man demanded, "Top--please," and this concession being refused he not only declined to comply with the instruction, but hurled the passenger out of the lift. This, of course, was carrying a comment on manners too far. Discourtesy is not a legal offence, and it does not excuse assault and battery. If a burglar breaks into my house and I knock him down the law will acquit me, and if I am physically assaulted it will permit me to retaliate with reasonable violence. It does this because the burglar and my assailant have broken quite definite commands of the law. But no legal system could attempt to legislate against bad manners, or could sanction the use of violence against something which it does not itself recognise as a legally punishable offence. And whatever our sympathy with the lift-man, we must admit that the law is reasonable. It would never do if we were at liberty to box people's ears because we did not like their behaviour, or the tone of their voices, or the scowl on their faces. Our fists would never be idle, and the gutters of the City would run with blood all day.
I may be as uncivil as I please and the law will protect me against violent retaliation. I may be haughty or boorish and there is no penalty to pay except the penalty of being written down an ill-mannered fellow. The law does not compel me to say "Please" or to attune my voice to other people's sensibilities any more than it says that I shall not wax my moustache or dye my hair or wear ringlets down my back. It does not recognise the laceration of our feelings as a case for compensation. There is no allowance for moral and intellectual damages in these matters.
This does not mean that the damages are negligible. It is probable that the lift-man was much more acutely hurt by what he regarded as a slur upon his social standing than he would have been if he had had a kick on the shins, for which he could have got legal redress. The pain of a kick on the shins soon passes away, but the pain of a wound to our self-respect or our vanity may poison a whole day. I can imagine that lift-man, denied the relief of throwing the author of his wound out of the lift, brooding over the insult by the hour, and visiting it on his wife in the evening as the only way of restoring his equilibrium. For there are few things more catching than bad temper and bad manners. When Sir Anthony Absolute bullied Captain Absolute, the latter went out and bullied his man Fag, whereupon Fag went downstairs and kicked the page-boy. Probably the man who said "Top" to the lift-man was really only getting back on his employer who had not said "Good morning" to him because he himself had been hen-pecked at breakfast by his wife, to whom the cook had been insolent because the housemaid had "answered her back." We infect the world with our ill-humours. Bad manners probably do more to poison the stream of the general life than all the crimes in the calendar. For one wife who gets a black eye from an otherwise good-natured husband there are a hundred who live a life of martyrdom under the shadow of a morose temper. But all the same the law cannot become the guardian of our private manners. No Decalogue could cover the vast area of offences and no court could administer a law which governed our social civilities, our speech, the tilt of our eyebrows and all our moods and manners.
But though we are bound to endorse the verdict against the lift-man, most people will have a certain sympathy with him. While it is true that there is no law that compels us to say "Please," there is a social practice much older and more sacred than any law which enjoins us to be civil. And the first requirement of civility is that we should acknowledge a service. "Please" and "Thank you" are the small change with which we pay our way as social beings. They are the little courtesies by which we keep the machine of life oiled and running sweetly. They put our intercourse upon the basis of a friendly co-operation, an easy give-and-take, instead of on the basis of superiors dictating to inferiors. It is a very vulgar mind that would wish to command where he can have the service for asking, and have it with willingness and good-feeling instead of resentment.
I should like to "feature" in this connection my friend the polite conductor. By this discriminating title I do not intend to suggest a rebuke to conductors generally. On the contrary, I am disposed to think that there are few classes of men who come through the ordeal of a very trying calling better than bus conductors do. Here and there you will meet an unpleasant specimen who regards the passengers as his natural enemies--as creatures whose chief purpose on the bus is to cheat him, and who can only be kept reasonably honest by a loud voice and an aggressive manner. But this type is rare--rarer than it used to be. I fancy the public owes much to the Underground Railway Company, which also runs the buses, for insisting on a certain standard of civility in its servants, and taking care that that standard is observed. In doing this it not only makes things pleasant for the travelling public, but performs an important social service.
It is not, therefore, with any feeling of unfriendliness to conductors as a class that I pay a tribute to a particular member of that class. I first became conscious of his existence one day when I jumped on to a bus and found that I had left home without any money in my pocket. Everyone has had the experience and knows the feeling, the mixed feeling, which the discovery arouses. You are annoyed because you look like a fool at the best, and like a knave at the worst. You would not be at all surprised if the conductor eyed you coldly as much as to say, "Yes, I know that stale old trick. Now then, off you get." And even if the conductor is a good fellow and lets you down easily, you are faced with the necessity of going back, and the inconvenience, perhaps, of missing your train or your engagement.
Having searched my pockets in vain for stray coppers, and having found I was utterly penniless, I told the conductor with as honest a face as I could assume that I couldn't pay the fare, and must go back for money. "Oh, you needn't get off: that's all right," said he. "All right," said I, "but I haven't a copper on me." "Oh, I'll book you through," he replied. "Where d'ye want to go?" and he handled his bundle of tickets with the air of a man who was prepared to give me a ticket for anywhere from the Bank to Hong Kong. I said it was very kind of him, and told him where I wanted to go, and as he gave me the ticket I said, "But where shall I send the fare?" "Oh, you'll see me some day all right," he said cheerfully, as he turned to go. And then, luckily, my fingers, still wandering in the corners of my pockets, lighted on a shilling, and the account was squared. But that fact did not lessen the glow of pleasure which so good-natured an action had given me.
A few days after my most sensitive toe was trampled on rather heavily as I sat reading on the top of a bus. I looked up with some anger and more agony, and saw my friend of the cheerful countenance. "Sorry, sir," he said. "I know these are heavy boots. Got 'em because my own feet get trod on so much, and now I'm treading on other people's. Hope I didn't hurt you, sir." He had hurt me but he was so nice about it that I assured him he hadn't. After this I began to observe him whenever I boarded his bus, and found a curious pleasure in the constant good-nature of his bearing. He seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of patience and a gift for making his passengers comfortable. I noticed that if it was raining he would run up the stairs to give someone the tip that there was "room inside." With old people he was as considerate as a son, and with children as solicitous as a father. He had evidently a peculiarly warm place in his heart for young people, and always indulged in some merry jest with them. If he had a blind man on board it was not enough to set him down safely on the pavement. He would call to Bill in front to wait while he took him across the road or round the corner, or otherwise safely on his way. In short, I found that he irradiated such an atmosphere of good-temper and kindliness that a journey with him was a lesson in natural courtesy and good manners.
What struck me particularly was the ease with which he got through his work. If bad manners are infectious, so also are good manners. If we encounter incivility most of us are apt to become uncivil, but it is an unusually uncouth person who can be disagreeable with sunny people. It is with manners as with the weather. "Nothing clears up my spirits like a fine day," said Keats, and a cheerful person descends on even the gloomiest of us with something of the benediction of a fine day. And so it was always fine weather on the polite conductor's bus, and his own civility, his conciliatory address and good-humoured bearing, infected his passengers. In lightening their spirits he lightened his own task. His gaiety was not a wasteful luxury, but a sound investment.
I have missed him from my bus route of late; but I hope that only means that he has carried his sunshine on to another road. It cannot be too widely diffused in a rather drab world. And I make no apologies for writing a panegyric on an unknown bus conductor. If Wordsworth could gather lessons of wisdom from the poor leech-gatherer "on the lonely moor," I see no reason why lesser people should not take lessons in conduct from one who shows how a very modest calling may be dignified by good-temper and kindly feeling.
It is a matter of general agreement that the war has had a chilling effect upon those little every-day civilities of behaviour that sweeten the general air. We must get those civilities back if we are to make life kindly and tolerable for each other. We cannot get them back by invoking the law. The policeman is a necessary symbol and the law is a necessary institution for a society that is still somewhat lower than the angels. But the law can only protect us against material attack. Nor will the lift-man's way of meeting moral affront by physical violence help us to restore the civilities. I suggest to him that he would have had a more subtle and effective revenge if he had treated the gentleman who would not say "Please" with elaborate politeness. He would have had the victory, not only over the boor, but over himself, and that is the victory that counts. The polite man may lose the material advantage, but he always has the spiritual victory. I commend to the lift-man a story of Chesterfield. In his time the London streets were without the pavements of to-day, and the man who "took the wall" had the driest footing. "I never give the wall to a scoundrel," said a man who met Chesterfield one day in the street. "I always do," said Chesterfield, stepping with a bow into the road. I hope the lift-man will agree that his revenge was much more sweet than if he had flung the fellow into the mud.
BILLITCH AT LORD'S
Of course, there were others there besides Bill. There were twenty thousand people there. There was the whole Oval crowd there. I was there--I always try to put in a day at Lord's when the Oval crowd charges across the river with its jolly plebeian war-cries and swarms into the enclosure at St. John's Wood like a crowd of happy children. It makes me feel young again to be caught in that tide of fresh enthusiasm. I know that is how I used to feel in the good old days of the 'eighties when I used to set out with my lunch to the Oval to see Walter Read and Lohmann and K. J. Key and M. P. Bowden and Abel and Lockwood and Tom Richardson and all the glorious company who filled the stage then. What heroes they were! What scenes we saw! What bowling, what batting, what fielding! I daresay the heroes of to-day are as heroic as those of whom I speak; but not for me.
Cricket, to the ageing mind, is never what it used to be; it is always looking back to some golden age when it flourished, like chivalry, in a pure and unsullied world. My father used to talk to me with fervour about the heroic deeds of Caffyn and Julius Cæsar, and I talk to young people about the incomparable skill of Grace and Steel and Lohmann, and they no doubt will be eloquent to their children about Hobbs and Gregory. And so on. Francis Thompson explained the secret of the golden age when he sang:
Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow long ago.
That is it. It is that "long ago" that makes our giants so gigantesque. Cricketers, as the old gentleman said of the peaches, are not so fine as they were in our young days. How could they be? Why have we lived all these years if we are not allowed to have seen greater things than these youngsters who are shouldering us out of the way have ever seen? Of course, they don't believe in "our Hornbys and our Barlows long ago" any more than I believed when a boy that Caffyn and Julius Cæsar could hold a candle to W. G. or Walter Read, and they will find that their children will think lightly of Hobbs in comparison with some contemporary god of their idolatry.
But whatever change has taken place in cricket--or in me--I swear there is no change in the jolly Oval crowd. It is, as it has always been, the liveliest, most intense, most good-humoured mob that ever shouted itself hoarse at cricket. It is as different from the Lord's crowd as a country fair is from the Church Congress. At Lord's we take our cricket as solemnly as if we were at a prayer-meeting. We sit and smoke and knit our brows with portentous gravity. Sometimes we forget ourselves and say: "Well run, sir!" or "Missed. By Jove!" Then we turn round to see if anybody has heard us. We have even been known to clap; but these extravagances are rare. Generally we end by falling asleep.
But we were done out of our sleep on Monday. There's no possibility of sleep when the Oval crowd is about and when they have brought Billitch with them. At Lord's we never have a popular hero or a comic figure. Cricket is far too serious a thing to turn to fun. If Little Tich came and played at Lord's, we should not smile. We should take him very seriously, and call him Mr. William Tich if he came out of the front-door of the pavilion, and Tich (W.) if he came out of the side-door. On Monday we had several bad shocks to our sense of the solemnities of cricket. For example, we saw Fender, the Surrey captain, lead the "gentlemen" members of his team to the professionals' quarters and bring his team out to the field in a body, just for all the world as though they were all one flesh and blood. It was a painful sight, and many of us closed our eyes rather than look upon it. We felt that Bolshevism had invaded our sanctuary at last.
And then there was that unseemly enthusiasm for Billitch. I don't know what there is about Bill that makes him such an idol of the Oval crowd; but there it is. If Bill went on to bowl the ring shouted, "Good ole Bill"; if he went off bowling it said that, "Ole Bill wants a rest"; if he hit a ball it said, "That's one for ole Bill"; if he missed a ball it said, "Ole Bill let that go by"; if he tapped the wicket with his bat it was confident that "Ole Bill had found a narsty spot"; if he made a short run it shouted, "Brayvo, ole Bill." I think that if he had stopped to blow his nose the crowd would have blown its nose too, for the pleasure of keeping him company.
It is not that Billitch is a comic figure, as Johnny Briggs used to be. Nor an incomparable cricketer, as Lohmann used to be. Nor of home product from Mitcham Common, for I think he comes from Lancashire. But he has a certain liveliness, a sense of enjoying everything he does, and putting his whole heart into it, that gives a lusty spirit to the game and touches the affections of the Oval crowd, which always mixes up its affections with its cricket. And his name does the rest. It is an irresistible name. You can go on saying Billitch all day without growing weary. It will suit any circumstances and go to any rhythm. What jolly verses old Craig would weave about it if he could come back and hawk poems to us on sunny afternoons. But it needed the Oval crowd to discover the riches of that name. If Billitch had come to Lord's he would not have been Billitch at all. He would have been Hitch (W.) and as solemn as all the rest of us. I wish we were as merry at Lord's as they are at the Oval.
ON SHOP WINDOWS
It is one of the consolations of being unemployed that one has time to look in the shop windows. When I was among the employed I never looked in shop windows. I was shot like a shuttle in a loom from home to office and from engagement to engagement, and had no time to saunter along and "stand and stare." It was not merely that I had no time for shop windows: I thought I had no taste for shop windows. If I walked down Regent Street with Jane I was sensible of a certain impatience when she made a sudden left-wheel and stood transfixed before some brilliant idea of the window-dresser. I declined to wheel to the left. I stood implacably in the middle of the pavement, looking severely ahead or around or above. I wanted to be getting on with the war. I was a serious person, with a soul above the frivolities of shop windows. No doubt there was something of a pose in this behaviour. There is usually something of a pose in us when we feel superior.
But with the inheritance of leisure I have become more humble-minded. I not only wheel to the left when Jane wheels, but I wheel to the left on my own account. I am becoming a student of shop windows. I find them as interesting as a hedgerow in the country. I can tell you the price of things. I can discuss with you the relative merits of Marshall and Snelgrove and Peter Robinson, and the name of Mr. Selfridge falls trippingly from my tongue. There is not a tailor's shop between the Law Courts and Marble Arch that I have not peered into, and if you want to know where a good line in boots is to be had or where motor-cars are cheap to-day or precious stones should be sought I am worth consulting. No longer does Jane regard a walk down Regent Street with me as an affliction. I am a companion after her own heart--if not an expert, at least an intelligent amateur. A touch on my arm, and I wheel to the left with military precision and line up in front of the window and discuss the contents in no unenlightened spirit. My opinion is regarded. I am asked questions. I am listened to with respect. My taste in hats is becoming a proverb, and it is allowed that I have a good eye for colour.
In this new-found diversion I am catholic in my tastes. You may see me lost in thought before a furniture shop or a fruit shop, or examining trombones or Kodaks, or looking at old colour prints or old books, or studying old china, or simply standing amused among a crowd of other idlers watching the kittens at play in the naturalist's shop window. There is no covetousness in all this. I am conscious of no yearnings for unattainable things. On the contrary, I am astonished at the number of things I can do without.
Nor am I tempted to go inside the shops.
May day seldom looks Up in the country as it does in books.
And I know that shop windows are no more like the inside of shops than a company prospectus is like the company's balance-sheet. You see, let us say, a pair of shoes in the window at twenty-five shillings. It would be a crime to let that pair of shoes go, you say. It is what you have been looking for--something "good-cheap," as the old English phrase went. You go inside and allude falteringly to that cheap line in the window. The salesman observes the falter. He speaks coldly of that attractive-looking bait. You feebly insist, and he tries it on, making you sensible the while that a person like you would be dishonoured by such footwear, that he is surprised you should think that a person of your obvious quality can appear abroad in such inferior leathers. Moreover, aren't they a leetle tight across the instep? And unfortunately he hasn't the next size in stock.... Now here is a perfect shoe, best box-calf, soft as kid, durable as brass, last a lifetime.... The price? The fellow looks inside as though the question of price had not occurred to him, as though it had no relation to the subject.... Fifty-five shillings. And as you leave the shop worsted, wearing the shoes, you fancy you hear a slight chuckle of derision from the victor.
There are, of course, people who love shopping and whose life is irradiated by victories at the counter. They are chiefly women, but I have known men who had gifts in this line of no mean order. They could march into a shop as boldly as any woman and have the place turned upside down and go away without spending a copper, carrying their heads as high and haughtily as you please. But men of this heroic mould are rare. Men are usually much too mean-spirited, too humble, too timid to be fit to go into a shop to buy anything. Perhaps I ought to say they are too proud. They would slink out, if they could do so unobserved. They would decline to buy what they don't want to buy if their vanity would permit them. But they cannot face the ordeal. They cannot leave the impression that they are not rolling in riches and are not able to buy anything in the shop, whether they want it or not. And it is only fair to us to say that sometimes we fall from compassion. We buy because the lady has been so attentive--or has such an agreeable presence--that we have not the courage to disappoint her or, less creditably, to lose her favourable opinion.
Now women, of course, are afflicted with none of these handicaps. The trouble with men as shoppers is that they are incurable amateurs and sentimentalists. They not only do not know the ropes; they do not know that there are any ropes to know. They are just babes and sucklings at the business. You can see the Delilah behind the counter smiling pityingly and even contemptuously to herself as they approach with their mouths wide open to receive the hook. She chooses her bait under the poor simpletons' noses, and lands them without a struggle. She knows that they will take any old thing at any old price. But a woman marches to the attack as the soldier marches to battle. She is for the rigour of the game. The shop is her battlefield, and she surveys it with the eye of the professional warrior. And Delilah prepares to receive her as an enemy worthy of her steel. All her faculties are aroused, all her suspicions are awakened. She expects no quarter, and she will give none.