Jerome Jerome K. - Diary of a Pilgrimage

Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: "Well now, why don't youwrite a sensible book? I should like to see you make people think."

"Do you believe it can be done, then?" I asked.

"Well, try," he replied.

Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you tounderstand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book Itell you all about Germanyat all events, all I know about Germanyandthe Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. Ido not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do notwant to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. Whenyou have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you somemore. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making youthink too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to theexercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractiveform, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous.I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are beinginstructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, sofar as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or anexceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowingit. I want to do you all goodto improve your minds and to make youthink, if I can.

What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want toknow; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward forme to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on thegross sales.

LONDON, March, 1891.

My friend B. called on me this morning and asked me if I would go to atheatre with him on Monday next.

"Oh, yes! certainly, old man," I replied. "Have you got an order, then?"

He said:

"No; they don't give orders. We shall have to pay."

"Pay! Pay to go into a theatre!" I answered, in astonishment. "Oh,nonsense! You are joking."

"My dear fellow," he rejoined, "do you think I should suggest paying ifit were possible to get in by any other means? But the people who runthis theatre would not even understand what was meant by a 'free list,'the uncivilised barbarians! It is of no use pretending to them that youare on the Press, because they don't want the Press; they don't thinkanything of the Press. It is no good writing to the acting manager,because there is no acting manager. It would be a waste of time offeringto exhibit bills, because they don't have any billsnot of that sort.If you want to go in to see the show, you've got to pay. If you don'tpay, you stop outside; that's their brutal rule."

"Dear me," I said, "what a very unpleasant arrangement! And whereaboutsis this extraordinary theatre? I don't think I can ever have been insideit."

"I don't think you have," he replied; "it is at Ober-Ammergaufirstturning on the left after you leave Ober railway-station, fifty milesfrom Munich."

"Um! rather out of the way for a theatre," I said. "I should not havethought an outlying house like that could have afforded to give itselfairs."

"The house holds seven thousand people," answered my friend B., "andmoney is turned away at each performance. The first production is onMonday next. Will you come?"

I pondered for a moment, looked at my diary, and saw that Aunt Emma wascoming to spend Saturday to Wednesday next with us, calculated that if Iwent I should miss her, and might not see her again for years, anddecided that I would go.

To tell the truth, it was the journey more than the play that tempted me.To be a great traveller has always been one of my cherished ambitions. Iyearn to be able to write in this sort of strain:

"I have smoked my fragrant Havana in the sunny streets of old Madrid, andI have puffed the rude and not sweet-smelling calumet of peace in thedraughty wigwam of the Wild West; I have sipped my evening coffee in thesilent tent, while the tethered camel browsed without upon the desertgrass, and I have quaffed the fiery brandy of the North while thereindeer munched his fodder beside me in the hut, and the pale light ofthe midnight sun threw the shadows of the pines across the snow; I havefelt the stab of lustrous eyes that, ghostlike, looked at me from outveil-covered faces in Byzantium's narrow ways, and I have laughed back(though it was wrong of me to do so) at the saucy, wanton glances of theblack-eyed girls of Jedo; I have wandered where 'good'but not toogoodHaroun Alraschid crept disguised at nightfall, with his faithfulMesrour by his side; I have stood upon the bridge where Dante watched thesainted Beatrice pass by; I have floated on the waters that once bore thebarge of Cleopatra; I have stood where Caesar fell; I have heard the softrustle of rich, rare robes in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, and I haveheard the teeth-necklaces rattle around the ebony throats of the bellesof Tongataboo; I have panted beneath the sun's fierce rays in India, andfrozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled with the teeminghordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the great pine forests of the WesternWorld, I have lain, wrapped in my blanket, a thousand miles beyond theshores of human life."

B., to whom I explained my leaning towards this style of diction, saidthat exactly the same effect could be produced by writing about placesquite handy. He said:

"I could go on like that without having been outside England at all. Ishould say:

"I have smoked my fourpenny shag in the sanded bars of Fleet Street, andI have puffed my twopenny Manilla in the gilded balls of the Criterion; Ihave quaffed my foaming beer of Burton where Islington's famed Angelgathers the little thirsty ones beneath her shadowing wings, and I havesipped my tenpenny ordinaire in many a garlic-scented salon of Soho.On the back of the strangely-moving ass I have urgedor, to speak morecorrectly, the proprietor of the ass, or his agent, from behind hasurgedmy wild career across the sandy heaths of Hampstead, and my canoehas startled the screaming wild-fowl from their lonely haunts amid thesub-tropical regions of Battersea. Adown the long, steep slope of OneTree Hill have I rolled from top to foot, while laughing maidens of theEast stood round and clapped their hands and yelled; and, in theold-world garden of that pleasant Court, where played the fair-hairedchildren of the ill-starred Stuarts, have I wandered long through manypaths, my arm entwined about the waist of one of Eve's sweet daughters,while her mother raged around indignantly on the other side of the hedge,and never seemed to get any nearer to us. I have chased thelodging-house Norfolk Howard to his watery death by the pale lamp'slight; I have, shivering, followed the leaping flea o'er many a mile ofpillow and sheet, by the great Atlantic's margin. Round and round, tillthe heartand not only the heartgrows sick, and the mad brain whirlsand reels, have I ridden the small, but extremely hard, horse, that may,for a penny, be mounted amid the plains of Peckham Rye; and high abovethe heads of the giddy throngs of Barnet (though it is doubtful if anyoneamong them was half so giddy as was I) have I swung in highly-colouredcar, worked by a man with a rope. I have trod in stately measure thefloor of Kensington's Town Hall (the tickets were a guinea each, andincluded refreshmentswhen you could get to them through the crowd), andon the green sward of the forest that borders eastern Anglia by theoft-sung town of Epping I have performed quaint ceremonies in a ring; Ihave mingled with the teeming hordes of Drury Lane on Boxing Night, and,during the run of a high-class piece, I have sat in lonely grandeur inthe front row of the gallery, and wished that I had spent my shillinginstead in the Oriental halls of the Alhambra."