第72章

NOTES OF A WEEK’S HOLIDAY.

Most of us tell old stories in our families.The wife and children laugh for the hundredth time at the joke.The old servants (though old servants are fewer every day) nod and smile a recognition at the well-known anecdote."Don't tell that story of Grouse in the gun-room," says Diggory to Mr.Hardcastle in the play, "or I must laugh." As we twaddle, and grow old and forgetful, we may tell an old story; or, out of mere benevolence, and a wish to amuse a friend when conversation is flagging, disinter a Joe Miller now and then;but the practice is not quite honest, and entails a certain necessity of hypocrisy on story hearers and tellers.It is a sad thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant.What right have I to tell my "Grouse in the gun-room" over and over in the presence of my wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power: and, the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly.

Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by it and laughs too.But this practice continued is not moral.This self-indulgence on your part, my dear Paterfamilias, is weak, vain--not to say culpable.I can imagine many a worthy man, who begins unguardedly to read this page, and comes to the present sentence, lying back in his chair, thinking of that story which he has told innocently for fifty years, and rather piteously owning to himself, "Well, well, it IS wrong; I have no right to call on my poor wife to laugh, my daughters to affect to be amused, by that old, old jest of mine.And they would have gone on laughing, and they would have pretended to be amused, to their dying day, if this man had not flung his damper over our hilarity."...I lay down the pen, and think, "Are there any old stories which I still tell myself in the bosom of my family? Have I any 'Grouse in my gun-room?'" If there are such, it is because my memory fails; not because I want applause, and wantonly repeat myself.You see, men with the so-called fund of anecdote will not repeat the same story to the same individual; but they do think that, on a new party, the repetition of a joke ever so old may be honorably tried.I meet men walking the London street, bearing the best reputation, men of anecdotal powers:--I know such, who very likely will read this, and say, "Hang the fellow, he means ME!" And so I do.No--no man ought to tell an anecdote more than thrice, let us say, unless he is sure he is speaking only to give pleasure to his hearers--unless he feels that it is not a mere desire for praise which makes him open his jaws.

And is it not with writers as with raconteurs? Ought they not to have their ingenuous modesty? May authors tell old stories, and how many times over? When I come to look at a place which I have visited any time these twenty or thirty years, I recall not the place merely, but the sensations I had at first seeing it, and which are quite different to my feelings to-day.That first day at Calais; the voices of the women crying out at night, as the vessel came alongside the pier; the supper at Quillacq's and the flavor of the cutlets and wine; the red-calico canopy under which I slept; the tiled floor, and the fresh smell of the sheets; the wonderful postilion in his jack-boots and pigtail;--all return with perfect clearness to my mind, and I am seeing them, and not the objects which are actually under my eyes.Here is Calais.Yonder is that commissioner I have known this score of years.Here are the women screaming and hustling over the baggage; the people at the passport-barrier who take your papers.My good people, I hardly see you.