Jane's uncle--Jane is my daughter--came to me one day and said, "What do
you think of my giving Jane a camera for her birthday? Wouldn't she be
pleased? The advertisement says, 'Any babe can do it,' and she'll be
ten."
"I have no doubt she'd be delighted," I said, "but there's a but. If you
give it you must endow it."
"What do you mean?" said Jane's uncle.
"The camera's the least part of it," I replied. "For half-a-guinea you
can cast a camera upon the world, but have you given a moment's
consideration to that camera's means of support? No, I thought not. One
more proof of the happy-go-lucky spirit of the present day. Yet you know
that a camera has to be fed on plates, that it consumes quantities of
poisonous acids, and expresses itself on reams of paper. It is
altogether a desperate and spendthrift character. On whom do you suppose
the cost of all this will fall?"
"On the employer, I should think," said Jane's uncle. "Doesn't Jane get
pocket-money?"
"Threepence a week," I said. "Barely her share of the camera's insurance
stamp. Jane being under age, any debts she may incur will devolve on me,
and I am really not in a position to take on this responsibility. No, I
repeat, if you give it you must endow it."
Jane's uncle meditated. Then he said, "Very well, I'll endow it to the
extent of £1 a year, to be paid in quarterly instalments of 5s. each."
Jane was delighted with the scheme. She had never had five shillings to
spend before, and was enthralled to find that it would buy not only
paper and poisons and plates, but also a mackintosh coat for her camera.
Then she took snapshots indoors and outdoors, at all times and in all
weathers, with catholic indifference to subject and suitability.
"The book says one has to learn by experience," she said, showing me a
pile of under-exposures. "This one of you is very good--the only pity is
that I didn't get your head into the photo." This was one of many small
details.
Jane looked forward feverishly to the payment of the second instalment.
"You'll have to put it by," I said. "You have plenty of paper and things
left, haven't you?"
"Yes, but I want a dormouse."
"Oh, but that wouldn't be legal," I said. "That would be a
misappropriation of trust funds."
"What's that?" said Jane.
"Well," I said, "don't you see that the money's given to endow your
camera, and must be spent on that camera and nothing else?"
"But there's nothing more to get for it," urged Jane.
"Then the money must accumulate interest until there is," I said.
Women have no heads for the law. I could not make Jane see that to buy a
dormouse with the funds of the camera would be an irregular and
punishable proceeding. Finally, in despair, I had to promise to ask her
uncle if he would recognise the application of one quarter's payment to
the purchase of a dormouse. He acceded to the somewhat unusual request
with his customary good-nature.
"But remember," I told Jane, "the next instalment must be spent on the
camera."
Slowly but surely, however, the camera fell into disuse. I was asked
more rarely, and more rarely still, to look through prints. At last I
was asked no more.
Then the third instalment arrived.
"You want some more paper and things by now, I suppose?" I said
encouragingly.
"The light hasn't been good lately," said Jane evasively. "I've not been
taking many photos."
"Then what are you going to do with the money?"
"Ask Uncle if I may buy a stamp-album."
* * * * *
Shortly after this, Jane's uncle's birthday came round. I passed a shop
in the City which had recently had a fire. Five hundred silver
cigarette-cases had been pluckily rescued from the flames and, to
celebrate their escape, were being offered for sale at a remarkably low
figure. One of these survivors was dispatched to Jane's uncle.
He dined with us the next evening, and was more grateful than I could
reasonably expect. He handled the cigarette-case quite fondly.
"But what about its endowment?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Well, isn't a cigarette-case as eligible as a camera?" he said. "Its
needs are, I consider, even greater. Presumably this gift is meant to
facilitate my smoking, but an empty cigarette-case offers me nothing to
smoke--it implies the heavy responsibility on an already overburdened
man of keeping it filled. Now, suppose you complete the gift, as I did
Jane's, by at least a year's endowment?"
I began to wish that the cigarette-cases had perished, but after his
kindness to Jane I could hardly refuse.
"Well, what would it cost?" I said.
"That's easily reckoned," said Jane's uncle. "Say I smoke on an average
fifteen cigarettes a day--that's 105 a week--that's---- Have you a piece
of paper?"
It worked out at just under 5,500 cigarettes a year. At 8_s._ a hundred,
twenty guineas would just cover the year's endowment. It seemed out of
all proportion to the cost of the case.
"It's a good deal more than Jane's camera got," I protested.
"I told you its claims were greater. Of course you can't expect to get
off as cheaply with a fixed habit of maturity as with the passing
caprice of a kid. On the other hand you might have done worse. Suppose
you had given me golf-clubs--there'd have been golf-balls, caddies, club
subscription, lunches, fares and postage on correspondence with _The
Times_. Compared with that, what is a paltry five guineas a quarter?"
On reflection I found that very few presents would have escaped the
endowment scheme altogether, and that the cigarette-case was really a
comparatively modest pensioner, and I felt a little comforted.
For four quarters I remitted five guineas to Jane's uncle.
My present seemed to change his nature. Whereas he had been a man rather
to ignore the claims of clothes than to consider them, I now noticed
that he looked more prosperous and was better dressed than I had ever
seen him before. Once, when he appeared in a new lounge suit--the second
new one within my knowledge in six months--I could not refrain from
remarking on it.
"One has to dress up to a silver cigarette-case, old fellow," he said,
and the subject was dismissed.
The year was on the point of expiring. One day I was talking with Jane's
uncle and another man at the Club. The other man offered me a cigarette,
and to my amazement passed Jane's uncle over with these words:--
"No good offering you one, I know, poor old chap. When is your doctor
going to give you a reprieve?"
"I don't know," he said sadly, taking a pinch of snuff.
"What does this mean?" I said when we were alone. "What about the
endowment at the rate of fifteen cigarettes a day?"
"A parallel case to Jane's," he answered. "There seems something fatal
about these endowments. Three days after you had agreed to endow the
cigarette-case my doctor forbade me, on pain of some awful 'itis,' to
exceed three cigarettes a day. With the first instalment you had
provided me with cigarettes for the year. So what should I do in these
circumstances but follow the precedent set by your family? Only, instead
of a dormouse and a stamp-album, I chose to purchase smartness. I spent
the three remaining instalments on my wardrobe."
* * * * *
It was my birthday yesterday. Jane's uncle sent me a handsome
silver-mounted walking-stick. "It is the only thing I can think of that
requires no endowment," he wrote. "Pavements are supplied by the County
Council, and you have an umbrella-stand."