"Well, really!" I protested. "Surely the man himself--everybody--I
mean--his--his eye-glass--his bulldog--of course only a few of us fully
appreciate the extent of his actual research work--but still--"
"All right, I'll get it," she replied.
That finished off Araminta easily enough, but the situation none the less
was serious. Paragraphs exactly like this had been meeting my eye in almost
every popular paper for month after month, and, though I use two memory
systems and have an electric scalp shampoo each week, I find them
increasingly difficult to cope with. _Who's Which_ already transgresses the
established canons of literary art. It is almost as tall lying down as
standing up, and fellows like Poppington are not even in _Who's Which_. He
had not, you observed, even obtained an O.B.E. What would happen if I met
him at some public gathering or dinner and by some awful mischance forgot
those salient facts?
It appeared to me that a process for reproducing short biographies of this
nature in a slightly larger type on the shirt-fronts of eminent personages
was badly needed; it should be coupled, I felt, with an arrangement of
periscopes to help one when sitting beside the great man or standing behind
his back. Or he might perhaps wear upon his sleeve something like the
divisional signs which were so useful in France. Old Poppington, for
instance, might have a--might wear an--I mean there might be something or
other on his coat in red or green or blue to indicate the nature and scope
of his secretarial activities and give a fellow the right lead. And to
think that every week dozens and dozens of new Poppingtons are springing up
like crocuses about me! It was a bewildering thought. They were becoming
perhaps the most numerous and influential class in the community. I had
visions of mass meetings of "well-known" men--"well-known" men marching in
procession with flags to Downing Street to demand State recognition,
statues and pensions, and insisting that it should be made a penal offence
not to recognise their well-known features in the street. I made a great
resolve. Why should I be left out of it? I determined to join the crowd.
I had got rather out of touch with old _Marchand_ for some time, and had
indeed forgotten exactly what he looked like, but I persuaded a mutual
friend to point him out to me, and, selecting the psychological moment,
cannoned into him heavily in the street. His spectacles dropped off and his
note-book fell out of his hand.
"Why, if it isn't _Du Beurre_!" I shouted, feigning an ecstatic surprise.
"I am sorry," he said rather stiffly, when he had recovered his breath,
"but I am afraid I haven't the pleasure--"
"I am John Smith," I said.
"I am afraid I still--"
"Allow me to tell you all about myself," I said. And I did.
I was a little nervous as to how he would take it, but the event justified
me. When I opened my paper next evening I found the following words:--
"Ran across John Smith of Ravenscourt Park yesterday afternoon. Chatting
with him about one thing and another, he told me something of the methods
he has employed to bring about his present celebrity in that salubrious
suburb. He has never, it appears, written a book, collaborated in a review,
appeared in a night-club, lunched at the Bitz, sat on a committee, or been
summoned as a witness in a sensational divorce case. His record, I fancy,
must be one of the most thoroughly unique in Greater London."
There was no photograph of John Smith, but, biting partly into this
paragraph and partly into another on the opposite side of the column, was
one of Mortimer Despenser, the new film star, featured in _Scented Sin_,
which really did almost as well. Dear old _Du Beurre_!