I have a confession to make. Once in the happy far-off days--it seems
ages since--I was bored by my fellow-passengers' conversation in the
train. I daresay that they were equally bored by mine; but against that
view there is the fact that this is my confession and not theirs. Well,
I am punished now. I admit that I would give a good deal to hear
Griffith's story of how he did the dog-leg hole in three again. There
sits Griffith opposite to me, and no one would know that he had ever
handled a club. He has become a golf-mute.
Or think of Purvis. The recital of the performances of Purvis's new car
lent an additional terror to railway travelling. I have forgotten the
very make of his car now. I cannot particularise the number of its
cylinders or say if it is electrically started. Purvis is
conversationally punctured.
There was, too, one recalls, an Insurance Act. Wilson felt a special
grievance because he employed an aged gardener, out of charity, two days
a week. He talked, if I remember correctly, about a cruel fourpence and
a mythical ninepence. He read fierce letters he had composed for the
Press, and when the papers published them, which was seldom, he read
them to us all over again. As an anti-insurance agitator Wilson now
comes under the unemployment section of the accursed Act.
And the strange people who intruded with third-class tickets, and
trampled on our toes, and smoked shag, and talked repulsively about the
Cockspurs and Chelsea's new purchase from Oldham Athletic, and gave each
other "dead certs" of appalling incertitude, and passed remarks which to
my mind showed a shocking lack of respect for the upper and middle
classes! We were not one class in those times.
May it all come back to us soon--all the old chatter! Come back to us,
Sir THOMAS LIPTON and the Cup! Come back to us, GLOOMY DEAN! Come back
to us, Ninepence for Fourpence. Come back to us, "dead certs" and "also
rans." Come back golf and motor-cars. Come back, Wicked Government and
Wicked Opposition. Life is too painfully interesting now. I long to be
bored again.
But it must be boredom with honour.
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