The men I most admire at the present time, though I take care not to
tell them so to their faces, are the men who can do everything. By
this I don't mean people of huge intellectual attainments, like
Cabinet Ministers, or tremendous physical powers, like _Tarzan_ of the
Apes. It must be very nice to be able to have a heart-to-heart talk
with KRASSIN or to write articles for the Sunday picture-papers, and
very nice also to swing rapidly through the tree-tops, say, in Eaton
Square; but none of these gifts is much help when the door-handle
comes off. I hate that sort of thing to happen in a house.
In the Victorian age, of course, which was one of specialisation based
upon peace and plenty, one simply sent for a door-handle replacer and
he put it right. But nowadays the Door-handle Replacers' Union is
probably affiliated to an amalgamation which is discussing sympathetic
action with somebody who is striking, so nothing is done. This means
that for weeks and weeks, whenever one tries to go out of the room,
there is a loud crash like a 9.2 on the further side and a large blunt
dagger clutched melodramatically in the right hand, and nobody to
murder with it.
The man who can do everything is the kind of man who can mend a thing
like a broken door-handle as soon as look at it. He always knows which
of the funny things you push or pull on any kind of machine to make it
go or stop, and what is wrong with the cistern and the drawing-room
clock.
Such a man came into my house the other day. I call it my house, but
it really seems to belong to a number of large people who walk in and
out and shift packing-cases and splash paint and tramp heavily into
the bathroom about 8.30 A.M. when I am trying to get off to sleep.
They have also dug a large moat right through the lawn and the
garden-path, which rather spoils the appearance of these places,
though it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge at night and
feel that one is safe from burglars. Anyhow, whether it is my house or
theirs, the fact remains that the electric-bells were wrong. The man
of whom I am speaking lives next-door, and he came in and pointed this
out. "It is not much use having electric-bells," he said, "that don't
ring."
I might have argued this point. I might have said that to press the
button of a bell that does not ring gives one time to reflect on
whether one really wants the thing one rang for, and thereafter on
the whole vanity of human wishes, and so inculcates patience and
self-discipline. It is quite possible that an Eastern _yogi_ might
spend many years of beneficial calm pressing the buttons of bells that
do not ring. But I replied rather weakly, "No, I suppose not."
"I'll soon put that right for you," he said cheerily, and about five
minutes later he asked me to press one of the buttons, and there was a
loud tinkling noise. It seemed a pity that at the moment when the bell
did happen to ring there should be nobody to come and answer it.
"Whatever did you do to them?" I asked.
"It only needed a little water," he said, and I had hard work to
suppress my admiration. The very morning before, feeling that I ought
to take a hand in all this practical work that was going on about the
place, I had filled a large watering-can that I found lying about and
wetted some things which someone had stuck into the garden. I have
a kind of idea that they were carrots, but they may have been
maiden-hair ferns. Somehow it had never occurred to me for a moment to
go and water the electric bells.
Almost immediately afterwards this man discovered that all the knives
in the kitchen were blunt and went and fetched some kind of private
grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees
ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did
to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put
together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon as _The Outline
of History_ was put on to it (I should like to know whether Canon
BARNES can explain _that_), I was obliged to ask him to stop, in case
the tramping men should see him and strike immediately for fear of the
dilution of labour.
But what impressed me most was the part he took next day in the
Railway Carriage Conference, which curiously enough was on the subject
of strikes. There were several people in the carriage, and they were
talking about what they had done during the railway strike last year,
and what they would do if such a thing happened again. I said I should
like to be a station-master if possible, because they had top-hats and
grew such beautiful flowers. Only four or five trains seem to stop at
our station during the day, and if there was a strike I suppose the
number would be reduced to one or two. And I thought it would be
rather nice to spend the day wearing a top-hat and watering the
nasturtiums in the little rock-gardens behind the platform. Watering,
I said, was quite easy when once one got into the swing of it.
But the man who could do everything seemed to know everything too, and
he told me that station-masters were much too noble to strike. There
were two kinds of station-masters, he said, both wearing top-hats,
but one kind with full morning-dress underneath it and the other with
uniform. But neither kind struck.
Slightly nettled at his superior knowledge, I asked him, "What did
_you_ do during the Great Strike?"
"Oh, I had rather fun," he said; "I controlled the signals at London
Bridge."
If all the truth were known I expect that he is quite ready for Mr.
SMILLIE'S strike; that he has a handy little pick in his bedroom and
knows of rather a jolly little coal-mine close by.