war, and I fear now that I shall never play it again. Yet I scan the
papers eagerly, hoping for some announcement of it. Not this actual
game, of course, but some version of it; some "Christmas novelty,"
in which, perhaps, the princes are called knights, but the laughter
remains the same.
The Mathematical Mind
My daily paper just now is full of mathematical difficulties,
submitted by its readers for the amusement of one of its staff. Every
morning he appeals to us for assistance in solving tricky little
problems about pints of water and herrings and rectangular fields. The
magic number "9" has a great fascination for him. It is terrifying
to think that if you multiply any row of figures by 9 the sum of the
figures thus obtained is divisible by 9. It is uncanny to hear that if
a clock takes six seconds to strike six it takes as much as thirteen
seconds and a fifth to strike twelve.
As a relief from searching for news in a press devoid of news, the
study of these problems is welcome enough, and to the unmathematical
mind, no doubt, the solutions appear to be something miraculous. But
to the mathematical mind a thing more miraculous is the awe with which
the unmathematical regard the simplest manipulation of figures. Most
of my life at school was spent in such pursuits that I feel bound to
claim the mathematical mind to some extent, with the result that I can
look down wonderingly upon these deeps of ignorance yawning daily in
the papers--much, I dare say, as the senior wrangler looks down upon
me. Figures may puzzle me occasionally, but at least they never cause
me surprise or alarm.
Naturally, then, I am jealous for the mathematical mind. If a man who
makes a false quantity, or attributes Lycidas to Keats, is generally
admitted to be uncultured, I resent it very much that no stigma
attaches to the gentleman who cannot do short division. I remember
once at school having to do a piece of Latin prose about the Black
Hole of Calcutta. It was a moving story as told in our prose book, and
I had spent an interesting hour turning into fairly correct and wholly
uninspired Latin--the sort of Latin I suppose which a small uneducated
Roman child (who had heard the news) would have written to a
school-boy friend. The size of the Black Hole was given as "twenty
foot square." I had no idea how to render this idiomatically, but I
knew that a room 20 ft. square contained 400 square feet. Also I knew
the Latin for one square foot. But you will not be surprised to hear
that my form master, a man of culture and education, leapt upon me.
"Quadringenti," he snapped, "is 400, not 20."
"Quite so," I agreed. "The room had 400 square feet."
"Read it again. It says 20 square feet."
"No, no, 20 feet square."
He glared at me in indignation. "What's the difference?" he said.
I sighed and began to explain. I went on explaining. If there had not
been other things to do than teaching cultured and educated
schoolmasters, I might be explaining still.
Yes, I resented this; and I resent now the matter-of-fact way in which
we accept the ignorance of mathematics shown by our present
teachers--the press. At every election in which there are only two
candidates a dozen papers discover with amazement this astounding
coincidence in the figures: that the decrease in, say, the Liberal
vote subtracted from the increase in the Conservative vote is exactly
equal to the increase in the poll. If there should happen to be three
candidates for a seat, the coincidences discovered are yet more
numerous and astonishing. Last Christmas a paper let itself go still
further, and dived into the economics of the plum pudding. A plum
pudding contains raisins, flour, and sugar. Raisins had gone up 2d. a
pound, or whatever it was, flour 6d., and sugar 1d. Hence the pudding
now would cost 9d. a pound more!
Consider, too, the extraordinary antics of the press over the methods
of scoring in the cricket championship. Wonderful new suggestions are
made which, if followed, could only have the effect of bringing the
teams out in exactly the same order as before. The simplest of simple
problems in algebra would have shown them this, but they feared to mix
themselves up with such unknown powers of darkness. The Theory of
Probability, again, leaves the press entirely cold, so that it is
ready to father any childish "system" for Monte Carlo. And nine men
out of ten really believe that, if you toss a penny five times in the
air and it comes down heads each time, it is more likely to come down
tails than heads next time.
Yet papers and people who think like this are considered quite capable
of dealing with the extraordinarily complicated figures of national
finance. They may boom or condemn insurance bills and fiscal policies,
and we listen to them reverently. As long as they know what Mr.
Gladstone said in '74, it doesn't seem to matter at all what Mr.
Todhunter said in his "Arithmetic for Beginners."
Going Out to Dinner
If you are one of those lucky people whose motor is not numbered (as
mine is) 19 or 11 or 22, it does not really matter where your host for
the evening prefers to live; Bayswater or Battersea or Blackheath--it
is all the same to your chauffeur. But for those of us who have to
fight for bus or train or taxicab, it is different. We have to say to
ourselves, "Is it worth it?" A man who lives in Chelsea (for
instance) demands more from an invitation to Hampstead than from an
invitation to Kensington. If such a man were interested in people
rather than in food, he might feel that one actor-manager and a rural
dean among his fellow-guests would be sufficient attraction in a
Kensington house, but that at least two archbishops and a
revue-producer would have to be forthcoming at Hampstead before the
journey on a wet night would be justified. On the other hand, if he
were a vulgar man who preferred food to people, he would divide London
up into whisky, burgundy, and champagne areas according to their
accessibility from his own house; and on receiving an invitation to a
house in the outer or champagne area (as it might be at Dulwich), he
would try to discover, either by inquiry among his friends or by
employing a private detective, whether this house fulfilled the
necessary condition. If not, of course, then he would write a polite
note to say that he would be in the country, or confined to his bed
with gout, on the day in question.
I am as fond of going out to dinner as anyone else is, but there is a
moment, just before I begin to array myself for it, when I wish that
it were on some other evening. If the telephone bell rings, I say,
"Thank Heavens, Mrs. Parkinson-Jones has died suddenly. I mean, how
sad," and, looking as solemn as I can, I pick up the receiver.
"Is that the Excelsior Laundry?" says a voice. "You only sent back
half a pair of socks this week."
I replace the receiver and go reluctantly upstairs to dress. There is
no help for it. As I dress, I wonder who my partner at the table will
be, and if at this moment she is feeling as gloomy about the prospects
as I am. How much better if we had both dined comfortably at home. I
remember some years ago taking in a Dowager Countess. Don't think that
I am priding myself on this; I realize as well as you do that a
mistake of some sort was made. Probably my hostess took me for
somebody else--Sir Thomas Lipton, it may have been. Anyway the Dowager
Countess and I led the way downstairs to the dining-room, and all the
other guests murmured to themselves, "Who on earth is that?" and
told each other that no doubt I was one of the Serbian Princes who had
recently arrived in the country. I forgot what the Countess and I
talked about; probably yachts, or tea; but I was not paying much
attention to our conversation. I had other things to think about.
For the Dowager Countess (wisely, I think) was dieting herself. She
went through the evening on a glass of water and two biscuits. Each
new dish on its way round the table was brought first to her; she
waved it away, and it came to me. There was nothing to be done. I had
to open it.
My particular memory is of a quail-pie. Quails may be all right for
Moses in the desert, but, if they are served in the form of pie at
dinner, they should be distributed at a side-table, not handed round
from guest to guest. The Countess having shuddered at it and resumed
her biscuit, it was left to me to make the opening excavation. The
difficulty was to know where each quail began and ended; the job
really wanted a professional quail-finder, who might have indicated
the point on the surface of the crust at which it would be most
hopeful to dig for quails.
As it was, I had to dig at random, and, being unlucky, I plunged the
knife straight into the middle of a bird. It was impossible, of
course, to withdraw the quail through the slit I had thus made in the
pastry, nor could I get my knife out (with a bird sticking on the end
of it) in order to make a second slit at a suitable angle. I tried to
shake the quail off inside the pie, but it was fixed too firmly. I
tried pulling it off against the inside of the crust, but it became
obvious that if I persisted in this, the whole roof would come off.
The footman, with great presence of mind, realized my difficulty and
offered me a second knife. Unfortunately, I misjudged the width of
quails, and plunging this second knife into the pie a little farther
on, I landed into the middle of another quail no less retentive of
cutlery than the first. The dish now began to look more like a game
than a pie, and, waving away a third knife, I said (quite truly by
this time) that I didn't like quails, and that on second thoughts I
would ask the Dowager Countess to lend me a biscuit.
Fortunately, dinner is not all quail-pie. But even in the case of some
more amenable dish, the first-comer is in a position of great
responsibility. Casting a hasty eye round the company, he has to count
the number of diners, estimate the size of the dish, divide the one by
the other, and take a helping of the appropriate size, knowing that
the fashion which he inaugurates will be faithfully followed. How much
less exacting is the position of the more lowly-placed man; my own,
for instance, on ordinary occasions. There may be two quails and an
egg-cup left when the footman reaches me, or even only the egg-cup,
but at least I have nobody but myself to consider.
But let us get away from food for the body, and consider food for the
mind. I refer to that intellectual conversation which it is the
business of the guests at a dinner-party to contribute. Not "What
shall we eat?" but "What shall be talk about?" is the question
which is really disturbing us as we tug definitely at our necktie and
give a last look at ourselves in the glass before following the
servant upstairs.
"Will you take in Miss Montmorency?" says our hostess.
We bow to Miss Montmorency hopefully.
"Er--jolly day it's been, hasn't it?"
No, really, we can't say anything about the weather. We must be
original.
"Er--have you been to any theatres lately?"
No, no, everybody says that. Well, then, what can we say? Let us try
again.
"How do you do. Er--I see by the paper this evening that the
Bolsheviks have captured Omsk."
"Captured Whatsk?"
"Omsk." Or was it Tomsk? Fortunately it does not matter, for Miss
Montmorency is not the least interested.
"Oh!" she says.
I hate people who say "Oh!" It means that you have to begin all over
again.
"I've been playing golfsk--I mean golf--this afternoon," we try.
"Do you play at all?"
"No."
Then it is no good telling her what our handicap is.
"No doubt your prefer tennis," we hazard.
"Oh no."
"I mean bridge."
"I don't play any game," she answers.
Then the sooner she goes away and talks to somebody else the better.
"Ah, I expect you're more interested in the theatre?"
"I hardly ever go to the theatre."
"Well, of course, a good book by the fireside--"
"I never read," she says.
Dash the woman, what does she do? But before we can ask her, she lets
us into the great secret.
"I like talking," she says.
Good Heavens! What else have we been trying to do all this time?
However, it is only the very young girl at her first dinner-party whom
it is difficult to entertain. At her second dinner-party, and
thereafter, she knows the whole art of being amusing. All she has to
do is to listen; all we men have to do is to tell her about ourselves.
Indeed, sometimes I think that it is just as well to begin at once.
Let us be quite frank about it, and get to work as soon as we are
introduced.
"How do you do. Lovely day it has been, hasn't it? It was on just
such a day as this, thirty-five years ago, that I was born in the
secluded village of Puddlecome of humble but honest parents. Nestling
among the western hills..."
And so on. Ending, at the dessert, with the thousand we earned that
morning.
The Etiquette of Escape
There is a girl in one of William de Morgan's books who interrupts the
narrator of a breathless tiger-hunting story with the rather
disconcerting warning, "I'm on the side of the tiger; I always am."
It was the sporting instinct. Tigers may be wicked beasts who defend
themselves when they are attacked, but one cannot help feeling a
little sorry for them. Their number is up. The hunters are too many,
the rifles too accurate, for the hunted to have any real chance. So
she was on the side of the tiger; she always was.
In the same way I am on the side of the convict; I always am. Not, of
course, until he is a convict. But when once the Law has condemned
him, and he is safely in prison, then he is only one against so many.
It is impossible not to sympathize with his attempts to escape.
Perhaps, if one lived close to a prison, in a cottage, say, whose
tenant was invariably called upon by any escaping prisoner and made to
exchange clothes with the help of a crow-bar, one might feel
differently. But in theory we are all of us inclined to applaud the
man who fights successfully such a lone battle against such tremendous
odds; yes, even if it was the blackest of crimes which sent him into
captivity.
It is, therefore, extraordinarily jolly to read about the escape of
political prisoners from gaol. One has to stifle no protests from
one's conscience while applauding them, for it is absurd to suppose
that the world is any the worse place for their being loose again.
Probably they are much more dangerous in prison than out of it. But
besides applauding them, one envies them heartily. What fun they must
have had when arranging it! What fun, too, to attempt an escape, when
the worst that can happen to you, if you are recaptured, is that the
next escape becomes a little more difficult. No bread and water, no
punishment cell for a political prisoner.
All the same, these are not quite the ideal escapes. I am a trifle
exigent in such matters. I allow my prisoners a little latitude, but
there are certain rules which must be observed. Sinn Feiners, for
instance, make it much too easy for themselves. Their friends from
outside are permitted to visit them, and to discuss openly (but of
course, in Irish) all the arrangements for the great day. When the day
comes, they make off by motor-car, and as likely as not have a
steam-yacht waiting for them on the coast. It was not thus that I used
to escape in the early nineties. I observed the rules.
The first rule was that the only means of communication with outside
was the roll of bread which formed one's principal meal. Biting
eagerly into the bread, the hungry prisoner found himself entangled in
a message from his loved one. Of course, in these last few years he
would just have thought that it was part of the bread, perhaps a
trifle more indigestible than usual, but in those days he would have
no excuse for not realizing that his Araminta was getting into touch
with him. This first message did not say much; just "All my love, and
I am sending a file to-morrow," so as to prevent him from breaking
his jaw on it. On the next day, he would open the roll cautiously, and
behold! a small file would be embedded within.
It is wonderful what can be done with quite a small file. But we must
remember that the world moved more slowly in those days. One had
leisure in which to do a job of work properly. Perhaps our prisoner
took a couple of years filing the gyves off his wrists (holding the
file carefully in the teeth), and another year to remove the manacles
from his ankles. Fortunately he was left alone to pursue these
avocations. The goaler pushed in the daily portion of bread and water,
but made no inquiry about his prisoner's well-being. Only the
essential tame rat kept him company, and Araminta outside, to whom he
dropped an occasional note to say that he had done another millimetre
that morning. Perhaps she did not get it; it was borne swiftly away by
the river which flowed beneath the walls, and never came to the
opposite bank, whereon she waited for him. But she did not lose hope.
These things always took a long time.
And then, when the fetters had been removed, and two of the bars in
the narrow window had been sawn through, there came the great moment.
The prisoner was now free to tear his sheet and his blanket and his
underclothes into strips, and plait himself a rope. One had to time
this for the summer, of course. One couldn't go cutting up one's shirt
in the middle of winter. So, upon a dark night in August, the prisoner
tied his rope to the remaining bar, squeezed through the window, and
let himself down into space. Was the rope long enough? It wasn't, of
course; it never was. But, once at the end of it, the prisoner would
realize, his senses quickened by the emergency, that it was too late
to go back. From the extreme end he breathed a prayer and dropped....
_Splash!_ And five minutes later he was embracing Araminta. There was
no pursuit; they were sportsmen in those days, and it was recognized
that he had won.
That is the classic mode of escape. But there are variants of it which
I am prepared to allow. The goaler may have a daughter, who, moved by
the romantic history and pallor of the prisoner, may exchange clothes
with him. The prisoner may pass himself off for dead, may be actually
buried, and then rescued from the grave just in time by the pre-warned
and ever-ready Araminta. There are many legitimate ways of escape, but
the essential thing is that all messages to the prisoner from his
Araminta outside should be conveyed in his loaf of bread. To whisper
them in Irish is too easy, too unromantic.
But in any case I am on the side of the prisoner. I always am.
Geographical Research
The other day I met a man who didn't know where Tripoli was. Tripoli
happened to come into the conversation, and he was evidently at a
loss. "Let's see," he said. "Tripoli is just down by the--er--you
know. What's the name of that place?" "That's right," I answered,
"just opposite Thingumabob. I could show you in a minute on the map.
It's near--what do they call it?" At this moment the train stopped,
and I got out and went straight home to look at my atlas.
Of course I really knew exactly where Tripoli was. About thirty years
ago, when I learnt geography, one of the questions they were always
asking me was, "What are the exports of Spain, and where is
Tripoli?" But much may happen in twenty years; coast erosion and
tidal waves and things like that. I looked at the map in order to
assure myself that Tripoli had remained pretty firm. As far as I could
make it out it had moved. Certainly it must have looked different
thirty years ago, for I took some little time to locate it. But no
doubt one's point of view changes with the decades. To a boy Tripoli
might seem a long way from Italy--even in Asia Minor; but when he grew
up his standards of measurement would be altered. Tripoli would appear
in its proper place due south of Sicily.
I always enjoy these periodic excursions to my atlas. People talk a
good deal of nonsense about the importance of teaching geography at
school instead of useless subjects like Latin and Greek, but so long
as you have an atlas near you, of what use is geography? Why waste
time learning where Tripoli and Fiume are, when you can turn to a map
of Africa and spot them in a moment? In a leading article in _The
Times_ (no less--our premier English newspaper) it was stated during a
general election that Darlington was in Yorkshire. You may say that
_The Times_ leader writers ought to have been taught geography; I say
that unfortunately they have been taught geography. They learnt, or
thought they learnt, that Darlington was a Yorkshire town. If they had
been left in a state of decent ignorance, they would have looked for
Darlington in the map and found that it was in Durham. (One
moment--Map 29--Yes, Durham; that's right.) As it is, there are at
this moment some hundreds of retired colonels who go about believing
implicitly that Darlington is in Yorkshire because _The Times_ has
said it. How much more important than a knowledge of geography is the
possession of an atlas.
My own atlas is a particularly fine specimen. It contains all sorts of
surprising maps which never come into ordinary geography. I think my
favourite is a picture of the Pacific Ocean, coloured in varying
shades of blue according to the depths of the sea. The deep
ultramarine terrifies me. I tremble for a ship which is passing over
it, and only breathe again when it reaches the very palest blue. There
is one little patch--the Nero Deep in the Ladrone Basin--which is
actually 31,614 feet deep. I suppose if you sailed over it you would
find it no bluer than the rest of the sea, and if you fell into it you
would feel no more alarmed than if it were 31,613 feet deep; but still
you cannot see it in the atlas without a moment's awe.
Then my atlas has a map of "The British Empire showing the great
commercial highways"; another of "The North Polar regions showing
the progress of explorations"; maps of the trade routes, of gulf
streams, and beautiful things of that kind. It tells you how far it is
from Southampton to Fremantle, so that if you are interested in the
M.C.C. Australian team you can follow them day by day across the sea.
Why, with all your geographical knowledge you couldn't even tell me
the distance between Yokohama and Honolulu, but I can give the answer
in a moment--3,379 miles. Also I know exactly what a section of the
world along lat. 45 deg. N. looks like--and there are very few of our
most learned men who can say as much.
But my atlas goes even farther than this, though I for one do not
follow it. It gives diagrams of exports and imports; it tells you
where things are manufactured or where grown; it gives pictures of
sheep--an immense sheep representing New Zealand and a mere insect
representing Russia, and alas! no sheep at all for Canada and Germany
and China. Then there are large cigars for America and small mild
cigars for France and Germany; pictures in colour of such unfamiliar
objects as spindles and raw silk and miners and Mongolians and iron
ore; statistics of traffic receipts and diamonds. I say that I don't
follow my atlas here, because information of this sort does not seem
to belong properly to an atlas. This is not my idea of geography at
all. When I open my atlas I open it to look at maps--to find out where
Tripoli is--not to acquire information about flax and things; yet I
cannot forego the boast that if I wanted I could even speak at length
about flax.
And lastly there is the index. Running my eye down it, I can tell you
in less than a minute where such different places as Jorobado, Kabba,
Hidegkut, Paloo, and Pago Pago are to be found. Could you, even after
your first-class honours in the Geography Tripos, be as certain as I
am? Of Hidegkut, perhaps, or Jorobado, but not of Pago Pago.
On the other hand, you might possibly have known where Tripoli was.
Children's Plays
At the beginning of every pantomime season, we are brought up against
two original discoveries. The first is that Mr. Arthur Collins has
undoubtedly surpassed himself; the other, that "the children's
pantomime" is not really a pantomime for children at all. Mr.
Collins, in fact, has again surpassed himself in providing an
entertainment for men and women of the world.