cathedral city I came upon a portfolio of water-colour drawings, among
which was one that to my eye would have been a possible Turner, even if
an earlier owner had not shared that opinion or hope and set the magic
name with all its initials (so often placed in the wrong order) beneath
it.
"How much is this?" I asked scornfully.
"Well," said the dealer, "if it were a genuine Turner it would be worth
anything. But let's say ten shillings. You can have it for that; but I
don't mind if you don't, because I'm going to London next week and
should take it with me to get an opinion."
I pondered.
"Mind you, I don't guarantee it," he added.
I gave him the ten shillings.
By what incredible means I found a purchaser for the drawing at fifty
pounds there is no need to tell, for the point of this narrative resides
not in bargaining with collectors, but in bargaining with my own soul.
The astonishing fact remains that I achieved a profit of forty-nine
pounds ten and was duly elated. I then began to think.
The dealer (so my thoughts ran) in that little street by the cathedral
west door, he ought to participate in this. He behaved very well to me
and I ought to behave well to him. It would be only fair to give him
half.
Thereupon I sat down and wrote a little note saying that the potential
Turner drawing, which no doubt he recollected, had turned out to be
authentic, and I had great pleasure in enclosing him half of the
proceeds, as I considered that to be the only just and decent course.
Having no stamps and the hour being late I did not post this, and went
to bed.
At about 3.30 a. m. I woke widely up and, according to custom, began to
review my life's errors, which are in no danger of ever suffering from
loneliness. From these I reached, by way of mitigation, my recent
successful piece of chaffering, and put the letter to the dealer under
both examination and cross-examination. Why (so my thoughts ran) give
him half? Why be quixotic? This is no world for quixotry. It was my eye
that detected the probability of the drawing, not his. He had indeed
failed; did not know his own business. Why put a premium on ineptitude?
No, a present of, say, ten pounds at the most would more than adequately
meet the case.
Sleep still refusing to oblige me, I took a book of short stories and
read one. Then I closed my eyes again, and again began to think about
the dealer. Why (so my thoughts ran) send him ten pounds? It will only
give him a wrong idea of his customers, none other of whom would be so
fair, so sporting, as I. He will expect similar letters every day and be
disappointed, and then he will become embittered and go down the vale of
tears a miserable creature. He looked a nice old man too; a pity, nay a
crime, to injure such a nature. No, ten pounds is absurd. Five would be
plenty. Ten would put him above himself.
While I was dressing the next morning I thought about the dealer again.
Why should I (so my thoughts ran), directly I had for the first time in
my life brought off a financial _coup_, spoil it by giving a large part
of the profit away? Was not that flying in the face of the Goddess of
Business, whoever she may be? Was it not asking her to disregard
me--only a day or so after we had at last got on terms? There is no fury
like a woman scorned; it would probably be the end of me. The
Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts have won to success and affluence
probably just because they don't do these foolish impulsive things. If I
am to make any kind of figure in this new _role_ of fine-art speculator
(so my thoughts continued) I must control my feelings. No, five pounds
is absurd. A _douceur_ of one pound will meet the case. It will be
nothing to me--or, at any rate, nothing serious--but a gift of quail and
manna from a clear sky to the dealer, without, however, doing him any
harm. A pound will be ample, accompanied by a brief note.
The note was to the effect that I had sold the drawing at a profit which
enabled me to make him a present, because it was an old, and perhaps
odd, belief of mine that one should do this kind of thing; good luck
should be shared.
I had the envelope in my pocket containing the note and the cheque when
I reached the club for lunch; and that afternoon I played bridge so
disastrously that I was glad I had not posted it.
After all (so my thoughts ran, as I destroyed the envelope and contents)
such bargains are all part of the game. Buying and selling are a
perfectly straightforward matter between dealer and customer. The dealer
asks as much as he thinks he can extort, and the customer, having paid
it, is under no obligation whatever to the dealer. The incident is
closed.
THE ITALIAN QUESTION
There are, no doubt, matters of importance which must always agitate the
minds of Italian senators and the souls of Italian reformers; the
country of Dante, Garibaldi, and D'Annunzio cannot for long be without
deep and vital problems, political and social: but for me, in that
otherwise delectable land, the dominant question is, What becomes of the
mosquito while you are hunting for him? (I say "him," although, of
course, there are supporters of the theory that mosquitoes are feminine.
But I know he is a he, and I know his name, too: it is, for too obvious
reasons, Macbeth.)
This is my procedure. I undress, then I put on a dressing-gown and
slippers, and, lifting the mosquito curtains, I place the candle inside
them on the bed. Then, with the closest scrutiny, I satisfy myself that
there is no mosquito inside, as indeed Eleanora, the handmaid, had done
some hours earlier, when she made the bed. "_Niente, niente_," she had
assured me, as she always does. None the less, again I go carefully
round it, examining the net for any faulty hanging which might let in
an insect ascending with malice from the floor.
This being done, I creep through, blow out the candle, and go to sleep.
I have slept perhaps an hour when a shrill bugle call, which I conceive
in my dreams to be the Last Trump, awakens me, and as I wake I realise
once again the melancholy fact that it is no Last Trump at all, but that
there is, as there always is, a mosquito inside the curtain.
Already he has probably bitten me in several places; at any cost he must
be prevented from biting me again. I sit up and feel my face all over to
discover if my beauty has been assailed; for that is the thing I most
dread. (Without beauty what are we?) I lie quite still while I do this,
straining to catch his horrid song again; and suddenly there it is, so
near that I duck my head swiftly, nearly ricking my neck in doing so.
This confirming my worst fears, there is nothing for it now but to lift
the curtains, slip out on to the cold stone floor, light the candle, and
once again go through the futile but necessary movement of locating and
expelling a mosquito.
That there will be none to expel, I know.
None the less I crawl about and peer into every corner. I shake the
clothes, I do everything that can be done short of stripping the
curtains, which I am too sleepy to do. And then I blow out the candle
for the second time and endeavour to fall asleep again.
But this time it is more difficult: Macbeth has performed his pet trick
too thoroughly. At last, however, I drowse away, again to be galvanised
suddenly into intense and dreadful vigilance by the bugle shrilling an
inch from my ear.
And so once again I get up and once again the pest vanishes into
nothing....
The next time I don't care a soldo if he is there or not, I am so tired;
and the rest of the night is passed in a half-sleep, in which real
mosquitoes and imaginary mosquitoes equally do their worst, and I turn
no hair. And then, some years later, the blessed dawn breaks and spreads
and another Italian night of misery passes into glorious day; and,
gradually recognising this bliss, I sit up in bed and begin to tear away
at the fresh poison in my poor hands and wrists, which were like enough
to a map of a volcanic island in the Pacific yesterday, but now are
poignantly more so.
And suddenly, as I thus scratch, I am conscious of a motionless black
speck on the curtain above me....
It is--yes--no--yes--it is Macbeth.
I agitate the gauze, but he takes no notice; I approach my hand, a
movement which in his saner moments he would fly from with the agility
of electricity; he remains still. He is either dead or dazed.
I examine him minutely and observe him to be alive, and the repugnant
truth is forced upon me that he is not merely drunk but drunk with my
blood. That purple tide must be intoxicating; and his intemperance has
been his ruin.
There is only one thing to be done. I have no paltry feelings of
revenge; but his death is indicated. The future must be considered. And
so I kill him. It is done with the greatest ease. He makes no resistance
at all: merely, dying, saluting me with my own blood. It is odd to have
it thus returned.
A good colour, I think, and get up, conscious of no triumph.
Then, going to the glass, I discern a red lump on my best feature....
ON DISGUISE
It was pointed out that one of the most striking novelties of the Peace
Day revels in London was the number of girls dressed as men, chiefly as
soldiers and sailors. Men who were dressed as women--at least
recognisably so--I did not observe, but then in a crowd at night they
might be more difficult to detect, whereas no woman can be a really
plausible man. The idea dominating these girls was less to deceive than
to be hilarious, and most of them, I am sure, before the evening was
over, achieved genuine male company.
For a man to pretend to be a woman is a less savoury proposition; but it
can be done without offence (as in "Charley's Aunt"), and I heard the
other day a pleasant story of such a disguise, the hero of which is a
comedian of great acceptance by the youthful every Christmas. This
popular performer laid a wager with the _maitre d'hotel_ of a famous
London restaurant that some time or other within the coming year he
would enter the restaurant dressed as an old woman, and be served with
lunch as though he were an ordinary customer. The _maitre d'hotel_, who
had been maintaining that men dressed as women were, at any rate in
broad daylight, always to be detected, accepted, and a sum was fixed
sufficient to make the enterprise worth while, the conditions being that
if the disguise were penetrated the _maitre d'hotel_ should indicate the
discovery by a somewhat idiomatic form of words, more suitable to be
applied to a sham lady than a real one; and if the actor succeeded he
should send for the manager and thank him for his lunch. Each winner
would add a request for the amount of the bet.
A few weeks ago the comedian won. But the cream of the story is that
during the year no fewer than three unoffending and genuine old ladies,
as female as God created them, were, on different occasions, more than
astonished to be accosted by the _maitre d'hotel_ in the midst of their
meals with a triumphant and not too refined catch-phrase, and to be
asked for a tenner.
People look now so little at the clothes of others that disguise must
have become easier than it was. The War brought so many strange costumes
into being that we stare hardly at all, and at uniforms never. A man
wearing a kilt, leggings, and spurs might, before the War, have
attracted attention; we now merely mutter, "Another of those Mounted
Highlanders," and pass on. In fact, we look more at members of the
no-hat brigade than at anyone else, and at them only to see if they are
authentic bare-heads or chance to have their hats in their hands.
Although the principal reasons for disguise are to assist in evading
justice (the criminal) and to assist in pursuing crime (the detective),
there are, I hope, a few whimsical humourists left who take to it for
its own sake or to make things more possible. A dull July day with a
north wind, such as in 1919 was the price of a divine May and June,
might be made quite tolerable if we masqueraded through it and pulled
the legs of our friends, like Sir Walter Scott's friend, the lady of the
"Mystifications." I am sure that it would enable us to have better
holidays. But we should have to be thorough: it is no use dressing up as
a policeman and walking fast, or assuming the mien of a Jewish financier
and taking long steps, or borrowing a scarecrow's wardrobe to beg in and
forgetting to supplant our natural assurance with a cringe. In fact, all
the real work is to come after the clothes are on. You may sit in
Clarkson's for a couple of hours having a beard attached to your face
(as I once watched a friend of mine doing), but, when it is finished,
you must look and behave not merely like a man with a beard, as he did,
but like a bearded man. He came away so painfully aware of a
transfigured chin that he collected every eye and the police began to
follow him merely on suspicion.
Indeed, to carry a disguise well requires unremitting concentration. The
walk comes first: one would have continually to remember it. Then the
carriage of the hands. Dressed as a curate, for example, you would give
it all away by strolling along with your hands in your pockets; just as
if you affected to be a seller of motor-cars you would fail if you had
them anywhere else. This need of unrelaxing thought is the reason why
disguise would be such a useful ally of the holiday maker. The
completest escape from one's ordinary preoccupations could be obtained
by a resolute simulation of this kind. It is not enough to go to
Brighton; that is only half a holiday. But to go to Brighton as a
bishop, say, or a taxi-driver, an American soldier or an Indian law
student, and keep it up--that would be a total change, a vacation
indeed.
BROKEN ENGLISH
Two examples of broken English have recently fallen upon my grateful
ear--both from the lips of foreign door-keepers of restaurants.
The first touched upon an untimely, although welcome, heat-wave.
"It is," I remarked with an affability equalled only by want of
originality, "almost too warm."
"Yes," the porter replied; "ze 'ot, 'e come all in one."
On the second occasion I was waiting for a guest who was late. After a
while I commented, pleasantly, to the door-keeper on the tendency of the
fair sex to be behind time.
He laughed the light, easy laugh of one who has deep intimacy with the
world we live in. "Ladies always late," he said; "always make themselves
wish and desire for."
However faulty in construction, both those phrases are epigrammatic. I
should not go so far as to say they could not be improved upon, yet it
would be difficult to make them more vivid. To endow the heat with
gender is assuredly to add to its reality: a blast from Vulcan's
furnace, for example; while the remark about the tarrying ladies
enshrines a great verity such as restaurant door-keepers are perhaps
better fitted to understand than most of us. At any rate, if a
restaurant door-keeper does not learn such things, who can? Both phrases
also show that neither speaker, after I know not how many years in
England, is yet making any effort to talk English, but is content to
clothe his own native thoughts in the most adequate English apparel that
he can collect; just as I, for one, never have done in France other than
translate more or less faithfully my English sentences into French. As
for talking French--never! No such good fortune. But I am quite sure
that, however amusing my blunders have been, no one has ever thought
them epigrammatic, because the English syntax does not automatically
tend to witty compression as the French does.
That illiteracy can get there as quickly and surely as the highest
culture, though by a different route, is proved by the following
instance.
Once upon a time there was a Little Tailor in a little shop in Soho. Not
a tailor in the ordinary sense of the word, but a ladies' tailor. He was
never seen out of shirt sleeves which might have been whiter, and he
came from one of the foreign lands where the youths seem to be under
conscription for this trade. What land it was I cannot say for certain,
but I should guess Poland.
Once upon a time--in fact, at the same time--there was also a lady
connected with the stage, and as her theatre was contiguous to the
Little Tailor's place of business, it was only natural that when one of
her gowns was suddenly torn her dresser should hasten to him to have it
put right. But the charge was so disproportionate to the slight work
done that the dresser deferred payment, and deferred it so long that the
Little Tailor had to lay down the shears and take the pen in their
place. And this is what he wrote:--
DEAR MISS,--I don't feel like exactly to quarrel with
somebody. But it is the first time in my life happens to me
a thing like that. And therefore I am not going to let it
go. I was just keeping quiet to see what you would do. But
what I can see you think I have forgotten about it. But I
may tell you this much. It is not the few shillings but it
is the impudence to come in while I am away to ask the girl
to do it as a special, and then to come in and take it away,
and then tell the girl you would come in to-morrow to see
me. And this is six weeks already and you have not come yet.
The only thing I can say now, Miss, if you will kindly send
the money by return, because I tell you candidly. I will not
be had by you in this manner. Should you not send the money
I shall try to get to know you personally, and will have
something to say about it.
--If the art of letter-writing is to state clearly one's own position,
that is as good a letter as any written. Every word expresses not only
the intention of the writer but his state of mind. No one could improve
upon it except in essentials.
And here is a letter by a Pole partially Americanised. It was recently
addressed to a Chicago firm:
DEAR GENTLEMEN,--Seaing Your Advertisement in the Daily News
that you wanted a Agent in Chicago I am a Temperance Polish
bachelor. I am 35 years of age, I live 30 years in Chicago
have a clear record. I love all Nations, I am inteligent i
worked in Metal line 10 years. I am a fine talker I lived in
4 parts of Chicago. I have a mild disposition I have 100.
cash. I am a Orphan. I work for a Jewish Real Estate man on
Commission he is worth 50,000 dollars he made that in 7
years. i want a small salary and Commission to act as
General Agent. I have a 4 room flat and furnished for my own
money and i have a roomer he has 5000 cash. I am a fine
Business talker used to being in Cigar and Grocery and Candy
Business some years agow. I will purchase a 25000 dollar
share in your Business Dear Gentlemen if you find me a wife
that has 50000 dollars cash or more. with best success to
you dear gentlemen, I will take a Widow, a white woman i
love children.
Very truly, etc.
With Baboo broken English we have long been familiar. Whole books have
been devoted to its exploitation; but the supply is continuous and
something new is ever emerging from India. Here is a recent effort by a
Calcutta student in search of pleasure. Writing to a firm of job-masters
in that city, he says:--
DEAR SIR,--It is to approach you for a kind consideration. I
am a student. I want a carriage either a tandaum or a
phaeton for evening drive now and then but not everyday. It
is to know from you whether you allow your carriages to be
engaged for part of a day say from 5 to 9 or 10 in the
evening and if the answer be in the affirmative at what rate
you do so. If you have no such rule will you be kind enough
to consider the case of a young man who wants a carriage for
joy-driving. It rests solely with you and be good and kind
enough to grant him what he wants. As regards charges in the
first instance let me tell you and which you perhaps know
thoroughly well that the student is generally poor but
merry, the best for him is to have it free of any charge and
if such cannot be the case, be kind enough to let me know
what least you can charge him for the same. I shall inform
you by phone or by a letter the date and time when I shall
require the carriage, you will send it with your syce and at
the end of every month I shall pay off the bill. I know
driving but not very nicely; and if you kindly grant me my
humble prayer you may send me a nice and well trained horse
and I shall do well with it. In a month's time I may require
it 6 or 7 times in the evening. Now, Sir, I do not know how
far I have been able to express fully what I wish to but I
hope you have fully understood what I mean and I pray you,
Sir, to give it a kind consideration and let me know of it
at your earliest convenience. This may seem to you like a
fancy but I am sure you have understood what I mean and
desire, and again I request you to grant me my humble prayer
for which act of kindness I shall remain ever obliging to
you. Please try to give it free of any charge; this will not
affect your huge business the least on the other hand will
provide a student with a merriest job for which act he will
pray to the Almighty for the prosperity and good-name of the
firm. You have understood what I mean so kindly excuse me
for the language used. Please keep this secret and
confidential.
A favourable reply is expected at the earliest possible
convenience by--Sincerely yours,
The African supplicant has now entered the lists too, and there are few
mails from the West Coast that do not bring to a certain London
publishing firm appeals for catalogues and books. The difference between
the Baboo and the African is very striking. The Baboo approaches the
patron almost on his stomach, certainly with a cringe, whereas the
African smiles light-heartedly, baring all his white teeth with cheerful
confidence. Here is a typical letter from a student in Ashanti to the
firm in question:
DEAR SIR,--I am with much pleasure to indite you about your
name that has come to my hand with great joy. On the
receipt of this letter, know that I want to be one of your
fellow friends. You have been reported to me by a friend of
mine of your good attention and benevolences. My openion of
writing you is to say, I want to take you as my favourite
friend. Everything or news that may be happened there at
your side, I wish you to report same to me. And I also shall
report same to you satisfaction. Will you be good enough to
agree with me? Then I hope to get few lines of news from you
being as you consented or disconsented. To have a friend at
abroad is something that delights the life. I am earnestly
requested to hear from you soon. I beg to detain, dear Sir,
Yours truly,
Thus does another ambitious youth, also in Ashanti, in whose veins the
virus of English civilisation has begun to work, put his needs and his
hopes and his potentialities before a well-known London firm of travel
agents with out-posts all over the world:--
DEAR SIRS,--I have the honour most respectfully to bring
this before you to ask your favour to remit me down per the
very first outward mail steamer to send me passenger's
ticket so that I may run up quickly to your station and stay
with you, because I often hear and know that you are the
best trainer in the city of London. So I wish you will send
me ticket. I am orphan. The object which induces me to write
you this letter is this, I wish to be an competent educated
fellow, but in our Africa here there exists no better school
and tutor. I hope you will do my request, and may this my
humble letter meet you in good condition. I am orphan.
Awaiting your favourable reply per the next steamer coming,
I beg to be, Sirs, Your obedient Servant,
From China comes a specimen of English as fractured with the best of
motives by a Chinese student. The Kaiser having been given as the
subject of an essay competition by the English class in whatever
celestial college it happened to be, some admirable documents resulted,
from one of which I take a few salient sentences:--
The German Kaiser is not the Superior Man as deciphered by
the Chinese literature; he is surely a mean fellow
containing much fraudish cunnings in his deceited heart. The
Superior Man is shown in the merits of excellent heart with
much loving kindness to all peoples; the mean fellow is
displayed in the black heart of the ungenerated devils of
the hell with much loving kindness only to himself.... The
German Kaiser he awfully wishing to slave the people and
extinct the civilisations of the universe; he destroy the
literature books, and the arts, and the ships, and mass the
people of Allies Nations together with the intermediate
outstanding Nations.... Thus it will be clearly seen by
whole universal globe that the German Hun Kaiser he conceal
much brutish iniquity in his heart, and is not fit to sit in
the pail of the Allies Nations including the Chinese
Republic.