Mr. Boldero liked the idea of the Patent Small-Clothes. He liked it
immensely, he said, immensely.
“There’s money in it,” he said.
Mr. Boldero was a small dark man of about forty-five, active as a bird
and with a bird’s brown, beady eyes, a bird’s sharp nose. He was always
busy, always had twenty different irons in the fire at once, was always
fresh, clearheaded, never tired. He was also always unpunctual, always
untidy. He had no sense of time or of order. But he got away with it, as
he liked to say. He delivered the goods—or rather the goods, in the
convenient form of cash, delivered themselves, almost miraculously it
always seemed, to him.
He was like a bird in appearance. But in mind, Gumbril found, after
having seen him once or twice, he was like a caterpillar: he ate all
that was put before him, he consumed a hundred times his own mental
weight every day. Other people’s ideas, other people’s knowledge—they
were his food. He devoured them and they were at once his own. All that
belonged to other people he annexed without a scruple or a second
thought, quite naturally, as though it were already his own. And he
absorbed it so rapidly and completely, he laid public claim to it so
promptly that he sometimes deceived people into believing that he had
really anticipated them in their ideas, that he had known for years and
years the things they had just been telling him, and which he would at
once airily repeat to them with the perfect assurance of one who
knows—knows by instinct, as it were, by inheritance.
At their first luncheon he had asked Gumbril to tell him all about
modern painting. Gumbril had given him a brief lecture; before the
savoury had appeared on the table, Mr. Boldero was talking with perfect
familiarity of Picasso and Derain. He almost made it understood that he
had a fine collection of their works in his drawing-room at home. Being
a trifle deaf, however, he was not very good at names, and Gumbril’s
all-too-tactful corrections were lost on him. He could not be induced to
abandon his Bacosso in favour of any other version of the Spaniard’s
name. Bacosso—why, he had known all about Bacosso since he was a
schoolboy! Bacosso was an old master, already.
Mr. Boldero was very severe with the waiters and knew so well how things
ought to be done at a good restaurant, that Gumbril felt sure he must
recently have lunched with some meticulous gormandizer of the old
school. And when the waiter made as though to serve them with brandy in
small glasses, Mr. Boldero was so passionately indignant that he sent
for the manager.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he shouted in a perfect frenzy of righteous
anger, “that you don’t yet know how brandy ought to be drunk?”
Perhaps it was only last week that he himself, Gumbril reflected, had
learned to aerate his cognac in Gargantuan beakers.
Meanwhile, of course, the Patent Small-Clothes were not neglected. As
soon as he had been told about the things, Mr. Boldero began speaking of
them with a perfect and practised familiarity. They were already his,
mentally his. And it was only Mr. Boldero’s generosity that prevented
him from making the Small-Clothes more effectively his own.
“If it weren’t for the friendship and respect which I feel for your
father, Mr. Gumbril,” he said, twinkling genially over the brandy, “I’d
just annex your Small-Clothes. Bag and baggage. Just annex them.”
“Ah, but they’re my patent,” said Gumbril. “Or at least they’re in
process of being patented. The agents are at work.”
Mr. Boldero laughed. “Do you suppose that would trouble me if I wanted
to be unscrupulous? I’d just take the idea and manufacture the article.
You’d bring an action. I’d have it defended with all the professional
erudition that could be brought. You’d find yourself let in for a case
that might cost thousands. And how would you pay for it? You’d be forced
to come to an agreement out of court, Mr. Gumbril. That’s what you’d
have to do. And a damned bad agreement it would be for you, I can tell
you.” Mr. Boldero laughed very cheerfully at the thought of the badness
of this agreement. “But don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I shan’t do it, you
know.”
Gumbril was not wholly reassured. Tactfully, he tried to find out what
terms Mr. Boldero was prepared to offer. Mr. Boldero was nebulously
vague.
They met again in Gumbril’s rooms. The contemporary drawings on the
walls reminded Mr. Boldero that he was now an art expert. He told
Gumbril all about it—in Gumbril’s own words. Every now and then, it was
true, Mr. Boldero made a little slip. Bacosso, for example, remained
unshakably Bacosso. But on the whole the performance was most
impressive. It made Gumbril feel very uncomfortable, however, while it
lasted. For he recognized in this characteristic of Mr. Boldero a
horrible caricature of himself. He too was an assimilator; more
discriminating, no doubt, more tactful, knowing better than Mr. Boldero
how to turn the assimilated experience into something new and truly his
own; but still a caterpillar, definitely a caterpillar. He began
studying Mr. Boldero with a close and disgustful attention, as one might
pore over some repulsive _memento mori_.
It was a relief when Mr. Boldero stopped talking art and consented to
get down to business. Gumbril was wearing for the occasion the sample
pair of Small-Clothes which Mr. Bojanus had made for him. For Mr.
Boldero’s benefit he put them, so to speak, through their paces. He
allowed himself to drop with a bump on to the floor—arriving there
bruiseless and unjarred. He sat in complete comfort for minutes at a
stretch on the edge of the ornamental iron fender. In the intervals he
paraded up and down before Mr. Boldero like a mannequin. “A trifle
bulgy,” said Mr. Boldero. “But still....” He was, taking it all round,
favourably impressed. It was time, he said, to begin thinking of
details. They would have to begin by making experiments with the
bladders to discover a model combining, as Mr. Boldero put it, ‘maximum
efficiency with minimum bulge.’ When they had found the right thing,
they would have it made in suitable quantities by any good rubber firm.
As for the trousers themselves, they could rely for those on sweated
female labour in the East End. “Cheap and good,” said Mr. Boldero.
“It sounds ideal,” said Gumbril.
“And then,” said Mr. Boldero, “there’s our advertising campaign. On that
I may say,” he went on with a certain solemnity, “will depend the
failure or success of our enterprise. I consider it of the first
importance.”
“Quite,” said Gumbril, nodding importantly and with intelligence.
“We must set to work,” said Mr. Boldero, “sci—en—tifically.” Gumbril
nodded again.
“We have to appeal,” Mr. Boldero went on so glibly that Gumbril felt
sure he must be quoting somebody else’s words, “to the great instincts
and feelings of humanity.... They are the sources of action. They spend
the money, if I may put it like that.”
“That’s all very well,” said Gumbril. “But how do you propose to appeal
to the most important of the instincts? I refer, as you may well
imagine, to sex.”
“I was just going to come to that,” said Mr. Boldero, raising his hand
as though to ask for a patient hearing. “Alas! we can’t. I don’t see any
way of hanging our Small-Clothes on the sexual peg.”
“Then we are undone,” said Gumbril, too dramatically.
“No, no.” Mr. Boldero was reassuring. “You make the error of the
Viennese. You exaggerate the importance of sex. After all, my dear Mr.
Gumbril, there is also the instinct of self-preservation; there is
also,” he leaned forward, wagging his finger, “the social instinct, the
instinct of the herd.”
“True.”
“Both of them as powerful as sex. What are the Professor’s famous
Censors but forbidding suggestions from the herd without, made powerful
and entrenched by the social instinct within?”
Gumbril had no answer; Mr. Boldero continued, smiling:
“So that we shall be all right if we stick to self-preservation and the
herd. Rub in the comfort and the utility, the hygienic virtues of our
Small-Clothes; that will catch their self-preservatory feelings. Aim at
their dread of public opinion, at their ambition to be one better than
their fellows and their terror of being different—at all the ludicrous
weaknesses a well-developed social instinct exposes them to. We shall
get them, if we set to work scientifically.” Mr. Boldero’s bird-like
eyes twinkled very brightly. “We shall get them,” he repeated, and he
laughed a happy little laugh, full of such a childlike diabolism, such
an innocent gay malignity that it seemed as though a little leprechaun
had suddenly taken the financier’s place in Gumbril’s best arm-chair.
Gumbril laughed too; for this leprechaunish mirth was infectious. “We
shall get them,” he echoed. “Oh, I’m sure we shall, if you set about it,
Mr. Boldero.”
Mr. Boldero acknowledged the compliment with a smile that expressed no
false humility. It was his due, and he knew it.
“I’ll give you some of my ideas about the advertising campaign,” he
said. “Just to give you a notion. You can think them over, quietly, and
make suggestions.”
“Yes, yes,” said Gumbril, nodding.
Mr. Boldero cleared his throat. “We shall begin,” he said, “by
making the most simple elementary appeal to their instinct of
self-preservation: we shall point out that the Patent Small-Clothes
are comfortable; that to wear them is to avoid pain. A few striking
slogans about comfort—that’s all we want. Very simple indeed. It
doesn’t take much to persuade a man that it’s pleasanter to sit on
air than on wood. But while we’re on the subject of hard seats we
shall have to glide off subtly at a tangent to make a flank attack
on the social instincts.” And joining the tip of his forefinger to
the tip of his thumb, Mr. Boldero moved his hand delicately
sideways, as though he were sliding it along a smooth brass rail.
“We shall have to speak about the glories and the trials of
sedentary labour. We must exalt its spiritual dignity and at the
same time condemn its physical discomforts. ‘The seat of honour,’
don’t you know. We could talk about that. ‘The Seats of the Mighty.’
‘The seat that rules the office rocks the world.’ All those lines
might be made something of. And then we could have little historical
chats about thrones; how dignified, but how uncomfortable they’ve
been. We must make the bank clerk and the civil servant feel proud
of being what they are and at the same time feel ashamed that, being
such splendid people, they should have to submit to the indignity of
having blistered hind-quarters. In modern advertising you must
flatter your public—not in the oily, abject, tradesmanlike style of
the old advertisers, crawling before clients who were their social
superiors; that’s all over now. It’s we who are the social
superiors—because we’ve got more money than the bank clerks and the
civil servants. Our modern flattery must be manly, straightforward,
sincere, the admiration of equal for equal—all the more flattering
as we aren’t equals.” Mr. Boldero laid a finger to his nose.
“They’re dirt and we’re capitalists....” He laughed.
Gumbril laughed too. It was the first time that he had ever thought of
himself as a capitalist, and the thought was exhilarating.
“We flatter them,” went on Mr. Boldero. “We say that honest work is
glorious and ennobling—which it isn’t; it’s merely dull and cretinizing.
And then we go on to suggest that it would be finer still, more
ennobling, because less uncomfortable, if they wore Gumbril’s Patent
Small-Clothes. You see the line?”
Gumbril saw the line.
“After that,” said Mr. Boldero, “we get on to the medical side of the
matter. The medical side, Mr. Gumbril—that’s most important. Nobody
feels really well nowadays—at any rate, nobody who lives in a big town
and does the kind of loathsome work that the people we’re catering for
does. Keeping this fact before our eyes, we have to make it clear that
only those can expect to be healthy who wear pneumatic trousers.”
“That will be a little difficult, won’t it?” questioned Gumbril.
“Not a bit of it!” Mr. Boldero laughed with an infectious confidence.
“All we have to do is to talk about the great nerve centres of the
spine: the shocks they get when you sit down too hard; the wearing
exhaustion to which long-protracted sitting on unpadded seats subjects
them. We’ll have to talk very scientifically about the great lumbar
ganglia—if there are such things, which I really don’t pretend to know.
We’ll even talk almost mystically about the ganglia. You know that sort
of ganglion philosophy?” Mr. Boldero went on parenthetically. “Very
interesting it is, sometimes, I think. We could put in a lot about the
dark, powerful sense-life, sex-life, instinct-life which is controlled
by the lumbar ganglion. How important it is that that shouldn’t be
damaged. That already our modern conditions of civilization tend unduly
to develop the intellect and the thoracic ganglia controlling the higher
emotions. That we’re wearing out, growing feeble, losing our balance in
consequence. And that the only cure—if we are to continue our present
mode of civilized life—is to be found in Gumbril’s Patent
Small-Clothes.” Mr. Boldero brought his hand with an emphatic smack on
to the table as he spoke, as he fairly shouted, these last words.
“Magnificent,” said Gumbril, with genuine admiration.
“This sort of medical and philosophical dope,” Mr. Boldero went on, “is
always very effective, if it’s properly used. The public to whom we are
making our appeal is, of course, almost absolutely ignorant on these,
or, indeed, on almost all other subjects. It is therefore very much
impressed by the unfamiliar words; particularly if they have such a good
juicy sound as the word ‘ganglia.’”
“There was a young man of East Anglia, whose loins were a tangle of
ganglia,” murmured Gumbril, _improvisatore_.
“Precisely,” said Mr. Boldero. “Precisely. You see how juicy it is?
Well, as I say, they’re impressed. And they’re also grateful. They’re
grateful to us for having given them a piece of abstruse, unlikely
information which they can pass on to their wives, or to such friends as
they know don’t read the paper in which our advertisement appears—can
pass on airily, don’t you know, with easy erudition, as though they’d
known all about ganglia from their childhood. And they’ll feel such a
flow of superiority as they hand on the metaphysics and the pathology,
that they’ll always think of us with affection. They’ll buy our breeks
and they’ll get other people to buy. That’s why,” Mr. Boldero went off
again on an instructive tangent, “that’s why the day of secret patent
medicines is really over. It’s no good saying you have rediscovered some
secret known only, in the past, to the Egyptians. People don’t know
anything about Egyptology; but they have an inkling that such a science
exists. And that if it does exist, it’s unlikely that patent medicine
makers should have found out facts unknown to the professors at the
universities. And it’s much the same even with secrets that don’t come
from Egypt. People know there’s such a thing as medical science and they
again feel it’s improbable that manufacturers should know things ignored
by the doctors. The modern democratic advertiser is entirely
above-board. He tells you all about it. He explains that the digestive
juices acting on bismuth give rise to a disinfectant acid. He points out
that lactic ferment gets destroyed before it reaches the large
intestine, so that Metchnikoff’s cure generally won’t work. And he goes
on to explain that the only way of getting the ferment there is to mix
it with starch and paraffin: starch to feed the ferment on, paraffin to
prevent the starch being digested before it gets to the intestine. And
in consequence, he convinces you that a mixture of starch, paraffin and
ferment is the only thing that’s any good at all. Consequently you buy
it; which you would never have done without the explanation. In the same
way, Mr. Gumbril, we mustn’t ask people to take our trousers on trust.
We must explain scientifically why these trousers will be good for their
health. And by means of the ganglia, as I’ve pointed out, we can even
show that the trousers will be good for their souls and the whole human
race at large. And as you probably know, Mr. Gumbril, there’s nothing
like a spiritual message to make things go. Combine spirituality with
practicality and you’ve fairly got them. Got them, I may say, on toast.
And that’s what we can do with our trousers; we can put a message into
them, a big, spiritual message. Decidedly,” he concluded, “we shall have
to work those ganglia all we can.”
“I’ll undertake to do that,” said Gumbril, who felt very buoyant and
self-assured. Mr. Boldero’s hydrogenous conversation had blown him up
like a balloon.
“And I’m sure you’ll do it well,” said Mr. Boldero encouragingly. “There
is no better training for modern commerce than a literary education. As
a practical business man, I always uphold the ancient universities,
especially in their teaching of the Humanities.”
Gumbril was much flattered. At the moment, it seemed supremely
satisfying to be told that he was likely to make a good business man.
The business man took on a radiance, began to glow, as it were, with a
phosphorescent splendour.
“Then it’s very important,” continued Mr. Boldero, “to play on their
snobbism; to exploit that painful sense of inferiority which the
ignorant and ingenuous always feel in the presence of the knowing. We’ve
got to make our trousers the Thing—socially right as well as merely
personally comfortable. We’ve got to imply somehow that it’s bad form
not to wear them. We’ve got to make those who don’t wear them feel
rather uncomfortable. Like that film of Charlie Chaplin’s, where he’s
the absent-minded young man about town who dresses for dinner
immaculately, from the waist up—white waistcoat, tail coat, stiff shirt,
top-hat—and only discovers, when he gets down into the hall of the
hotel, that he’s forgotten to put on his trousers. We’ve got to make
them feel like that. That’s always very successful. You know those
excellent American advertisements about young ladies whose engagements
are broken off because they perspire too freely or have an unpleasant
breath? How horribly uncomfortable those make you feel! We’ve got to do
something of the same sort for our trousers. Or more immediately
applicable would be those tailor’s advertisements about correct clothes.
‘Good clothes make you feel good.’ You know the sort of line. And then
those grave warning sentences in which you’re told that a correctly cut
suit may make the difference between an appointment gained and an
appointment lost, an interview granted and an interview refused. But the
most masterly examples I can think of,” Mr. Boldero went on with growing
enthusiasm, “are those American advertisements of spectacles, in which
the manufacturers first assume the existence of a social law about
goggles, and then proceed to invoke all the sanctions which fall on the
head of the committer of a solecism upon those who break it. It’s
masterly. For sport or relaxation, they tell you, as though it was a
social axiom, you must wear spectacles of pure tortoiseshell. For
business, tortoiseshell rims and nickel ear-pieces lend incisive
poise—incisive poise, we must remember that for our ads, Mr. Gumbril.
‘Gumbril’s Patent Small-Clothes lend incisive poise to business men.’
For semi-evening dress, shell rims with gold ear-pieces and gold
nose-bridge. And for full dress, gold-mounted rimless pince-nez are
refinement itself, and absolutely correct. Thus we see, a social law has
been created, according to which every self-respecting myope or astigmat
must have four distinct pairs of glasses. Think if he should wear the
all-shell sports model with full dress! Revolting solecism! The people
who read advertisements like that begin to feel uncomfortable; they have
only one pair of glasses, they are afraid of being laughed at, thought
low-class and ignorant and suburban. And since there are few who would
not rather be taken in adultery than in provincialism, they rush out to
buy four new pairs of spectacles. And the manufacturer gets rich, Mr.
Gumbril. Now, we must do something of the kind with our trousers. Imply
somehow that they’re correct, that you’re undressed without, that you’re
fiancée would break off the engagement if she saw you sitting down to
dinner on anything but air.” Mr. Boldero shrugged his shoulders, vaguely
waved his hand.
“It may be rather difficult,” said Gumbril, shaking his head.
“It may,” Mr. Boldero agreed. “But difficulties are made to be overcome.
We must pull the string of snobbery and shame: it’s essential. We must
find out methods for bringing the weight of public opinion to bear
mockingly on those who do not wear our trousers. It is difficult at the
moment to see how it can be done. But it will have to be done, it will
have to be done,” Mr. Boldero repeated emphatically. “We might even find
a way of invoking patriotism to our aid. ‘English trousers filled with
English air, for English men.’ A little far-fetched, perhaps. But there
might be something in it.”
Gumbril shook his head doubtfully.
“Well, it’s one of the things we’ve got to think about in any case,”
said Mr. Boldero. “We can’t afford to neglect such powerful social
emotions as these. Sex, as we’ve seen, is almost entirely out of the
question. We must run the rest, therefore, as hard as we can. For
instance, there’s the novelty business. People feel superior if they
possess something new which their neighbours haven’t got. The mere fact
of newness is an intoxication. We must encourage that sense of
superiority, brew up that intoxication. The most absurd and futile
objects can be sold because they’re new. Not long ago I sold four
million patent soap-dishes of a new and peculiar kind. The point was
that you didn’t screw the fixture into the bathroom wall; you made a
hole in the wall and built the soap-dish into a niche, like a holy water
stoup. My soap-dishes possessed no advantages over other kinds of
soap-dishes, and they cost a fantastic amount to instal. But I managed
to put them across, simply because they were new. Four million of them.”
Mr. Boldero smiled with satisfaction at the recollection. “We shall do
the same, I hope, with our trousers. People may be shy of being the
first to appear in them; but the shyness will be compensated for by the
sense of superiority and elation produced by the consciousness of the
newness of the things.”
“Quite so,” said Gumbril.
“And then, of course, there’s the economy slogan. ‘One pair of Gumbril’s
Patent Small-Clothes will outlast six pairs of ordinary trousers.’
That’s easy enough. So easy that it’s really uninteresting.” Mr. Boldero
waved it away.
“We shall have to have pictures,” said Gumbril, parenthetically. He had
an idea.
“Oh, of course.”
“I believe I know of the very man to do them,” Gumbril went on. “His
name’s Lypiatt. A painter. You’ve probably heard of him.”
“Heard of him!” exclaimed Mr. Boldero. He laughed. “But who hasn’t heard
of Lydgate.”
“Lypiatt.”
“Lypgate, I mean, of course.”
“I think he’d be the very man,” said Gumbril.
“I’m certain he would,” said Mr. Boldero, not a whit behind-hand.
Gumbril was pleased with himself. He felt he had done some one a good
turn. Poor old Lypiatt; be glad of the money. Gumbril remembered also
his own fiver. And remembering his own fiver, he also remembered that
Mr. Boldero had as yet made no concrete suggestion about terms. He
nerved himself at last to suggest to Mr. Boldero that it was time to
think of this little matter. Ah, how he hated talking about money! He
found it so hard to be firm in asserting his rights. He was ashamed of
showing himself grasping. He always thought with consideration of the
other person’s point of view—poor devil, could he afford to pay? And he
was always swindled and always conscious of the fact. Lord, how he hated
life on these occasions! Mr. Boldero was still evasive.
“I’ll write you a letter about it,” he said at last.
Gumbril was delighted. “Yes, do,” he said enthusiastically, “do.” He
knew how to cope with letters all right. He was a devil with the
fountain pen. It was these personal, hand-to-hand combats that he
couldn’t manage. He could have been, he always felt, such a ruthless
critic and satirist, such a violent, unscrupulous polemical writer. And
if ever he committed his autobiography to paper, how breath-takingly
intimate, how naked—naked without so much as a healthy sunburn to colour
the whiteness—how quiveringly a sensitive jelly it would be! All the
things he had never told any one would be in it. Confession at long
range—if anything, it would be rather agreeable.
“Yes, do write me a letter,” he repeated. “Do.”
Mr. Boldero’s letter came at last, and the proposals it contained were
derisory. A hundred pounds down and five pounds a week when the business
should be started. Five pounds a week—and for that he was to act as a
managing director, writer of advertisements and promoter of foreign
sales. Gumbril felt thankful that Mr. Boldero had put the terms in a
letter. If they had been offered point-blank across the luncheon table,
he would probably have accepted them without a murmur. He wrote a few
neat, sharp phrases saying that he could not consider less than five
hundred pounds down and a thousand a year. Mr. Boldero’s reply was
amiable; would Mr. Gumbril come and see him?
See him? Well, of course, it was inevitable. He would have to see him
again some time. But he would send the Complete Man to deal with the
fellow. A Complete Man matched with a leprechaun—there could be no doubt
as to the issue.
“DEAR MR. BOLDERO,” he wrote back, “I should have come to talk over
matters before this. But I have been engaged during the last days in
growing a beard and until this has come to maturity, I cannot, as
you will easily be able to understand, leave the house. By the day
after to-morrow, however, I hope to be completely presentable and
shall come to see you at your office at about three o’clock, if that
is convenient to you. I hope we shall be able to arrange matters
satisfactorily.—Believe me, dear Mr. Boldero, yours very truly,
THEODORE GUMBRIL, JR.”
The day after to-morrow became in due course to-day; splendidly bearded
and Rabelaisianly broad in his whipcord toga, Gumbril presented himself
at Mr. Boldero’s office in Queen Victoria Street.
“I should hardly have recognized you,” exclaimed Mr. Boldero as he shook
hands. “How it does alter you, to be sure!”
“Does it?” The Complete Man laughed with a significant joviality.
“Won’t you take off your coat?”
“No, thanks,” said Gumbril. “I’ll keep it on.”
“Well,” said the leprechaun, leaning back in his chair and twinkling,
bird-like, across the table.
“Well,” repeated Gumbril on a different tone from behind the stooks of
his corn-like beard. He smiled, feeling serenely strong and safe.
“I’m sorry we should have disagreed,” said Mr. Boldero.
“So am I,” the Complete Man replied. “But we shan’t disagree for long,”
he added, with significance; and as he spoke the words he brought down
his fist with such a bang, that the inkpots on Mr. Boldero’s very solid
mahogany writing-table trembled and the pens danced, while Mr. Boldero
himself started with a genuine alarm. He had not expected them. And now
he came to look at him more closely, this young Gumbril was a great,
hulking, dangerous-looking fellow. He had thought he would be easy to
manage. How could he have made such a mistake?
Gumbril left the office with Mr. Boldero’s cheque for three hundred and
fifty pounds in his pocket and an annual income of eight hundred. His
bruised right hand was extremely tender to the touch. He was thankful
that a single blow had been enough.