I have often longed to be a grocer. To be surrounded by so many
interesting things-- sardines, bottled raspberries, biscuits with
sugar on the top, preserved ginger, hams, brawn under glass,
everything in fact that makes life worth living; at one moment to
walk up a ladder in search of nutmeg, at the next to dive under a
counter in pursuit of cinnamon; to serve little girls with a
ha'porth of pear drops and lordly people like you and me with a
pint of cherry gin --is not this to follow the king of trades?
Some day I shall open a grocer's shop, and you will find me in my
spare evenings aproned behind the counter. Look out for the
currants in the window as you come in--I have an idea for
something artistic in the way of patterns there; but, as you love
me, do not offer to buy any. We grocers only put the currants out
for show, and so that we may run our fingers through them
luxuriously when business is slack. I have a good line in
shortbreads, madam, if I can find the box, but no currants this
evening, I beg you.
Yes, to be a grocer is to live well; but, after all, it is not to
see life. A grocer, in as far as it is possible to a man who
sells both scented soap and pilchards, would become narrow. We do
not come into contact with the outside world much, save through
the medium of potted lobster, and to sell a man potted lobster is
not to have our fingers on his pulse. Potted lobster does not
define a man. All customers are alike to the grocer, provided
their money is good. I perceive now that I was over-hasty in
deciding to become a grocer. That is rather for one's old age.
While one is young, and interested in persons rather than in
things, there is only one profession to follow--the profession of
bookstall clerk.
To be behind a bookstall is indeed to see life. The fascination
of it struck me suddenly as 1 stood in front of a station
bookstall last Monday and wondered who bought the tie-clips. The
answer came to me just as I got into my train-- Ask the man
behind the bookstall. He would know. Yes, and he would know who
bought all his papers and books and pamphlets, and to know this
is to know something about the people in the world. You cannot
tell a man by the lobster he eats, but you can tell something
about him by the literature he reads.
For instance, I once occupied a carriage on an eastern line with,
among others, a middle-aged woman. As soon as we left Liverpool
Street she produced a bag of shrimps, grasped each individual in
turn firmly by the head and tail, and ate him. When she had
finished, she emptied the ends out of the window, wiped her
hands, and settled down comfortably to her paper. What paper?
You'll never guess; I shall have to tell you--The Morning Post.
Now doesn't that give you the woman? The shrimps alone, no; the
paper alone, no; but the two to-gether. Conceive the holy joy of
the bookstall clerk as she and her bag of shrimps-- yes, he could
have told at once they were shrimps--approached and asked for The
Morning Post.
The day can never be dull to the bookstall clerk. I imagine him
assigning in his mind the right paper to each customer. This man
will ask for Golfing--wrong, he wants Cage Birds; that one over
there wants The Motor--ah, well, The Auto-Car, that's near
enough. Soon he would begin to know the different types; he would
learn to distinguish between the patrons of The Dancing Times and
of The Vote, The Era and The Athenaeum. Delightful surprises
would overwhelm him at intervals; as when--a red-letter day in
all the great stations--a gentleman in a check waistcoat makes
the double purchase of Homer's Penny Stories and The Spectator.
On those occasions, and they would be very rare, his faith in
human nature would begin to ooze away, until all at once he would
tell himself excitedly that the man was obviously an escaped
criminal in disguise, rather overdoing the part. After which he
would hand over The Winning Post and The Animals' Friend to the
pursuing detective in a sort of holy awe. What a life!
But he has other things than papers to sell. He knows who buys
those little sixpenny books of funny stories--a problem which has
often puzzled us others; he understands by now the type of man
who wants to read up a few good jokes to tell them down at old
Robinson's, where he is going for the week-end. Our bookstall
clerk doesn't wait to be asked. As soon as this gentleman
approaches, he whips out the book, dusts it, and places it before
the raconteur. He recognizes also at a glance the sort of silly
ass who is always losing his indiarubber umbrella ring. Half-way
across the station he can see him, and he hastens to get a new
card out in readiness. ("Or we would let you have seven for
sixpence, sir.") And even when one of those subtler characters
draws near, about whom it is impossible to say immediately
whether they require a fountain pen with case or the Life and
Letters, reduced to 3s. 6d., of Major-General Clement Bulger,
C.B., even then the man behind the bookstall is not found
wanting. If he is wrong the first time, he never fails to recover
with his second. "Bulger, sir. One of our greatest soldiers."
I thought of these things last Monday, and definitely renounced
the idea of becoming a grocer; and as I wandered round the
bookstall, thinking, I came across a little book, sixpence in
cloth, a shilling in leather, called Proverbs and Maxims. It
contained some thousands of the best thoughts in all languages,
such as have guided men along the path of truth since the
beginning of the world, from "What ho, she bumps!" to "Ich dien,"
and more. The thought occurred to me that an interesting article
might be extracted from it, so I bought the book. Unfortunately
enough I left it in the train before I had time to master it. I
shall be at the bookstall next Monday and I shall have to buy
another copy. That will be all right; you shan't miss it.
But I am wondering now what the bookstall clerk will make of me.
A man who keeps on buying Proverbs and Maxims. Well, as I say,
they see life.
"Who's Who"
I like my novels long. When I had read three pages of this one I
glanced at the end, and found to my delight that there were two
thousand seven hundred and twenty-five pages more to come. I
returned with a sigh of pleasure to page 4. I was just at the
place where Leslie Patrick Abercrombie wins the prize "for laying
out Prestatyn," some local wrestler, presumably, who had
challenged the crowd at a country fair. After laying him out,
Abercrombie returns to his books and becomes editor of the Town
Planning Review. A wonderfully drawn character.
The plot of this oddly named novel is too complicated to describe
at length. It opens with the conferment of the C.M.G. on Kuli
Khan Abbas in 1903, an incident of which the anonymous author
might have made a good deal more, and closes with a brief
description of the Rev. Samuel Marinus Zwemer's home in New York
City; but much has happened in the meanwhile. Thousands of
characters have made their brief appearance on the stage, and
have been hustled off to make room for others, but so unerringly
are they drawn that we feel that we are in the presence of living
people. Take Colette Willy, for example, who comes in on page
2656 at a time when the denouement is clearly at hand. The
author, who is working up to his great scene --the appointment of
Dr. Norman Wilsmore to the International Commission for the
Publication of Annual Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants--
draws her for us in a few lightning touches. She is "authoress,
actress." She has written two little books: Dialogue de Betes and
La Retraite Sentimentale. That is all. But is it not enough? Has
he not made Colette Willy live before us? A lesser writer might
have plunged into elaborate details about her telephone number
and her permanent address, but, like the true artist that he is,
our author leaves all those things unsaid. For though he can be a
realist when necessary (as in the case of Wallis Budge, to which
I shall refer directly), he does not hesitate to trust to the
impressionist sketch when the situation demands it.
Wallis Budge is apparently the hero of the tale; at any rate, the
author devotes most space to him--some hundred and twenty lines
or so. He does not appear until page 341, by which time we are on
familiar terms with some two or three thousand of the less
important characters. It is typical of the writer that, once he
has described a character to us, has (so to speak) set him on his
feet, he appears to lose interest in his creation, and it is only
rarely that further reference is made to him. Alfred Budd, for
instance, who became British Vice-Consul of San Sebastian in
1907, and resides, as the intelligent reader will have guessed,
at the San Sebastian British Vice-Consulate, obtains the M.V.O.
in 1908. Nothing is said, however, of the resultant effect on his
character, nor is any adequate description given--either then or
later--of the San Sebastian scenery. On the other hand, Bucy, who
first appears on page 340, turns up again on page 644 as the
Marquess de Bucy, a Grandee of Spain. I was half-expecting that
the body would be discovered about this time, but the author is
still busy over his protagonists, and only leaves the Marquess in
order to introduce to us his three musketeers, de Bunsen, de
Burgh, and de Butts.
But it is time that I returned to our hero, Dr. Wallis Budge.
Although Budge is a golfer of world-wide experience, having
"conducted excavations in Egypt, the Island of Meroe, Nineveh and
Mesopotamia," it is upon his mental rather than his athletic
abilities that the author dwells most lovingly. The fact that in
1886 he wrote a pamphlet upon The Coptic History of Elijah the
Tishbite, and followed it up in 1888 with one on The Coptic
Martyrdom of George of Cappadocia (which is, of course, in every
drawing-room) may not seem at first to have much bearing upon the
tremendous events which followed later. But the author is
artistically right in drawing our attention to them; for it is
probable that, had these popular works not been written, our hero
would never have been encouraged to proceed with his Magical
Texts of Za-Walda-Hawaryat, Tasfa Maryam, Sebhat-Le'ab, Gabra
Shelase Tezasu, Aheta-Mikael, which had such a startling effect
on the lives of all the other characters, and led indirectly to
the finding of the blood-stain on the bath-mat. My own suspicions
fell immediately upon Thomas Rooke, of whom we are told nothing
more than "R.W.S.," which is obviously the cabbalistic sign of
some secret society.
One of the author's weaknesses is a certain carelessness in the
naming of his characters. For instance, no fewer than two hundred
and forty-one of them are called Smith. True, he endeavours to
distinguish between them by giving them such different Christian
names as John, Henry, Charles, and so forth, but the result is
bound to be confusing. Sometimes, indeed, he does not even bother
to distinguish between their Christian names. Thus we have three
Henry Smiths, who appear to have mixed themselves up even in the
author's mind. He tells us that Colonel Henry's chief recreation
is "the study of the things around him," but it sounds much more
like that of the Reverend Henry, whose opportunities in the
pulpit would be considerably greater. It is the same with the
Thomsons, the Williamses and others. When once he hits upon one
of these popular names, he is carried away for several pages, and
insists on calling everybody Thomson. But occasionally he has an
inspiration. Temistocle Zammit is a good name, though the humour
of calling a famous musician Zimbalist is perhaps a little too
obvious.
In conclusion, one can say that while our author's merits are
many, his faults are of no great moment. Certainly he handles his
love-scenes badly. Many of his characters are married but he
tells us little of the early scenes of courtship, and says
nothing of any previous engagements which were afterwards broken
off. Also, he is apparently incapable of describing a child,
unless it is the offspring of titled persons and will itself
succeed to the title; even then he prefers to dismiss it in a
parenthesis. But as a picture of the present-day Englishman his
novel can hardly be surpassed. He is not a writer who is only at
home with one class. He can describe the utterly unknown and
unimportant with as much gusto as he describes the genius or the
old nobility. True, he overcrowds his canvas, but one must
recognize this as his method. It is so that he expresses himself
best; just as one painter can express himself best in a rendering
of the whole Town Council of Slappenham, while another only
requires a single haddock on a plate.
His future will be watched with interest. He hints in his
introduction that he has another volume in preparation, in which
he will introduce to us several entirely new C.B.E.'s, besides
carrying on the histories (in the familiar manner of our modern
novelists) of many of those with whom we have already made
friends. Who's Who, 1920, it is to be called, and I, for one,
shall look out for it with the utmost eagerness.