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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marge Askinforit, by Barry Pain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Marge Askinforit
+
+Author: Barry Pain
+
+Release Date: July 11, 2008 [EBook #26024]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGE ASKINFORIT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MARGE ASKINFORIT
+
+BY BARRY PAIN
+
+NEW YORK
+
+DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      AUTHOR'S NOTE                                     7
+
+ I.   THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY                           9
+
+ II.  EBULLIENT YOUTH                                  18
+
+ III. GLADSTONE--LLOYD GEORGE--INMEMORISON--DR.
+      BENGER HORLICK                                   26
+
+ IV.  THE SOLES                                        40
+
+ V.   MISFIRES                                         50
+
+ VI.  TESTIMONIALS--ROYAL  APPRECIATION                64
+
+ VII. SELF-ESTIMATE                                    78
+      LATE EXTRA                                       83
+
+
+
+
+     "And every week you opened your hoard
+       Of truthful and tasteful tales--
+     How you sat on the knees of the Laureate Lord,
+       How you danced with the Prince of Wales--
+     And we knew that the Sunday Times had scored
+       In Literature and Sales."
+
+                _To Margot in Heaven._
+
+     BY CLARENCE G. HENNESSY (circa 1985).
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+This book was suggested by the reading of some extracts from the
+autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number
+of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which
+seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait
+for posterity and perspective will pardon a little contemporary
+distortion.
+
+In adding my humble wreath to the flatteries--in their sincerest
+form--which she has already received, I should like to point out that a
+parody of an autobiography should not be a caricature of the people
+biographed--some of whom must already have suffered enough. I have
+lowered the social key of the original considerably, not only to bring
+it within the compass of the executant, but also to make a distinction.
+I have increased the remoteness from real life--which was sometimes
+appreciable in the original--to such an extent that it should be
+impossible to suppose that any of the grotesques of the parody is
+intended for anybody in real life. Nobody in the parody is intended to
+be a representation, or even a misrepresentation, of any real person
+living or dead. For instance, Inmemorison is not intended to be a
+caricature of Tennyson, but the passage which deals with him is intended
+to parody some of the stuff that has been written about Tennyson.
+
+No doubt the author of the original has opened to the public several
+doors through which it is not thinkable that a parodist would care to
+follow her. Apart from that, parody should be brief, just as
+autobiography should be long--_ars brevis, vita longa_.
+
+                              BARRY PAIN.
+_October_ 8, 1920.
+
+_The quotations are from the articles which appeared in "The Sunday
+Times." It does not of course follow that these passages will appear in
+the same form, or will appear at all, when the complete autobiography is
+published._
+
+
+
+
+MARGE ASKINFORIT
+
+
+
+
+FIRST EXTRACT
+
+THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY
+
+
+I was christened Margarine, of course, but in my own circle I have
+always been known as Marge. The name is, I am informed, derived from the
+Latin word _margo_, meaning the limit. I have always tried to live right
+up to it.
+
+We were a very numerous family, and I can find space for biographical
+details of only a few of the more important. I must keep room for
+myself.
+
+My elder sister, Casein--Casey, as we always called her--was supposed to
+be the most like myself, and was less bucked about it than one would
+have expected. I never made any mistake myself as to which was which. I
+had not her beautiful lustrous eyes, but neither had she my wonderful
+cheek. She had not my intelligence. Nor had she my priceless gift for
+uttering an unimportant personal opinion as if it were the final verdict
+of posterity with the black cap on. We were devoted to one another, and
+many a time have I owed my position as temporary parlour-maid in an
+unsuspicious family to the excellent character that she had written for
+me.
+
+She married Moses Morgenstein, a naturalized British subject, who showed
+his love for his adopted country by trading as Stanley Harcourt. He was
+a striking figure with his coal-black hair and nails, his drooping
+eye-lashes and under-lip, and the downward sweep of his ingratiating
+nose. The war found him burning with enthusiasm, and I give here one
+verse of a fine poem which he wrote and, as I will remember, recited in
+Mrs. Mopworth's _salon_:
+
+     I vos in Luntun since t'ree year,
+     In dis lant I holt so tear,
+         Inklant, my Inklant!
+     Mit her overbowering might
+     If she gonquer in der fight,
+     M. Morgenstein vill be all right--
+                   _Nicht?_--
+         Inklant, my own!
+
+He was a man of diverse talents, and I used to regret that he gave to
+the tripe-dressing what was meant for the muses. Alas, he was, though
+indirectly, one of the many victims of the Great War. His scheme for the
+concealment of excess profits was elaborate and ingenious, and practised
+with assiduity. His simple mind could not apprehend that elemental
+honesty was in process of modification. "Vot I maig for myself, dat I
+keeb, _nicht?_" he often said to me. And then the blow fell.
+
+However, he has earned the utmost remission to which good conduct could
+entitle him, and we are hoping that he will be out again by Christmas.
+
+My next sister, Saccharine, was of a filmy and prismatic beauty that was
+sufficient evidence of her Cohltar origin--our mother, of course, was a
+Cohltar. I never thought her mind the equal of my own. Indeed, at the
+moment of going to press I have not yet met the mind that I thought the
+equal of my own. But about her beauty there was no doubt. In those
+days--I am speaking of the 'nineties--it was quite an ordinary event for
+my sister, inadvertently, to hold up an omnibus. The horses pulled up as
+soon as they saw her, and refused to move until they had drunk their
+fill of her astounding beauty. I well remember one occasion on which the
+horses in a West Kensington omnibus met her at Piccadilly Circus and
+refused to leave her until she reached Highgate, in spite of the whip of
+the driver, the blasphemy of the conductor, the more formal complaints
+of the passengers, and direct police intervention.
+
+She was a sweet girl in those days, and I loved her. I never had any
+feelings of jealousy. How can one who is definitely assured of
+superiority to everybody be jealous of anybody?
+
+She married a Russian, Alexis Chopitoff. He was a perfect artist in his
+own medium, which happened to be hair. It is to him that I owe what is
+my only beauty, and I am assured that it defies detection. At one time
+life's greatest prizes seemed to be within his reach. During the war his
+skill in rendering the _chevelure_ of noted pianists fit for military
+service attracted official attention, and if he had been made O.B.E. it
+would have come as no surprise to any of us. Unhappily his interest in
+the political affairs of his own country led him to annex at Waterloo a
+despatch-case which, pedantically speaking, did not belong to him. The
+case unfortunately happened to contain a diamond tiara, and this led to
+misunderstandings. Nothing could have exceeded the courage of dear
+Saccharine when she learned that at the end of his sentence he was to be
+deported.
+
+"It will leave me," she said, with perfect calm and in words that have
+since become historical, "in a position of greater freedom and less
+responsibility."
+
+But I knew how near she was to a nervous breakdown. Indeed, nervous
+breakdown was her successful defence when, a week later, she was
+arrested at Whiteridge's with a tin of sardines, two cakes of
+super-cream toilet-soap, and a bound copy of Keble's "Christian Year" in
+her muff. The malice and animosity that Whiteridge's showed in the
+prosecution are but partly excused by the fact that dear Saccharine had
+pinched the muff first.
+
+Another sister, Chlorine, in later years became well known as a medium.
+She communicated with the hereafter, or at the very least professed to
+do so, by telephonic wireless. It used to be rather weird to hear her
+ring up "Gehenna, 1 double 7, 6." I have not the least doubt that she
+would have convinced a famous physicist who, curiously enough, is weak
+on facts, or a writer of detective stories who, equally curiously, is
+weak on imagination. I am sorry to say that she would never give me the
+winner of the next Derby, nor do I remember that she ever used this
+special and exclusive information for her own benefit. But, like other
+mediums, she could always give a plausible reason for avoiding any test
+that was really a test; and now that she has doubled her fees owing to
+the increased cost of labour and materials, she ought to do very well,
+particularly after the friendly boost that I have just given her.
+
+Then there was Methyll--this is the old Anglo-Saxon form of Ethel. She
+was a charming child and made a profound study of natural history. I
+remember her saying to me at a reception where the refreshments had been
+somewhat restricted: "One cocktail doesn't make a swallow." Modern
+biology has, I believe, confirmed this observation. She spent much of
+her time at the Zoo, and it was thought that it would be an advantage if
+she could be permanently resident there. But although she was not unlike
+a flamingo in the face, and I had some interest with the man who
+supplies the fish for the sea-lions, no vacant cage could be found. An
+offer to let her share one with the cassowary--_missionara
+timbuctana_--was refused.
+
+I must now speak of another sister, Caramel, though I do so with grief.
+However, there is a skeleton in every fold--I mean to say, a black sheep
+in every cupboard. She was undeniably beautiful, and had a romantic
+postcard face. Her figure was perfect. Her intelligence was C 3. In a
+weak moment she accepted a thinking part in a revue at the "Frivolity,"
+and her career ended, as might have been expected, in a shocking
+_mésalliance_. She married the Marquis of Beanstrite, and has more than
+once appeared on the back page of the "Daily Mail," but that is not
+everything. She never sees anything of me now, and it brings the tears
+to my eyes when I think what she is missing.
+
+My brothers were all of them sportsmen, but they were seldom at home.
+They seemed to feel that they were wanted elsewhere, and they generally
+were. You ask any policeman in the Kentish Town district, mentioning my
+name, and he will tell you.
+
+There were seventy-three of us all together, of whom eighty-four
+survive, including myself. And yet dear papa sometimes seems a little
+irritable--I wonder why.
+
+My mamma was quite different from my papa. They were not even of the
+same sex. But that so often happens, don't you think?
+
+My father had a curious fancy for naming all his sons after subsequent
+winners of the Derby. No doubt it will be said that this is not always
+practical; nor is it--the Derby is occasionally won by a gee-gee of the
+sex which I have myself adopted, and in those cases the name is
+unsuitable for a boy. But if it could be generally done, it would
+absolutely preclude any betting on one of our classic races; it would
+probably also preclude the race. After all, we do have to be moral in
+the intervals, and reclaim factory-girls in the dinner-hour. But I fear
+it will never happen--so few men have dear papa's wonderful foresight.
+
+Spearmint, my eldest surviving brother, came much under the influence of
+Alexis Chopitoff, and entered the same profession. Simple and
+unassuming, no one would have supposed that in one year he had backed
+the winner in all the principal races. But such was veritably the case.
+
+"There's nothing in it, Marge," he said to me one evening. "There's only
+one sure way to win--back every horse in the race with another man's
+money. I tell a customer the tale that I was shaving a well-known
+trainer that morning, and that the trainer had given me a certainty; all
+I ask is that the customer will put half-a-crown on for me. I repeat the
+process, changing the name of the certainty, until I have got all risks
+covered. I know it's old fashioned, but I like it. It demands nothing
+but patience, and it cannot possibly go wrong."
+
+But it did go wrong. He was telling the tale of how the well-known
+trainer had given him the certainty to a new customer, whom Spearmint
+had never shaved before. By a disastrous coincidence it happened that
+the new customer actually was that well-known trainer. He seemed to
+think that Spearmint had taken a liberty with his name, and even to
+resent it.
+
+Spearmint did not lose the sight of the left eye, as was at one time
+feared, but his looks have never been quite the same since his nose was
+broken.
+
+My next brother, Orby, was born in 1870. He could do the most graceful
+and charming things. When his namesake won the Derby in 1907, he
+immediately acquired a complimentary Irish accent, and employed it in
+the narration of humorous stories. An accent acquired at the age of
+thirty-seven is perhaps liable to lack conviction, and I always thought
+that my brother was over-scrupulous in beginning every sentence with the
+word "Bedad." Like myself, he simply did not know what fear was, and in
+consequence told his Irish stories in his own Irish accent to a real
+Irishman. However, now that he has got his new teeth in you would never
+know that he had been hit. It was said of him by a great legal
+authority--I forget in which police-court--that he had the best manners
+and the least honesty of any taxi-driver on the Knightsbridge rank.
+
+Another brother, Sunstar, acquired considerable reputation by his skill
+in legerdemain. If you lent him a watch or a coin, with one turn of his
+hand he would make it disappear; he could do the same thing when you
+had not lent it. He could make anything disappear that was not
+absolutely screwed to the floor, and at public-houses where he was known
+the pewter from which he drank was always chained to the bar. He had
+something of my own quixotic nature, and would probably have taken the
+rest if he had wanted it. One day at Ascot he made a stranger's watch
+disappear. When he came to examine his newly-acquired property he was
+disappointed to find that the watch was a four-and-sixpenny American
+Everbright--"Puts you wrong, Day and night." He was on the point of
+throwing it away when the kindly thought came to him that perhaps the
+stranger attached some sentimental value to that watch; indeed, there
+seemed to be no other possible reason for wearing it. Sunstar determined
+to replace the watch in the stranger's pocket. He did his best, but he
+was far more practised in removing than in replacing. The stranger--a
+hulking, cowardly brute--caught my brother with his hand in his pocket,
+and failed to grasp the altruism of his motives, and that is why poor
+Sunnie walks a little lame.
+
+He is not with us at present. He had made quite a number of things
+disappear, and a censorious world is ever prone to judge by
+disappearances. It became expedient--and even necessary--for my brother
+to make himself disappear, and he did so.
+
+The Second Extract, as they say on the film, will follow immediately.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND EXTRACT
+
+EBULLIENT YOUTH
+
+
+I have been studying the beautiful pages of the autobiography of my
+Great Example--hereinafter to be called the G.E. It is wonderful to be
+admitted to the circle of the elect, week after week, at the low rate of
+twopence a time. Why, I've paid more to see the pictures.
+
+Considering the price, one ought not to carp. The G.E. says in one
+extract that she has lost every female friend she ever had, with the
+exception of four. In a subsequent extract she names six women whose
+friendship has remained loving and true to her since girlhood. She
+speaks of a four-line stanza as a couplet. She imputes a "blasphemous
+tirade" to a great man of science who certainly never uttered one. She
+says that she had a conversation with Lord Salisbury about the fiscal
+controversy, in which he took no part, the year after his death. But why
+make a fuss about little things like this? If you write in bed at the
+rate of one thousand words an hour, accidents are sure to happen.
+
+But there is just one of the G.E.'s sentences that is worrying me and
+keeping me awake at night. Here it is--read it carefully:
+
+"I wore the shortest of tweed skirts, knickerbockers of the same stuff,
+top-boots, a cover-coat, and a coloured scarf round my head."
+
+And all very nice too, no doubt. But consider the terrific problem
+involved.
+
+She does not say that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
+same kind of stuff_. If she had, I could have understood it, and my
+natural delicacy would for ever have kept me from the slightest allusion
+to the subject.
+
+What she does say is that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
+same stuff_. That is very different, and involves hideous complications.
+
+Firstly, it must mean that the knickerbockers were made out of the
+skirt. Well, there may have been surplus material from that coloured
+scarf, and it is not for me to say. But, secondly, it must also mean
+that the skirt was made out of the knickerbockers. Oh, help!
+
+No, I positively refuse. I will not say another word. There are limits.
+Only an abstruse theologian with a taste for the more recondite niceties
+of obscure heresies could possibly do justice to it.
+
+All change, please. The next item on the programme will be a succinct
+account of my ebullient girlhood.
+
+I cannot say that I loved the Warren, my ancestral home. The neighbours
+called it the Warren, but I can't think why. The Post Office said it was
+No. 4, Catley Mews, Kentish Town, and dear papa--who always had the
+_mot juste_--sometimes said that it was hell.
+
+We were a high-spirited family with clean-cut personalities, penetrating
+voices, short tempers, high nervous tension, and small feet. Don't you
+wish you were like that?
+
+All the same, there were only the four rooms over the stable. At times
+there were fifteen or sixteen of us at home, and also the lodger--I
+shall speak of him presently. And when you have five personal quarrels,
+baby, the family wash, a sewing-machine, three mouth-organs, fried
+bacon, and a serious political argument occurring simultaneously in a
+restricted establishment, something has to go. As a rule, dear papa
+went. He would make for Regent's Park, and find repose in the old-world
+calm of the parrot-house at the Zoo.
+
+But there is always room on the top--it is a conviction on which I have
+ever acted. When I felt too cramped and stifled in the atmosphere of the
+Warren, I would climb out on the roof. There, with nothing on but my
+nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically.
+The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied
+by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit
+all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things
+complained. I know the police called, and I seem to remember rather a
+nasty letter from the landlord's agent. I had a long interview with
+mamma on the subject. She pointed out that if I slipped and fell I
+should probably make a nasty dent in the pavement, and with many tears I
+promised to relinquish the practice.
+
+I used to ride on the Heath when I had the opportunity, but I cannot
+pretend that I was up to the standard of the G.E. I do not think I ever
+rode up a staircase. I certainly never threw my horse down on the marble
+floor of the hall of the Warren. There were several reasons for this.
+Firstly, the Warren had not got a hall, and if it had had a hall, the
+hall would not have had a marble floor. Secondly, the horses I rode were
+likely to be wanted again, being in fact the ponies that unsuspecting
+tradesmen stabled at Catley Mews. Bogey Nutter looked after them, and I
+could always do what I liked with Bogey. He was perhaps the most profuse
+proposer I ever met. At one time he always proposed to me once a day and
+twice on Bank holidays. I was such a dashing, attractive creature, what?
+
+As to my education, a good deal depends on what is meant by education.
+The kind that was ladled out at the County Council establishment made
+little effect upon me. But I was pretty quick at figures, and knew that
+an investment of half-a-crown at eleven to eight should bring me in a
+profit of three-and-five--provided that the horse won and the man at the
+fishmonger's round the corner paid up. My brother Lemberg had the same
+talent. If he bought a packet of fags and paid with a ten-shilling note,
+he could always negotiate the change so that he made ninepence for
+himself and had the cigarettes thrown in. His only mistake was in trying
+to do it twice at the same shop, but the scar over his right eye hardly
+shows now. A sharp-cornered tobacco-tin was not the thing to have hit
+him with anyhow.
+
+For autobiographical purposes always treat a deficiency as if it were a
+gift. The G.E. was apparently a duffer at arithmetic, but she tells you
+so in a way that makes you admire her for it. All the same I wish I had
+been one of those factory-girls that she used to reclaim in their
+dinner-hour; I am fundamentally honest, but I never could miss a chance
+when it was thrown at me.
+
+My education in dancing was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not
+wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient
+proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life.
+The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and
+dance while he turned the handle. I told Signor Hokey-pokey what I
+thought of the offer, and I have some talent for language, if not for
+languages. So, as he could not get me, he did the next best thing and
+bought a monkey.
+
+I was by far the most spiritual of the family. But my brother Minoru
+attended chapel regularly, until they stopped collecting the offertory
+in open plates and substituted locked boxes with a slot in them. He
+found another chapel that seemed more promising, but he attended it
+only once. I shall always consider that the policeman was needlessly
+rough with him, for Minoru said distinctly that he would go quietly.
+
+My sisters and myself had a fascination for the other sex that was
+almost incredible. At one time we had a Proposal Competition every week;
+each of us put in sixpence, and the girl who got the greatest number of
+proposals took the pool. Casey or I generally won. Then one week I
+encountered on the Heath the annual beanfeast of the Pottey Asylum for
+the Feeble-minded, and won with a score of a hundred and seven, and I
+think the others said it was not fair. Anyhow, the competitions were
+discontinued.
+
+Really, the way our lodger pestered my sisters and myself with his
+absolute inattentions is difficult to explain. Anyone might have thought
+that he did not know we were there. While the Proposal Competitions were
+on, not one of us thought it worth while to waste time on the man. We
+could get a better return for the same amount of fascination in other
+quarters. Afterwards I thought that possibly his employment in the
+milk-trade might be the cause of his extraordinary mildness, and that it
+would be kind to offer him a little encouragement.
+
+He usually went for a walk on Sunday mornings, and one Sunday I said
+that I would accompany him.
+
+"Better not," he said. "Looks to me like rain."
+
+"But you have an umbrella," I pointed out.
+
+"Aye," he said, "and when two people share one umbrella, they both get
+all the drippings from it and none of the protection. You take a nice
+book and read for a bit."
+
+"No," I said. "I'm coming with you, and though it's Leap Year, I
+definitely promise not to propose to you."
+
+"Well," he said, "that makes a difference."
+
+I thrust my arm into his gaily and confidentially, and he immediately
+unhooked. We went on to the Heath together.
+
+"I was once told by a palmist," I said, "that I had a mysterious and
+magnetic attraction for men."
+
+"Those palmists will say anything," he said. "It's just the other way
+round really."
+
+"Perhaps," I said. "I know I have an unlimited capacity for love--and
+nobody seems to want it."
+
+"Ah," he said, "it's a pity to be overstocked with a perishable article.
+It means parting with it at a loss."
+
+What could I say to a brute like that? And I had nobody there to protect
+me.
+
+"I wish," I said, "that you'd look if I've a fly in my eye."
+
+"If you had, you'd know," he answered. "The fly sees to that."
+
+Some minutes elapsed before I asked him to tie my shoe-lace.
+
+He looked down and said that it was not undone.
+
+I simply turned round and left him, I was not going to stay there to be
+insulted.
+
+However, he must have been ashamed of himself, for two days later he
+sub-let his part of the floor in one of the rooms at the Warren to an
+Irish family. If he was not ashamed, he was frightened.
+
+Yet, curiously enough, that cowardly brute moulded my future.
+
+The influx of the Irish family into the Warren drove me out of it. It
+made me feel the absolute necessity for a wider sphere.
+
+On leaving home I took an indeterminate position in a Bayswater
+boarding-house. At any rate, my wages and food were determined, but my
+hours of work were not.
+
+A boarding-house is a congeries of people who have come down. The
+proprietoress never dreamed that she would have to earn her own living
+like that--though she gets everything to a knife-edge certainty in the
+first week. Then in the drawing-room you have military people who have
+thundered, been saluted, been respected--and superseded. And nobody can
+make worse clothes look better. The cook explains why she's not in
+Grosvenor Square, and the elderly Swiss waiter says that he has been in
+places where pace was not everytink. If you're out looking for
+depression, try a boarding-house.
+
+I stayed there a week and then said I was going. The lady said she knew
+the law and I couldn't. So I said I would stay, and was sorry that the
+state of my nerves would mean a good deal in breakages.
+
+I left at the end of the week.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD EXTRACT
+
+GLADSTONE--MR. LLOYD GEORGE--INMEMORISON--DR. BENGER HORLICK.
+
+
+After this I had a long succession of different situations. It is
+possible for a girl to learn the work of any branch of domestic
+service in a week, if she wishes to do it, with the exception of the
+work of a cook or a personal maid. But then, it is quite possible to
+take a situation as a cook, and to keep it, without knowing anything
+appreciable about the work. Thousands of women have done it, and
+are still doing it. I never went as personal maid--I dislike
+familiarity--but with that exception I played, so to speak, every
+instrument in the orchestra.
+
+I acquired an excellent stock of testimonials, of which some were
+genuine. The others were due to the kindly heart and vivid imagination
+of my sister Casey, now Mrs. Morgenstein.
+
+I rarely kept my places, and never kept my friends. The only thing I
+did keep was a diary. A diary is evidence. So if you see anything
+about anybody in these pages, you can believe it without hesitation.
+Do, please. You see, if you hesitate, you may never believe it.
+
+I well remember the first and only time that I met Gladstone. I was
+staying with Lady Bilberry at the time at her house in Half Moon
+Street. She was a woman with real charm and wit, but somewhat irritable.
+Most of the people I've met were irritable or became so, and I can't
+think why. I may add that I only stayed out my month as too much was
+expected. Besides, I'd been told there was a boy for the rough work and
+there never was.
+
+But to return to Gladstone. I wrote down every precious word of my
+conversation with him at the time, and the eager and excited reader may
+now peruse it in full.
+
+     GLADSTONE: Lady Bilberry at home?
+
+     MARGE: Yes, sir.
+
+     GLADSTONE: Thanks.
+
+     MARGE: What name, please?
+
+He gave me his name quite simply, without any attempt at rudeness or
+facetiousness. I should say that this was typical of the whole character
+of the man. With a beautiful and punctilious courtesy he removed his
+hat--not a very good hat--on entering the house. I formed the impression
+from the ease with which he did this that the practice must have been
+habitual with him.
+
+The only thing that mars this cherished memory is that it was not the
+Gladstone you mean, nor any relative of his, but a gentleman of the same
+name who had called to see if he could interest her ladyship in a scheme
+for the recovery of some buried treasure. He did not stay long, and Lady
+Bilberry said I ought to have known better.
+
+About this time I received by post a set of verses which bear quite a
+resemblance to the senile vivacity of the verses which the real
+Gladstone addressed to my illustrious example of autobiographical art.
+The verses I received were anonymous, and as a matter of fact the
+postmark on the envelope was Beaconsfield. Still, you never know, do
+you?
+
+
+                         MARGE.
+
+     When Pentonville's over and comes the release,
+     With a year's supervision perhaps by the p'lice,
+     Your longing to meet all your pals may be large,
+     But make an exception, and do not ask Marge.
+
+     She's Aspasia, Pavlova, Tom Sayers, Tod Sloan,
+     Spinoza, and Barnum, and Mrs. Chapone;
+     For a bloke that has only just got his discharge,
+     She's rather too dazzling a patchwork, is Marge.
+
+     Never mind, never mind, you have got to go slow,
+     One section a year is the most you can know;
+
+     If you study a life-time, you'll jest on the barge
+     Of Charon with madd'ningly manifold Marge.
+
+By the way, whenever we change houses a special pantechnicon has to be
+engaged to take all the complimentary verses that have from time to time
+been addressed to me. Must be a sort of something about me somehow,
+don't you think?
+
+I cannot pretend that I was on the same terms of intimate friendship
+with Mr. Lloyd George. I spoke to him only once.
+
+It was when we were in Downing Street. There was quite a crowd of us
+there, and it had been an evening of exalted and roseate patriotism. I
+gazed up at the window of No. 10 and said, as loudly as I could:
+
+"Lloyd George! Lloyd George!"
+
+Most of the others in the crowd said the same thing with equal force.
+Then an uneducated policeman came up to me and asked me to pass along,
+please, adding that Mr. Lloyd George was not in London. So, simply
+replying "All right, face," I passalongpleased.
+
+However, in spite of all that bound me so closely to the great political
+world, I could not help feeling the claims of literature. I am sensitive
+to every claim. It is the claim of history, for example, that compels me
+to write my autobiography. I seem to see all around me a thousand human
+arts and activities crying for my help and interest. They seem to say
+"Marge, Marge, more Marge!" in the words that Goethe himself might have
+used. And whenever I hear the call I have to give myself.
+
+I doubt if any girl ever gave herself away quite as much as I have done.
+
+One day in November I met Chummie Popbright in the neighbourhood of
+Cambridge Circus. He was a man with very little _joie de vivre_, _ventre
+ŕ terre_, or _esprit de corps_. He had fair hair and no manners, and was
+very, very fond of me. He held a position in the Post Office, and was,
+in fact, emptying a pillar-box when I met him. I record the
+conversation.
+
+    CHUMMIE: Blessed if it ain't Marge! And what would you like
+    for a Christmas present?
+
+    MARGE: I want to spend a week or so at the house of the
+    great poet, Lord Inmemorison. If you really wish to please me, you
+    will use your influence to get me a job there. Your uncle being
+    Inmemorison's butler, you ought to be able to work it.
+
+    CHUMMIE: Might. What would you go as?
+
+    MARGE: Anything--but temporary parlour-maid is my strong suit.
+
+    CHUMMIE: And what's your game?
+
+    MARGE: I'm sick of patronizing politicians and want to patronize a
+    poet. When all's said and done, Inmemorison is a proper certificated
+    poet. Besides, I want to put something by for my rainy
+    autobiography.
+
+    CHUMMIE: Oh, well. I'll try and lay a pipe for it. May come off or
+    may not.
+
+Chummie managed the thing to perfection. My sister Casey wrote me one of
+the best testimonials I have ever had, and by Christmas I was safely
+installed for a week. Chummie's uncle treated me with the utmost
+consideration, and it is to him that I owe many of the thrilling details
+that I am now able to present to the panting public. Although there was
+a high leather screen in the drawing-room which was occasionally useful
+to me, my opportunities for direct observation were limited.
+
+Lord Inmemorison had a magnificent semi-detached mansion (including a
+bath-room, h. and c.) in one of the wildest and loneliest parts of
+Wandsworth Common. The rugged beauty of the scenery around is reflected
+in many of his poems.
+
+There were, as was to be expected, several departures from ordinary
+convention in the household. Dinner was at seven. The poet went to bed
+immediately after dinner, and punctually at ten reappeared in the
+drawing-room and began reading his poems aloud.
+
+The family generally went to bed at ten sharp.
+
+I heard him read once. There were visitors in the house who wished to
+hear the great man, and it was after midnight before a general
+retirement could take place. He had a rich, sonorous, over-proof,
+pre-war voice, considerable irritability, and a pretty girl sitting on
+his knee. The last item was, of course, an instance of poetical licence.
+
+The girl had asked him to read from "Maud" and he had consented. He
+began with his voice turned down so low that in my position behind the
+screen I could only just catch the opening lines:
+
+     "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
+     Bird thou never wert..."
+
+He opened the throttle a little wider when he came to the passage:
+
+     "His head was bare, his matted hair
+     Was buried in the sand."
+
+He read that last line "was serried in the band," but immediately
+corrected himself. And the poignant haunting repetition of the last
+lines of the closing stanza were given out on the full organ:
+
+     "And everywhere that Mary went--
+     And everywhere that Mary went--
+     And everywhere that Mary went--
+       The lamb was sure to go."
+
+It was a great--a wonderful experience for me, and I shall never forget
+it.
+
+I have spoken of his irritability. It is not unnatural in a great poet.
+He must live with his exquisite sentient nerves screwed up to such a
+pitch that at any moment something may give.
+
+For example, one evening he was sitting with a girl on his knee, and had
+just read to her these enchanting lines in which he speaks of hearing
+the cuckoo call.
+
+     INMEMORISON (_gruffly and suddenly_): What bird says cuckoo?
+
+     GIRL (_with extreme nervous agitation_): The rabbit.
+
+     INMEMORISON: No, you fool--it's the nightingale.
+
+The girl burst into tears and said she would not play any more. I think
+she was wrong. Whenever I hear any criticism of myself I always take it
+meekly and gently, whether it is right or wrong--it has never been right
+yet--and try to see if I cannot learn something from it. What the girl
+should have said was: "Now it's your turn to go out, and we'll think of
+something."
+
+Another occasion when Inmemorison was perhaps more pardonably annoyed
+was when a young undergraduate asked him to read out one of his poems.
+
+"Which?" said Inmemorison.
+
+I am told that the thirty seconds of absolute silence which followed
+this question seemed like an eternity, and that the agony on the young
+man's face was Aeschylean. He did not know any precise answer to the
+question.
+
+"Which?" repeated Inmemorison, like the booming of a great bell at a
+young man's funeral.
+
+The young man made a wild and misjudged effort, and got right off the
+target.
+
+"Well," he said, "one of my greatest favourites of course is
+'Kissingcup's Race.'"
+
+"Is it, indeed?" said the Poet. "If you turn to the left on leaving the
+house, the second on the right will take you straight to the station."
+
+The young man never forgave it. And that, so I have always been told, is
+how the first Browning Society came to be founded.
+
+It was a meeting with this undergraduate--purely accidental on my
+part--in the romantic garden of the poet's house that first turned my
+mind towards the university town of Oxbridge. I had no difficulty in
+finding employment as a waitress there in a restaurant where knowledge
+of the business was considered less essential than a turn for repartee
+and some gift for keeping the young of our great nobility in their
+proper place. It was not long before I had made the acquaintance of
+quite a number of undergraduates. Some of them had a marked tendency
+towards rapidity, but soon learned that the regulation of the pace would
+remain with me.
+
+One Sunday morning I had consented to go for a walk with one of my young
+admirers--a nice boy, with more nerve than I have ever encountered in
+any human being except myself. It happened by chance that we encountered
+the Dean of his college. The Dean, with an unusual condescension--for
+which there may possibly have been a reason--stopped to speak to my
+companion, who without the least hesitation introduced the Dean to me as
+his sister.
+
+That was my first meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick, the celebrated Dean
+of Belial.
+
+No social occasion has ever yet found me at a loss. The more difficult
+and dramatic it is, the more thoroughly do I enjoy its delicate
+manipulation. I could not deny the relationship which had been asserted,
+without involving my young friend. The only alternative was to play up
+to it, and I played up. The perfect management of old men is best
+understood by young girls.
+
+I told him that I was staying with mamma, and mentioned a suitable
+hotel, adding that I was so sorry I had to return to town that
+afternoon, as I had begun to love the scholastic peace of Oxbridge and
+valued so much the opportunity of meeting its greatest men. I was bright
+and poetical in streaks, and every shy--if I may use the expression--hit
+the coco-nut. Sometimes I glanced at Willie, my pseudo-brother. His face
+twitched a little, but he never actually gave way to his feelings. The
+Dean had ceased to pay much attention to him.
+
+For about a quarter of an hour the Dean strolled along with us. At
+parting, he held my hand--for a minute longer than was strictly
+necessary--and said:
+
+"You have interested me--er--profoundly. May I hope that when you get
+back to Grosvenor Square, you will sometimes spare a few moments from
+the fashionable circles in which you move, and write to me?"
+
+I said that it would be a great honour to me to be permitted to do so.
+
+"I hope," he added, "that you will visit Oxbridge again, and that you
+will then renew an acquaintance which, though accidental in its origin,
+has none the less impressed me--er--very much."
+
+After his departure Willie became hilarious and I became very angry
+with him. He persisted that everything was all right. I had put up a
+fine performance and had only to continue it. The Dean would no doubt
+write to me at Grosvenor Square, and Willie assured me that he had his
+father's butler on a string, and that the butler sorted the letters. I
+would receive the Dean's epistles at any address I would give him, and
+would reply on the Grosvenor Square notepaper.
+
+"I've got chunks of it in a writing-case at my rooms," he said, "and
+I'll send it round to you."
+
+I had to consent to this. However, the next day I skipped for London,
+somewhat to the disappointment of the restaurant that I adorned, and
+still more to the disappointment of Willie. But, as I wrote to him, he
+had brought it on himself. I could not take the risk of another
+accidental meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick.
+
+Nor, as a matter of fact, did we ever meet again. But for three years we
+corresponded with some frequency; it was a thin-ice, high-wire business,
+but I pulled it through.
+
+No doubt the task was made easier for me by the fact that the Dean was a
+singularly simple-minded man. Reverence for the aristocracy had become
+with him almost a religion. When he was brought--or believed himself to
+be brought--in contact with the aristocracy, his intellectual vision
+closed in a swoon of ecstasy. Snob? Oh, dear, no! Of course not. What
+can have made you think that? It was simply that the aristocracy
+appealed to him very much as romance did--he was outside it, but liked
+to get a near view.
+
+The G.E. found that letters, however delightful, bored her when they
+were scattered through a biography. For that reason she gave one set of
+letters all together. I do not see myself why, if a thing bores you when
+you get a little of it at a time, it should bore you less when you get a
+lot of it. But, determined to follow my brilliant model with simple
+faith and humility, I now append extracts from the letters I received
+from Dr. Benger Horlick.
+
+     "I wish I could persuade you to be less precise in your language.
+     If you say what your opinion is, you should take care to be
+     beautiful but unintelligible. Commit yourself to nothing. Words
+     were given us to conceal our thoughts, and with a little practice
+     and self-discipline will conceal them even from ourselves. A candid
+     friend once complained to me that in my translation from the Greek
+     it was sometimes impossible for him to know which of two different
+     _lectiones_ I was translating. As a matter of fact, though I did
+     not tell him this, I did not know either. Especially useful is this
+     when one is confronted with a rude, challenging, direct question as
+     to any point in religion or politics; I reply with a sonorous and,
+     I hope, well-balanced sentence, from which the actual meaning has
+     been carefully extracted, and so escape in the fog. It is indeed
+     from one point of view a mercy that most people are too cowardly
+     or too ashamed to say that they have failed to comprehend. Yet if
+     they had my passion for truth it might be better. Truth is very
+     precious to me--sometimes too precious to give away.
+
+     "It is good of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice
+     did not bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No
+     Dean--and perhaps no don--who has been in that portentous position
+     as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice.
+     It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated
+     with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception
+     with which I am acquainted. Child, why do you not make more use of
+     your noble gifts for dancing, amateur theatricals, and general
+     conversation? And yet I'm not grumbling. Only I mean to say, don't
+     you know? Of course, they all do it--the people in the great world
+     to which you, and occasionally I, belong. Still, there it is, isn't
+     it? And you write me such soothing full-cream letters with only an
+     occasional snag in them. So bless you, my child. I do trust that
+     the report which comes to me that you are going with the Prince of
+     Wales, Mrs. H. Ward, and a Mr. Arthur Roberts to shoot kangaroos in
+     Australia is at least exaggerated. These marsupials, though their
+     appearance is sufficiently eccentric to suggest the conscientious
+     objector, will--I am credibly informed--fight desperately in
+     defence of their young. If I may venture to suggest, try rabbits.
+
+     "I am delighted to hear that you are not the author of the two
+     articles attacking Society. The fact that they happen to be signed
+     with the name of another well-known lady had made me think it
+     possible that this might be the case. Society? It is a great
+     mystery. I can hardly think of it without taking off my boots and
+     prostrating myself orientally. To criticize it is a mistake; it is
+     even, if I may for once use a harsh word, subversive. It is the
+     only one we've got. Oh, hush! Only in whispers at the dead of night
+     to the most trusted friend under the seal of secrecy can we think
+     of criticizing it. But holding, as I do, perhaps the most important
+     public position in the Continent of Europe, if not in the whole
+     world--responsible, as I am, for what may be called the sustenance
+     of the next generation--I do feel called upon to carry out any
+     repairs and re-decoration of the social fabric that may be
+     required. You with your universal influence which--until Einstein
+     arrives--will be the only possible explanation of the vagaries in
+     the orbit of Mercury, can do as much, or nearly as much. Do it. But
+     never speak of it. Oh, hush! (Sorry--I forgot I'd mentioned that
+     before.)
+
+     "In reply to your inquiry, I never read 'Robert Elsmere,' but
+     understand from a private source that it saved many young men from
+     reading 'David Grieve.' Your second inquiry as to the lady-love of
+     my first youth is violent--very violent. Suppose you mind your own
+     business."
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH EXTRACT
+
+THE SOLES
+
+
+I do not know why we were called the Soles. Enemies said it was because
+we were flat, fishy, and rather expensive.
+
+Our set comprised the upper servants of some of the best houses in
+Mayfair. Looking back at it now, I can see that no similar body ever had
+such a tremendous influence. It may not have been entirely due to us
+that gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance, but at
+least we acquiesced. And what we did in home and foreign politics has
+scarcely yet been suspected.
+
+The reason for our influence is sufficiently obvious. Our great leader,
+James Arthur Bunting, was perhaps the most perfect butler that the world
+has yet seen; his magnificent presence, plummy voice, exquisite tact,
+and wide knowledge made him beyond price. We had other butlers whom it
+would have been almost equally difficult to replace. We had chefs who
+with a chain of marvellous dinners bound their alleged employers to
+their chariot-wheels. Nominally, Parliament ruled the country, but we
+never had any doubt who ruled Parliament.
+
+To take but one instance, the sudden _volte face_ of Lord Baringstoke on
+the Home Rule Question. This created a great sensation at the time, and
+various explanations were suggested to account for it. Nobody guessed
+the truth. The fact is that Mr. Bunting tendered his resignation.
+
+Lord Baringstoke was much distressed. An increase of salary was
+immediately suggested and waved aside.
+
+"It is not that, m'lord," said Bunting. "It is a question of principle.
+Your lordship's expressed views as to Ireland are not, if I may say so,
+the views of my friends and of myself. And on that subject we feel
+deeply. Preoccupied with that difference, if I remained, I could no
+longer do justice to your lordship nor to myself. My wounded and
+bleeding heart----"
+
+"Oh, never mind your bleeding heart, Bunting," said Baringstoke. "Do I
+understand that this is your only reason for wanting to go?"
+
+"That is so, m'lord."
+
+"Then, supposing that I reconsidered my views as to Ireland and found
+that they were in fact the opposite of what I had previously supposed,
+you would remain?"
+
+"With very great pleasure."
+
+"Then in that case you had better wait a few days. I'm inclined to think
+that everything can be arranged."
+
+"Very good, m'lord."
+
+Less than a week later, Lord Baringstoke's public recantation was the
+talk of London. In a speech of considerable eloquence he showed how the
+merciless logic of facts had convinced his intellect, and his conscience
+had compelled him to abandon the position he had previously taken up.
+Fortunately, you can prove absolutely anything about Ireland. It is
+merely a question of what facts you will select and what you will
+suppress.
+
+Mr. Bunting is, I believe, still with Lord Baringstoke. This was,
+perhaps, one of the principal triumphs of the Soles. There were many
+others. We had our own secret service, and I should here acknowledge
+with respect and admiration the Gallic ingenuity of two of the Soles,
+Monsieur Colbert and Monsieur Normand, in reconstructing fragmentary
+letters taken from the waste-paper baskets of the illustrious.
+
+Naturally, we had to suffer from the jealousy and malice of those who
+had not been asked to join us, and a rumour even was spread abroad that
+we played bridge for sixpence a hundred. There was no truth in it. There
+have been, and still are, gambling clubs among the younger men-servants
+of the West-end, but we never gambled. Mr. Bunting would not have liked
+it at all. We were serious. We did try to live up to our ideals, and
+some of our members actually succeeded in living beyond their incomes.
+Our principal recreation was pencil-games, mostly of our own invention.
+
+In this connection I have rather a sad incident to relate. On one
+occasion we had a competition to see which of us could write the
+flattest and least pointed epigram in rhyme. The prize for men consisted
+of two out-size Havannah cigars, formerly the property of Lord
+Baringstoke, kindly presented by Mr. Bunting.
+
+Percy Binder, first footman to the Earl of Dilwater, was extremely
+anxious to secure this prize. He took as the subject of his epigram the
+sudden death of a man on rising from prayer. This was in such lamentably
+bad taste that he did not win the prize, but otherwise it would have
+certainly been his. His four lines could not have been surpassed for
+clumsy and laboured imbecility. The last two ran:
+
+     "But when for aid he ceased to beg,
+     The wily devil broke his leg."
+
+And then came a terrible discovery. Percy Binder had stolen these lines
+from the autobiography of my own G.E. She says, by the way, that their
+author was "the last of the wits." But how can you be last in a race in
+which you never start? It is always safe to say what you think, but
+sometimes dangerous to give your reasons for thinking it.
+
+That, however, is a digression. Percy Binder was given to understand
+that we did not know him in future. Mr. Bunting was so upset that he
+declared the competition cancelled, and smoked the prize himself. He
+said afterwards that what annoyed him most was the foolishness of Mr.
+Binder's idea that his plagiarism would be undetected.
+
+"He is," said Mr. Bunting, "like the silly ostrich that lays its eggs
+in the sand in order to escape the vigilance of its pursuers."
+
+One of our pencil-games was known as Inverted Conundrums, and played as
+follows. One person gave the answer to a riddle, and mentioned one word
+to be used in the question. The rest then had to write down what they
+thought the question would be. The deafness of dear Violet Orpington
+sometimes spoiled this game.
+
+For instance, I had once given as an answer "bee-hive," and said that
+one word in the question was "correct."
+
+The first question I read out was from George Leghorn. He had written:
+"If a cockney nurse wished to correct a child, what insect-home would
+she name?" This was accepted.
+
+The next question was from Violet Orpington: "If you had never corrected
+a naughty boy before, where would you correct him?"
+
+"But, Violet," I said, "the answer to that could not be 'bee-hive.'"
+
+"Oh," she said, "you said 'hive,' did you? I thought you said something
+else."
+
+I have never been able to guess what it was she thought I had said; and
+she refused to tell me.
+
+Another of our pencil-games was Missing Rhymes. One of us would write a
+deccasyllabic couplet--we always called it a quatrain, as being a
+better-class word--and the rhyme in the second line would not be
+actually given but merely indicated.
+
+For example, I myself wrote the following little sonnet:
+
+     "I have an adoration for
+     One person only, namely _je_."
+
+To any reader who is familiar with the French language, this may seem
+almost too easy, but I doubt if anybody who knew no language but modern
+Greek would guess it. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may add that
+the French word _je_ is pronounced "mwor," thus supplying the missing
+rhyme.
+
+Millie Wyandotte disgraced herself with the following lyric:
+
+     "After her dance, Salome, curtseying, fell,
+     And shocked the Baptist with her scream of 'Bother!'"
+
+She had no sooner read it out than Mr. Bunting rose in his place and
+said gravely:
+
+"I can only speak definitely for myself, but it is my firm belief that
+all present, with the exception of Miss Wyandotte, have too much
+refinement to be able to guess correctly the missing rhyme in this
+case." Loud and prolonged applause.
+
+George Leghorn was particularly happy at these pencil games, and to him
+is due this very clever combination of the lyrical and the acrostical:
+
+     "My first a man is, and my next a trap;
+     My whole's forbidden, lest it cause trouble."
+
+The answer to the acrostic is "mantrap"; the missing rhyme is "mishap."
+The entire solution was given in something under half an hour by Popsie
+Bantam. She was a very bright girl, and afterwards married a man in the
+Guards (L.N.W.R.).
+
+Mr. Bunting, a rather strong party-politician, one night submitted this
+little triolet:
+
+     "When the Great War new weapons bade us forge,
+     Whom did the nation trust? 'Twas thou, Asquith!"
+
+The missing rhyme was guessed immediately, in two places, as the
+auctioneers say.
+
+However, by our next quinquennial meeting Nettie Minorca had thought out
+the following rejoinder:
+
+     "When history's hand corrects the current myth,
+     Whose name will she prefer? 'Tis thine, Lloyd George."
+
+Yes, dear Nettie had a belated brilliance--the wit of the staircase,
+only more so. We always said that Nettie could do wonderful things if
+only she were given time.
+
+She was given time ultimately, and is still doing it, but that was in a
+totally different connection. She inserted an advertisement stating that
+she was a thorough good cook. First-class references. Eight years in
+present situation in Exeter, and leaving because the family was going
+abroad. Wages asked, Ł36 per annum. No kitchen-maid required. No less
+than twelve families were so anxious to receive the treasure that they
+offered her return-fare between Exeter and London, and her expenses, to
+secure a personal interview with her. She collected the boodle from all
+twelve. And she was living in Bryanstone Square at the time. She is lost
+to us now.
+
+As dear old Percy Cochin, also one of the Soles, once said to me: "We
+are here to-day, and gone at the end of our month."
+
+Violet Orpington had an arresting appearance, and walked rather like a
+policeman also. Her hair was a rich raw sienna, and any man would have
+made love to her had she but carried an ear-trumpet. She is the
+"retiring Violet" of verse seven.[A] Millie Wyandotte was malicious and
+unintelligent; she looked well in white, but was too heavily built for
+my taste. I may add, as evidence of my impartiality, that she laid a
+table better than any woman I ever knew; in fact, she took first prize
+in a laying competition. Nettie Minorca was "black but comely," and had
+Spanish blood in her veins. She is the "gipsy" mentioned in verse
+one-and-a-half. Popsie Bantam was _petite_. Her profile was admired, but
+I always thought it a little beaky myself. I myself was the least
+beautiful, but the most attractive. Allusions to me will be found in
+verses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12-19, 24, 57-60, 74, 77, 87, 97, and 102-3468.
+
+[Footnote A:
+     _Publisher_: But you don't give the verses.
+
+     _Author_: I know. It's a little idea I got from an excellent Sunday
+     newspaper.]
+
+George Leghorn was an Albino, but his figure was very graceful. From the
+specimen which I have already given, it will be easy to believe that his
+wit was fluorescent, detergent, and vibratory. He afterwards became a
+well-known personality on the turf. He gained a considerable fortune by
+laying the odds; his family were all reputed to be good layers.
+
+Dear old Peter Cochin was staunch and true. He reminds me of something
+that my illustrious model says of another man. She says that he "would
+risk telling me or anyone he loved, before confiding to an inner circle,
+faults which both he and I think might be corrected." Grammar was no
+doubt made for slaves--not for the brilliant and autobiographical. All
+the same, a prize should be offered to anybody who can find the missing
+"risk" in mentioning to another a point on which both are agreed.
+
+She adds that she has had "a long experience of inner circles." There,
+it must be admitted, she is ahead of me. But the only inner circle of
+which I have had a long experience has been much improved since it was
+electrified.
+
+In congratulating Peter upon a new appointment, with three under him, I
+asked when I first met him. His reply was particularly staunch, and I
+quote from it:
+
+     "It was in May 28, 1913. The hour was 1.38.5 Greenwich Time, and I
+     shall never forget it. You were sixteen then, and the effect as you
+     came into the room was quintessential. Suddenly the sunlight
+     blazed, the electric light went on automatically till the fuses
+     gave way, the chimney caught fire, the roof fell in, the petrol
+     tank exploded, old R--y said that he should never care to speak to
+     his wife again, and the butler dropped the Veuve Clicquot. After
+     that the shooting party came in, but for some reason or other the
+     sentence was not carried out."
+
+I have very few staunch friends, and many of them have had to be
+discarded from weakness; but when they are staunch--well, they really
+are. The only trouble with Peter Cochin was that he was too cautious. He
+was given to under-statement. I do not think he gives a really full and
+rich idea of the effect I habitually produced.
+
+I sometimes think that I am almost too effective. Still, as I said
+before, the Latin word "margo" does mean "the limit."
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH EXTRACT
+
+MISFIRES
+
+
+My family had a curious dread that I should marry a groom. I never did.
+To be quite honest, I never had the opportunity. But I did get engaged
+to quite a lot of other things.
+
+My first engagement was when I was very, very young. He was a humorous
+man, and perhaps I was wrong in taking him so seriously. Still, he must
+have adored me. When I accepted him his hair turned completely white--an
+infallible test of the depth of emotion.
+
+He was an excellent whip. It used to be a wonderful sight to see him
+taking a pair of young horses down Ludgate Hill on a greasy day at noon,
+with the whole road chock-a-block with traffic, lighting a pipe with a
+wooden match with one hand, carrying on an animated conversation with
+the other with a fare on the front seat, dropping white-hot satire on
+the heads of drivers less efficient than himself, and always getting the
+'bus through safely with about an inch to spare on each side.
+
+On the other hand, he was almost entirely ignorant of Marcus Aurelius,
+Henry James, Step-dancing, Titian, the Manners and Customs of Polite
+Society, Factory-Girl Reclamation, Cardinal Newman, or the Art of
+Self-advertisement. He said, with an entire absence of pretension, that
+these things were not on his route.
+
+When I announced our engagement the members of my family who were
+present, about seventeen of them, all swooned, except dear papa, who
+said in his highly-strung way that if I married anybody he would put the
+R.S.P.C.A. on to me.
+
+I said what I thought, and fled for consolation to Casey, my married
+sister. But she also was discouraging.
+
+"Marge," she said, "give it a miss. You have a rich nature, beautiful
+hair, a knowledge of the world, nervous tension, some of the appearance
+of education, and four pound fifteen put by in the Post Office. You must
+look higher."
+
+I have always detested scenes--which, perhaps, seems strange in a girl
+as fond of the limelight as I was. I began to re-consider the question.
+Accidentally, I discovered that he had a wife already. What with one
+thing and another, I thought it best to write and give him up. He
+immediately resigned his appointment with the London General, gave me a
+long-priced certainty for the Oaks, and left for New York. When he
+returned, two years later, his hair was pale green.
+
+But if the engagement did not come off, the certainty for the Oaks did.
+In consequence of this I left for Ramsgate by the "Marguerite" some days
+later. Dressed? Well, you should have seen me.
+
+It chanced that one of the passengers on the boat was Mr. Aaron Birsch.
+He had been presented to me some weeks before by Mr. Bunting. I knew
+that he was a turf commissioner, had speculated with success in cottage
+property, and was commonly reported to be much richer than he looked.
+Beyond that, I know very little of him. Apparently, however, he had made
+it his business to know quite a good deal of me. Mr. Bunting was his
+informant, and I had always been a quite special favourite of the
+_doyen_ of the Soles.
+
+Mr. Birsch came up to me at once. We chatted on various topics, and he
+told me of something which was likely to be quite useful for Goodwood.
+Then he said suddenly:
+
+"Matter of fact, there was a bit of private business I wanted a word
+with you about. This boat's too full of what I call riff-raff.
+Mouth-organs. Bad taste. Can't hear yourself speak. But we get an hour
+at Ramsgate, and if you'll take a snack with me there, I can tell you
+what I've got to say."
+
+More from curiosity than from anything else, I accepted. And I must say
+that our luncheon conversation was rather remarkable.
+
+     BIRSCH: To come to the point, you're the very identical girl that I
+     want Alfred to marry.
+
+     MARGE (_innocently_): Alfred?
+
+     BIRSCH: Yes, my son.
+
+     MARGE: But I have never even seen him.
+
+     BIRSCH: And when you have you'll probably wish you hadn't. But
+     don't let that prejudice you. It's the inside of the head that
+     counts. That boy's got a perfect genius for cottage property and
+     real tact with it. Only last week he raised an old woman's rent a
+     shilling a week, and when he left she gave him a rosebud and said
+     she'd pray for him. It takes some doing--a thing like that. Now, I
+     want a public career for that boy, and if he marries you he can't
+     miss it. Do you know what Mr. Bunting said to me about you?
+
+     MARGE (_breathlessly_): But he's so flattering. I think he likes
+     me--I don't know why. I sometimes wonder----
+
+     BIRSCH (_just as if I'd never spoken_): Bunting said to me: "That
+     girl, Marge, will get into the newspapers. It may be in the Court
+     News, and it may be in the Police-court News. That will depend on
+     which she prefers. But she'll get there, and she'll stick there!"
+     That's what I want for Alfred. Everything's ready for him to start
+     firing, but he needs you to sight the gun.
+
+     MARGE: And if you can't get me, whom would you like?
+
+     BIRSCH: Well, Lady Artemis Morals has some gift for publicity. But
+     Alfred won't marry a title--say's he rather thinks of making a
+     title for himself. The boy's got ambition. The cash is forthcoming.
+     And you can do the rest.
+
+     MARGE: It is a flattering offer. You'll let me think over it?
+
+He kindly consented, and we returned to the boat. However, on the way
+back the sea became very rough and unpleasant; and I threw up the idea.
+
+(By the way, you don't mind me writing the dialogue, as above, just as
+if it were a piece out of a play? I've always brought the sense of the
+theatre into real life.)
+
+Poor Aaron Birsch! He was only one of the very many men who have been
+extremely anxious that I should marry somebody else. Two years later
+Alfred died of cerebral tumescence--a disease to which the ambitious are
+peculiarly liable. That cat, Millie Wyandotte, happened to say to Birsch
+that if I had married his son I should now have been a wealthy young
+widow.
+
+"Anybody who married Marge," said Birsch, "would not die at the end of
+two years."
+
+"I suppose not," said Millie. "He'd be more likely to commit suicide at
+the end of one."
+
+I never did like that girl.
+
+But I must speak now of what was perhaps my most serious engagement.
+Hugo Broke--his mother was one of the Stoneys--was intended from birth
+for one of the services and selected domestic service. Here it was
+thought that his height--he was seven foot one--would tell in his
+favour. However, the Duchess of Exminster, in ordering that the new
+footman should be dismissed, said that height was desirable, but that
+this was prolixity.
+
+However, it was not long before he found a congenial sphere for his
+activities with the London branch of the Auto-extensor Co. of America.
+The Auto-extensor Co. addresses itself to the abbreviated editions of
+humanity. It is claimed for the Auto-extensor system that there is
+absolutely no limit to the increase in height which may be obtained by
+it, provided of course, that the system is followed exactly, that
+nothing happens to prevent it, and that the rain keeps off.
+
+Hugo walked into the Regent Street establishment of the Auto-extensor
+people, and said:
+
+"Good morning. I think I could be of some service to this company as an
+advertisement."
+
+"I am sure you could," said the manager. "If you will kindly wait a
+moment while the boy fetches the step-ladder I will come up and arrange
+terms."
+
+In the result, the large window of the Regent Street establishment was
+furnished as a club smoking-room or thereabouts. In the very centre, in
+a chair of exaggerated comfort but doubtful taste, sat Hugo. He was
+exquisitely attired. He read a newspaper and smoked cigarettes. By his
+side, in a magnificent frame, was a printed notice, giving a rather
+fanciful biography of the exhibit.
+
+"This gentleman," the notice ran, "was once a dwarf. For years he
+suffered in consequence agonies of humiliation, and then a friend called
+his attention to the Auto-extensor System of increasing height. He did
+not have much faith in it, but in desperation he gave it a trial--and it
+made him what he now is. Look for yourselves. Facts speak louder than
+words. All we ask you to do is to trust the evidence of your own eyes."
+
+The window proved a great attraction. The crowd before it was most
+numerous about four o'clock, because every day at that hour a dramatic
+and exciting scene was witnessed. Putting down his newspaper, Hugo
+struck a bell on a little table by his side. A page entered through the
+excessively plush curtains at the back, and Hugo gave a brief and
+haughty order. The boy somewhat overacted respectful acquiescence,
+retired through the curtains, and reappeared again with tea and thin
+bread and butter. Of these delicacies Hugo partook _coram populo_. This
+carried conviction with it. One onlooker would say to another: "Shows
+you he's real, don't it? At one time I thought it was only a dummy." And
+for some time afterwards the assistant in the shop would be kept busy,
+handing out the gratis explanatory booklet of the Auto-extensor Co.
+
+It was in this window that I first saw Hugo. I arrived a little late
+that afternoon, and missed the first act, where he puts down the
+newspaper and rings the bell. But I saw the conclusion of the piece.
+
+My eyes filled with tears. Here--here at last--I had met somebody whose
+chilled-steel endurance of publicity equalled, and perhaps exceeded, my
+own.
+
+I entered the shop, procured the explanatory booklet, and asked at what
+hour they closed. At that hour I met him as he left business, and my
+first feelings were of disappointment. His clothes were not the
+exquisite raiment that he had worn as an exhibit in the window. The
+white spats, the sponge-bag trousers with the knife-edge crease, the
+gold-rimmed eye-glass, the well-cut morning coat, the too assertive
+waistcoat--all were the property of the Auto-extensor Co. and not to be
+worn out of business hours. He now wore a shabby tweed suit and a cap.
+But he was still a noticeable figure; a happy smile came into the faces
+of little boys as he went past.
+
+"Like your job?" I said shyly, as I took the seat next to him on the top
+of the omnibus.
+
+He replied rather gruffly that he supposed a bloke had to work for his
+living, and all work was work, whatever way you looked at it. Further
+questions elicited that the pay was satisfactory, but that he did not
+regard the situation as permanent. The public would get tired of it and
+some other form of advertisement would be found. He complained, too,
+that he was supposed to keep up the appearance of a wealthy toff smoking
+cigarettes continually for a period of seven hours, and the management
+provided only one small packet of woodbines per diem for him to do it
+on.
+
+I produced my cigarette-case. It was one which Lord Baringstoke--always
+a careless man--had lost. It had been presented to me by dear Mr.
+Bunting. Hugo said he had not intended anything of that sort, but helped
+himself.
+
+A quarter of an hour later we had our first quarrel. I asked him if it
+was cold up where he was. He said morosely that he had heard that joke
+on his stature a few times before. I told him that if he lived long
+enough--and I'd never seen anybody living much longer--he was likely to
+hear it a few times again. He then said that either I could hop off the
+'bus or he would, and he didn't care which. After that we both were
+rather rude. He got me by the hair, and I had just landed a straight
+left to the point when the conductor came up and said he would not have
+it.
+
+I became engaged to Hugo that night at 10.41. I remember the time
+exactly, because Mrs. Pettifer had a rule that all her maids were to be
+in the house by ten sharp, and I was rather keeping an eye on my watch
+in consequence.
+
+To tell the truth, we quarrelled very frequently. Different though we
+were in many respects, we both had irritable, overstrung, tri-chord
+natures, with hair-spring nerves connected direct to the high-explosive
+language-mine.
+
+On one occasion I went with him to a paper fancy-dress dance at the
+rooms attached to the Hopley Arms. I went as "The Sunday Times," my
+dress being composed of two copies of that excellent, though
+inexpensive journal, tastefully arranged on a concrete foundation.
+
+When Millie Wyandotte saw me, she called out: "Hello, Marge! Got into
+the newspapers at last?" I shall be even with that girl one of these
+days.
+
+I declined to dance with Hugo at all. I said frankly that I preferred to
+dance with somebody who could touch the top of my head without stooping.
+I went off with Georgie Leghorn, and Hugo sat and sulked.
+
+Later in the evening he came up to me and asked if he should get my
+cloak.
+
+I said irritably: "Of course not. Why should you?"
+
+"Well," he said, "I don't know whether you're aware of it, but you've
+got three split infinitives in your City article."
+
+"Ah!" I replied. "The next time Millie Wyandotte telephones up to your
+head, give her my love and tell her not to over-strain herself."
+
+Things went from bad to worse, and after he had alluded to my backbone
+as my Personal Column, any possibility of reconciliation seemed at an
+end. I did not know then what a terribly determined person Hugo was.
+
+Georgie Leghorn saw me home. I parted with him at the house, let myself
+in by the area-gate, locking it after me, and so down the steps and into
+the kitchen.
+
+There I had just taken off my hair when I heard a shrill whistle in the
+street outside. Hurriedly replacing my only beauty, I drew up the blind
+and looked out. There, up above me on the pavement, was Hugo, stretching
+away into the distance.
+
+"Called for the reconciliation," he said. "Just open this area gate,
+will you?"
+
+"At this time of night?" I called, in a tense whisper. "Certainly not."
+
+He stepped back, and in one leap jumped over the area-railings and down
+on to the window-sill of the kitchen. The next moment he had flung the
+window up, entered, and stood beside me.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he said calmly.
+
+"Hugo," I said, "I've known some bounders in my time, but not one who
+could have done that."
+
+We sat down and began discussing the Disestablishment of the Welsh
+Church, when suddenly the area-gate was rattled and a stern voice
+outside said "Police."
+
+Instantly, Hugo concealed as much of himself as he could under the
+kitchen table. There was no help for it. I had to let the policeman in,
+or he would have roused the household.
+
+"I'm just going to have a look in your kitchen," he said.
+
+"No use," I replied. "The rabbit-pie was finished yesterday."
+
+"Saucy puss, ain't you?" he said, as he entered.
+
+"Well, you might be a sport and tell a girl what you're after."
+
+"Cabman, driving past here a few minutes ago, saw a man jump the
+area-railings and make a burglarious entry by the kitchen window."
+
+"Is that all?" I said. "A man did enter that way a few minutes ago, but
+it was not a burglar. It was Master Edward, Mrs. Pettifer's eldest son.
+He'd lost his latch-key--he's always doing it--and that's how it
+happened. He went straight upstairs to bed, or he'd confirm what I say."
+
+"Went straight up to bed, did he? Did he take his legs off first? I
+notice there's a pair of them sticking out from under the kitchen
+table."
+
+"Yes," I admitted, "I've told better lies in my time. Oh, Mr. Policeman,
+don't be hard. I never wanted my young man to come larking about like
+this. But--he's not a burglar. He's the exhibit from the Auto-extensor
+Co.'s in Regent Street. You can pull out the rest of him and see if he
+isn't."
+
+"That's what I told the cabman," said the policeman. "I said to him:
+'You juggins,' I said, 'do you think a burglar who wants to get into a
+house waits till a cab's going past and then gives a acrobatic
+exhibition to attract the driver's attention? That's some young fool
+after one of the maids.' No, I don't want to see the rest of the young
+man--not if he's like the sample. Get him unwound as soon as you can,
+and send him about his business. If he's not out in two minutes, I
+shall ring the front door, and you'll be in the cart. And don't act so
+silly another time."
+
+Hugo was out in 1 min. 35 sec. He stopped to chat with the policeman,
+jumped the seven-foot railings into the square garden, and jumped back
+again, just to show what he could do, and went off.
+
+I gave a long, deep sigh. I always do that when an incident in my life
+fails to reach the best autobiographical level. I neither knew nor cared
+what the policeman thought. You see, I would never deserve a bad
+reputation, but there's nothing else I wouldn't do to get one.
+
+For eighty-four years--my memory for numbers is not absolutely accurate,
+but we will say eighty-four--for eighty-four years I wrote him a letter
+every morning and evening of every day, with the exception of Sundays,
+bank holidays, and the days when I did not feel like it.
+
+But it was not to be. He was not without success in the circus which he
+subsequently joined, but he was improvident. His income increased in
+arithmetical progression, and his expenditure in geometrical. This, as
+Dr. Micawber and Professor Malthus have shown us, must end in disaster.
+Looking at it from the noblest point of view--the autobiographical--I
+saw that a marriage with Hugo would inevitably cramp my style.
+
+And so the great sacrifice was made. Our feelings were so intense as we
+said farewell that my native reserve and reticence forbid me to
+describe them. But we parted one night in June, with a tear in the
+throat and a catch in the eye. As he strode from the park, I looked
+upward and saw in the brown crags above me some graceful animal
+silhouetted against an opal sky. I always have said that those Mappin
+Terraces were an improvement.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH EXTRACT
+
+TESTIMONIALS--ROYAL APPRECIATION
+
+
+Being what I am, it may readily be supposed that I have received many
+tributes to the qualities that I possess. I have already exposed many of
+these to the public gaze, still have some left, and it seems to me a
+pity that my readers should miss any of the evidence. The first
+testimonial is from my sister Casey, and a melancholy interest is
+attached to it. It was the last one she wrote for me before I took the
+momentous step which will be described in my last chapter:
+
+     "Marge Askinforit has been in my service for eight years. I should
+     not be parting with her but for the fact that I am compelled by
+     reasons of health to leave England. Askinforit is clean, sober,
+     honest, an early riser, an excellent plate-cleaner and valet, has
+     perfect manners and high intelligence, takes a great pride in her
+     work, and is most willing, obliging and industrious. She was with
+     me as parlour-maid (first of two), and now seeks temporary
+     employment in that capacity; but there is no branch of domestic
+     service with which she is not thoroughly well acquainted, and when
+     the occasion has arisen she has always been willing to undertake
+     any duties, and has done so with unfailing success. She is tall, of
+     good appearance, Church of England (or anything else that is
+     required), and anybody who secures such a treasure will be
+     exceptionally fortunate. I shall be pleased at any time to give any
+     further information that may be desired.
+
+                              "(Mrs.) C. MORGENSTEIN."
+
+I do not say that dear Casey's estimate had the arid accuracy of the
+pedant, but she had a rich and helpful imagination. In rare moments of
+depression and unhappiness I have found that by reading one of her
+testimonials I can always recover my tone. And they were effective for
+their purpose. By this time I was accepting no situations except with
+titled people; and some of the language that I heard used suggested to
+me that the reclamation of baronets during their dinner-hour might after
+all be my life's work.
+
+The next exhibit will be a letter from a famous author, a complete
+stranger to me, whose work I had long known and admired:
+
+     "Dear Madam, For a long time past it has been my privilege to
+     express in the daily newspapers my keen and heartfelt appreciation
+     of a certain departmental store. I thought that I knew my work. I
+     believe even that it gave satisfaction. I could begin an article
+     with fragments of moral philosophy, easily intelligible and certain
+     of general acceptance, modulate with consummate skill into the key
+     of _crępe de chine_, and with a further natural and easy transition
+     reach the grand theme of the glorious opportunities offered by a
+     philanthropical Oxford Street to a gasping and excited public. Or I
+     would adopt with grace and facility the attitude of a prejudiced
+     and hostile critic, show how cold facts and indisputable figures
+     reversed my judgment, and end with a life-like picture of myself
+     heading frantically in a No. 16 'bus for the bargain basement,
+     haunted by the terror that I might be too late. With what
+     dignity--even majesty--did I not invest an ordinary transaction in
+     _lingerie_, when I spoke of 'the policy of this great House'! Yes,
+     I believed I knew what there was to know of the supreme art of
+     writing an advertisement.
+
+     "But now the mists roll away and I see as it were remote peaks of
+     delicate and implicating advertising the existence of which I had
+     never suspected. It is to you I owe it. You have a theme that you
+     probably find inexhaustible. Fired by your example I shall turn to
+     my own subject (Government linen at the moment) with a happy
+     consciousness that I shall do a far, far better thing than I have
+     ever done before.
+
+                              "Your obedient servant,
+                                "CALLISTHENIDES."
+
+Of this letter I will only say that few have the courage and candour to
+acknowledge an inferiority and an indebtedness, and fewer still could
+have done it in the vicious and even succulent style of the above. It is
+a letter that I read often and value highly. The only trouble about it
+is that I sometimes wonder if it was not really intended for another
+lady whose name has one or two points of similarity with my own.
+
+I cannot refrain from quoting also one of the many letters that I
+received from my dear old friend, Mr. J. A. Bunting:
+
+     "And now I must turn to your request for a statement of my opinion
+     of you, to be published in case an autobiography should set in. It
+     was I who introduced you to a certain circle. That circle, though
+     to me an open sessimy, was no doubt particular, and I confess that
+     I felt some hesitation. Through no fault of your own, you were at
+     that time in a position which was hardly up to our level. But I
+     admired your spirit and thought your manners, of which I can claim
+     to be a good judge, had the correct cashy, though with rather too
+     much tendency to back-chat. At any rate, I took the step, and I
+     have never regretted it. You soon made your way to the front, and
+     it is my firm belief that if you had been dropped into a den of
+     raging lions you would have done the same thing. You are much
+     missed. You have my full permission to make what use you please of
+     this testimonial, which is quite unsolicited, and actuated solely
+     by an appreciation of the goods supplied.
+
+     "Society in London is very so-so at present, and we leave for
+     Scotland at the end of the week. His lordship's had one fit of his
+     tantrums, but I had a look in my eye that ipsum factum soon put an
+     end to it. I wish it was as easy to put a stop to his leaning to
+     third-class company. Three ordinary M.P.'s at dinner last night and
+     one R.A. I always did hate riff-raff, and should say it was in my
+     blood."
+
+Unfortunately, it is not everybody who will put into writing, with the
+simple manliness of Mr. Bunting, the very high opinion of me which they
+must inevitably have formed. Even George Leghorn has proved a
+disappointment. But in his case I am inclined to think there was a
+misunderstanding.
+
+I asked him to send his opinion of me as I thought of making a book. He
+replied on a postcard: "Don't approve of women in the profession, and
+you'd better cut it out. It's hard enough for a man bookmaker to scrape
+a living, with everybody expecting the absurd prices quoted in the
+press."
+
+Many of the contemporary testimonials that I have received are so
+cautiously framed and so wanting in warmth that I decline to make any
+use of them. I have always hated cowardice. I have the courage of my
+opinions. Why cannot others have the same.
+
+However, I have through my sister Chlorine succeeded in securing the
+opinions of some of the greatest in another century. I can only say that
+they confirm my belief in her powers as a medium, and in her wonderful
+system of wireless telephony.
+
+The first person that I asked her to ring up was Napoleon. She had some
+difficulty in getting through. He spoke as follows:
+
+"Yes, I am Napoleon. Oh, that's you, Chlorine, is it?... Quite well,
+thank you, but find the heat rather oppressive.... You want my opinion
+of your sister Marge? She is wonderful--wonderful! Tell her from me that
+if I had but married her when I was a young man, I am confident that
+Wellington would have met his Waterloo."
+
+I think he would have liked to say more, but unfortunately the receiver
+fused. I think it showed such nice feeling in him that he spoke English.
+Poor Chlorine knows no French.
+
+After the apparatus had been repaired, Chlorine got into communication
+with Sir Joshua Reynolds. She said that his voice had a fruity
+ceremoniousness, and I wish I could have heard it. But I have not
+Chlorine's gift of mediumship. Sir Joshua said:
+
+"The more I see of your sister Marge, the more I regret the time that I
+spent on Mrs. Siddons, who was also theatrical; my compliment that I
+should go down to posterity on the hem of her garment was not
+ill-turned, but she is more likely to go down to posterity as the
+subject of my art. Why, even Romney would have been good enough for her.
+Could I but have painted Marge, my fame had been indeed immortal. Who's
+President?... Well, you surprise me."
+
+To prevent any possibility of incredulity, I may add that I wrote those
+words down at the time, added the date and address, and signed them; so
+there can be no mistake.
+
+But far more interesting is the important and exclusive communication
+which Chlorine next received. It was only after much persuasion that I
+got her to ring him up; she said it was contrary to etiquette. However,
+she at last put through a call to Sir Herbert Taylor, who kindly
+arranged the matter for us.
+
+He--not Sir Herbert--showed the greatest readiness to converse. Chlorine
+says that he spoke in a quick staccato. He was certainly voluble, and
+this is what he said:
+
+"What, what, what? Want my opinion of marriage, do you, Miss
+Forget-your-name? I had a long experience of it. Estimable woman,
+Charlotte, very estimable, and made a good mother, though she showed
+partiality. If I'd had my own way though--between ourselves, what,
+what?--I should have preferred Sarah. More lively, more entertaining.
+Holland would have been pleased. But it couldn't be done. Monarchs are
+the servants of ministers now. Never admitted that doctrine myself.
+Kicked against it all my life. Ah, if North had been the strong man I
+was! But as to marriage....
+
+"What, what? You said 'Marge'--not 'marriage'--your sister Marge? You
+should speak more clearly. Get nearer the receiver--age plays havoc with
+the hearing. Fine woman, Marge, and you can tell her I said so. Great
+spirit. Plenty of courage. Always admired courage. If I were a young man
+and back on earth again, I might do worse, what, what?"
+
+And then I am sorry to say he changed the subject abruptly. He went on:
+
+"What's this about King Edward potatoes? Stuff and nonsense! I knew all
+about potatoes. Grew them at Windsor. Kew too. Wrote an article about
+them. Why can't they name a potato after me? What?"
+
+Here Chlorine interposed: "Do you wish for another three minutes, sir,
+or have you finished?"
+
+I hoped he would say, "Don't cut us off," but, possibly from habits of
+economy, he did not. I have not given his name, for fear of being
+thought indiscreet, but possibly those who are deeply read in history
+may guess it.
+
+It is the greatest tribute but one that I have ever received, and I
+think brings me very nearly up to the level of my Great Example. If I
+could only feel that for once I had done that, I could fold my little
+hands and be content.
+
+But it is not quite the greatest tribute of all. The greatest is my own
+self-estimate of me myself. It demands and shall receive a chapter all
+to itself. Wipe your feet, take off your hat, assume a Sunday
+expression, and enter upon it reverently.
+
+After all, the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us is not to be
+desired. In your case for certain it would cause you the most intense
+depression. Even in my own case I doubt if it would give me the same
+warm, pervading glow of satisfaction that obtain from a more Narcissan
+procedure.
+
+By the way, ought one to say "self-estimate" or "self-esteem"? What a
+silly girl I am! I quite forgot.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH EXTRACT
+
+SELF-ESTIMATE
+
+
+More trouble. Determined to give an estimate of myself based on the best
+models, I turned to the pages of my Great Example, and ran into the
+following sentence:
+
+"I do not propose to treat myself like Mr. Bernard Shaw in this
+account."
+
+Does this mean that she does not propose to treat herself as if she were
+Mr. Bernard Shaw? It might. Does it mean that she does not propose to
+treat herself as Mr. Bernard Shaw treats her? It is not impossible.
+
+What one wants it to mean is: "I do not propose to treat myself as Mr.
+Bernard Shaw treats himself." But if she had meant that, she would have
+said it.
+
+I backed away cautiously, and, a few lines further on, fell over her
+statement that she has a conception of beauty "not merely in poetry,
+music, art and nature, but in human beings." No doubt. And I have a
+conception of slovenly writing not merely in her autobiography, but in
+its seventeenth chapter.
+
+I had not gone very much further in that same chapter before I was
+caught in the following thicket:
+
+"I have got china, books, whips, knives, matchboxes, and clocks given me
+since I was a small child."
+
+If these things were given her since she was a small child, they might
+have been given her on the day she wrote--in which case it would not
+have been remarkable that she still possessed them. The nearest way out
+of the jungle would be to substitute "when" for "since." But it is
+incredible that she should have thought of two ways of saying the same
+thing, let them run into one another, and sent "The Sunday Times" the
+mess resulting from the collision.
+
+She must be right. Mr. Balfour said she was the best letter-writer he
+knew. With generous reciprocity she read Mr. Balfour's books and
+realized without external help "what a beautiful style he wrote."
+
+And for goodness sake don't ask me how you write a style. You do it in
+precisely the same way that you cook a saucepan--that is, by the
+omission of the word "in."
+
+Yet one more quotation from the last column of the last extract:
+
+"If I had to confess and expose one opinion of myself which might
+differentiate me a little from other people, I should say it was my
+power of love coupled with my power of criticism."
+
+No, never mind. The power of love is not an opinion; and in ending a
+sentence it is just as well to remember how you began it. But I
+absolutely refuse to let my simple faith be shaken. She records the
+bones that she has broken, but John Addington Symonds told her that she
+retained "_l'oreille juste_." Her husband said she wrote well, and he
+must know. Besides, am I to be convinced in my penultimate chapter that
+anything can be wrong with the model I have followed? Certainly not. It
+would be heartbreaking.
+
+Besides, the explanation is quite simple. When she wrote that last
+instalment in "The Sunday Times," the power of criticism had gone to
+have the valves ground in.
+
+I will now ask your kind attention for my estimate of me, Marge
+Askinforit, by myself.
+
+There is just one quality which I claim to have in an even greater
+degree than my prototype. She is unlike real life--no woman was ever
+like what any woman supposes herself to be--but I am far more unlike
+real life. I have more inconsistency, more self-contradiction, more
+anachronism, more impossibility. In fact, I sometimes feel as if some
+fool of a man were just making me up as he went along.
+
+And the next article? Yes, my imagination.
+
+I have imagination of a certain kind. It has nothing to do with
+invention or fancy. It is not a mental faculty at all. It is not
+physical. Neither is it paralysis, butterscotch, or three spades
+re-doubled. I should so much like to give some idea of it if I
+had any. Perhaps an instance will help.
+
+I remember that I once said to the Dean of Belial that I thought the
+naming of a Highland hotel "The Light Brigade" showed a high degree of
+imagination.
+
+"Half a moment," said the Dean. "I think I know that one. No--can't get
+it. Why was the hotel called that?"
+
+"Because of its terrific charges."
+
+"Yes," he said wearily. "I've heard it. But"--more brightly--"can you
+tell me why a Highland regiment was called 'The Black Watch'?"
+
+"I can, Massa Johnson. Because there's a 'b' in both."
+
+"Wrong again. It's because there's an 'e' in each."
+
+I gave him a half-nelson to the jaw and killed him, and the entire
+company then sung "Way down upon de Swannee Ribber," with harmonium
+accompaniment, thus bringing the afternoon performance to a close. The
+front seats were half empty, but then it was late in the season, and
+looked like rain, and--
+
+Certainly, I can stop if you like. But you do see what I mean, don't
+you? The imagination is something that runs away with you. If I were to
+let mine get away with me, it would knock this old autobiography all to
+splinters.
+
+But I do not appear to have the kind of imagination that makes me know
+what will hurt people's feelings. If I love people I always tell them
+what their worst faults are, and repeat what everybody says about them
+behind their back. That ought to make people say: "Thank you, Marge, for
+your kind words. They will help me to improve myself." It has not
+happened yet. It is my miraculous power of criticism that causes the
+trouble. Whenever I let it off the lead it seems to bite somebody; a
+muzzle has been suggested.
+
+The other day I said to Popsie Bantam: "You're quite right to bob your
+hair, Popsie. When you have not got enough of anything, always try to
+persuade people that you want less. But your rouge-et-noir make-up is
+right off the map. If you could manage to get some of the colours in
+some of the right places, people would laugh less. And I can never quite
+decide whether it's your clothes that are all wrong, or if it's just
+your figure. I wish you'd tell me. Anyhow, you should try for a job at a
+photographer's--you're just the girl for a dark-room."
+
+Really, that's all I said--just affectionate, lambent, helpful
+criticism, with a little Tarragon in it. Yet next day when I met her on
+the staircase she said she didn't want to talk to me any more. So I
+heaved her over the balustrade and she had a forty-foot drop on to the
+marble below. I am too impulsive--I have always said so. Rather a
+pathetic touch was that she died just as the ambulance reached the
+hospital. I have lost quite a lot of nice friends in this way.
+
+With the exception of a few teeny-weeny murders, I do not think I have
+done anything in my life that I regret. And even the murders--such as
+they were--were more the fault of my circumstances than of myself. If,
+as I have always wished, I had lived alone on a desert island, I should
+never have killed anybody at all. But when you go into the great world
+(basement entrance) and have a bad night, or the flies are troublesome,
+you do get a feeling of passionate economy; you realize that there are
+people you can do without, and you do without them. This is the whole
+truth about a little failing of which my detractors have made the most.
+Calumny and exaggeration have been carried to such an extent that more
+than once I have been accused of being habitually irritable.
+
+My revered model wrote that she had always been a collector "of letters,
+old photographs of the family, famous people and odds and ends." I have
+not gone quite as far as this.
+
+I have collected odds, and almost every autumn I roam over the moors and
+fill a large basket with them, but I have never collected ends.
+
+I do want to collect famous people, but for want of a little education I
+have not been able to do it. I simply do not know whether it is best to
+keep them in spirits of wine, or to have them stuffed in glass
+cases--like the canaries and the fish that you could not otherwise
+believe in. I have been told that really the best way is to press them
+between the leaves of some very heavy book, such as an autobiography,
+but I fancy they lose much of their natural brilliance when treated in
+this way.
+
+Another difficulty is that the ordinary cyanide bottles that you buy at
+the naturalist's, though excellent for moths, are not really large
+enough to hold a full-sized celebrity. At the risk of being called a
+sentimentalist, I may say that I do not think I could kill famous people
+by any method that was not both quick and painless. If anything like
+cruelty were involved in their destruction, I would sooner not collect
+them at all, but just make a study of them in their wild state.
+
+I am only a poor little girl, and I can find nothing whatever on the
+subject in any reference book in the public reading-room. I need expert
+advice. There is quite a nice collection of famous--and infamous--people
+near Baker Street Station, but I am told these are only simulacra. That
+would not suit me at all. I am far too genuine, downright, and truthful
+to put up with anything less than the real thing.
+
+There must be some way of doing it. I should like to have a stuffed M.P.
+in a glass case at each end of the mantelpiece in my little boudoir.
+They need not be of the rarest and most expensive kinds. A pretty Labour
+Member with his mouth open and a rustic background, and a Coalitionist
+lightly poised on the fence, would please me.
+
+It would be so interesting to display one's treasures when people came
+to tea.
+
+"Never seen a real leader-writer?" I should say. "They're plentiful
+locally, but mostly come out at night, and so many people miss them. It
+is not of the least use to put treacle on the trees. The best way is to
+drive a taxi slowly down Fleet Street about one in the morning and look
+honest. That's how I got the big leader-writer in the hall. Just press
+his top waistcoat button and he'll prove that the lost election was a
+moral victory.
+
+"In the next case? Oh, they're just a couple of little Georgian poets.
+They look wild, but they're quite tame really. Sprinkle an advance on
+account of royalties on the window-sill and they'll come for it. It used
+to be pretty to watch those two, pouring adulatory articles over each
+other. They sing chopped prose, and it seemed almost a pity to kill
+them; but there are plenty more.
+
+"And that very pretty creature is an actress; if you drop an interviewer
+into the left hand corner of the dressing-room you will hear her say: 'I
+love a country life, and am never happier than when I am working in my
+little garden,'--insert here the photograph in the sun-bonnet--'I don't
+think the great public often realizes what a vast amount of----'"
+
+But I am talking about collecting other people. I am wandering from my
+subject. I must collect myself.
+
+At a very early age I caught the measles and a little later on the
+public eye. The latter I still hold. But I do not often lose anything
+except friends, and occasionally the last 'bus, and of course my
+situations. My great model says it is a positive punishment to her to
+be in one position for long at a time, and I must be something like
+that--I rarely keep a place much longer than a month. On the other hand,
+I still have quite a number of metal discs that formed the wheels of a
+toy railway train which I had when I was quite a child. I should have
+had them all, but I used some to get chocolates out of the automatic
+machines.
+
+I should have liked to have appended here a list of my accomplishments,
+but I must positively keep room for my last chapter. So to save space I
+will merely give a list of the accomplishments which I have not got, or
+have not got to perfection.
+
+The E flat clarionet is not really my instrument, but I will give you
+three guesses what is.
+
+I skate beautifully, but not so well as I dance. However, I am saving
+the I's out of my autobiography for further practice.
+
+Some people perhaps have better memories. But that's no reason why they
+should write to the "Sunday Times" about it.
+
+I cannot write Chinese as fluently as English, though I might
+conceivably write it more correctly.
+
+I think I have mentioned everything in which I am not perfectly
+accomplished. Truth and modesty make me do it.
+
+I would conclude this estimate of myself as follows. If I had to confess
+and expose one opinion of myself which would record what I believe to
+be my differentiation from other people, it would be the opinion that I
+am a law unto myself and a judgment to everybody else.
+
+
+
+
+LATE EXTRA
+
+TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE OF MARGE ASKINFORIT
+
+
+I sometimes think that it must have been a sense of impending
+autobiography which made me seek employment in the Lightning Laundry.
+After all, the autobiographist merely does in public what the laundry
+does in the decent seclusion of its works at Wandsworth or Balham.
+
+The principal difference would appear to be that a respectable laundress
+does know where to draw the line.
+
+But I admit that I had other motives in seeking a new career. My attempt
+to reclaim baronets in their dinner-hour had broken down completely; in
+spite of everything I could do, the dirty dogs would persist in eating
+their dinner at that time. Then again, the beautiful and imaginative
+essays which dear Casey wrote, under different names and with varying
+addresses, on my suitability for domestic service, had begun to attract
+too much attention; and a censorious world stigmatized as false and
+dishonest what was really poetical. I wanted too, a position of greater
+independence.
+
+Of course, I had to learn the work. At first I was taught the leading
+principles of button-removal. Then I went on to the rough-edging. This
+consists in putting a rough edge on starched collars and cuffs with a
+coarse file. Afterwards I was promoted to the mixing department. This is
+where the completed articles are packed for delivery. It requires great
+quickness and a nice sense of humour. For instance, you take up a pair
+of socks and have to decide instantly whether you will send them both to
+an elderly unmarried lady, or divide them impartially between two men.
+Our skill in creating odd socks and stockings was gratefully recognized
+by the Amalgamated Hosiers' Institution, who paid the laundry an annual
+subsidy. A good memory was essential for the work. Every girl was
+required to memorize what size in collars each male client took, so
+that the fifteen-inch collars might be sent to the man with the
+seventeen-inch neck and vice-versa. As the manager said to me once:
+"What we are here for is to teach people self-control. The rest is
+merely incidental."
+
+I did not remain very long in the mixing department. My head for figures
+soon earned me a place in the office. Much of it was routine work. Four
+times every year we had to send out the notices that owing to the
+increased cost of labour and materials we were reluctantly compelled to
+increase our prices 22-˝ per cent. We made it 22-˝ per cent. with
+the happy certainty that very few of our customers would be able to
+calculate the amount of the increase, and still fewer would take the
+trouble; this left a little room for the play of our fancy. As one of
+our directors--a man with a fine, scholarly head--once said to me:
+"Bring the larger vision into the addition of a customer's account. The
+only natural limit to the charge for washing a garment is the cost of
+the garment. Keep your eyes ever on the goal. Our present prices are but
+milestones on the road." He had a beautiful, ecclesiastical voice.
+Nobody would have guessed that he was an engineer and the inventor of
+the Button-pulper and Hem-render which have done so much to make our
+laundries what they are.
+
+From the very first day that I took up my work in the office I became
+conscious that Hector, the manager, had his eye upon me. He would
+generally read a page or two of Keats or Shelley to us girls, before we
+began to make out the customers' accounts. This was all in accord with
+the far-seeing and generous policy of the laundry. The reading took a
+little time, but it filled us with the soaring spirit. It made pedantic
+precision and things-that-are repulsive to us. After I heard Hector read
+the "Ode to a Nightingale" I could not bring myself to say that two and
+two were four; nothing less than fourteen seemed to give me any
+satisfaction. Hector knew how quickly responsive and keenly sentient I
+was. A friend once told me that he had said of me that I made arithmetic
+a rhapsody. "This," I replied quietly, "means business."
+
+It did. One Saturday afternoon I had tea with him--not on the Terrace,
+as the A.B.C. shop in the High Street was so much nearer. He was very
+wonderful. He talked continuously for two hours, and would have gone on
+longer. But the waitress pointed out that the charge for a cup of tea
+and a scone did not include a twenty-one years' lease of the chair you
+sat on.
+
+He was, of course, a man of great scientific attainments. His work on
+the use of acids in fabric-disintegration has a reputation throughout
+the laundries of Europe. But he had not the habit of screaming
+blasphemies which my Great Example failed to convince anybody that she
+had discovered in Huxley. In brief, he did not conform to the
+unscientific idea of what a scientific man must be like. He was a
+cultured idealist. I will try to recall a few of the marvellous things
+he said that afternoon.
+
+In reply to some remark of mine, he said with authority and conviction:
+"Marge, you really _are_."
+
+And, indeed, I had to admit that very often I am.
+
+He was saying that in this world gentle methods have effected more than
+harsh, and added this beautiful thought: "In the ordeal by laundry the
+soft-fronted often outlasts the starched."
+
+Later, I led him on to speak of ambition.
+
+"I am ambitious. That is to say, I live not in the present, but in the
+future. At one time I had a bicycle, but in imagination I drove a
+second-hand Ford; and now I possess the Ford, and in imagination I have
+a Rolls-Royce. I once held a subordinate position in the laundry, but in
+imagination I was the manager; and now I am the manager, and in
+imagination am asked to join the Board of Directors. As the poet
+Longfellow so wisely said--Excelsior. Engraved in letters of gold on the
+heart of the ambitious are these words: 'And the next article?' At this
+present moment I am having a cup of tea with by far the most brilliant
+and beautiful girl of my acquaintance, but in imagination----"
+
+And it was just there that the tactless waitress interrupted us so
+rudely. It was in vain that I tried to lead him back to the subject.
+Almost his last words to me that afternoon were:
+
+"I suppose you don't happen to know what the time is?"
+
+Nor did I. It was just an instance of his subtle intuition. He
+understood me at once and without effort. Many men have made a hobby of
+it for years and never been within three streets of it.
+
+The clock at the post-office gave him the information he required, and,
+raising his hat, he said: "Well, I must be getting on."
+
+The whole of the man's life was in that sentence. Always, he was getting
+on--and always with a compulsion, as of destiny, shoving behind.
+
+Knowing my keen appreciation of art, of which I have always been a just
+and unfailing critic, he took me on the following Saturday to see the
+pictures. It was not a good show--too many comics for my taste, and I'd
+seen the Charlie Chaplin one before. However, in the dim seclusion of
+the two-shilling seats just as the eighteenth episode of "The Woman
+Vampire" reached its most pathetic passage, and the girl at the piano
+appropriately shifted to the harmonium, Hector asked me if I would marry
+him.
+
+(No, I shan't. I know I'm an autobiographer and that you have paid to
+come in, but there are limits. You know how shy and retiring I am. No
+nice girl would tell you what the man said or did on such an occasion,
+or how she responded. There will be no details. And you ought to be
+ashamed of yourself.)
+
+But just one of Hector's observations struck me particularly: "You know,
+Marge, there are not many girls in the laundry I would say as much to."
+
+That statement of preference, admitting me as it were to a small circle
+of the elect, meant very much to me. I could only reply that there were
+some men I wouldn't even allow to take me to a cinema. I asked, and was
+accorded, time for consideration.
+
+I was face to face with the greatest problem of my life. There was, I
+know, one great drawback to my marriage with Hector. An immense risk was
+involved. When the end of this chapter is reached the reader will know
+what the risk and drawback were.
+
+At the same time, everybody knew well that Hector was marked out for a
+great position. I had already, with a view to eventualities, had some
+discussion with one of the Directors, Mr. Cashmere, whom I have already
+quoted. I was a special favourite of his. But it is quite an ordinary
+thing in business, of course, for a Director to discuss the internal
+affairs of the Board with one of the Company's junior clerks.
+
+Mr. Cashmere expressed the highest opinion of Hector, and said he had no
+doubt that Hector would become a Director, as a result of a complicated
+situation that had arisen. Two of the Directors, Mr. Serge and Mr.
+Angora, while remaining on the best possible social terms with the
+chairman, Sir Charles Cheviot, were bitterly opposed to him on questions
+of policy. On the other hand, though agreed on questions of policy, Mr.
+Serge and Mr. Angora were bitterly jealous of each other, and a rupture
+was imminent. Under the circumstances, Mr. Cashmere, while assuring
+everybody of his whole-hearted support, had a private reservation of
+judgment to be finally settled by the directional feline saltation.
+
+Whichever turn the crisis took, he regarded it as certain that there
+would be a resignation, and that Hector would get the vacant place.
+
+"Why," I said, "it's rather like the Government of the British Empire."
+
+"Hush!" he said, warningly. "It is exactly like it, but in the interests
+of the shareholders we do not wish that to be generally known. It would
+destroy confidence."
+
+I myself felt quite certain that if Hector did become a Director he
+would very shortly be chairman of the Board. He was a man that naturally
+took anything there was.
+
+It was in my power to marry a man who would become the chairman of a
+Laundry Company with seventeen different branches. It was a great
+position. Had I any right to refuse it? If I did not take it, I felt
+sure that somebody else would. Was anybody else as good as I was? Truth
+compelled me to answer in the negative. The voice of conscience said:
+"Take a good thing when you see it. People have lost fortunes by opening
+their mouths too wide."
+
+On the other hand there were two considerations of importance. I might
+possibly receive a better offer. If I had been quite sure that Hector
+would have taken it nicely, I would have asked him for a three months'
+option to see if anything better turned up, but I knew that with his
+sensitive nature he might be offended.
+
+The second consideration was the terrible risk to which I have already
+referred. Do be patient. You will know all about it when the time comes.
+
+I had to decide one way or the other, and--as the world knows now--I
+decided in favour of Hector. And immediately the storm broke.
+
+Every old cat that I knew--and I knew some--began to give me advice.
+Now, nobody takes advice better than I do, when I am conscious that I
+need it and am sure that the advice is good. Of this I feel as sure as
+if such an occasion had ever actually arrived. In an International
+Sweet-nature Competition I would back myself for money every time.
+
+I was told that in the dignified position which was to be mine I must
+give up larking about and the use of wicked words when irritated. It
+seemed to me that if I was to surrender all my accomplishments I might
+just as well never marry Hector at all. I avoid a certain freedom of
+speech which my great predecessor uses on a similar occasion.
+
+Dear old Mr. Cashmere found me in almost a bad temper about it, and
+listened gravely to my complaint. Placing one hand on my shoulder, he
+said:
+
+"Marge, I have lived long, and in the course of my life I have received
+much advice. My invariable rule has always been to thank for it,
+expressing my gratitude with some warmth and every appearance of
+sincerity. This is all that the adviser requires. It gives him, or her,
+complete satisfaction. It costs nothing. Afterwards, I proceed precisely
+as if no advice had been given."
+
+That freak, Millie Wyandotte, sent me a plated toast-rack and a letter
+from which I extract the following:
+
+     "If you were half as extraordinary as you think you are, this
+     would be a miserable marriage. Anybody who married it would get
+     lost, bewildered, and annoyed, and the hymn for those at sea should
+     be sung at the wedding ceremony. But cheer up, old girl. Really
+     extraordinary people never think it worth while to prove that they
+     are extraordinary, and mostly would resent being told it. You'll
+     do. Psychologies like yours can be had from any respectable dealer
+     at a shilling a dozen, including the box. They wear very well and
+     give satisfaction. Here's luck."
+
+Mr. J. A. Banting sent me a travelling-clock at one time the property of
+Lord Baringstoke, and a letter of such fervent piety and tender
+affection that it is too sacred for me to quote.
+
+Fifty-eight rejected suitors combined to send me a hand-bag of no great
+intrinsic value. I cannot but think that the principle of syndication is
+more suited to business than to generosity.
+
+But I will not weary the reader with a list of the numerous and costly
+gifts that I received. Suffice it to say that one of my brothers, an
+excellent judge, offered me a fiver for the lot, and said that he
+expected to lose money by it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Immediately after the wedding ceremony the blow fell. I had foreseen the
+danger of disaster from the very first, and that disaster came. I can
+hardly bring myself to write of it.
+
+I have spoken of my husband as Hector, but his surname was Harris--his
+mother was one of the Tweeds. Consequently, I had become Mrs. Harris.
+
+The tendency of a Mrs. Harris to become mythical was first noticed by an
+English writer of some repute in the nineteenth century. I forget his
+precise name, but believe that it was Thackeray.
+
+It was in the vestry that I seemed to hear the voice of an elderly and
+gin-bemused female telling me that there was no sich person. I did not
+cease to exist, but I became aware that I never had, and never could
+have, existed. I was merely mythical. Gently whispering "The Snark was a
+Boojum," I faded away.
+
+The last sound I heard was the voice of Hector calling to me:
+
+"Hullo, hullo! Are you there? Harris speaking.... Hullo, hullo.... Are
+you there?"
+
+And, as not infrequently happens, there was no answer.
+
+
+
+
+ H. G. WELLS'
+ Best Novels
+
+
+ TONO BUNGAY
+     (11th Edition)
+
+ THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
+     (10th Edition)
+
+ MARRIAGE
+     (12th Edition)
+
+ MR. POLLY
+     (9th Edition)
+
+ THE
+ ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
+     (10th Edition)
+
+ DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to be true to the author's words and intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marge Askinforit, by Barry Pain
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marge Askinforit, by Barry Pain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+
+Title: Marge Askinforit
+
+Author: Barry Pain
+
+Release Date: July 11, 2008 [EBook #26024]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGE ASKINFORIT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 271px;">
+<img src="images/icover.jpg" width="271" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h1>MARGE<br />
+ASKINFORIT</h1>
+
+<h2>BY BARRY PAIN</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 143px;">
+<img src="images/i-title.jpg" width="143" height="200" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK</h3>
+<h2>DUFFIELD AND COMPANY</h2>
+<h4>1921</h4>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="60%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left">AUTHOR&#8217;S NOTE</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Authors_Note">7</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">I.</td>
+<td align="left">THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#MARGE_ASKINFORIT">9</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">II.</td>
+<td align="left">EBULLIENT YOUTH</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Second_Extract">18</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">III.</td>
+<td align="left">GLADSTONE&mdash;LLOYD GEORGE&mdash;INMEMORISON&mdash;DR.<br />
+BENGER HORLICK</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Third_Extract">26</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">IV.</td>
+<td align="left">THE SOLES</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Fourth_Extract">40</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">V.</td>
+<td align="left">MISFIRES</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Fifth_Extract">50</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">VI.</td>
+<td align="left">TESTIMONIALS&mdash;ROYAL&nbsp; APPRECIATION</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Sixth_Extract">64</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">VII.</td>
+<td align="left">SELF-ESTIMATE</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Seventh_Extract">78</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left">LATE EXTRA</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#Late_Extra">83</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;And every week you opened your hoard<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Of truthful and tasteful tales&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">How you sat on the knees of the Laureate Lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">How you danced with the Prince of Wales&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">And we knew that the Sunday Times had scored<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">In Literature and Sales.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><i>To Margot in Heaven.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By Clarence G. Hennessy</span> (circa 1985).</p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Authors_Note" id="Authors_Note"></a><span class="smcap">Author&#8217;s Note</span></h2>
+
+<p>This book was suggested by the reading of some extracts from the
+autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number
+of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which
+seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait
+for posterity and perspective will pardon a little contemporary
+distortion.</p>
+
+<p>In adding my humble wreath to the flatteries&mdash;in their sincerest
+form&mdash;which she has already received, I should like to point out that a
+parody of an autobiography should not be a caricature of the people
+biographed&mdash;some of whom must already have suffered enough. I have
+lowered the social key of the original considerably, not only to bring
+it within the compass of the executant, but also to make a distinction.
+I have increased the remoteness from real life&mdash;which was sometimes
+appreciable in the original&mdash;to such an extent that it should be
+impossible to suppose that any of the grotesques of the parody is
+intended for anybody in real life. Nobody in the parody is intended to
+be a representation, or even a misrepresentation, of any real person
+living or dead. For instance, Inmemorison <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>is not intended to be a
+caricature of Tennyson, but the passage which deals with him is intended
+to parody some of the stuff that has been written about Tennyson.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the author of the original has opened to the public several
+doors through which it is not thinkable that a parodist would care to
+follow her. Apart from that, parody should be brief, just as
+autobiography should be long&mdash;<i>ars brevis, vita longa</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Barry Pain</span>.</p>
+<p><i>October</i> 8, 1920.</p>
+
+<p><i>The quotations are from the articles which appeared in &#8220;The Sunday
+Times.&#8221; It does not of course follow that these passages will appear in
+the same form, or will appear at all, when the complete autobiography is
+published.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="MARGE_ASKINFORIT" id="MARGE_ASKINFORIT"></a>MARGE ASKINFORIT</h2>
+
+<h2><a name="First_Extract" id="First_Extract"></a><span class="smcap">First Extract</span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY</h3>
+
+<p>I was christened Margarine, of course, but in my own circle I have
+always been known as Marge. The name is, I am informed, derived from the
+Latin word <i>margo</i>, meaning the limit. I have always tried to live right
+up to it.</p>
+
+<p>We were a very numerous family, and I can find space for biographical
+details of only a few of the more important. I must keep room for
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>My elder sister, Casein&mdash;Casey, as we always called her&mdash;was supposed to
+be the most like myself, and was less bucked about it than one would
+have expected. I never made any mistake myself as to which was which. I
+had not her beautiful lustrous eyes, but neither had she my wonderful
+cheek. She had not my intelligence. Nor had she my priceless gift for
+uttering an unimportant personal opinion as if it were the final verdict
+of posterity with the black cap on. We were devoted to one another, and
+many a time have I owed my position as temporary parlour-maid <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>in an
+unsuspicious family to the excellent character that she had written for
+me.</p>
+
+<p>She married Moses Morgenstein, a naturalized British subject, who showed
+his love for his adopted country by trading as Stanley Harcourt. He was
+a striking figure with his coal-black hair and nails, his drooping
+eye-lashes and under-lip, and the downward sweep of his ingratiating
+nose. The war found him burning with enthusiasm, and I give here one
+verse of a fine poem which he wrote and, as I will remember, recited in
+Mrs. Mopworth&#8217;s <i>salon</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">I vos in Luntun since t&#8217;ree year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">In dis lant I holt so tear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i17">Inklant, my Inklant!<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Mit her overbowering might<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">If she gonquer in der fight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">M. Morgenstein vill be all right&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i20"><i>Nicht?</i>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i17">Inklant, my own!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He was a man of diverse talents, and I used to regret that he gave to
+the tripe-dressing what was meant for the muses. Alas, he was, though
+indirectly, one of the many victims of the Great War. His scheme for the
+concealment of excess profits was elaborate and ingenious, and practised
+with assiduity. His simple mind could not apprehend that elemental
+honesty was in process of modification. &#8220;Vot I maig for myself, dat I
+keeb, <i>nicht?</i>&#8221; he often said to me. And then the blow fell.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>However, he has earned the utmost remission to which good conduct could
+entitle him, and we are hoping that he will be out again by Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>My next sister, Saccharine, was of a filmy and prismatic beauty that was
+sufficient evidence of her Cohltar origin&mdash;our mother, of course, was a
+Cohltar. I never thought her mind the equal of my own. Indeed, at the
+moment of going to press I have not yet met the mind that I thought the
+equal of my own. But about her beauty there was no doubt. In those
+days&mdash;I am speaking of the &#8217;nineties&mdash;it was quite an ordinary event for
+my sister, inadvertently, to hold up an omnibus. The horses pulled up as
+soon as they saw her, and refused to move until they had drunk their
+fill of her astounding beauty. I well remember one occasion on which the
+horses in a West Kensington omnibus met her at Piccadilly Circus and
+refused to leave her until she reached Highgate, in spite of the whip of
+the driver, the blasphemy of the conductor, the more formal complaints
+of the passengers, and direct police intervention.</p>
+
+<p>She was a sweet girl in those days, and I loved her. I never had any
+feelings of jealousy. How can one who is definitely assured of
+superiority to everybody be jealous of anybody?</p>
+
+<p>She married a Russian, Alexis Chopitoff. He was a perfect artist in his
+own medium, which happened to be hair. It is to him that I owe what is
+my only beauty, and I am assured <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>that it defies detection. At one time
+life&#8217;s greatest prizes seemed to be within his reach. During the war his
+skill in rendering the <i>chevelure</i> of noted pianists fit for military
+service attracted official attention, and if he had been made O.B.E. it
+would have come as no surprise to any of us. Unhappily his interest in
+the political affairs of his own country led him to annex at Waterloo a
+despatch-case which, pedantically speaking, did not belong to him. The
+case unfortunately happened to contain a diamond tiara, and this led to
+misunderstandings. Nothing could have exceeded the courage of dear
+Saccharine when she learned that at the end of his sentence he was to be
+deported.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It will leave me,&#8221; she said, with perfect calm and in words that have
+since become historical, &#8220;in a position of greater freedom and less
+responsibility.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But I knew how near she was to a nervous breakdown. Indeed, nervous
+breakdown was her successful defence when, a week later, she was
+arrested at Whiteridge&#8217;s with a tin of sardines, two cakes of
+super-cream toilet-soap, and a bound copy of Keble&#8217;s &#8220;Christian Year&#8221; in
+her muff. The malice and animosity that Whiteridge&#8217;s showed in the
+prosecution are but partly excused by the fact that dear Saccharine had
+pinched the muff first.</p>
+
+<p>Another sister, Chlorine, in later years became well known as a medium.
+She communicated with the hereafter, or at the very least professed to
+do so, by telephonic wireless. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>It used to be rather weird to hear her
+ring up &#8220;Gehenna, 1 double 7, 6.&#8221; I have not the least doubt that she
+would have convinced a famous physicist who, curiously enough, is weak
+on facts, or a writer of detective stories who, equally curiously, is
+weak on imagination. I am sorry to say that she would never give me the
+winner of the next Derby, nor do I remember that she ever used this
+special and exclusive information for her own benefit. But, like other
+mediums, she could always give a plausible reason for avoiding any test
+that was really a test; and now that she has doubled her fees owing to
+the increased cost of labour and materials, she ought to do very well,
+particularly after the friendly boost that I have just given her.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was Methyll&mdash;this is the old Anglo-Saxon form of Ethel. She
+was a charming child and made a profound study of natural history. I
+remember her saying to me at a reception where the refreshments had been
+somewhat restricted: &#8220;One cocktail doesn&#8217;t make a swallow.&#8221; Modern
+biology has, I believe, confirmed this observation. She spent much of
+her time at the Zoo, and it was thought that it would be an advantage if
+she could be permanently resident there. But although she was not unlike
+a flamingo in the face, and I had some interest with the man who
+supplies the fish for the sea-lions, no vacant cage could be found. An
+offer to let her share one with the cassowary&mdash;<i>missionara
+timbuctana</i>&mdash;was refused.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>I must now speak of another sister, Caramel, though I do so with grief.
+However, there is a skeleton in every fold&mdash;I mean to say, a black sheep
+in every cupboard. She was undeniably beautiful, and had a romantic
+postcard face. Her figure was perfect. Her intelligence was C 3. In a
+weak moment she accepted a thinking part in a revue at the &#8220;Frivolity,&#8221;
+and her career ended, as might have been expected, in a shocking
+<i>m&eacute;salliance</i>. She married the Marquis of Beanstrite, and has more than
+once appeared on the back page of the &#8220;Daily Mail,&#8221; but that is not
+everything. She never sees anything of me now, and it brings the tears
+to my eyes when I think what she is missing.</p>
+
+<p>My brothers were all of them sportsmen, but they were seldom at home.
+They seemed to feel that they were wanted elsewhere, and they generally
+were. You ask any policeman in the Kentish Town district, mentioning my
+name, and he will tell you.</p>
+
+<p>There were seventy-three of us all together, of whom eighty-four
+survive, including myself. And yet dear papa sometimes seems a little
+irritable&mdash;I wonder why.</p>
+
+<p>My mamma was quite different from my papa. They were not even of the
+same sex. But that so often happens, don&#8217;t you think?</p>
+
+<p>My father had a curious fancy for naming all his sons after subsequent
+winners of the Derby. No doubt it will be said that this is not always
+practical; nor is it&mdash;the Derby is occasionally won by a gee-gee of the
+sex <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>which I have myself adopted, and in those cases the name is
+unsuitable for a boy. But if it could be generally done, it would
+absolutely preclude any betting on one of our classic races; it would
+probably also preclude the race. After all, we do have to be moral in
+the intervals, and reclaim factory-girls in the dinner-hour. But I fear
+it will never happen&mdash;so few men have dear papa&#8217;s wonderful foresight.</p>
+
+<p>Spearmint, my eldest surviving brother, came much under the influence of
+Alexis Chopitoff, and entered the same profession. Simple and
+unassuming, no one would have supposed that in one year he had backed
+the winner in all the principal races. But such was veritably the case.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nothing in it, Marge,&#8221; he said to me one evening. &#8220;There&#8217;s only
+one sure way to win&mdash;back every horse in the race with another man&#8217;s
+money. I tell a customer the tale that I was shaving a well-known
+trainer that morning, and that the trainer had given me a certainty; all
+I ask is that the customer will put half-a-crown on for me. I repeat the
+process, changing the name of the certainty, until I have got all risks
+covered. I know it&#8217;s old fashioned, but I like it. It demands nothing
+but patience, and it cannot possibly go wrong.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But it did go wrong. He was telling the tale of how the well-known
+trainer had given him the certainty to a new customer, whom Spearmint
+had never shaved before. By a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>disastrous coincidence it happened that
+the new customer actually was that well-known trainer. He seemed to
+think that Spearmint had taken a liberty with his name, and even to
+resent it.</p>
+
+<p>Spearmint did not lose the sight of the left eye, as was at one time
+feared, but his looks have never been quite the same since his nose was
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>My next brother, Orby, was born in 1870. He could do the most graceful
+and charming things. When his namesake won the Derby in 1907, he
+immediately acquired a complimentary Irish accent, and employed it in
+the narration of humorous stories. An accent acquired at the age of
+thirty-seven is perhaps liable to lack conviction, and I always thought
+that my brother was over-scrupulous in beginning every sentence with the
+word &#8220;Bedad.&#8221; Like myself, he simply did not know what fear was, and in
+consequence told his Irish stories in his own Irish accent to a real
+Irishman. However, now that he has got his new teeth in you would never
+know that he had been hit. It was said of him by a great legal
+authority&mdash;I forget in which police-court&mdash;that he had the best manners
+and the least honesty of any taxi-driver on the Knightsbridge rank.</p>
+
+<p>Another brother, Sunstar, acquired considerable reputation by his skill
+in legerdemain. If you lent him a watch or a coin, with one turn of his
+hand he would make it disappear; he could do the same thing when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>you
+had not lent it. He could make anything disappear that was not
+absolutely screwed to the floor, and at public-houses where he was known
+the pewter from which he drank was always chained to the bar. He had
+something of my own quixotic nature, and would probably have taken the
+rest if he had wanted it. One day at Ascot he made a stranger&#8217;s watch
+disappear. When he came to examine his newly-acquired property he was
+disappointed to find that the watch was a four-and-sixpenny American
+Everbright&mdash;&#8220;Puts you wrong, Day and night.&#8221; He was on the point of
+throwing it away when the kindly thought came to him that perhaps the
+stranger attached some sentimental value to that watch; indeed, there
+seemed to be no other possible reason for wearing it. Sunstar determined
+to replace the watch in the stranger&#8217;s pocket. He did his best, but he
+was far more practised in removing than in replacing. The stranger&mdash;a
+hulking, cowardly brute&mdash;caught my brother with his hand in his pocket,
+and failed to grasp the altruism of his motives, and that is why poor
+Sunnie walks a little lame.</p>
+
+<p>He is not with us at present. He had made quite a number of things
+disappear, and a censorious world is ever prone to judge by
+disappearances. It became expedient&mdash;and even necessary&mdash;for my brother
+to make himself disappear, and he did so.</p>
+
+<p>The Second Extract, as they say on the film, will follow immediately.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Second_Extract" id="Second_Extract"></a><span class="smcap">Second Extract</span></h2>
+
+<h3>EBULLIENT YOUTH</h3>
+
+<p>I have been studying the beautiful pages of the autobiography of my
+Great Example&mdash;hereinafter to be called the G.E. It is wonderful to be
+admitted to the circle of the elect, week after week, at the low rate of
+twopence a time. Why, I&#8217;ve paid more to see the pictures.</p>
+
+<p>Considering the price, one ought not to carp. The G.E. says in one
+extract that she has lost every female friend she ever had, with the
+exception of four. In a subsequent extract she names six women whose
+friendship has remained loving and true to her since girlhood. She
+speaks of a four-line stanza as a couplet. She imputes a &#8220;blasphemous
+tirade&#8221; to a great man of science who certainly never uttered one. She
+says that she had a conversation with Lord Salisbury about the fiscal
+controversy, in which he took no part, the year after his death. But why
+make a fuss about little things like this? If you write in bed at the
+rate of one thousand words an hour, accidents are sure to happen.</p>
+
+<p>But there is just one of the G.E.&#8217;s sentences that is worrying me and
+keeping me awake at night. Here it is&mdash;read it carefully:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wore the shortest of tweed skirts, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>knickerbockers of the same stuff,
+top-boots, a cover-coat, and a coloured scarf round my head.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And all very nice too, no doubt. But consider the terrific problem
+involved.</p>
+
+<p>She does not say that the skirt and knickerbockers were made <i>of the
+same kind of stuff</i>. If she had, I could have understood it, and my
+natural delicacy would for ever have kept me from the slightest allusion
+to the subject.</p>
+
+<p>What she does say is that the skirt and knickerbockers were made <i>of the
+same stuff</i>. That is very different, and involves hideous complications.</p>
+
+<p>Firstly, it must mean that the knickerbockers were made out of the
+skirt. Well, there may have been surplus material from that coloured
+scarf, and it is not for me to say. But, secondly, it must also mean
+that the skirt was made out of the knickerbockers. Oh, help!</p>
+
+<p>No, I positively refuse. I will not say another word. There are limits.
+Only an abstruse theologian with a taste for the more recondite niceties
+of obscure heresies could possibly do justice to it.</p>
+
+<p>All change, please. The next item on the programme will be a succinct
+account of my ebullient girlhood.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot say that I loved the Warren, my ancestral home. The neighbours
+called it the Warren, but I can&#8217;t think why. The Post Office said it was
+No. 4, Catley Mews, Kentish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>Town, and dear papa&mdash;who always had the
+<i>mot juste</i>&mdash;sometimes said that it was hell.</p>
+
+<p>We were a high-spirited family with clean-cut personalities, penetrating
+voices, short tempers, high nervous tension, and small feet. Don&#8217;t you
+wish you were like that?</p>
+
+<p>All the same, there were only the four rooms over the stable. At times
+there were fifteen or sixteen of us at home, and also the lodger&mdash;I
+shall speak of him presently. And when you have five personal quarrels,
+baby, the family wash, a sewing-machine, three mouth-organs, fried
+bacon, and a serious political argument occurring simultaneously in a
+restricted establishment, something has to go. As a rule, dear papa
+went. He would make for Regent&#8217;s Park, and find repose in the old-world
+calm of the parrot-house at the Zoo.</p>
+
+<p>But there is always room on the top&mdash;it is a conviction on which I have
+ever acted. When I felt too cramped and stifled in the atmosphere of the
+Warren, I would climb out on the roof. There, with nothing on but my
+nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically.
+The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied
+by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit
+all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things
+complained. I know the police called, and I seem to remember rather a
+nasty letter from the landlord&#8217;s agent. I had a long interview with
+mamma on the subject. She pointed out that if I slipped <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>and fell I
+should probably make a nasty dent in the pavement, and with many tears I
+promised to relinquish the practice.</p>
+
+<p>I used to ride on the Heath when I had the opportunity, but I cannot
+pretend that I was up to the standard of the G.E. I do not think I ever
+rode up a staircase. I certainly never threw my horse down on the marble
+floor of the hall of the Warren. There were several reasons for this.
+Firstly, the Warren had not got a hall, and if it had had a hall, the
+hall would not have had a marble floor. Secondly, the horses I rode were
+likely to be wanted again, being in fact the ponies that unsuspecting
+tradesmen stabled at Catley Mews. Bogey Nutter looked after them, and I
+could always do what I liked with Bogey. He was perhaps the most profuse
+proposer I ever met. At one time he always proposed to me once a day and
+twice on Bank holidays. I was such a dashing, attractive creature, what?</p>
+
+<p>As to my education, a good deal depends on what is meant by education.
+The kind that was ladled out at the County Council establishment made
+little effect upon me. But I was pretty quick at figures, and knew that
+an investment of half-a-crown at eleven to eight should bring me in a
+profit of three-and five&mdash;provided that the horse won and the man at the
+fishmonger&#8217;s round the corner paid up. My brother Lemberg had the same
+talent. If he bought a packet of fags and paid with a ten-shilling note,
+he could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>always negotiate the change so that he made ninepence for
+himself and had the cigarettes thrown in. His only mistake was in trying
+to do it twice at the same shop, but the scar over his right eye hardly
+shows now. A sharp-cornered tobacco-tin was not the thing to have hit
+him with anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>For autobiographical purposes always treat a deficiency as if it were a
+gift. The G.E. was apparently a duffer at arithmetic, but she tells you
+so in a way that makes you admire her for it. All the same I wish I had
+been one of those factory-girls that she used to reclaim in their
+dinner-hour; I am fundamentally honest, but I never could miss a chance
+when it was thrown at me.</p>
+
+<p>My education in dancing was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not
+wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient
+proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life.
+The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and
+dance while he turned the handle. I told Signor Hokey-pokey what I
+thought of the offer, and I have some talent for language, if not for
+languages. So, as he could not get me, he did the next best thing and
+bought a monkey.</p>
+
+<p>I was by far the most spiritual of the family. But my brother Minoru
+attended chapel regularly, until they stopped collecting the offertory
+in open plates and substituted locked boxes with a slot in them. He
+found another chapel that seemed more promising, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>but he attended it
+only once. I shall always consider that the policeman was needlessly
+rough with him, for Minoru said distinctly that he would go quietly.</p>
+
+<p>My sisters and myself had a fascination for the other sex that was
+almost incredible. At one time we had a Proposal Competition every week;
+each of us put in sixpence, and the girl who got the greatest number of
+proposals took the pool. Casey or I generally won. Then one week I
+encountered on the Heath the annual beanfeast of the Pottey Asylum for
+the Feeble-minded, and won with a score of a hundred and seven, and I
+think the others said it was not fair. Anyhow, the competitions were
+discontinued.</p>
+
+<p>Really, the way our lodger pestered my sisters and myself with his
+absolute inattentions is difficult to explain. Anyone might have thought
+that he did not know we were there. While the Proposal Competitions were
+on, not one of us thought it worth while to waste time on the man. We
+could get a better return for the same amount of fascination in other
+quarters. Afterwards I thought that possibly his employment in the
+milk-trade might be the cause of his extraordinary mildness, and that it
+would be kind to offer him a little encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>He usually went for a walk on Sunday mornings, and one Sunday I said
+that I would accompany him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Better not,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Looks to me like rain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you have an umbrella,&#8221; I pointed out.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Aye,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and when two people share one umbrella, they both get
+all the drippings from it and none of the protection. You take a nice
+book and read for a bit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; I said. &#8220;I&#8217;m coming with you, and though it&#8217;s Leap Year, I
+definitely promise not to propose to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;that makes a difference.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I thrust my arm into his gaily and confidentially, and he immediately
+unhooked. We went on to the Heath together.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was once told by a palmist,&#8221; I said, &#8220;that I had a mysterious and
+magnetic attraction for men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Those palmists will say anything,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just the other way
+round really.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; I said. &#8220;I know I have an unlimited capacity for love&mdash;and
+nobody seems to want it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; he said, &#8220;it&#8217;s a pity to be overstocked with a perishable article.
+It means parting with it at a loss.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What could I say to a brute like that? And I had nobody there to protect
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish,&#8221; I said, &#8220;that you&#8217;d look if I&#8217;ve a fly in my eye.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you had, you&#8217;d know,&#8221; he answered. &#8220;The fly sees to that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Some minutes elapsed before I asked him to tie my shoe-lace.</p>
+
+<p>He looked down and said that it was not undone.</p>
+
+<p>I simply turned round and left him, I was not going to stay there to be
+insulted.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>However, he must have been ashamed of himself, for two days later he
+sub-let his part of the floor in one of the rooms at the Warren to an
+Irish family. If he was not ashamed, he was frightened.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, curiously enough, that cowardly brute moulded my future.</p>
+
+<p>The influx of the Irish family into the Warren drove me out of it. It
+made me feel the absolute necessity for a wider sphere.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving home I took an indeterminate position in a Bayswater
+boarding-house. At any rate, my wages and food were determined, but my
+hours of work were not.</p>
+
+<p>A boarding-house is a congeries of people who have come down. The
+proprietoress never dreamed that she would have to earn her own living
+like that&mdash;though she gets everything to a knife-edge certainty in the
+first week. Then in the drawing-room you have military people who have
+thundered, been saluted, been respected&mdash;and superseded. And nobody can
+make worse clothes look better. The cook explains why she&#8217;s not in
+Grosvenor Square, and the elderly Swiss waiter says that he has been in
+places where pace was not everytink. If you&#8217;re out looking for
+depression, try a boarding-house.</p>
+
+<p>I stayed there a week and then said I was going. The lady said she knew
+the law and I couldn&#8217;t. So I said I would stay, and was sorry that the
+state of my nerves would mean a good deal in breakages.</p>
+
+<p>I left at the end of the week.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Third_Extract" id="Third_Extract"></a><span class="smcap">Third Extract</span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Gladstone&mdash;Mr. Lloyd George&mdash;Inmemorison&mdash;Dr.<br /> Benger Horlick.</span></h3>
+
+<p>After this I had a long succession of different situations. It is
+possible for a girl to learn the work of any branch of domestic service
+in a week, if she wishes to do it, with the exception of the work of a
+cook or a personal maid. But then, it is quite possible to take a
+situation as a cook, and to keep it, without knowing anything
+appreciable about the work. Thousands of women have done it, and are
+still doing it. I never went as personal maid&mdash;I dislike
+familiarity&mdash;but with that exception I played, so to speak, every
+instrument in the orchestra.</p>
+
+<p>I acquired an excellent stock of testimonials, of which some were
+genuine. The others were due to the kindly heart and vivid imagination
+of my sister Casey, now Mrs. Morgenstein.</p>
+
+<p>I rarely kept my places, and never kept my friends. The only thing I did
+keep was a diary. A diary is evidence. So if you see anything about
+anybody in these pages, you can believe it without hesitation. Do,
+please. You see, if you hesitate, you may never believe it.</p>
+
+<p>I well remember the first and only time that I met Gladstone. I was
+staying with Lady <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>Bilberry at the time at her house in Half Moon
+Street. She was a woman with real charm and wit, but somewhat irritable.
+Most of the people I&#8217;ve met were irritable or became so, and I can&#8217;t
+think why. I may add that I only stayed out my month as too much was
+expected. Besides, I&#8217;d been told there was a boy for the rough work and
+there never was.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to Gladstone. I wrote down every precious word of my
+conversation with him at the time, and the eager and excited reader may
+now peruse it in full.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>: Lady Bilberry at home?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span>: Yes, sir.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gladstone</span>: Thanks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span>: What name, please?</p></div>
+
+<p>He gave me his name quite simply, without any attempt at rudeness or
+facetiousness. I should say that this was typical of the whole character
+of the man. With a beautiful and punctilious courtesy he removed his
+hat&mdash;not a very good hat&mdash;on entering the house. I formed the impression
+from the ease with which he did this that the practice must have been
+habitual with him.</p>
+
+<p>The only thing that mars this cherished memory is that it was not the
+Gladstone you mean, nor any relative of his, but a gentleman of the same
+name who had called to see if he could interest her ladyship in a scheme
+for the recovery of some buried treasure. He did not stay long, and Lady
+Bilberry said I ought to have known better.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p><p>About this time I received by post a set of verses which bear quite a
+resemblance to the senile vivacity of the verses which the real
+Gladstone addressed to my illustrious example of autobiographical art.
+The verses I received were anonymous, and as a matter of fact the
+postmark on the envelope was Beaconsfield. Still, you never know, do
+you?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><span class="i40"><span class="smcap">Marge.</span></span></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">When Pentonville&#8217;s over and comes the release,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">With a year&#8217;s supervision perhaps by the p&#8217;lice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Your longing to meet all your pals may be large,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">But make an exception, and do not ask Marge.<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">She&#8217;s Aspasia, Pavlova, Tom Sayers, Tod Sloan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Spinoza, and Barnum, and Mrs. Chapone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">For a bloke that has only just got his discharge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">She&#8217;s rather too dazzling a patchwork, is Marge.<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">Never mind, never mind, you have got to go slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">One section a year is the most you can know;<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">If you study a life-time, you&#8217;ll jest on the barge<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Of Charon with madd&#8217;ningly manifold Marge.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>By the way, whenever we change houses a special pantechnicon has to be
+engaged to take all the complimentary verses that have from time to time
+been addressed to me. Must be a sort of something about me somehow,
+don&#8217;t you think?</p>
+
+<p>I cannot pretend that I was on the same terms of intimate friendship
+with Mr. Lloyd George. I spoke to him only once.</p>
+
+<p>It was when we were in Downing Street. There was quite a crowd of us
+there, and it had been an evening of exalted and roseate patriotism. I
+gazed up at the window of No. 10 and said, as loudly as I could:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lloyd George! Lloyd George!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Most of the others in the crowd said the same thing with equal force.
+Then an uneducated policeman came up to me and asked me to pass along,
+please, adding that Mr. Lloyd George was not in London. So, simply
+replying &#8220;All right, face,&#8221; I passalongpleased.</p>
+
+<p>However, in spite of all that bound me so closely to the great political
+world, I could not help feeling the claims of literature. I am sensitive
+to every claim. It is the claim of history, for example, that compels me
+to write my autobiography. I seem to see all around me a thousand human
+arts and activities crying for my help and interest. They seem to say
+&#8220;Marge, Marge, more Marge!&#8221; in the words that Goethe himself might have
+used. And whenever I hear the call I have to give myself.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>I doubt if any girl ever gave herself away quite as much as I have done.</p>
+
+<p>One day in November I met Chummie Popbright in the neighbourhood of
+Cambridge Circus. He was a man with very little <i>joie de vivre</i>, <i>ventre
+&agrave; terre</i>, or <i>esprit de corps</i>. He had fair hair and no manners, and was
+very, very fond of me. He held a position in the Post Office, and was,
+in fact, emptying a pillar-box when I met him. I record the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Chummie</span>: Blessed if it ain&#8217;t Marge! And what would you like for a
+Christmas present?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span>: I want to spend a week or so at the house of the great poet, Lord
+Inmemorison. If you really wish to please me, you will use your
+influence to get me a job there. Your uncle being Inmemorison&#8217;s butler,
+you ought to be able to work it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Chummie</span>: Might. What would you go as?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span>: Anything&mdash;but temporary parlour-maid is my strong suit.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Chummie</span>: And what&#8217;s your game?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span>: I&#8217;m sick of patronizing politicians and want to patronize a poet.
+When all&#8217;s said and done, Inmemorison is a proper certificated poet.
+Besides, I want to put something by for my rainy autobiography.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Chummie</span>: Oh, well. I&#8217;ll try and lay a pipe for it. May come off or may
+not.</p></div>
+
+<p>Chummie managed the thing to perfection. My sister Casey wrote me one of
+the best testimonials I have ever had, and by Christmas I was safely
+installed for a week. Chummie&#8217;s <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>uncle treated me with the utmost
+consideration, and it is to him that I owe many of the thrilling details
+that I am now able to present to the panting public. Although there was
+a high leather screen in the drawing-room which was occasionally useful
+to me, my opportunities for direct observation were limited.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Inmemorison had a magnificent semi-detached mansion (including a
+bath-room, h. and c.) in one of the wildest and loneliest parts of
+Wandsworth Common. The rugged beauty of the scenery around is reflected
+in many of his poems.</p>
+
+<p>There were, as was to be expected, several departures from ordinary
+convention in the household. Dinner was at seven. The poet went to bed
+immediately after dinner, and punctually at ten reappeared in the
+drawing-room and began reading his poems aloud.</p>
+
+<p>The family generally went to bed at ten sharp.</p>
+
+<p>I heard him read once. There were visitors in the house who wished to
+hear the great man, and it was after midnight before a general
+retirement could take place. He had a rich, sonorous, over-proof,
+pre-war voice, considerable irritability, and a pretty girl sitting on
+his knee. The last item was, of course, an instance of poetical licence.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had asked him to read from &#8220;Maud&#8221; and he had consented. He
+began with his voice turned down so low that in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>my position behind the
+screen I could only just catch the opening lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;Hail to thee, blithe spirit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Bird thou never wert...&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He opened the throttle a little wider when he came to the passage:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;His head was bare, his matted hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Was buried in the sand.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He read that last line &#8220;was serried in the band,&#8221; but immediately
+corrected himself. And the poignant haunting repetition of the last
+lines of the closing stanza were given out on the full organ:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;And everywhere that Mary went&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">And everywhere that Mary went&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">And everywhere that Mary went&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">The lamb was sure to go.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was a great&mdash;a wonderful experience for me, and I shall never forget
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of his irritability. It is not unnatural in a great poet.
+He must live with his exquisite sentient nerves screwed up to such a
+pitch that at any moment something may give.</p>
+
+<p>For example, one evening he was sitting with a girl on his knee, and had
+just read to her these enchanting lines in which he speaks of hearing
+the cuckoo call.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Inmemorison</span> (<i>gruffly and suddenly</i>): What bird says cuckoo?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Girl</span> (<i>with extreme nervous agitation</i>): The rabbit.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p><span class="smcap">Inmemorison</span>: No, you fool&mdash;it&#8217;s the nightingale.</p></div>
+
+<p>The girl burst into tears and said she would not play any more. I think
+she was wrong. Whenever I hear any criticism of myself I always take it
+meekly and gently, whether it is right or wrong&mdash;it has never been right
+yet&mdash;and try to see if I cannot learn something from it. What the girl
+should have said was: &#8220;Now it&#8217;s your turn to go out, and we&#8217;ll think of
+something.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Another occasion when Inmemorison was perhaps more pardonably annoyed
+was when a young undergraduate asked him to read out one of his poems.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Which?&#8221; said Inmemorison.</p>
+
+<p>I am told that the thirty seconds of absolute silence which followed
+this question seemed like an eternity, and that the agony on the young
+man&#8217;s face was Aeschylean. He did not know any precise answer to the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Which?&#8221; repeated Inmemorison, like the booming of a great bell at a
+young man&#8217;s funeral.</p>
+
+<p>The young man made a wild and misjudged effort, and got right off the
+target.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;one of my greatest favourites of course is
+&#8216;Kissingcup&#8217;s Race.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it, indeed?&#8221; said the Poet. &#8220;If you turn to the left on leaving the
+house, the second on the right will take you straight to the station.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The young man never forgave it. And that, so I have always been told, is
+how the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>first Browning Society came to be founded.</p>
+
+<p>It was a meeting with this undergraduate&mdash;purely accidental on my
+part&mdash;in the romantic garden of the poet&#8217;s house that first turned my
+mind towards the university town of Oxbridge. I had no difficulty in
+finding employment as a waitress there in a restaurant where knowledge
+of the business was considered less essential than a turn for repartee
+and some gift for keeping the young of our great nobility in their
+proper place. It was not long before I had made the acquaintance of
+quite a number of undergraduates. Some of them had a marked tendency
+towards rapidity, but soon learned that the regulation of the pace would
+remain with me.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday morning I had consented to go for a walk with one of my young
+admirers&mdash;a nice boy, with more nerve than I have ever encountered in
+any human being except myself. It happened by chance that we encountered
+the Dean of his college. The Dean, with an unusual condescension&mdash;for
+which there may possibly have been a reason&mdash;stopped to speak to my
+companion, who without the least hesitation introduced the Dean to me as
+his sister.</p>
+
+<p>That was my first meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick, the celebrated Dean
+of Belial.</p>
+
+<p>No social occasion has ever yet found me at a loss. The more difficult
+and dramatic it is, the more thoroughly do I enjoy its delicate
+manipulation. I could not deny the relationship which had been asserted,
+without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>involving my young friend. The only alternative was to play up
+to it, and I played up. The perfect management of old men is best
+understood by young girls.</p>
+
+<p>I told him that I was staying with mamma, and mentioned a suitable
+hotel, adding that I was so sorry I had to return to town that
+afternoon, as I had begun to love the scholastic peace of Oxbridge and
+valued so much the opportunity of meeting its greatest men. I was bright
+and poetical in streaks, and every shy&mdash;if I may use the expression&mdash;hit
+the coco-nut. Sometimes I glanced at Willie, my pseudo-brother. His face
+twitched a little, but he never actually gave way to his feelings. The
+Dean had ceased to pay much attention to him.</p>
+
+<p>For about a quarter of an hour the Dean strolled along with us. At
+parting, he held my hand&mdash;for a minute longer than was strictly
+necessary&mdash;and said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have interested me&mdash;er&mdash;profoundly. May I hope that when you get
+back to Grosvenor Square, you will sometimes spare a few moments from
+the fashionable circles in which you move, and write to me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I said that it would be a great honour to me to be permitted to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope,&#8221; he added, &#8220;that you will visit Oxbridge again, and that you
+will then renew an acquaintance which, though accidental in its origin,
+has none the less impressed me&mdash;er&mdash;very much.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After his departure Willie became hilarious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>and I became very angry
+with him. He persisted that everything was all right. I had put up a
+fine performance and had only to continue it. The Dean would no doubt
+write to me at Grosvenor Square, and Willie assured me that he had his
+father&#8217;s butler on a string, and that the butler sorted the letters. I
+would receive the Dean&#8217;s epistles at any address I would give him, and
+would reply on the Grosvenor Square notepaper.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got chunks of it in a writing-case at my rooms,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and
+I&#8217;ll send it round to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I had to consent to this. However, the next day I skipped for London,
+somewhat to the disappointment of the restaurant that I adorned, and
+still more to the disappointment of Willie. But, as I wrote to him, he
+had brought it on himself. I could not take the risk of another
+accidental meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, as a matter of fact, did we ever meet again. But for three years we
+corresponded with some frequency; it was a thin-ice, high-wire business,
+but I pulled it through.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the task was made easier for me by the fact that the Dean was a
+singularly simple-minded man. Reverence for the aristocracy had become
+with him almost a religion. When he was brought&mdash;or believed himself to
+be brought&mdash;in contact with the aristocracy, his intellectual vision
+closed in a swoon of ecstasy. Snob? Oh, dear, no! Of course not. What
+can have made you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>think that? It was simply that the aristocracy
+appealed to him very much as romance did&mdash;he was outside it, but liked
+to get a near view.</p>
+
+<p>The G.E. found that letters, however delightful, bored her when they
+were scattered through a biography. For that reason she gave one set of
+letters all together. I do not see myself why, if a thing bores you when
+you get a little of it at a time, it should bore you less when you get a
+lot of it. But, determined to follow my brilliant model with simple
+faith and humility, I now append extracts from the letters I received
+from Dr. Benger Horlick.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I wish I could persuade you to be less precise in your language. If you
+say what your opinion is, you should take care to be beautiful but
+unintelligible. Commit yourself to nothing. Words were given us to
+conceal our thoughts, and with a little practice and self-discipline
+will conceal them even from ourselves. A candid friend once complained
+to me that in my translation from the Greek it was sometimes impossible
+for him to know which of two different <i>lectiones</i> I was translating. As
+a matter of fact, though I did not tell him this, I did not know either.
+Especially useful is this when one is confronted with a rude,
+challenging, direct question as to any point in religion or politics; I
+reply with a sonorous and, I hope, well-balanced sentence, from which
+the actual meaning has been carefully extracted, and so escape in the
+fog. It is indeed from one point of view a mercy that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>most people are
+too cowardly or too ashamed to say that they have failed to comprehend.
+Yet if they had my passion for truth it might be better. Truth is very
+precious to me&mdash;sometimes too precious to give away.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is good of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice did not
+bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No Dean&mdash;and
+perhaps no don&mdash;who has been in that portentous position as long as I
+have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice. It is the Nemesis
+of those who have all their lives been treated with more respect than
+they have deserved. I am the only exception with which I am acquainted.
+Child, why do you not make more use of your noble gifts for dancing,
+amateur theatricals, and general conversation? And yet I&#8217;m not
+grumbling. Only I mean to say, don&#8217;t you know? Of course, they all do
+it&mdash;the people in the great world to which you, and occasionally I,
+belong. Still, there it is, isn&#8217;t it? And you write me such soothing
+full-cream letters with only an occasional snag in them. So bless you,
+my child. I do trust that the report which comes to me that you are
+going with the Prince of Wales, Mrs. H. Ward, and a Mr. Arthur Roberts
+to shoot kangaroos in Australia is at least exaggerated. These
+marsupials, though their appearance is sufficiently eccentric to suggest
+the conscientious objector, will&mdash;I am credibly informed&mdash;fight
+desperately in defence of their young. If I may venture to suggest, try
+rabbits.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;I am delighted to hear that you are not the author of the two articles
+attacking Society. The fact that they happen to be signed with the name
+of another well-known lady had made me think it possible that this might
+be the case. Society? It is a great mystery. I can hardly think of it
+without taking off my boots and prostrating myself orientally. To
+criticize it is a mistake; it is even, if I may for once use a harsh
+word, subversive. It is the only one we&#8217;ve got. Oh, hush! Only in
+whispers at the dead of night to the most trusted friend under the seal
+of secrecy can we think of criticizing it. But holding, as I do, perhaps
+the most important public position in the Continent of Europe, if not in
+the whole world&mdash;responsible, as I am, for what may be called the
+sustenance of the next generation&mdash;I do feel called upon to carry out
+any repairs and re-decoration of the social fabric that may be required.
+You with your universal influence which&mdash;until Einstein arrives&mdash;will be
+the only possible explanation of the vagaries in the orbit of Mercury,
+can do as much, or nearly as much. Do it. But never speak of it. Oh,
+hush! (Sorry&mdash;I forgot I&#8217;d mentioned that before.)</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In reply to your inquiry, I never read &#8216;Robert Elsmere,&#8217; but understand
+from a private source that it saved many young men from reading &#8216;David
+Grieve.&#8217; Your second inquiry as to the lady-love of my first youth is
+violent&mdash;very violent. Suppose you mind your own business.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Fourth_Extract" id="Fourth_Extract"></a><span class="smcap">Fourth Extract</span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE SOLES</h3>
+
+<p>I do not know why we were called the Soles. Enemies said it was because
+we were flat, fishy, and rather expensive.</p>
+
+<p>Our set comprised the upper servants of some of the best houses in
+Mayfair. Looking back at it now, I can see that no similar body ever had
+such a tremendous influence. It may not have been entirely due to us
+that gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance, but at
+least we acquiesced. And what we did in home and foreign politics has
+scarcely yet been suspected.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for our influence is sufficiently obvious. Our great leader,
+James Arthur Bunting, was perhaps the most perfect butler that the world
+has yet seen; his magnificent presence, plummy voice, exquisite tact,
+and wide knowledge made him beyond price. We had other butlers whom it
+would have been almost equally difficult to replace. We had chefs who
+with a chain of marvellous dinners bound their alleged employers to
+their chariot-wheels. Nominally, Parliament ruled the country, but we
+never had any doubt who ruled Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>To take but one instance, the sudden <i>volte face</i> of Lord Baringstoke on
+the Home Rule <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>Question. This created a great sensation at the time, and
+various explanations were suggested to account for it. Nobody guessed
+the truth. The fact is that Mr. Bunting tendered his resignation.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Baringstoke was much distressed. An increase of salary was
+immediately suggested and waved aside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not that, m&#8217;lord,&#8221; said Bunting. &#8220;It is a question of principle.
+Your lordship&#8217;s expressed views as to Ireland are not, if I may say so,
+the views of my friends and of myself. And on that subject we feel
+deeply. Preoccupied with that difference, if I remained, I could no
+longer do justice to your lordship nor to myself. My wounded and
+bleeding heart&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, never mind your bleeding heart, Bunting,&#8221; said Baringstoke. &#8220;Do I
+understand that this is your only reason for wanting to go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is so, m&#8217;lord.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then, supposing that I reconsidered my views as to Ireland and found
+that they were in fact the opposite of what I had previously supposed,
+you would remain?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With very great pleasure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then in that case you had better wait a few days. I&#8217;m inclined to think
+that everything can be arranged.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very good, m&#8217;lord.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Less than a week later, Lord Baringstoke&#8217;s public recantation was the
+talk of London. In a speech of considerable eloquence he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>showed how the
+merciless logic of facts had convinced his intellect, and his conscience
+had compelled him to abandon the position he had previously taken up.
+Fortunately, you can prove absolutely anything about Ireland. It is
+merely a question of what facts you will select and what you will
+suppress.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bunting is, I believe, still with Lord Baringstoke. This was,
+perhaps, one of the principal triumphs of the Soles. There were many
+others. We had our own secret service, and I should here acknowledge
+with respect and admiration the Gallic ingenuity of two of the Soles,
+Monsieur Colbert and Monsieur Normand, in reconstructing fragmentary
+letters taken from the waste-paper baskets of the illustrious.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, we had to suffer from the jealousy and malice of those who
+had not been asked to join us, and a rumour even was spread abroad that
+we played bridge for sixpence a hundred. There was no truth in it. There
+have been, and still are, gambling clubs among the younger men-servants
+of the West-end, but we never gambled. Mr. Bunting would not have liked
+it at all. We were serious. We did try to live up to our ideals, and
+some of our members actually succeeded in living beyond their incomes.
+Our principal recreation was pencil-games, mostly of our own invention.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection I have rather a sad incident to relate. On one
+occasion we had a competition to see which of us could write <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>the
+flattest and least pointed epigram in rhyme. The prize for men consisted
+of two out-size Havannah cigars, formerly the property of Lord
+Baringstoke, kindly presented by Mr. Bunting.</p>
+
+<p>Percy Binder, first footman to the Earl of Dilwater, was extremely
+anxious to secure this prize. He took as the subject of his epigram the
+sudden death of a man on rising from prayer. This was in such lamentably
+bad taste that he did not win the prize, but otherwise it would have
+certainly been his. His four lines could not have been surpassed for
+clumsy and laboured imbecility. The last two ran:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;But when for aid he ceased to beg,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">The wily devil broke his leg.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And then came a terrible discovery. Percy Binder had stolen these lines
+from the autobiography of my own G.E. She says, by the way, that their
+author was &#8220;the last of the wits.&#8221; But how can you be last in a race in
+which you never start? It is always safe to say what you think, but
+sometimes dangerous to give your reasons for thinking it.</p>
+
+<p>That, however, is a digression. Percy Binder was given to understand
+that we did not know him in future. Mr. Bunting was so upset that he
+declared the competition cancelled, and smoked the prize himself. He
+said afterwards that what annoyed him most was the foolishness of Mr.
+Binder&#8217;s idea that his plagiarism would be undetected.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is,&#8221; said Mr. Bunting, &#8220;like the silly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>ostrich that lays its eggs
+in the sand in order to escape the vigilance of its pursuers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One of our pencil-games was known as Inverted Conundrums, and played as
+follows. One person gave the answer to a riddle, and mentioned one word
+to be used in the question. The rest then had to write down what they
+thought the question would be. The deafness of dear Violet Orpington
+sometimes spoiled this game.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, I had once given as an answer &#8220;bee-hive,&#8221; and said that
+one word in the question was &#8220;correct.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The first question I read out was from George Leghorn. He had written:
+&#8220;If a cockney nurse wished to correct a child, what insect-home would
+she name?&#8221; This was accepted.</p>
+
+<p>The next question was from Violet Orpington: &#8220;If you had never corrected
+a naughty boy before, where would you correct him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, Violet,&#8221; I said, &#8220;the answer to that could not be &#8216;bee-hive.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she said, &#8220;you said &#8216;hive,&#8217; did you? I thought you said something
+else.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I have never been able to guess what it was she thought I had said; and
+she refused to tell me.</p>
+
+<p>Another of our pencil-games was Missing Rhymes. One of us would write a
+deccasyllabic couplet&mdash;we always called it a quatrain, as being a
+better-class word&mdash;and the rhyme in the second line would not be
+actually given but merely indicated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p><p>For example, I myself wrote the following little sonnet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;I have an adoration for<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">One person only, namely <i>je</i>.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To any reader who is familiar with the French language, this may seem
+almost too easy, but I doubt if anybody who knew no language but modern
+Greek would guess it. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may add that
+the French word <i>je</i> is pronounced &#8220;mwor,&#8221; thus supplying the missing
+rhyme.</p>
+
+<p>Millie Wyandotte disgraced herself with the following lyric:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;After her dance, Salome, curtseying, fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">And shocked the Baptist with her scream of &#8216;Bother!&#8217;&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She had no sooner read it out than Mr. Bunting rose in his place and
+said gravely:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can only speak definitely for myself, but it is my firm belief that
+all present, with the exception of Miss Wyandotte, have too much
+refinement to be able to guess correctly the missing rhyme in this
+case.&#8221; Loud and prolonged applause.</p>
+
+<p>George Leghorn was particularly happy at these pencil games, and to him
+is due this very clever combination of the lyrical and the acrostical:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;My first a man is, and my next a trap;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">My whole&#8217;s forbidden, lest it cause trouble.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The answer to the acrostic is &#8220;mantrap&#8221;; the missing rhyme is &#8220;mishap.&#8221;
+The entire solution was given in something under half <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>an hour by Popsie
+Bantam. She was a very bright girl, and afterwards married a man in the
+Guards (L.N.W.R.).</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bunting, a rather strong party-politician, one night submitted this
+little triolet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;When the Great War new weapons bade us forge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Whom did the nation trust? &#8217;Twas thou, Asquith!&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The missing rhyme was guessed immediately, in two places, as the
+auctioneers say.</p>
+
+<p>However, by our next quinquennial meeting Nettie Minorca had thought out
+the following rejoinder:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">&#8220;When history&#8217;s hand corrects the current myth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Whose name will she prefer? &#8217;Tis thine, Lloyd George.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yes, dear Nettie had a belated brilliance&mdash;the wit of the staircase,
+only more so. We always said that Nettie could do wonderful things if
+only she were given time.</p>
+
+<p>She was given time ultimately, and is still doing it, but that was in a
+totally different connection. She inserted an advertisement stating that
+she was a thorough good cook. First-class references. Eight years in
+present situation in Exeter, and leaving because the family was going
+abroad. Wages asked, &pound;36 per annum. No kitchen-maid required. No less
+than twelve families were so anxious to receive the treasure that they
+offered her return-fare between Exeter and London, and her expenses, to
+secure a personal interview <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>with her. She collected the boodle from all
+twelve. And she was living in Bryanstone Square at the time. She is lost
+to us now.</p>
+
+<p>As dear old Percy Cochin, also one of the Soles, once said to me: &#8220;We
+are here to-day, and gone at the end of our month.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Violet Orpington had an arresting appearance, and walked rather like a
+policeman also. Her hair was a rich raw sienna, and any man would have
+made love to her had she but carried an ear-trumpet. She is the
+&#8220;retiring Violet&#8221; of verse seven.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> Millie Wyandotte was malicious and
+unintelligent; she looked well in white, but was too heavily built for
+my taste. I may add, as evidence of my impartiality, that she laid a
+table better than any woman I ever knew; in fact, she took first prize
+in a laying competition. Nettie Minorca was &#8220;black but comely,&#8221; and had
+Spanish blood in her veins. She is the &#8220;gipsy&#8221; mentioned in verse
+one-and-a-half. Popsie Bantam was <i>petite</i>. Her profile was admired, but
+I always thought it a little beaky myself. I myself was the least
+beautiful, but the most attractive. Allusions to me will be found in
+verses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12-19, 24, 57-60, 74, 77, 87, 97, and 102-3468.</p>
+
+<p>George Leghorn was an Albino, but his figure was very graceful. From the
+specimen which I have already given, it will be easy to believe that his
+wit was fluorescent, detergent, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>and vibratory. He afterwards became a
+well-known personality on the turf. He gained a considerable fortune by
+laying the odds; his family were all reputed to be good layers.</p>
+
+<p>Dear old Peter Cochin was staunch and true. He reminds me of something
+that my illustrious model says of another man. She says that he &#8220;would
+risk telling me or anyone he loved, before confiding to an inner circle,
+faults which both he and I think might be corrected.&#8221; Grammar was no
+doubt made for slaves&mdash;not for the brilliant and autobiographical. All
+the same, a prize should be offered to anybody who can find the missing
+&#8220;risk&#8221; in mentioning to another a point on which both are agreed.</p>
+
+<p>She adds that she has had &#8220;a long experience of inner circles.&#8221; There,
+it must be admitted, she is ahead of me. But the only inner circle of
+which I have had a long experience has been much improved since it was
+electrified.</p>
+
+<p>In congratulating Peter upon a new appointment, with three under him, I
+asked when I first met him. His reply was particularly staunch, and I
+quote from it:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;It was in May 28, 1913. The hour was 1.38.5 Greenwich Time, and I shall
+never forget it. You were sixteen then, and the effect as you came into
+the room was quintessential. Suddenly the sunlight blazed, the electric
+light went on automatically till the fuses gave way, the chimney caught
+fire, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>roof fell in, the petrol tank exploded, old R&mdash;y said that he
+should never care to speak to his wife again, and the butler dropped the
+Veuve Clicquot. After that the shooting party came in, but for some
+reason or other the sentence was not carried out.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>I have very few staunch friends, and many of them have had to be
+discarded from weakness; but when they are staunch&mdash;well, they really
+are. The only trouble with Peter Cochin was that he was too cautious. He
+was given to under-statement. I do not think he gives a really full and
+rich idea of the effect I habitually produced.</p>
+
+<p>I sometimes think that I am almost too effective. Still, as I said
+before, the Latin word &#8220;margo&#8221; does mean &#8220;the limit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Fifth_Extract" id="Fifth_Extract"></a><span class="smcap">Fifth Extract</span></h2>
+
+<h3>MISFIRES</h3>
+
+<p>My family had a curious dread that I should marry a groom. I never did.
+To be quite honest, I never had the opportunity. But I did get engaged
+to quite a lot of other things.</p>
+
+<p>My first engagement was when I was very, very young. He was a humorous
+man, and perhaps I was wrong in taking him so seriously. Still, he must
+have adored me. When I accepted him his hair turned completely white&mdash;an
+infallible test of the depth of emotion.</p>
+
+<p>He was an excellent whip. It used to be a wonderful sight to see him
+taking a pair of young horses down Ludgate Hill on a greasy day at noon,
+with the whole road chock-a-block with traffic, lighting a pipe with a
+wooden match with one hand, carrying on an animated conversation with
+the other with a fare on the front seat, dropping white-hot satire on
+the heads of drivers less efficient than himself, and always getting the
+&#8217;bus through safely with about an inch to spare on each side.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, he was almost entirely ignorant of Marcus Aurelius,
+Henry James, Step-dancing, Titian, the Manners and Customs of Polite
+Society, Factory-Girl Reclamation, Cardinal Newman, or the Art of
+Self-advertisement. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>He said, with an entire absence of pretension, that
+these things were not on his route.</p>
+
+<p>When I announced our engagement the members of my family who were
+present, about seventeen of them, all swooned, except dear papa, who
+said in his highly-strung way that if I married anybody he would put the
+R.S.P.C.A. on to me.</p>
+
+<p>I said what I thought, and fled for consolation to Casey, my married
+sister. But she also was discouraging.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Marge,&#8221; she said, &#8220;give it a miss. You have a rich nature, beautiful
+hair, a knowledge of the world, nervous tension, some of the appearance
+of education, and four pound fifteen put by in the Post Office. You must
+look higher.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I have always detested scenes&mdash;which, perhaps, seems strange in a girl
+as fond of the limelight as I was. I began to re-consider the question.
+Accidentally, I discovered that he had a wife already. What with one
+thing and another, I thought it best to write and give him up. He
+immediately resigned his appointment with the London General, gave me a
+long-priced certainty for the Oaks, and left for New York. When he
+returned, two years later, his hair was pale green.</p>
+
+<p>But if the engagement did not come off, the certainty for the Oaks did.
+In consequence of this I left for Ramsgate by the &#8220;Marguerite&#8221; some days
+later. Dressed? Well, you should have seen me.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>It chanced that one of the passengers on the boat was Mr. Aaron Birsch.
+He had been presented to me some weeks before by Mr. Bunting. I knew
+that he was a turf commissioner, had speculated with success in cottage
+property, and was commonly reported to be much richer than he looked.
+Beyond that, I know very little of him. Apparently, however, he had made
+it his business to know quite a good deal of me. Mr. Bunting was his
+informant, and I had always been a quite special favourite of the
+<i>doyen</i> of the Soles.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Birsch came up to me at once. We chatted on various topics, and he
+told me of something which was likely to be quite useful for Goodwood.
+Then he said suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Matter of fact, there was a bit of private business I wanted a word
+with you about. This boat&#8217;s too full of what I call riff-raff.
+Mouth-organs. Bad taste. Can&#8217;t hear yourself speak. But we get an hour
+at Ramsgate, and if you&#8217;ll take a snack with me there, I can tell you
+what I&#8217;ve got to say.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>More from curiosity than from anything else, I accepted. And I must say
+that our luncheon conversation was rather remarkable.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Birsch</span>: To come to the point, you&#8217;re the very identical girl that I want
+Alfred to marry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span> (<i>innocently</i>): Alfred?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Birsch</span>: Yes, my son.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span>: But I have never even seen him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Birsch</span>: And when you have you&#8217;ll probably <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>wish you hadn&#8217;t. But
+don&#8217;t let that prejudice you. It&#8217;s the inside of the head that counts.
+That boy&#8217;s got a perfect genius for cottage property and real tact with
+it. Only last week he raised an old woman&#8217;s rent a shilling a week, and
+when he left she gave him a rosebud and said she&#8217;d pray for him. It
+takes some doing&mdash;a thing like that. Now, I want a public career for
+that boy, and if he marries you he can&#8217;t miss it. Do you know what Mr.
+Bunting said to me about you?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge</span> (<i>breathlessly</i>): But he&#8217;s so flattering. I think
+he likes me&mdash;I don&#8217;t know why. I sometimes wonder&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Birsch</span> (<i>just as if I&#8217;d never spoken</i>): Bunting said to
+me: &#8220;That girl, Marge, will get into the newspapers. It may be in the
+Court News, and it may be in the Police-court News. That will depend
+on which she prefers. But she&#8217;ll get there, and she&#8217;ll stick there!&#8221;
+That&#8217;s what I want for Alfred. Everything&#8217;s ready for him to start
+firing, but he needs you to sight the gun.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge:</span> And if you can&#8217;t get me, whom would you like?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Birsch:</span> Well, Lady Artemis Morals has some gift for publicity.
+But Alfred won&#8217;t marry a title&mdash;say&#8217;s he rather thinks of making a title
+for himself. The boy&#8217;s got ambition. The cash is forthcoming. And you
+can do the rest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marge:</span> It is a flattering offer. You&#8217;ll let me think over it?</p></div>
+
+<p>He kindly consented, and we returned to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>the boat. However, on the way
+back the sea became very rough and unpleasant; and I threw up the idea.</p>
+
+<p>(By the way, you don&#8217;t mind me writing the dialogue, as above, just as
+if it were a piece out of a play? I&#8217;ve always brought the sense of the
+theatre into real life.)</p>
+
+<p>Poor Aaron Birsch! He was only one of the very many men who have been
+extremely anxious that I should marry somebody else. Two years later
+Alfred died of cerebral tumescence&mdash;a disease to which the ambitious are
+peculiarly liable. That cat, Millie Wyandotte, happened to say to Birsch
+that if I had married his son I should now have been a wealthy young
+widow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anybody who married Marge,&#8221; said Birsch, &#8220;would not die at the end of
+two years.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose not,&#8221; said Millie. &#8220;He&#8217;d be more likely to commit suicide at
+the end of one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I never did like that girl.</p>
+
+<p>But I must speak now of what was perhaps my most serious engagement.
+Hugo Broke&mdash;his mother was one of the Stoneys&mdash;was intended from birth
+for one of the services and selected domestic service. Here it was
+thought that his height&mdash;he was seven foot one&mdash;would tell in his
+favour. However, the Duchess of Exminster, in ordering that the new
+footman should be dismissed, said that height was desirable, but that
+this was prolixity.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p><p>However, it was not long before he found a congenial sphere for his
+activities with the London branch of the Auto-extensor Co. of America.
+The Auto-extensor Co. addresses itself to the abbreviated editions of
+humanity. It is claimed for the Auto-extensor system that there is
+absolutely no limit to the increase in height which may be obtained by
+it, provided of course, that the system is followed exactly, that
+nothing happens to prevent it, and that the rain keeps off.</p>
+
+<p>Hugo walked into the Regent Street establishment of the Auto-extensor
+people, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good morning. I think I could be of some service to this company as an
+advertisement.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am sure you could,&#8221; said the manager. &#8220;If you will kindly wait a
+moment while the boy fetches the step-ladder I will come up and arrange
+terms.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the result, the large window of the Regent Street establishment was
+furnished as a club smoking-room or thereabouts. In the very centre, in
+a chair of exaggerated comfort but doubtful taste, sat Hugo. He was
+exquisitely attired. He read a newspaper and smoked cigarettes. By his
+side, in a magnificent frame, was a printed notice, giving a rather
+fanciful biography of the exhibit.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This gentleman,&#8221; the notice ran, &#8220;was once a dwarf. For years he
+suffered in consequence agonies of humiliation, and then a friend called
+his attention to the Auto-extensor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>System of increasing height. He did
+not have much faith in it, but in desperation he gave it a trial&mdash;and it
+made him what he now is. Look for yourselves. Facts speak louder than
+words. All we ask you to do is to trust the evidence of your own eyes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The window proved a great attraction. The crowd before it was most
+numerous about four o&#8217;clock, because every day at that hour a dramatic
+and exciting scene was witnessed. Putting down his newspaper, Hugo
+struck a bell on a little table by his side. A page entered through the
+excessively plush curtains at the back, and Hugo gave a brief and
+haughty order. The boy somewhat overacted respectful acquiescence,
+retired through the curtains, and reappeared again with tea and thin
+bread and butter. Of these delicacies Hugo partook <i>coram populo</i>. This
+carried conviction with it. One onlooker would say to another: &#8220;Shows
+you he&#8217;s real, don&#8217;t it? At one time I thought it was only a dummy.&#8221; And
+for some time afterwards the assistant in the shop would be kept busy,
+handing out the gratis explanatory booklet of the Auto-extensor Co.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this window that I first saw Hugo. I arrived a little late
+that afternoon, and missed the first act, where he puts down the
+newspaper and rings the bell. But I saw the conclusion of the piece.</p>
+
+<p>My eyes filled with tears. Here&mdash;here at last&mdash;I had met somebody whose
+chilled-steel <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>endurance of publicity equalled, and perhaps exceeded, my
+own.</p>
+
+<p>I entered the shop, procured the explanatory booklet, and asked at what
+hour they closed. At that hour I met him as he left business, and my
+first feelings were of disappointment. His clothes were not the
+exquisite raiment that he had worn as an exhibit in the window. The
+white spats, the sponge-bag trousers with the knife-edge crease, the
+gold-rimmed eye-glass, the well-cut morning coat, the too assertive
+waistcoat&mdash;all were the property of the Auto-extensor Co. and not to be
+worn out of business hours. He now wore a shabby tweed suit and a cap.
+But he was still a noticeable figure; a happy smile came into the faces
+of little boys as he went past.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Like your job?&#8221; I said shyly, as I took the seat next to him on the top
+of the omnibus.</p>
+
+<p>He replied rather gruffly that he supposed a bloke had to work for his
+living, and all work was work, whatever way you looked at it. Further
+questions elicited that the pay was satisfactory, but that he did not
+regard the situation as permanent. The public would get tired of it and
+some other form of advertisement would be found. He complained, too,
+that he was supposed to keep up the appearance of a wealthy toff smoking
+cigarettes continually for a period of seven hours, and the management
+provided only one small packet of woodbines per diem for him to do it
+on.</p>
+
+<p>I produced my cigarette-case. It was one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>which Lord Baringstoke&mdash;always
+a careless man&mdash;had lost. It had been presented to me by dear Mr.
+Bunting. Hugo said he had not intended anything of that sort, but helped
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later we had our first quarrel. I asked him if it
+was cold up where he was. He said morosely that he had heard that joke
+on his stature a few times before. I told him that if he lived long
+enough&mdash;and I&#8217;d never seen anybody living much longer&mdash;he was likely to
+hear it a few times again. He then said that either I could hop off the
+&#8217;bus or he would, and he didn&#8217;t care which. After that we both were
+rather rude. He got me by the hair, and I had just landed a straight
+left to the point when the conductor came up and said he would not have
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I became engaged to Hugo that night at 10.41. I remember the time
+exactly, because Mrs. Pettifer had a rule that all her maids were to be
+in the house by ten sharp, and I was rather keeping an eye on my watch
+in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, we quarrelled very frequently. Different though we
+were in many respects, we both had irritable, overstrung, tri-chord
+natures, with hair-spring nerves connected direct to the high-explosive
+language-mine.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion I went with him to a paper fancy-dress dance at the
+rooms attached to the Hopley Arms. I went as &#8220;The Sunday Times,&#8221; my
+dress being composed of two <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>copies of that excellent, though
+inexpensive journal, tastefully arranged on a concrete foundation.</p>
+
+<p>When Millie Wyandotte saw me, she called out: &#8220;Hello, Marge! Got into
+the newspapers at last?&#8221; I shall be even with that girl one of these
+days.</p>
+
+<p>I declined to dance with Hugo at all. I said frankly that I preferred to
+dance with somebody who could touch the top of my head without stooping.
+I went off with Georgie Leghorn, and Hugo sat and sulked.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the evening he came up to me and asked if he should get my
+cloak.</p>
+
+<p>I said irritably: &#8220;Of course not. Why should you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know whether you&#8217;re aware of it, but you&#8217;ve
+got three split infinitives in your City article.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah!&#8221; I replied. &#8220;The next time Millie Wyandotte telephones up to your
+head, give her my love and tell her not to over-strain herself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Things went from bad to worse, and after he had alluded to my backbone
+as my Personal Column, any possibility of reconciliation seemed at an
+end. I did not know then what a terribly determined person Hugo was.</p>
+
+<p>Georgie Leghorn saw me home. I parted with him at the house, let myself
+in by the area-gate, locking it after me, and so down the steps and into
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>There I had just taken off my hair when I heard a shrill whistle in the
+street outside. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>Hurriedly replacing my only beauty, I drew up the blind
+and looked out. There, up above me on the pavement, was Hugo, stretching
+away into the distance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Called for the reconciliation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Just open this area gate,
+will you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At this time of night?&#8221; I called, in a tense whisper. &#8220;Certainly not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stepped back, and in one leap jumped over the area-railings and down
+on to the window-sill of the kitchen. The next moment he had flung the
+window up, entered, and stood beside me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you think of that?&#8221; he said calmly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hugo,&#8221; I said, &#8220;I&#8217;ve known some bounders in my time, but not one who
+could have done that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We sat down and began discussing the Disestablishment of the Welsh
+Church, when suddenly the area-gate was rattled and a stern voice
+outside said &#8220;Police.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, Hugo concealed as much of himself as he could under the
+kitchen table. There was no help for it. I had to let the policeman in,
+or he would have roused the household.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m just going to have a look in your kitchen,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No use,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;The rabbit-pie was finished yesterday.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Saucy puss, ain&#8217;t you?&#8221; he said, as he entered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Well, you might be a sport and tell a girl what you&#8217;re after.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cabman, driving past here a few minutes ago, saw a man jump the area-railings
+and make a burglarious entry by the kitchen window.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that all?&#8221; I said. &#8220;A man did enter that way a few minutes ago, but
+it was not a burglar. It was Master Edward, Mrs. Pettifer&#8217;s eldest son.
+He&#8217;d lost his latch-key&mdash;he&#8217;s always doing it&mdash;and that&#8217;s how it
+happened. He went straight upstairs to bed, or he&#8217;d confirm what I say.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Went straight up to bed, did he? Did he take his legs off first? I
+notice there&#8217;s a pair of them sticking out from under the kitchen
+table.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I admitted, &#8220;I&#8217;ve told better lies in my time. Oh, Mr. Policeman,
+don&#8217;t be hard. I never wanted my young man to come larking about like
+this. But&mdash;he&#8217;s not a burglar. He&#8217;s the exhibit from the Auto-extensor
+Co.&#8217;s in Regent Street. You can pull out the rest of him and see if he
+isn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I told the cabman,&#8221; said the policeman. &#8220;I said to him:
+&#8216;You juggins,&#8217; I said, &#8216;do you think a burglar who wants to get into a
+house waits till a cab&#8217;s going past and then gives a acrobatic
+exhibition to attract the driver&#8217;s attention? That&#8217;s some young fool
+after one of the maids.&#8217; No, I don&#8217;t want to see the rest of the young
+man&mdash;not if he&#8217;s like the sample. Get him unwound as soon as you can,
+and send him about his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>business. If he&#8217;s not out in two minutes, I
+shall ring the front door, and you&#8217;ll be in the cart. And don&#8217;t act so
+silly another time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Hugo was out in 1 min. 35 sec. He stopped to chat with the policeman,
+jumped the seven-foot railings into the square garden, and jumped back
+again, just to show what he could do, and went off.</p>
+
+<p>I gave a long, deep sigh. I always do that when an incident in my life
+fails to reach the best autobiographical level. I neither knew nor cared
+what the policeman thought. You see, I would never deserve a bad
+reputation, but there&#8217;s nothing else I wouldn&#8217;t do to get one.</p>
+
+<p>For eighty-four years&mdash;my memory for numbers is not absolutely accurate,
+but we will say eighty-four&mdash;for eighty-four years I wrote him a letter
+every morning and evening of every day, with the exception of Sundays,
+bank holidays, and the days when I did not feel like it.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not to be. He was not without success in the circus which he
+subsequently joined, but he was improvident. His income increased in
+arithmetical progression, and his expenditure in geometrical. This, as
+Dr. Micawber and Professor Malthus have shown us, must end in disaster.
+Looking at it from the noblest point of view&mdash;the autobiographical&mdash;I
+saw that a marriage with Hugo would inevitably cramp my style.</p>
+
+<p>And so the great sacrifice was made. Our feelings were so intense as we
+said farewell <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>that my native reserve and reticence forbid me to
+describe them. But we parted one night in June, with a tear in the
+throat and a catch in the eye. As he strode from the park, I looked
+upward and saw in the brown crags above me some graceful animal
+silhouetted against an opal sky. I always have said that those Mappin
+Terraces were an improvement.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Sixth_Extract" id="Sixth_Extract"></a><span class="smcap">Sixth Extract</span></h2>
+
+<h3>TESTIMONIALS&mdash;ROYAL APPRECIATION</h3>
+
+<p>Being what I am, it may readily be supposed that I have received many
+tributes to the qualities that I possess. I have already exposed many of
+these to the public gaze, still have some left, and it seems to me a
+pity that my readers should miss any of the evidence. The first
+testimonial is from my sister Casey, and a melancholy interest is
+attached to it. It was the last one she wrote for me before I took the
+momentous step which will be described in my last chapter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Marge Askinforit has been in my service for eight years. I should
+not be parting with her but for the fact that I am compelled by
+reasons of health to leave England. Askinforit is clean, sober,
+honest, an early riser, an excellent plate-cleaner and valet, has
+perfect manners and high intelligence, takes a great pride in her
+work, and is most willing, obliging and industrious. She was with
+me as parlour-maid (first of two), and now seeks temporary
+employment in that capacity; but there is no branch of domestic
+service with which she is not thoroughly well acquainted, and when
+the occasion has arisen she has always been willing to undertake
+any duties, and has done so with unfailing success. She is tall, of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>good appearance, Church of England (or anything else that is
+required), and anybody who secures such a treasure will be
+exceptionally fortunate. I shall be pleased at any time to give any
+further information that may be desired.</p>
+
+<p class="right">&#8220;(Mrs.) <span class="smcap">C. Morgenstein.</span>&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>I do not say that dear Casey&#8217;s estimate had the arid accuracy of the
+pedant, but she had a rich and helpful imagination. In rare moments of
+depression and unhappiness I have found that by reading one of her
+testimonials I can always recover my tone. And they were effective for
+their purpose. By this time I was accepting no situations except with
+titled people; and some of the language that I heard used suggested to
+me that the reclamation of baronets during their dinner-hour might after
+all be my life&#8217;s work.</p>
+
+<p>The next exhibit will be a letter from a famous author, a complete
+stranger to me, whose work I had long known and admired:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Dear Madam, For a long time past it has been my privilege to
+express in the daily newspapers my keen and heartfelt appreciation
+of a certain departmental store. I thought that I knew my work. I
+believe even that it gave satisfaction. I could begin an article
+with fragments of moral philosophy, easily intelligible and certain
+of general acceptance, modulate with consummate skill into the key
+of <i>cr&ecirc;pe de chine</i>, and with a further natural and easy transition
+reach the grand theme of the glorious opportunities <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>offered by a
+philanthropical Oxford Street to a gasping and excited public. Or I
+would adopt with grace and facility the attitude of a prejudiced
+and hostile critic, show how cold facts and indisputable figures
+reversed my judgment, and end with a life-like picture of myself
+heading frantically in a No. 16 &#8217;bus for the bargain basement,
+haunted by the terror that I might be too late. With what
+dignity&mdash;even majesty&mdash;did I not invest an ordinary transaction in
+<i>lingerie</i>, when I spoke of &#8216;the policy of this great House&#8217;! Yes,
+I believed I knew what there was to know of the supreme art of
+writing an advertisement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But now the mists roll away and I see as it were remote peaks of
+delicate and implicating advertising the existence of which I had
+never suspected. It is to you I owe it. You have a theme that you
+probably find inexhaustible. Fired by your example I shall turn to
+my own subject (Government linen at the moment) with a happy
+consciousness that I shall do a far, far better thing than I have
+ever done before.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&#8220;Your obedient servant,</p>
+<p class="right2">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Callisthenides.&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Of this letter I will only say that few have the courage and candour to
+acknowledge an inferiority and an indebtedness, and fewer still could
+have done it in the vicious and even succulent style of the above. It is
+a letter that I read often and value highly. The only trouble about it
+is that I sometimes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>wonder if it was not really intended for another
+lady whose name has one or two points of similarity with my own.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot refrain from quoting also one of the many letters that I
+received from my dear old friend, Mr. J. A. Bunting:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;And now I must turn to your request for a statement of my opinion
+of you, to be published in case an autobiography should set in. It
+was I who introduced you to a certain circle. That circle, though
+to me an open sessimy, was no doubt particular, and I confess that
+I felt some hesitation. Through no fault of your own, you were at
+that time in a position which was hardly up to our level. But I
+admired your spirit and thought your manners, of which I can claim
+to be a good judge, had the correct cashy, though with rather too
+much tendency to back-chat. At any rate, I took the step, and I
+have never regretted it. You soon made your way to the front, and
+it is my firm belief that if you had been dropped into a den of
+raging lions you would have done the same thing. You are much
+missed. You have my full permission to make what use you please of
+this testimonial, which is quite unsolicited, and actuated solely
+by an appreciation of the goods supplied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Society in London is very so-so at present, and we leave for
+Scotland at the end of the week. His lordship&#8217;s had one fit of his
+tantrums, but I had a look in my eye that ipsum factum soon put an
+end to it. I wish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>it was as easy to put a stop to his leaning to
+third-class company. Three ordinary M.P.&#8217;s at dinner last night and
+one R.A. I always did hate riff-raff, and should say it was in my
+blood.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, it is not everybody who will put into writing, with the
+simple manliness of Mr. Bunting, the very high opinion of me which they
+must inevitably have formed. Even George Leghorn has proved a
+disappointment. But in his case I am inclined to think there was a
+misunderstanding.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him to send his opinion of me as I thought of making a book. He
+replied on a postcard: &#8220;Don&#8217;t approve of women in the profession, and
+you&#8217;d better cut it out. It&#8217;s hard enough for a man bookmaker to scrape
+a living, with everybody expecting the absurd prices quoted in the
+press.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Many of the contemporary testimonials that I have received are so
+cautiously framed and so wanting in warmth that I decline to make any
+use of them. I have always hated cowardice. I have the courage of my
+opinions. Why cannot others have the same.</p>
+
+<p>However, I have through my sister Chlorine succeeded in securing the
+opinions of some of the greatest in another century. I can only say that
+they confirm my belief in her powers as a medium, and in her wonderful
+system of wireless telephony.</p>
+
+<p>The first person that I asked her to ring up was Napoleon. She had some
+difficulty in getting through. He spoke as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Yes, I am Napoleon. Oh, that&#8217;s you, Chlorine, is it?... Quite well,
+thank you, but find the heat rather oppressive.... You want my opinion
+of your sister Marge? She is wonderful&mdash;wonderful! Tell her from me that
+if I had but married her when I was a young man, I am confident that
+Wellington would have met his Waterloo.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I think he would have liked to say more, but unfortunately the receiver
+fused. I think it showed such nice feeling in him that he spoke English.
+Poor Chlorine knows no French.</p>
+
+<p>After the apparatus had been repaired, Chlorine got into communication
+with Sir Joshua Reynolds. She said that his voice had a fruity
+ceremoniousness, and I wish I could have heard it. But I have not
+Chlorine&#8217;s gift of mediumship. Sir Joshua said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The more I see of your sister Marge, the more I regret the time that I
+spent on Mrs. Siddons, who was also theatrical; my compliment that I
+should go down to posterity on the hem of her garment was not
+ill-turned, but she is more likely to go down to posterity as the
+subject of my art. Why, even Romney would have been good enough for her.
+Could I but have painted Marge, my fame had been indeed immortal. Who&#8217;s
+President?... Well, you surprise me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To prevent any possibility of incredulity, I may add that I wrote those
+words down at the time, added the date and address, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>signed them; so
+there can be no mistake.</p>
+
+<p>But far more interesting is the important and exclusive communication
+which Chlorine next received. It was only after much persuasion that I
+got her to ring him up; she said it was contrary to etiquette. However,
+she at last put through a call to Sir Herbert Taylor, who kindly
+arranged the matter for us.</p>
+
+<p>He&mdash;not Sir Herbert&mdash;showed the greatest readiness to converse. Chlorine
+says that he spoke in a quick staccato. He was certainly voluble, and
+this is what he said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What, what, what? Want my opinion of marriage, do you, Miss
+Forget-your-name? I had a long experience of it. Estimable woman,
+Charlotte, very estimable, and made a good mother, though she showed
+partiality. If I&#8217;d had my own way though&mdash;between ourselves, what,
+what?&mdash;I should have preferred Sarah. More lively, more entertaining.
+Holland would have been pleased. But it couldn&#8217;t be done. Monarchs are
+the servants of ministers now. Never admitted that doctrine myself.
+Kicked against it all my life. Ah, if North had been the strong man I
+was! But as to marriage....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What, what? You said &#8216;Marge&#8217;&mdash;not &#8216;marriage&#8217;&mdash;your sister Marge? You
+should speak more clearly. Get nearer the receiver&mdash;age plays havoc with
+the hearing. Fine woman, Marge, and you can tell her I said so. Great
+spirit. Plenty of courage. Always admired courage. If I were a young man
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>and back on earth again, I might do worse, what, what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And then I am sorry to say he changed the subject abruptly. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s this about King Edward potatoes? Stuff and nonsense! I knew all
+about potatoes. Grew them at Windsor. Kew too. Wrote an article about
+them. Why can&#8217;t they name a potato after me? What?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here Chlorine interposed: &#8220;Do you wish for another three minutes, sir,
+or have you finished?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I hoped he would say, &#8220;Don&#8217;t cut us off,&#8221; but, possibly from habits of
+economy, he did not. I have not given his name, for fear of being
+thought indiscreet, but possibly those who are deeply read in history
+may guess it.</p>
+
+<p>It is the greatest tribute but one that I have ever received, and I
+think brings me very nearly up to the level of my Great Example. If I
+could only feel that for once I had done that, I could fold my little
+hands and be content.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not quite the greatest tribute of all. The greatest is my own
+self-estimate of me myself. It demands and shall receive a chapter all
+to itself. Wipe your feet, take off your hat, assume a Sunday
+expression, and enter upon it reverently.</p>
+
+<p>After all, the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us is not to be
+desired. In your case for certain it would cause you the most intense
+depression. Even in my own case I doubt if it would give me the same
+warm, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>pervading glow of satisfaction that obtain from a more Narcissan
+procedure.</p>
+
+<p>By the way, ought one to say &#8220;self-estimate&#8221; or &#8220;self-esteem&#8221;? What a
+silly girl I am! I quite forgot.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Seventh_Extract" id="Seventh_Extract"></a><span class="smcap">Seventh Extract</span></h2>
+
+<h3>SELF-ESTIMATE</h3>
+
+<p>More trouble. Determined to give an estimate of myself based on the best
+models, I turned to the pages of my Great Example, and ran into the
+following sentence:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not propose to treat myself like Mr. Bernard Shaw in this
+account.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Does this mean that she does not propose to treat herself as if she were
+Mr. Bernard Shaw? It might. Does it mean that she does not propose to
+treat herself as Mr. Bernard Shaw treats her? It is not impossible.</p>
+
+<p>What one wants it to mean is: &#8220;I do not propose to treat myself as Mr.
+Bernard Shaw treats himself.&#8221; But if she had meant that, she would have
+said it.</p>
+
+<p>I backed away cautiously, and, a few lines further on, fell over her
+statement that she has a conception of beauty &#8220;not merely in poetry,
+music, art and nature, but in human beings.&#8221; No doubt. And I have a
+conception of slovenly writing not merely in her autobiography, but in
+its seventeenth chapter.</p>
+
+<p>I had not gone very much further in that same chapter before I was
+caught in the following thicket:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have got china, books, whips, knives, matchboxes, and clocks given me
+since I was a small child.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>If these things were given her since she was a small child, they might
+have been given her on the day she wrote&mdash;in which case it would not
+have been remarkable that she still possessed them. The nearest way out
+of the jungle would be to substitute &#8220;when&#8221; for &#8220;since.&#8221; But it is
+incredible that she should have thought of two ways of saying the same
+thing, let them run into one another, and sent &#8220;The Sunday Times&#8221; the
+mess resulting from the collision.</p>
+
+<p>She must be right. Mr. Balfour said she was the best letter-writer he
+knew. With generous reciprocity she read Mr. Balfour&#8217;s books and
+realized without external help &#8220;what a beautiful style he wrote.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And for goodness sake don&#8217;t ask me how you write a style. You do it in
+precisely the same way that you cook a saucepan&mdash;that is, by the
+omission of the word &#8220;in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Yet one more quotation from the last column of the last extract:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I had to confess and expose one opinion of myself which might
+differentiate me a little from other people, I should say it was my
+power of love coupled with my power of criticism.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>No, never mind. The power of love is not an opinion; and in ending a
+sentence it is just as well to remember how you began it. But I
+absolutely refuse to let my simple faith be shaken. She records the
+bones that she has broken, but John Addington Symonds told her that she
+retained &#8220;<i>l&#8217;oreille juste</i>.&#8221; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>Her husband said she wrote well, and he
+must know. Besides, am I to be convinced in my penultimate chapter that
+anything can be wrong with the model I have followed? Certainly not. It
+would be heartbreaking.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, the explanation is quite simple. When she wrote that last
+instalment in &#8220;The Sunday Times,&#8221; the power of criticism had gone to
+have the valves ground in.</p>
+
+<p>I will now ask your kind attention for my estimate of me, Marge
+Askinforit, by myself.</p>
+
+<p>There is just one quality which I claim to have in an even greater
+degree than my prototype. She is unlike real life&mdash;no woman was ever like
+what any woman supposes herself to be&mdash;but I am far more unlike real
+life. I have more inconsistency, more self-contradiction, more
+anachronism, more impossibility. In fact, I sometimes feel as if some
+fool of a man were just making me up as he went along.</p>
+
+<p>And the next article? Yes, my imagination.</p>
+
+<p>I have imagination of a certain kind. It has nothing to do with
+invention or fancy. It is not a mental faculty at all. It is not
+physical. Neither is it paralysis, butterscotch, or three spades
+re-doubled. I should so much like to give some idea of it if I had any.
+Perhaps an instance will help.</p>
+
+<p>I remember that I once said to the Dean of Belial that I thought the
+naming of a Highland <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>hotel &#8220;The Light Brigade&#8221; showed a high degree of
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Half a moment,&#8221; said the Dean. &#8220;I think I know that one. No&mdash;can&#8217;t get
+it. Why was the hotel called that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because of its terrific charges.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said wearily. &#8220;I&#8217;ve heard it. But&#8221;&mdash;more brightly&mdash;&#8220;can you
+tell me why a Highland regiment was called &#8216;The Black Watch&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can, Massa Johnson. Because there&#8217;s a &#8216;b&#8217; in both.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wrong again. It&#8217;s because there&#8217;s an &#8216;e&#8217; in each.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I gave him a half-nelson to the jaw and killed him, and the entire
+company then sung &#8220;Way down upon de Swannee Ribber,&#8221; with harmonium
+accompaniment, thus bringing the afternoon performance to a close. The
+front seats were half empty, but then it was late in the season, and
+looked like rain, and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, I can stop if you like. But you do see what I mean, don&#8217;t
+you? The imagination is something that runs away with you. If I were to
+let mine get away with me, it would knock this old autobiography all to
+splinters.</p>
+
+<p>But I do not appear to have the kind of imagination that makes me know
+what will hurt people&#8217;s feelings. If I love people I always tell them
+what their worst faults are, and repeat what everybody says about them
+behind their back. That ought to make people say: &#8220;Thank you, Marge, for
+your <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>kind words. They will help me to improve myself.&#8221; It has not
+happened yet. It is my miraculous power of criticism that causes the
+trouble. Whenever I let it off the lead it seems to bite somebody; a
+muzzle has been suggested.</p>
+
+<p>The other day I said to Popsie Bantam: &#8220;You&#8217;re quite right to bob your
+hair, Popsie. When you have not got enough of anything, always try to
+persuade people that you want less. But your rouge-et-noir make-up is
+right off the map. If you could manage to get some of the colours in
+some of the right places, people would laugh less. And I can never quite
+decide whether it&#8217;s your clothes that are all wrong, or if it&#8217;s just
+your figure. I wish you&#8217;d tell me. Anyhow, you should try for a job at a
+photographer&#8217;s&mdash;you&#8217;re just the girl for a dark-room.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Really, that&#8217;s all I said&mdash;just affectionate, lambent, helpful
+criticism, with a little Tarragon in it. Yet next day when I met her on
+the staircase she said she didn&#8217;t want to talk to me any more. So I
+heaved her over the balustrade and she had a forty-foot drop on to the
+marble below. I am too impulsive&mdash;I have always said so. Rather a
+pathetic touch was that she died just as the ambulance reached the
+hospital. I have lost quite a lot of nice friends in this way.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of a few teeny-weeny murders, I do not think I have
+done anything in my life that I regret. And even the murders&mdash;such as
+they were&mdash;were more the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>fault of my circumstances than of myself. If,
+as I have always wished, I had lived alone on a desert island, I should
+never have killed anybody at all. But when you go into the great world
+(basement entrance) and have a bad night, or the flies are troublesome,
+you do get a feeling of passionate economy; you realize that there are
+people you can do without, and you do without them. This is the whole
+truth about a little failing of which my detractors have made the most.
+Calumny and exaggeration have been carried to such an extent that more
+than once I have been accused of being habitually irritable.</p>
+
+<p>My revered model wrote that she had always been a collector &#8220;of letters,
+old photographs of the family, famous people and odds and ends.&#8221; I have
+not gone quite as far as this.</p>
+
+<p>I have collected odds, and almost every autumn I roam over the moors and
+fill a large basket with them, but I have never collected ends.</p>
+
+<p>I do want to collect famous people, but for want of a little education I
+have not been able to do it. I simply do not know whether it is best to
+keep them in spirits of wine, or to have them stuffed in glass
+cases&mdash;like the canaries and the fish that you could not otherwise
+believe in. I have been told that really the best way is to press them
+between the leaves of some very heavy book, such as an autobiography,
+but I fancy they lose much of their natural brilliance when treated in
+this way.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p><p>Another difficulty is that the ordinary cyanide bottles that you buy at
+the naturalist&#8217;s, though excellent for moths, are not really large
+enough to hold a full-sized celebrity. At the risk of being called a
+sentimentalist, I may say that I do not think I could kill famous people
+by any method that was not both quick and painless. If anything like
+cruelty were involved in their destruction, I would sooner not collect
+them at all, but just make a study of them in their wild state.</p>
+
+<p>I am only a poor little girl, and I can find nothing whatever on the
+subject in any reference book in the public reading-room. I need expert
+advice. There is quite a nice collection of famous&mdash;and infamous&mdash;people
+near Baker Street Station, but I am told these are only simulacra. That
+would not suit me at all. I am far too genuine, downright, and truthful
+to put up with anything less than the real thing.</p>
+
+<p>There must be some way of doing it. I should like to have a stuffed M.P.
+in a glass case at each end of the mantelpiece in my little boudoir.
+They need not be of the rarest and most expensive kinds. A pretty Labour
+Member with his mouth open and a rustic background, and a Coalitionist
+lightly poised on the fence, would please me.</p>
+
+<p>It would be so interesting to display one&#8217;s treasures when people came
+to tea.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never seen a real leader-writer?&#8221; I should say. &#8220;They&#8217;re plentiful
+locally, but mostly come out at night, and so many people <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>miss them. It
+is not of the least use to put treacle on the trees. The best way is to
+drive a taxi slowly down Fleet Street about one in the morning and look
+honest. That&#8217;s how I got the big leader-writer in the hall. Just press
+his top waistcoat button and he&#8217;ll prove that the lost election was a
+moral victory.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In the next case? Oh, they&#8217;re just a couple of little Georgian poets.
+They look wild, but they&#8217;re quite tame really. Sprinkle an advance on
+account of royalties on the window-sill and they&#8217;ll come for it. It used
+to be pretty to watch those two, pouring adulatory articles over each
+other. They sing chopped prose, and it seemed almost a pity to kill
+them; but there are plenty more.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And that very pretty creature is an actress; if you drop an interviewer
+into the left hand corner of the dressing-room you will hear her say: &#8216;I
+love a country life, and am never happier than when I am working in my
+little garden,&#8217;&mdash;insert here the photograph in the sun-bonnet&mdash;&#8216;I don&#8217;t
+think the great public often realizes what a vast amount of&mdash;&mdash;&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But I am talking about collecting other people. I am wandering from my
+subject. I must collect myself.</p>
+
+<p>At a very early age I caught the measles and a little later on the
+public eye. The latter I still hold. But I do not often lose anything
+except friends, and occasionally the last &#8217;bus, and of course my
+situations. My <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>great model says it is a positive punishment to her to
+be in one position for long at a time, and I must be something like
+that&mdash;I rarely keep a place much longer than a month. On the other hand,
+I still have quite a number of metal discs that formed the wheels of a
+toy railway train which I had when I was quite a child. I should have
+had them all, but I used some to get chocolates out of the automatic
+machines.</p>
+
+<p>I should have liked to have appended here a list of my accomplishments,
+but I must positively keep room for my last chapter. So to save space I
+will merely give a list of the accomplishments which I have not got, or
+have not got to perfection.</p>
+
+<p>The E flat clarionet is not really my instrument, but I will give you
+three guesses what is.</p>
+
+<p>I skate beautifully, but not so well as I dance. However, I am saving
+the I&#8217;s out of my autobiography for further practice.</p>
+
+<p>Some people perhaps have better memories. But that&#8217;s no reason why they
+should write to the &#8220;Sunday Times&#8221; about it.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot write Chinese as fluently as English, though I might
+conceivably write it more correctly.</p>
+
+<p>I think I have mentioned everything in which I am not perfectly
+accomplished. Truth and modesty make me do it.</p>
+
+<p>I would conclude this estimate of myself as follows. If I had to confess
+and expose one opinion of myself which would record what I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>believe to
+be my differentiation from other people, it would be the opinion that I
+am a law unto myself and a judgment to everybody else.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Late_Extra" id="Late_Extra"></a><span class="smcap">Late Extra</span></h2>
+
+<h3>TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE OF MARGE ASKINFORIT</h3>
+
+<p>I sometimes think that it must have been a sense of impending
+autobiography which made me seek employment in the Lightning Laundry.
+After all, the autobiographist merely does in public what the laundry
+does in the decent seclusion of its works at Wandsworth or Balham.</p>
+
+<p>The principal difference would appear to be that a respectable laundress
+does know where to draw the line.</p>
+
+<p>But I admit that I had other motives in seeking a new career. My attempt
+to reclaim baronets in their dinner-hour had broken down completely; in
+spite of everything I could do, the dirty dogs would persist in eating
+their dinner at that time. Then again, the beautiful and imaginative
+essays which dear Casey wrote, under different names and with varying
+addresses, on my suitability for domestic service, had begun to attract
+too much attention; and a censorious world stigmatized as false and
+dishonest what was really poetical. I wanted too, a position of greater
+independence.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I had to learn the work. At first I was taught the leading
+principles of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>button-removal. Then I went on to the rough-edging. This
+consists in putting a rough edge on starched collars and cuffs with a
+coarse file. Afterwards I was promoted to the mixing department. This is
+where the completed articles are packed for delivery. It requires great
+quickness and a nice sense of humour. For instance, you take up a pair
+of socks and have to decide instantly whether you will send them both to
+an elderly unmarried lady, or divide them impartially between two men.
+Our skill in creating odd socks and stockings was gratefully recognized
+by the Amalgamated Hosiers&#8217; Institution, who paid the laundry an annual
+subsidy. A good memory was essential for the work. Every girl was
+required to memorize what size in collars each male client took, so that
+the fifteen-inch collars might be sent to the man with the
+seventeen-inch neck and vice-versa. As the manager said to me once:
+&#8220;What we are here for is to teach people self-control. The rest is
+merely incidental.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I did not remain very long in the mixing department. My head for figures
+soon earned me a place in the office. Much of it was routine work. Four
+times every year we had to send out the notices that owing to the
+increased cost of labour and materials we were reluctantly compelled to
+increase our prices 22-1/2 per cent. We made it 22-1/2 per cent. with
+the happy certainty that very few of our customers would be able to
+calculate the amount of the increase, and still fewer would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>take the
+trouble; this left a little room for the play of our fancy. As one of
+our directors&mdash;a man with a fine, scholarly head&mdash;once said to me:
+&#8220;Bring the larger vision into the addition of a customer&#8217;s account. The
+only natural limit to the charge for washing a garment is the cost of
+the garment. Keep your eyes ever on the goal. Our present prices are but
+milestones on the road.&#8221; He had a beautiful, ecclesiastical voice.
+Nobody would have guessed that he was an engineer and the inventor of
+the Button-pulper and Hem-render which have done so much to make our
+laundries what they are.</p>
+
+<p>From the very first day that I took up my work in the office I became
+conscious that Hector, the manager, had his eye upon me. He would
+generally read a page or two of Keats or Shelley to us girls, before we
+began to make out the customers&#8217; accounts. This was all in accord with
+the far-seeing and generous policy of the laundry. The reading took a
+little time, but it filled us with the soaring spirit. It made pedantic
+precision and things-that-are repulsive to us. After I heard Hector read
+the &#8220;Ode to a Nightingale&#8221; I could not bring myself to say that two and
+two were four; nothing less than fourteen seemed to give me any
+satisfaction. Hector knew how quickly responsive and keenly sentient I
+was. A friend once told me that he had said of me that I made arithmetic
+a rhapsody. &#8220;This,&#8221; I replied quietly, &#8220;means business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p><p>It did. One Saturday afternoon I had tea with him&mdash;not on the Terrace,
+as the A.B.C. shop in the High Street was so much nearer. He was very
+wonderful. He talked continuously for two hours, and would have gone on
+longer. But the waitress pointed out that the charge for a cup of tea
+and a scone did not include a twenty-one years&#8217; lease of the chair you
+sat on.</p>
+
+<p>He was, of course, a man of great scientific attainments. His work on
+the use of acids in fabric-disintegration has a reputation throughout
+the laundries of Europe. But he had not the habit of screaming
+blasphemies which my Great Example failed to convince anybody that she
+had discovered in Huxley. In brief, he did not conform to the
+unscientific idea of what a scientific man must be like. He was a
+cultured idealist. I will try to recall a few of the marvellous things
+he said that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to some remark of mine, he said with authority and conviction:
+&#8220;Marge, you really <i>are</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, I had to admit that very often I am.</p>
+
+<p>He was saying that in this world gentle methods have effected more than
+harsh, and added this beautiful thought: &#8220;In the ordeal by laundry the
+soft-fronted often outlasts the starched.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Later, I led him on to speak of ambition.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am ambitious. That is to say, I live not in the present, but in the
+future. At one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>time I had a bicycle, but in imagination I drove a
+second-hand Ford; and now I possess the Ford, and in imagination I have
+a Rolls-Royce. I once held a subordinate position in the laundry, but in
+imagination I was the manager; and now I am the manager, and in
+imagination am asked to join the Board of Directors. As the poet
+Longfellow so wisely said&mdash;Excelsior. Engraved in letters of gold on the
+heart of the ambitious are these words: &#8216;And the next article?&#8217; At this
+present moment I am having a cup of tea with by far the most brilliant
+and beautiful girl of my acquaintance, but in imagination&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And it was just there that the tactless waitress interrupted us so
+rudely. It was in vain that I tried to lead him back to the subject.
+Almost his last words to me that afternoon were:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose you don&#8217;t happen to know what the time is?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Nor did I. It was just an instance of his subtle intuition. He
+understood me at once and without effort. Many men have made a hobby of
+it for years and never been within three streets of it.</p>
+
+<p>The clock at the post-office gave him the information he required, and,
+raising his hat, he said: &#8220;Well, I must be getting on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The whole of the man&#8217;s life was in that sentence. Always, he was getting
+on&mdash;and always with a compulsion, as of destiny, shoving behind.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing my keen appreciation of art, of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>which I have always been a just
+and unfailing critic, he took me on the following Saturday to see the
+pictures. It was not a good show&mdash;too many comics for my taste, and I&#8217;d
+seen the Charlie Chaplin one before. However, in the dim seclusion of
+the two-shilling seats just as the eighteenth episode of &#8220;The Woman
+Vampire&#8221; reached its most pathetic passage, and the girl at the piano
+appropriately shifted to the harmonium, Hector asked me if I would marry
+him.</p>
+
+<p>(No, I shan&#8217;t. I know I&#8217;m an autobiographer and that you have paid to
+come in, but there are limits. You know how shy and retiring I am. No
+nice girl would tell you what the man said or did on such an occasion,
+or how she responded. There will be no details. And you ought to be
+ashamed of yourself.)</p>
+
+<p>But just one of Hector&#8217;s observations struck me particularly: &#8220;You know,
+Marge, there are not many girls in the laundry I would say as much to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That statement of preference, admitting me as it were to a small circle
+of the elect, meant very much to me. I could only reply that there were
+some men I wouldn&#8217;t even allow to take me to a cinema. I asked, and was
+accorded, time for consideration.</p>
+
+<p>I was face to face with the greatest problem of my life. There was, I
+know, one great drawback to my marriage with Hector. An immense risk was
+involved. When the end <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>of this chapter is reached the reader will know
+what the risk and drawback were.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, everybody knew well that Hector was marked out for a
+great position. I had already, with a view to eventualities, had some
+discussion with one of the Directors, Mr. Cashmere, whom I have already
+quoted. I was a special favourite of his. But it is quite an ordinary
+thing in business, of course, for a Director to discuss the internal
+affairs of the Board with one of the Company&#8217;s junior clerks.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cashmere expressed the highest opinion of Hector, and said he had no
+doubt that Hector would become a Director, as a result of a complicated
+situation that had arisen. Two of the Directors, Mr. Serge and Mr.
+Angora, while remaining on the best possible social terms with the
+chairman, Sir Charles Cheviot, were bitterly opposed to him on questions
+of policy. On the other hand, though agreed on questions of policy, Mr.
+Serge and Mr. Angora were bitterly jealous of each other, and a rupture
+was imminent. Under the circumstances, Mr. Cashmere, while assuring
+everybody of his whole-hearted support, had a private reservation of
+judgment to be finally settled by the directional feline saltation.</p>
+
+<p>Whichever turn the crisis took, he regarded it as certain that there
+would be a resignation, and that Hector would get the vacant place.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; I said, &#8220;it&#8217;s rather like the Government of the British Empire.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Hush!&#8221; he said, warningly. &#8220;It is exactly like it, but in the interests
+of the shareholders we do not wish that to be generally known. It would
+destroy confidence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I myself felt quite certain that if Hector did become a Director he
+would very shortly be chairman of the Board. He was a man that naturally
+took anything there was.</p>
+
+<p>It was in my power to marry a man who would become the chairman of a
+Laundry Company with seventeen different branches. It was a great
+position. Had I any right to refuse it? If I did not take it, I felt
+sure that somebody else would. Was anybody else as good as I was? Truth
+compelled me to answer in the negative. The voice of conscience said:
+&#8220;Take a good thing when you see it. People have lost fortunes by opening
+their mouths too wide.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand there were two considerations of importance. I might
+possibly receive a better offer. If I had been quite sure that Hector
+would have taken it nicely, I would have asked him for a three months&#8217;
+option to see if anything better turned up, but I knew that with his
+sensitive nature he might be offended.</p>
+
+<p>The second consideration was the terrible risk to which I have already
+referred. Do be patient. You will know all about it when the time comes.</p>
+
+<p>I had to decide one way or the other, and&mdash;as the world knows now&mdash;I
+decided in favour <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>of Hector. And immediately the storm broke.</p>
+
+<p>Every old cat that I knew&mdash;and I knew some&mdash;began to give me advice.
+Now, nobody takes advice better than I do, when I am conscious that I
+need it and am sure that the advice is good. Of this I feel as sure as
+if such an occasion had ever actually arrived. In an International
+Sweet-nature Competition I would back myself for money every time.</p>
+
+<p>I was told that in the dignified position which was to be mine I must
+give up larking about and the use of wicked words when irritated. It
+seemed to me that if I was to surrender all my accomplishments I might
+just as well never marry Hector at all. I avoid a certain freedom of
+speech which my great predecessor uses on a similar occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Dear old Mr. Cashmere found me in almost a bad temper about it, and
+listened gravely to my complaint. Placing one hand on my shoulder, he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Marge, I have lived long, and in the course of my life I have received
+much advice. My invariable rule has always been to thank for it,
+expressing my gratitude with some warmth and every appearance of
+sincerity. This is all that the adviser requires. It gives him, or her,
+complete satisfaction. It costs nothing. Afterwards, I proceed precisely
+as if no advice had been given.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That freak, Millie Wyandotte, sent me a plated toast-rack and a letter
+from which I extract the following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">&#8220;If you were half as extraordinary as you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>think you are, this would be
+a miserable marriage. Anybody who married it would get lost, bewildered,
+and annoyed, and the hymn for those at sea should be sung at the wedding
+ceremony. But cheer up, old girl. Really extraordinary people never
+think it worth while to prove that they are extraordinary, and mostly
+would resent being told it. You&#8217;ll do. Psychologies like yours can be
+had from any respectable dealer at a shilling a dozen, including the
+box. They wear very well and give satisfaction. Here&#8217;s luck.&#8221;</div>
+
+<p>Mr. J. A. Banting sent me a travelling-clock at one time the property of
+Lord Baringstoke, and a letter of such fervent piety and tender
+affection that it is too sacred for me to quote.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty-eight rejected suitors combined to send me a hand-bag of no great
+intrinsic value. I cannot but think that the principle of syndication is
+more suited to business than to generosity.</p>
+
+<p>But I will not weary the reader with a list of the numerous and costly
+gifts that I received. Suffice it to say that one of my brothers, an
+excellent judge, offered me a fiver for the lot, and said that he
+expected to lose money by it.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>Immediately after the wedding ceremony the blow fell. I had foreseen the
+danger of disaster from the very first, and that disaster <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>came. I can
+hardly bring myself to write of it.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of my husband as Hector, but his surname was Harris&mdash;his
+mother was one of the Tweeds. Consequently, I had become Mrs. Harris.</p>
+
+<p>The tendency of a Mrs. Harris to become mythical was first noticed by an
+English writer of some repute in the nineteenth century. I forget his
+precise name, but believe that it was Thackeray.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the vestry that I seemed to hear the voice of an elderly and
+gin-bemused female telling me that there was no sich person. I did not
+cease to exist, but I became aware that I never had, and never could
+have, existed. I was merely mythical. Gently whispering &#8220;The Snark was a
+Boojum,&#8221; I faded away.</p>
+
+<p>The last sound I heard was the voice of Hector calling to me:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hullo, hullo! Are you there? Harris speaking.... Hullo, hullo.... Are
+you there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And, as not infrequently happens, there was no answer.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="centerbox bbox ispace">
+<h2>H. G. WELLS&#8217;</h2>
+
+<h3>Best Novels</h3>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr><td align="left">TONO BUNGAY</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">(11th Edition)</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>THE NEW MACHIAVELLI</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">(10th Edition)</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>MARRIAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">(12th Edition)</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>MR. POLLY</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">(9th Edition)</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>THE<br />
+ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">(10th Edition)</td></tr></table></div>
+
+<h3>DUFFIELD AND COMPANY</h3></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Footnote</span></h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a>
+<i>Publisher</i>: But you don&#8217;t give the verses.<br />
+</p>
+<p><i>Author</i>: I know. It&#8217;s a little idea I got from an excellent Sunday newspaper.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marge Askinforit, by Barry Pain
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@@ -0,0 +1,2770 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marge Askinforit, by Barry Pain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Marge Askinforit
+
+Author: Barry Pain
+
+Release Date: July 11, 2008 [EBook #26024]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGE ASKINFORIT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MARGE ASKINFORIT
+
+BY BARRY PAIN
+
+NEW YORK
+
+DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      AUTHOR'S NOTE                                     7
+
+ I.   THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY                           9
+
+ II.  EBULLIENT YOUTH                                  18
+
+ III. GLADSTONE--LLOYD GEORGE--INMEMORISON--DR.
+      BENGER HORLICK                                   26
+
+ IV.  THE SOLES                                        40
+
+ V.   MISFIRES                                         50
+
+ VI.  TESTIMONIALS--ROYAL  APPRECIATION                64
+
+ VII. SELF-ESTIMATE                                    78
+      LATE EXTRA                                       83
+
+
+
+
+     "And every week you opened your hoard
+       Of truthful and tasteful tales--
+     How you sat on the knees of the Laureate Lord,
+       How you danced with the Prince of Wales--
+     And we knew that the Sunday Times had scored
+       In Literature and Sales."
+
+                _To Margot in Heaven._
+
+     BY CLARENCE G. HENNESSY (circa 1985).
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+This book was suggested by the reading of some extracts from the
+autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number
+of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which
+seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait
+for posterity and perspective will pardon a little contemporary
+distortion.
+
+In adding my humble wreath to the flatteries--in their sincerest
+form--which she has already received, I should like to point out that a
+parody of an autobiography should not be a caricature of the people
+biographed--some of whom must already have suffered enough. I have
+lowered the social key of the original considerably, not only to bring
+it within the compass of the executant, but also to make a distinction.
+I have increased the remoteness from real life--which was sometimes
+appreciable in the original--to such an extent that it should be
+impossible to suppose that any of the grotesques of the parody is
+intended for anybody in real life. Nobody in the parody is intended to
+be a representation, or even a misrepresentation, of any real person
+living or dead. For instance, Inmemorison is not intended to be a
+caricature of Tennyson, but the passage which deals with him is intended
+to parody some of the stuff that has been written about Tennyson.
+
+No doubt the author of the original has opened to the public several
+doors through which it is not thinkable that a parodist would care to
+follow her. Apart from that, parody should be brief, just as
+autobiography should be long--_ars brevis, vita longa_.
+
+                              BARRY PAIN.
+_October_ 8, 1920.
+
+_The quotations are from the articles which appeared in "The Sunday
+Times." It does not of course follow that these passages will appear in
+the same form, or will appear at all, when the complete autobiography is
+published._
+
+
+
+
+MARGE ASKINFORIT
+
+
+
+
+FIRST EXTRACT
+
+THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY
+
+
+I was christened Margarine, of course, but in my own circle I have
+always been known as Marge. The name is, I am informed, derived from the
+Latin word _margo_, meaning the limit. I have always tried to live right
+up to it.
+
+We were a very numerous family, and I can find space for biographical
+details of only a few of the more important. I must keep room for
+myself.
+
+My elder sister, Casein--Casey, as we always called her--was supposed to
+be the most like myself, and was less bucked about it than one would
+have expected. I never made any mistake myself as to which was which. I
+had not her beautiful lustrous eyes, but neither had she my wonderful
+cheek. She had not my intelligence. Nor had she my priceless gift for
+uttering an unimportant personal opinion as if it were the final verdict
+of posterity with the black cap on. We were devoted to one another, and
+many a time have I owed my position as temporary parlour-maid in an
+unsuspicious family to the excellent character that she had written for
+me.
+
+She married Moses Morgenstein, a naturalized British subject, who showed
+his love for his adopted country by trading as Stanley Harcourt. He was
+a striking figure with his coal-black hair and nails, his drooping
+eye-lashes and under-lip, and the downward sweep of his ingratiating
+nose. The war found him burning with enthusiasm, and I give here one
+verse of a fine poem which he wrote and, as I will remember, recited in
+Mrs. Mopworth's _salon_:
+
+     I vos in Luntun since t'ree year,
+     In dis lant I holt so tear,
+         Inklant, my Inklant!
+     Mit her overbowering might
+     If she gonquer in der fight,
+     M. Morgenstein vill be all right--
+                   _Nicht?_--
+         Inklant, my own!
+
+He was a man of diverse talents, and I used to regret that he gave to
+the tripe-dressing what was meant for the muses. Alas, he was, though
+indirectly, one of the many victims of the Great War. His scheme for the
+concealment of excess profits was elaborate and ingenious, and practised
+with assiduity. His simple mind could not apprehend that elemental
+honesty was in process of modification. "Vot I maig for myself, dat I
+keeb, _nicht?_" he often said to me. And then the blow fell.
+
+However, he has earned the utmost remission to which good conduct could
+entitle him, and we are hoping that he will be out again by Christmas.
+
+My next sister, Saccharine, was of a filmy and prismatic beauty that was
+sufficient evidence of her Cohltar origin--our mother, of course, was a
+Cohltar. I never thought her mind the equal of my own. Indeed, at the
+moment of going to press I have not yet met the mind that I thought the
+equal of my own. But about her beauty there was no doubt. In those
+days--I am speaking of the 'nineties--it was quite an ordinary event for
+my sister, inadvertently, to hold up an omnibus. The horses pulled up as
+soon as they saw her, and refused to move until they had drunk their
+fill of her astounding beauty. I well remember one occasion on which the
+horses in a West Kensington omnibus met her at Piccadilly Circus and
+refused to leave her until she reached Highgate, in spite of the whip of
+the driver, the blasphemy of the conductor, the more formal complaints
+of the passengers, and direct police intervention.
+
+She was a sweet girl in those days, and I loved her. I never had any
+feelings of jealousy. How can one who is definitely assured of
+superiority to everybody be jealous of anybody?
+
+She married a Russian, Alexis Chopitoff. He was a perfect artist in his
+own medium, which happened to be hair. It is to him that I owe what is
+my only beauty, and I am assured that it defies detection. At one time
+life's greatest prizes seemed to be within his reach. During the war his
+skill in rendering the _chevelure_ of noted pianists fit for military
+service attracted official attention, and if he had been made O.B.E. it
+would have come as no surprise to any of us. Unhappily his interest in
+the political affairs of his own country led him to annex at Waterloo a
+despatch-case which, pedantically speaking, did not belong to him. The
+case unfortunately happened to contain a diamond tiara, and this led to
+misunderstandings. Nothing could have exceeded the courage of dear
+Saccharine when she learned that at the end of his sentence he was to be
+deported.
+
+"It will leave me," she said, with perfect calm and in words that have
+since become historical, "in a position of greater freedom and less
+responsibility."
+
+But I knew how near she was to a nervous breakdown. Indeed, nervous
+breakdown was her successful defence when, a week later, she was
+arrested at Whiteridge's with a tin of sardines, two cakes of
+super-cream toilet-soap, and a bound copy of Keble's "Christian Year" in
+her muff. The malice and animosity that Whiteridge's showed in the
+prosecution are but partly excused by the fact that dear Saccharine had
+pinched the muff first.
+
+Another sister, Chlorine, in later years became well known as a medium.
+She communicated with the hereafter, or at the very least professed to
+do so, by telephonic wireless. It used to be rather weird to hear her
+ring up "Gehenna, 1 double 7, 6." I have not the least doubt that she
+would have convinced a famous physicist who, curiously enough, is weak
+on facts, or a writer of detective stories who, equally curiously, is
+weak on imagination. I am sorry to say that she would never give me the
+winner of the next Derby, nor do I remember that she ever used this
+special and exclusive information for her own benefit. But, like other
+mediums, she could always give a plausible reason for avoiding any test
+that was really a test; and now that she has doubled her fees owing to
+the increased cost of labour and materials, she ought to do very well,
+particularly after the friendly boost that I have just given her.
+
+Then there was Methyll--this is the old Anglo-Saxon form of Ethel. She
+was a charming child and made a profound study of natural history. I
+remember her saying to me at a reception where the refreshments had been
+somewhat restricted: "One cocktail doesn't make a swallow." Modern
+biology has, I believe, confirmed this observation. She spent much of
+her time at the Zoo, and it was thought that it would be an advantage if
+she could be permanently resident there. But although she was not unlike
+a flamingo in the face, and I had some interest with the man who
+supplies the fish for the sea-lions, no vacant cage could be found. An
+offer to let her share one with the cassowary--_missionara
+timbuctana_--was refused.
+
+I must now speak of another sister, Caramel, though I do so with grief.
+However, there is a skeleton in every fold--I mean to say, a black sheep
+in every cupboard. She was undeniably beautiful, and had a romantic
+postcard face. Her figure was perfect. Her intelligence was C 3. In a
+weak moment she accepted a thinking part in a revue at the "Frivolity,"
+and her career ended, as might have been expected, in a shocking
+_mesalliance_. She married the Marquis of Beanstrite, and has more than
+once appeared on the back page of the "Daily Mail," but that is not
+everything. She never sees anything of me now, and it brings the tears
+to my eyes when I think what she is missing.
+
+My brothers were all of them sportsmen, but they were seldom at home.
+They seemed to feel that they were wanted elsewhere, and they generally
+were. You ask any policeman in the Kentish Town district, mentioning my
+name, and he will tell you.
+
+There were seventy-three of us all together, of whom eighty-four
+survive, including myself. And yet dear papa sometimes seems a little
+irritable--I wonder why.
+
+My mamma was quite different from my papa. They were not even of the
+same sex. But that so often happens, don't you think?
+
+My father had a curious fancy for naming all his sons after subsequent
+winners of the Derby. No doubt it will be said that this is not always
+practical; nor is it--the Derby is occasionally won by a gee-gee of the
+sex which I have myself adopted, and in those cases the name is
+unsuitable for a boy. But if it could be generally done, it would
+absolutely preclude any betting on one of our classic races; it would
+probably also preclude the race. After all, we do have to be moral in
+the intervals, and reclaim factory-girls in the dinner-hour. But I fear
+it will never happen--so few men have dear papa's wonderful foresight.
+
+Spearmint, my eldest surviving brother, came much under the influence of
+Alexis Chopitoff, and entered the same profession. Simple and
+unassuming, no one would have supposed that in one year he had backed
+the winner in all the principal races. But such was veritably the case.
+
+"There's nothing in it, Marge," he said to me one evening. "There's only
+one sure way to win--back every horse in the race with another man's
+money. I tell a customer the tale that I was shaving a well-known
+trainer that morning, and that the trainer had given me a certainty; all
+I ask is that the customer will put half-a-crown on for me. I repeat the
+process, changing the name of the certainty, until I have got all risks
+covered. I know it's old fashioned, but I like it. It demands nothing
+but patience, and it cannot possibly go wrong."
+
+But it did go wrong. He was telling the tale of how the well-known
+trainer had given him the certainty to a new customer, whom Spearmint
+had never shaved before. By a disastrous coincidence it happened that
+the new customer actually was that well-known trainer. He seemed to
+think that Spearmint had taken a liberty with his name, and even to
+resent it.
+
+Spearmint did not lose the sight of the left eye, as was at one time
+feared, but his looks have never been quite the same since his nose was
+broken.
+
+My next brother, Orby, was born in 1870. He could do the most graceful
+and charming things. When his namesake won the Derby in 1907, he
+immediately acquired a complimentary Irish accent, and employed it in
+the narration of humorous stories. An accent acquired at the age of
+thirty-seven is perhaps liable to lack conviction, and I always thought
+that my brother was over-scrupulous in beginning every sentence with the
+word "Bedad." Like myself, he simply did not know what fear was, and in
+consequence told his Irish stories in his own Irish accent to a real
+Irishman. However, now that he has got his new teeth in you would never
+know that he had been hit. It was said of him by a great legal
+authority--I forget in which police-court--that he had the best manners
+and the least honesty of any taxi-driver on the Knightsbridge rank.
+
+Another brother, Sunstar, acquired considerable reputation by his skill
+in legerdemain. If you lent him a watch or a coin, with one turn of his
+hand he would make it disappear; he could do the same thing when you
+had not lent it. He could make anything disappear that was not
+absolutely screwed to the floor, and at public-houses where he was known
+the pewter from which he drank was always chained to the bar. He had
+something of my own quixotic nature, and would probably have taken the
+rest if he had wanted it. One day at Ascot he made a stranger's watch
+disappear. When he came to examine his newly-acquired property he was
+disappointed to find that the watch was a four-and-sixpenny American
+Everbright--"Puts you wrong, Day and night." He was on the point of
+throwing it away when the kindly thought came to him that perhaps the
+stranger attached some sentimental value to that watch; indeed, there
+seemed to be no other possible reason for wearing it. Sunstar determined
+to replace the watch in the stranger's pocket. He did his best, but he
+was far more practised in removing than in replacing. The stranger--a
+hulking, cowardly brute--caught my brother with his hand in his pocket,
+and failed to grasp the altruism of his motives, and that is why poor
+Sunnie walks a little lame.
+
+He is not with us at present. He had made quite a number of things
+disappear, and a censorious world is ever prone to judge by
+disappearances. It became expedient--and even necessary--for my brother
+to make himself disappear, and he did so.
+
+The Second Extract, as they say on the film, will follow immediately.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND EXTRACT
+
+EBULLIENT YOUTH
+
+
+I have been studying the beautiful pages of the autobiography of my
+Great Example--hereinafter to be called the G.E. It is wonderful to be
+admitted to the circle of the elect, week after week, at the low rate of
+twopence a time. Why, I've paid more to see the pictures.
+
+Considering the price, one ought not to carp. The G.E. says in one
+extract that she has lost every female friend she ever had, with the
+exception of four. In a subsequent extract she names six women whose
+friendship has remained loving and true to her since girlhood. She
+speaks of a four-line stanza as a couplet. She imputes a "blasphemous
+tirade" to a great man of science who certainly never uttered one. She
+says that she had a conversation with Lord Salisbury about the fiscal
+controversy, in which he took no part, the year after his death. But why
+make a fuss about little things like this? If you write in bed at the
+rate of one thousand words an hour, accidents are sure to happen.
+
+But there is just one of the G.E.'s sentences that is worrying me and
+keeping me awake at night. Here it is--read it carefully:
+
+"I wore the shortest of tweed skirts, knickerbockers of the same stuff,
+top-boots, a cover-coat, and a coloured scarf round my head."
+
+And all very nice too, no doubt. But consider the terrific problem
+involved.
+
+She does not say that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
+same kind of stuff_. If she had, I could have understood it, and my
+natural delicacy would for ever have kept me from the slightest allusion
+to the subject.
+
+What she does say is that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
+same stuff_. That is very different, and involves hideous complications.
+
+Firstly, it must mean that the knickerbockers were made out of the
+skirt. Well, there may have been surplus material from that coloured
+scarf, and it is not for me to say. But, secondly, it must also mean
+that the skirt was made out of the knickerbockers. Oh, help!
+
+No, I positively refuse. I will not say another word. There are limits.
+Only an abstruse theologian with a taste for the more recondite niceties
+of obscure heresies could possibly do justice to it.
+
+All change, please. The next item on the programme will be a succinct
+account of my ebullient girlhood.
+
+I cannot say that I loved the Warren, my ancestral home. The neighbours
+called it the Warren, but I can't think why. The Post Office said it was
+No. 4, Catley Mews, Kentish Town, and dear papa--who always had the
+_mot juste_--sometimes said that it was hell.
+
+We were a high-spirited family with clean-cut personalities, penetrating
+voices, short tempers, high nervous tension, and small feet. Don't you
+wish you were like that?
+
+All the same, there were only the four rooms over the stable. At times
+there were fifteen or sixteen of us at home, and also the lodger--I
+shall speak of him presently. And when you have five personal quarrels,
+baby, the family wash, a sewing-machine, three mouth-organs, fried
+bacon, and a serious political argument occurring simultaneously in a
+restricted establishment, something has to go. As a rule, dear papa
+went. He would make for Regent's Park, and find repose in the old-world
+calm of the parrot-house at the Zoo.
+
+But there is always room on the top--it is a conviction on which I have
+ever acted. When I felt too cramped and stifled in the atmosphere of the
+Warren, I would climb out on the roof. There, with nothing on but my
+nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically.
+The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied
+by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit
+all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things
+complained. I know the police called, and I seem to remember rather a
+nasty letter from the landlord's agent. I had a long interview with
+mamma on the subject. She pointed out that if I slipped and fell I
+should probably make a nasty dent in the pavement, and with many tears I
+promised to relinquish the practice.
+
+I used to ride on the Heath when I had the opportunity, but I cannot
+pretend that I was up to the standard of the G.E. I do not think I ever
+rode up a staircase. I certainly never threw my horse down on the marble
+floor of the hall of the Warren. There were several reasons for this.
+Firstly, the Warren had not got a hall, and if it had had a hall, the
+hall would not have had a marble floor. Secondly, the horses I rode were
+likely to be wanted again, being in fact the ponies that unsuspecting
+tradesmen stabled at Catley Mews. Bogey Nutter looked after them, and I
+could always do what I liked with Bogey. He was perhaps the most profuse
+proposer I ever met. At one time he always proposed to me once a day and
+twice on Bank holidays. I was such a dashing, attractive creature, what?
+
+As to my education, a good deal depends on what is meant by education.
+The kind that was ladled out at the County Council establishment made
+little effect upon me. But I was pretty quick at figures, and knew that
+an investment of half-a-crown at eleven to eight should bring me in a
+profit of three-and-five--provided that the horse won and the man at the
+fishmonger's round the corner paid up. My brother Lemberg had the same
+talent. If he bought a packet of fags and paid with a ten-shilling note,
+he could always negotiate the change so that he made ninepence for
+himself and had the cigarettes thrown in. His only mistake was in trying
+to do it twice at the same shop, but the scar over his right eye hardly
+shows now. A sharp-cornered tobacco-tin was not the thing to have hit
+him with anyhow.
+
+For autobiographical purposes always treat a deficiency as if it were a
+gift. The G.E. was apparently a duffer at arithmetic, but she tells you
+so in a way that makes you admire her for it. All the same I wish I had
+been one of those factory-girls that she used to reclaim in their
+dinner-hour; I am fundamentally honest, but I never could miss a chance
+when it was thrown at me.
+
+My education in dancing was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not
+wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient
+proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life.
+The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and
+dance while he turned the handle. I told Signor Hokey-pokey what I
+thought of the offer, and I have some talent for language, if not for
+languages. So, as he could not get me, he did the next best thing and
+bought a monkey.
+
+I was by far the most spiritual of the family. But my brother Minoru
+attended chapel regularly, until they stopped collecting the offertory
+in open plates and substituted locked boxes with a slot in them. He
+found another chapel that seemed more promising, but he attended it
+only once. I shall always consider that the policeman was needlessly
+rough with him, for Minoru said distinctly that he would go quietly.
+
+My sisters and myself had a fascination for the other sex that was
+almost incredible. At one time we had a Proposal Competition every week;
+each of us put in sixpence, and the girl who got the greatest number of
+proposals took the pool. Casey or I generally won. Then one week I
+encountered on the Heath the annual beanfeast of the Pottey Asylum for
+the Feeble-minded, and won with a score of a hundred and seven, and I
+think the others said it was not fair. Anyhow, the competitions were
+discontinued.
+
+Really, the way our lodger pestered my sisters and myself with his
+absolute inattentions is difficult to explain. Anyone might have thought
+that he did not know we were there. While the Proposal Competitions were
+on, not one of us thought it worth while to waste time on the man. We
+could get a better return for the same amount of fascination in other
+quarters. Afterwards I thought that possibly his employment in the
+milk-trade might be the cause of his extraordinary mildness, and that it
+would be kind to offer him a little encouragement.
+
+He usually went for a walk on Sunday mornings, and one Sunday I said
+that I would accompany him.
+
+"Better not," he said. "Looks to me like rain."
+
+"But you have an umbrella," I pointed out.
+
+"Aye," he said, "and when two people share one umbrella, they both get
+all the drippings from it and none of the protection. You take a nice
+book and read for a bit."
+
+"No," I said. "I'm coming with you, and though it's Leap Year, I
+definitely promise not to propose to you."
+
+"Well," he said, "that makes a difference."
+
+I thrust my arm into his gaily and confidentially, and he immediately
+unhooked. We went on to the Heath together.
+
+"I was once told by a palmist," I said, "that I had a mysterious and
+magnetic attraction for men."
+
+"Those palmists will say anything," he said. "It's just the other way
+round really."
+
+"Perhaps," I said. "I know I have an unlimited capacity for love--and
+nobody seems to want it."
+
+"Ah," he said, "it's a pity to be overstocked with a perishable article.
+It means parting with it at a loss."
+
+What could I say to a brute like that? And I had nobody there to protect
+me.
+
+"I wish," I said, "that you'd look if I've a fly in my eye."
+
+"If you had, you'd know," he answered. "The fly sees to that."
+
+Some minutes elapsed before I asked him to tie my shoe-lace.
+
+He looked down and said that it was not undone.
+
+I simply turned round and left him, I was not going to stay there to be
+insulted.
+
+However, he must have been ashamed of himself, for two days later he
+sub-let his part of the floor in one of the rooms at the Warren to an
+Irish family. If he was not ashamed, he was frightened.
+
+Yet, curiously enough, that cowardly brute moulded my future.
+
+The influx of the Irish family into the Warren drove me out of it. It
+made me feel the absolute necessity for a wider sphere.
+
+On leaving home I took an indeterminate position in a Bayswater
+boarding-house. At any rate, my wages and food were determined, but my
+hours of work were not.
+
+A boarding-house is a congeries of people who have come down. The
+proprietoress never dreamed that she would have to earn her own living
+like that--though she gets everything to a knife-edge certainty in the
+first week. Then in the drawing-room you have military people who have
+thundered, been saluted, been respected--and superseded. And nobody can
+make worse clothes look better. The cook explains why she's not in
+Grosvenor Square, and the elderly Swiss waiter says that he has been in
+places where pace was not everytink. If you're out looking for
+depression, try a boarding-house.
+
+I stayed there a week and then said I was going. The lady said she knew
+the law and I couldn't. So I said I would stay, and was sorry that the
+state of my nerves would mean a good deal in breakages.
+
+I left at the end of the week.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD EXTRACT
+
+GLADSTONE--MR. LLOYD GEORGE--INMEMORISON--DR. BENGER HORLICK.
+
+
+After this I had a long succession of different situations. It is
+possible for a girl to learn the work of any branch of domestic
+service in a week, if she wishes to do it, with the exception of the
+work of a cook or a personal maid. But then, it is quite possible to
+take a situation as a cook, and to keep it, without knowing anything
+appreciable about the work. Thousands of women have done it, and
+are still doing it. I never went as personal maid--I dislike
+familiarity--but with that exception I played, so to speak, every
+instrument in the orchestra.
+
+I acquired an excellent stock of testimonials, of which some were
+genuine. The others were due to the kindly heart and vivid imagination
+of my sister Casey, now Mrs. Morgenstein.
+
+I rarely kept my places, and never kept my friends. The only thing I
+did keep was a diary. A diary is evidence. So if you see anything
+about anybody in these pages, you can believe it without hesitation.
+Do, please. You see, if you hesitate, you may never believe it.
+
+I well remember the first and only time that I met Gladstone. I was
+staying with Lady Bilberry at the time at her house in Half Moon
+Street. She was a woman with real charm and wit, but somewhat irritable.
+Most of the people I've met were irritable or became so, and I can't
+think why. I may add that I only stayed out my month as too much was
+expected. Besides, I'd been told there was a boy for the rough work and
+there never was.
+
+But to return to Gladstone. I wrote down every precious word of my
+conversation with him at the time, and the eager and excited reader may
+now peruse it in full.
+
+     GLADSTONE: Lady Bilberry at home?
+
+     MARGE: Yes, sir.
+
+     GLADSTONE: Thanks.
+
+     MARGE: What name, please?
+
+He gave me his name quite simply, without any attempt at rudeness or
+facetiousness. I should say that this was typical of the whole character
+of the man. With a beautiful and punctilious courtesy he removed his
+hat--not a very good hat--on entering the house. I formed the impression
+from the ease with which he did this that the practice must have been
+habitual with him.
+
+The only thing that mars this cherished memory is that it was not the
+Gladstone you mean, nor any relative of his, but a gentleman of the same
+name who had called to see if he could interest her ladyship in a scheme
+for the recovery of some buried treasure. He did not stay long, and Lady
+Bilberry said I ought to have known better.
+
+About this time I received by post a set of verses which bear quite a
+resemblance to the senile vivacity of the verses which the real
+Gladstone addressed to my illustrious example of autobiographical art.
+The verses I received were anonymous, and as a matter of fact the
+postmark on the envelope was Beaconsfield. Still, you never know, do
+you?
+
+
+                         MARGE.
+
+     When Pentonville's over and comes the release,
+     With a year's supervision perhaps by the p'lice,
+     Your longing to meet all your pals may be large,
+     But make an exception, and do not ask Marge.
+
+     She's Aspasia, Pavlova, Tom Sayers, Tod Sloan,
+     Spinoza, and Barnum, and Mrs. Chapone;
+     For a bloke that has only just got his discharge,
+     She's rather too dazzling a patchwork, is Marge.
+
+     Never mind, never mind, you have got to go slow,
+     One section a year is the most you can know;
+
+     If you study a life-time, you'll jest on the barge
+     Of Charon with madd'ningly manifold Marge.
+
+By the way, whenever we change houses a special pantechnicon has to be
+engaged to take all the complimentary verses that have from time to time
+been addressed to me. Must be a sort of something about me somehow,
+don't you think?
+
+I cannot pretend that I was on the same terms of intimate friendship
+with Mr. Lloyd George. I spoke to him only once.
+
+It was when we were in Downing Street. There was quite a crowd of us
+there, and it had been an evening of exalted and roseate patriotism. I
+gazed up at the window of No. 10 and said, as loudly as I could:
+
+"Lloyd George! Lloyd George!"
+
+Most of the others in the crowd said the same thing with equal force.
+Then an uneducated policeman came up to me and asked me to pass along,
+please, adding that Mr. Lloyd George was not in London. So, simply
+replying "All right, face," I passalongpleased.
+
+However, in spite of all that bound me so closely to the great political
+world, I could not help feeling the claims of literature. I am sensitive
+to every claim. It is the claim of history, for example, that compels me
+to write my autobiography. I seem to see all around me a thousand human
+arts and activities crying for my help and interest. They seem to say
+"Marge, Marge, more Marge!" in the words that Goethe himself might have
+used. And whenever I hear the call I have to give myself.
+
+I doubt if any girl ever gave herself away quite as much as I have done.
+
+One day in November I met Chummie Popbright in the neighbourhood of
+Cambridge Circus. He was a man with very little _joie de vivre_, _ventre
+a terre_, or _esprit de corps_. He had fair hair and no manners, and was
+very, very fond of me. He held a position in the Post Office, and was,
+in fact, emptying a pillar-box when I met him. I record the
+conversation.
+
+    CHUMMIE: Blessed if it ain't Marge! And what would you like
+    for a Christmas present?
+
+    MARGE: I want to spend a week or so at the house of the
+    great poet, Lord Inmemorison. If you really wish to please me, you
+    will use your influence to get me a job there. Your uncle being
+    Inmemorison's butler, you ought to be able to work it.
+
+    CHUMMIE: Might. What would you go as?
+
+    MARGE: Anything--but temporary parlour-maid is my strong suit.
+
+    CHUMMIE: And what's your game?
+
+    MARGE: I'm sick of patronizing politicians and want to patronize a
+    poet. When all's said and done, Inmemorison is a proper certificated
+    poet. Besides, I want to put something by for my rainy
+    autobiography.
+
+    CHUMMIE: Oh, well. I'll try and lay a pipe for it. May come off or
+    may not.
+
+Chummie managed the thing to perfection. My sister Casey wrote me one of
+the best testimonials I have ever had, and by Christmas I was safely
+installed for a week. Chummie's uncle treated me with the utmost
+consideration, and it is to him that I owe many of the thrilling details
+that I am now able to present to the panting public. Although there was
+a high leather screen in the drawing-room which was occasionally useful
+to me, my opportunities for direct observation were limited.
+
+Lord Inmemorison had a magnificent semi-detached mansion (including a
+bath-room, h. and c.) in one of the wildest and loneliest parts of
+Wandsworth Common. The rugged beauty of the scenery around is reflected
+in many of his poems.
+
+There were, as was to be expected, several departures from ordinary
+convention in the household. Dinner was at seven. The poet went to bed
+immediately after dinner, and punctually at ten reappeared in the
+drawing-room and began reading his poems aloud.
+
+The family generally went to bed at ten sharp.
+
+I heard him read once. There were visitors in the house who wished to
+hear the great man, and it was after midnight before a general
+retirement could take place. He had a rich, sonorous, over-proof,
+pre-war voice, considerable irritability, and a pretty girl sitting on
+his knee. The last item was, of course, an instance of poetical licence.
+
+The girl had asked him to read from "Maud" and he had consented. He
+began with his voice turned down so low that in my position behind the
+screen I could only just catch the opening lines:
+
+     "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
+     Bird thou never wert..."
+
+He opened the throttle a little wider when he came to the passage:
+
+     "His head was bare, his matted hair
+     Was buried in the sand."
+
+He read that last line "was serried in the band," but immediately
+corrected himself. And the poignant haunting repetition of the last
+lines of the closing stanza were given out on the full organ:
+
+     "And everywhere that Mary went--
+     And everywhere that Mary went--
+     And everywhere that Mary went--
+       The lamb was sure to go."
+
+It was a great--a wonderful experience for me, and I shall never forget
+it.
+
+I have spoken of his irritability. It is not unnatural in a great poet.
+He must live with his exquisite sentient nerves screwed up to such a
+pitch that at any moment something may give.
+
+For example, one evening he was sitting with a girl on his knee, and had
+just read to her these enchanting lines in which he speaks of hearing
+the cuckoo call.
+
+     INMEMORISON (_gruffly and suddenly_): What bird says cuckoo?
+
+     GIRL (_with extreme nervous agitation_): The rabbit.
+
+     INMEMORISON: No, you fool--it's the nightingale.
+
+The girl burst into tears and said she would not play any more. I think
+she was wrong. Whenever I hear any criticism of myself I always take it
+meekly and gently, whether it is right or wrong--it has never been right
+yet--and try to see if I cannot learn something from it. What the girl
+should have said was: "Now it's your turn to go out, and we'll think of
+something."
+
+Another occasion when Inmemorison was perhaps more pardonably annoyed
+was when a young undergraduate asked him to read out one of his poems.
+
+"Which?" said Inmemorison.
+
+I am told that the thirty seconds of absolute silence which followed
+this question seemed like an eternity, and that the agony on the young
+man's face was Aeschylean. He did not know any precise answer to the
+question.
+
+"Which?" repeated Inmemorison, like the booming of a great bell at a
+young man's funeral.
+
+The young man made a wild and misjudged effort, and got right off the
+target.
+
+"Well," he said, "one of my greatest favourites of course is
+'Kissingcup's Race.'"
+
+"Is it, indeed?" said the Poet. "If you turn to the left on leaving the
+house, the second on the right will take you straight to the station."
+
+The young man never forgave it. And that, so I have always been told, is
+how the first Browning Society came to be founded.
+
+It was a meeting with this undergraduate--purely accidental on my
+part--in the romantic garden of the poet's house that first turned my
+mind towards the university town of Oxbridge. I had no difficulty in
+finding employment as a waitress there in a restaurant where knowledge
+of the business was considered less essential than a turn for repartee
+and some gift for keeping the young of our great nobility in their
+proper place. It was not long before I had made the acquaintance of
+quite a number of undergraduates. Some of them had a marked tendency
+towards rapidity, but soon learned that the regulation of the pace would
+remain with me.
+
+One Sunday morning I had consented to go for a walk with one of my young
+admirers--a nice boy, with more nerve than I have ever encountered in
+any human being except myself. It happened by chance that we encountered
+the Dean of his college. The Dean, with an unusual condescension--for
+which there may possibly have been a reason--stopped to speak to my
+companion, who without the least hesitation introduced the Dean to me as
+his sister.
+
+That was my first meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick, the celebrated Dean
+of Belial.
+
+No social occasion has ever yet found me at a loss. The more difficult
+and dramatic it is, the more thoroughly do I enjoy its delicate
+manipulation. I could not deny the relationship which had been asserted,
+without involving my young friend. The only alternative was to play up
+to it, and I played up. The perfect management of old men is best
+understood by young girls.
+
+I told him that I was staying with mamma, and mentioned a suitable
+hotel, adding that I was so sorry I had to return to town that
+afternoon, as I had begun to love the scholastic peace of Oxbridge and
+valued so much the opportunity of meeting its greatest men. I was bright
+and poetical in streaks, and every shy--if I may use the expression--hit
+the coco-nut. Sometimes I glanced at Willie, my pseudo-brother. His face
+twitched a little, but he never actually gave way to his feelings. The
+Dean had ceased to pay much attention to him.
+
+For about a quarter of an hour the Dean strolled along with us. At
+parting, he held my hand--for a minute longer than was strictly
+necessary--and said:
+
+"You have interested me--er--profoundly. May I hope that when you get
+back to Grosvenor Square, you will sometimes spare a few moments from
+the fashionable circles in which you move, and write to me?"
+
+I said that it would be a great honour to me to be permitted to do so.
+
+"I hope," he added, "that you will visit Oxbridge again, and that you
+will then renew an acquaintance which, though accidental in its origin,
+has none the less impressed me--er--very much."
+
+After his departure Willie became hilarious and I became very angry
+with him. He persisted that everything was all right. I had put up a
+fine performance and had only to continue it. The Dean would no doubt
+write to me at Grosvenor Square, and Willie assured me that he had his
+father's butler on a string, and that the butler sorted the letters. I
+would receive the Dean's epistles at any address I would give him, and
+would reply on the Grosvenor Square notepaper.
+
+"I've got chunks of it in a writing-case at my rooms," he said, "and
+I'll send it round to you."
+
+I had to consent to this. However, the next day I skipped for London,
+somewhat to the disappointment of the restaurant that I adorned, and
+still more to the disappointment of Willie. But, as I wrote to him, he
+had brought it on himself. I could not take the risk of another
+accidental meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick.
+
+Nor, as a matter of fact, did we ever meet again. But for three years we
+corresponded with some frequency; it was a thin-ice, high-wire business,
+but I pulled it through.
+
+No doubt the task was made easier for me by the fact that the Dean was a
+singularly simple-minded man. Reverence for the aristocracy had become
+with him almost a religion. When he was brought--or believed himself to
+be brought--in contact with the aristocracy, his intellectual vision
+closed in a swoon of ecstasy. Snob? Oh, dear, no! Of course not. What
+can have made you think that? It was simply that the aristocracy
+appealed to him very much as romance did--he was outside it, but liked
+to get a near view.
+
+The G.E. found that letters, however delightful, bored her when they
+were scattered through a biography. For that reason she gave one set of
+letters all together. I do not see myself why, if a thing bores you when
+you get a little of it at a time, it should bore you less when you get a
+lot of it. But, determined to follow my brilliant model with simple
+faith and humility, I now append extracts from the letters I received
+from Dr. Benger Horlick.
+
+     "I wish I could persuade you to be less precise in your language.
+     If you say what your opinion is, you should take care to be
+     beautiful but unintelligible. Commit yourself to nothing. Words
+     were given us to conceal our thoughts, and with a little practice
+     and self-discipline will conceal them even from ourselves. A candid
+     friend once complained to me that in my translation from the Greek
+     it was sometimes impossible for him to know which of two different
+     _lectiones_ I was translating. As a matter of fact, though I did
+     not tell him this, I did not know either. Especially useful is this
+     when one is confronted with a rude, challenging, direct question as
+     to any point in religion or politics; I reply with a sonorous and,
+     I hope, well-balanced sentence, from which the actual meaning has
+     been carefully extracted, and so escape in the fog. It is indeed
+     from one point of view a mercy that most people are too cowardly
+     or too ashamed to say that they have failed to comprehend. Yet if
+     they had my passion for truth it might be better. Truth is very
+     precious to me--sometimes too precious to give away.
+
+     "It is good of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice
+     did not bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No
+     Dean--and perhaps no don--who has been in that portentous position
+     as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice.
+     It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated
+     with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception
+     with which I am acquainted. Child, why do you not make more use of
+     your noble gifts for dancing, amateur theatricals, and general
+     conversation? And yet I'm not grumbling. Only I mean to say, don't
+     you know? Of course, they all do it--the people in the great world
+     to which you, and occasionally I, belong. Still, there it is, isn't
+     it? And you write me such soothing full-cream letters with only an
+     occasional snag in them. So bless you, my child. I do trust that
+     the report which comes to me that you are going with the Prince of
+     Wales, Mrs. H. Ward, and a Mr. Arthur Roberts to shoot kangaroos in
+     Australia is at least exaggerated. These marsupials, though their
+     appearance is sufficiently eccentric to suggest the conscientious
+     objector, will--I am credibly informed--fight desperately in
+     defence of their young. If I may venture to suggest, try rabbits.
+
+     "I am delighted to hear that you are not the author of the two
+     articles attacking Society. The fact that they happen to be signed
+     with the name of another well-known lady had made me think it
+     possible that this might be the case. Society? It is a great
+     mystery. I can hardly think of it without taking off my boots and
+     prostrating myself orientally. To criticize it is a mistake; it is
+     even, if I may for once use a harsh word, subversive. It is the
+     only one we've got. Oh, hush! Only in whispers at the dead of night
+     to the most trusted friend under the seal of secrecy can we think
+     of criticizing it. But holding, as I do, perhaps the most important
+     public position in the Continent of Europe, if not in the whole
+     world--responsible, as I am, for what may be called the sustenance
+     of the next generation--I do feel called upon to carry out any
+     repairs and re-decoration of the social fabric that may be
+     required. You with your universal influence which--until Einstein
+     arrives--will be the only possible explanation of the vagaries in
+     the orbit of Mercury, can do as much, or nearly as much. Do it. But
+     never speak of it. Oh, hush! (Sorry--I forgot I'd mentioned that
+     before.)
+
+     "In reply to your inquiry, I never read 'Robert Elsmere,' but
+     understand from a private source that it saved many young men from
+     reading 'David Grieve.' Your second inquiry as to the lady-love of
+     my first youth is violent--very violent. Suppose you mind your own
+     business."
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH EXTRACT
+
+THE SOLES
+
+
+I do not know why we were called the Soles. Enemies said it was because
+we were flat, fishy, and rather expensive.
+
+Our set comprised the upper servants of some of the best houses in
+Mayfair. Looking back at it now, I can see that no similar body ever had
+such a tremendous influence. It may not have been entirely due to us
+that gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance, but at
+least we acquiesced. And what we did in home and foreign politics has
+scarcely yet been suspected.
+
+The reason for our influence is sufficiently obvious. Our great leader,
+James Arthur Bunting, was perhaps the most perfect butler that the world
+has yet seen; his magnificent presence, plummy voice, exquisite tact,
+and wide knowledge made him beyond price. We had other butlers whom it
+would have been almost equally difficult to replace. We had chefs who
+with a chain of marvellous dinners bound their alleged employers to
+their chariot-wheels. Nominally, Parliament ruled the country, but we
+never had any doubt who ruled Parliament.
+
+To take but one instance, the sudden _volte face_ of Lord Baringstoke on
+the Home Rule Question. This created a great sensation at the time, and
+various explanations were suggested to account for it. Nobody guessed
+the truth. The fact is that Mr. Bunting tendered his resignation.
+
+Lord Baringstoke was much distressed. An increase of salary was
+immediately suggested and waved aside.
+
+"It is not that, m'lord," said Bunting. "It is a question of principle.
+Your lordship's expressed views as to Ireland are not, if I may say so,
+the views of my friends and of myself. And on that subject we feel
+deeply. Preoccupied with that difference, if I remained, I could no
+longer do justice to your lordship nor to myself. My wounded and
+bleeding heart----"
+
+"Oh, never mind your bleeding heart, Bunting," said Baringstoke. "Do I
+understand that this is your only reason for wanting to go?"
+
+"That is so, m'lord."
+
+"Then, supposing that I reconsidered my views as to Ireland and found
+that they were in fact the opposite of what I had previously supposed,
+you would remain?"
+
+"With very great pleasure."
+
+"Then in that case you had better wait a few days. I'm inclined to think
+that everything can be arranged."
+
+"Very good, m'lord."
+
+Less than a week later, Lord Baringstoke's public recantation was the
+talk of London. In a speech of considerable eloquence he showed how the
+merciless logic of facts had convinced his intellect, and his conscience
+had compelled him to abandon the position he had previously taken up.
+Fortunately, you can prove absolutely anything about Ireland. It is
+merely a question of what facts you will select and what you will
+suppress.
+
+Mr. Bunting is, I believe, still with Lord Baringstoke. This was,
+perhaps, one of the principal triumphs of the Soles. There were many
+others. We had our own secret service, and I should here acknowledge
+with respect and admiration the Gallic ingenuity of two of the Soles,
+Monsieur Colbert and Monsieur Normand, in reconstructing fragmentary
+letters taken from the waste-paper baskets of the illustrious.
+
+Naturally, we had to suffer from the jealousy and malice of those who
+had not been asked to join us, and a rumour even was spread abroad that
+we played bridge for sixpence a hundred. There was no truth in it. There
+have been, and still are, gambling clubs among the younger men-servants
+of the West-end, but we never gambled. Mr. Bunting would not have liked
+it at all. We were serious. We did try to live up to our ideals, and
+some of our members actually succeeded in living beyond their incomes.
+Our principal recreation was pencil-games, mostly of our own invention.
+
+In this connection I have rather a sad incident to relate. On one
+occasion we had a competition to see which of us could write the
+flattest and least pointed epigram in rhyme. The prize for men consisted
+of two out-size Havannah cigars, formerly the property of Lord
+Baringstoke, kindly presented by Mr. Bunting.
+
+Percy Binder, first footman to the Earl of Dilwater, was extremely
+anxious to secure this prize. He took as the subject of his epigram the
+sudden death of a man on rising from prayer. This was in such lamentably
+bad taste that he did not win the prize, but otherwise it would have
+certainly been his. His four lines could not have been surpassed for
+clumsy and laboured imbecility. The last two ran:
+
+     "But when for aid he ceased to beg,
+     The wily devil broke his leg."
+
+And then came a terrible discovery. Percy Binder had stolen these lines
+from the autobiography of my own G.E. She says, by the way, that their
+author was "the last of the wits." But how can you be last in a race in
+which you never start? It is always safe to say what you think, but
+sometimes dangerous to give your reasons for thinking it.
+
+That, however, is a digression. Percy Binder was given to understand
+that we did not know him in future. Mr. Bunting was so upset that he
+declared the competition cancelled, and smoked the prize himself. He
+said afterwards that what annoyed him most was the foolishness of Mr.
+Binder's idea that his plagiarism would be undetected.
+
+"He is," said Mr. Bunting, "like the silly ostrich that lays its eggs
+in the sand in order to escape the vigilance of its pursuers."
+
+One of our pencil-games was known as Inverted Conundrums, and played as
+follows. One person gave the answer to a riddle, and mentioned one word
+to be used in the question. The rest then had to write down what they
+thought the question would be. The deafness of dear Violet Orpington
+sometimes spoiled this game.
+
+For instance, I had once given as an answer "bee-hive," and said that
+one word in the question was "correct."
+
+The first question I read out was from George Leghorn. He had written:
+"If a cockney nurse wished to correct a child, what insect-home would
+she name?" This was accepted.
+
+The next question was from Violet Orpington: "If you had never corrected
+a naughty boy before, where would you correct him?"
+
+"But, Violet," I said, "the answer to that could not be 'bee-hive.'"
+
+"Oh," she said, "you said 'hive,' did you? I thought you said something
+else."
+
+I have never been able to guess what it was she thought I had said; and
+she refused to tell me.
+
+Another of our pencil-games was Missing Rhymes. One of us would write a
+deccasyllabic couplet--we always called it a quatrain, as being a
+better-class word--and the rhyme in the second line would not be
+actually given but merely indicated.
+
+For example, I myself wrote the following little sonnet:
+
+     "I have an adoration for
+     One person only, namely _je_."
+
+To any reader who is familiar with the French language, this may seem
+almost too easy, but I doubt if anybody who knew no language but modern
+Greek would guess it. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may add that
+the French word _je_ is pronounced "mwor," thus supplying the missing
+rhyme.
+
+Millie Wyandotte disgraced herself with the following lyric:
+
+     "After her dance, Salome, curtseying, fell,
+     And shocked the Baptist with her scream of 'Bother!'"
+
+She had no sooner read it out than Mr. Bunting rose in his place and
+said gravely:
+
+"I can only speak definitely for myself, but it is my firm belief that
+all present, with the exception of Miss Wyandotte, have too much
+refinement to be able to guess correctly the missing rhyme in this
+case." Loud and prolonged applause.
+
+George Leghorn was particularly happy at these pencil games, and to him
+is due this very clever combination of the lyrical and the acrostical:
+
+     "My first a man is, and my next a trap;
+     My whole's forbidden, lest it cause trouble."
+
+The answer to the acrostic is "mantrap"; the missing rhyme is "mishap."
+The entire solution was given in something under half an hour by Popsie
+Bantam. She was a very bright girl, and afterwards married a man in the
+Guards (L.N.W.R.).
+
+Mr. Bunting, a rather strong party-politician, one night submitted this
+little triolet:
+
+     "When the Great War new weapons bade us forge,
+     Whom did the nation trust? 'Twas thou, Asquith!"
+
+The missing rhyme was guessed immediately, in two places, as the
+auctioneers say.
+
+However, by our next quinquennial meeting Nettie Minorca had thought out
+the following rejoinder:
+
+     "When history's hand corrects the current myth,
+     Whose name will she prefer? 'Tis thine, Lloyd George."
+
+Yes, dear Nettie had a belated brilliance--the wit of the staircase,
+only more so. We always said that Nettie could do wonderful things if
+only she were given time.
+
+She was given time ultimately, and is still doing it, but that was in a
+totally different connection. She inserted an advertisement stating that
+she was a thorough good cook. First-class references. Eight years in
+present situation in Exeter, and leaving because the family was going
+abroad. Wages asked, L36 per annum. No kitchen-maid required. No less
+than twelve families were so anxious to receive the treasure that they
+offered her return-fare between Exeter and London, and her expenses, to
+secure a personal interview with her. She collected the boodle from all
+twelve. And she was living in Bryanstone Square at the time. She is lost
+to us now.
+
+As dear old Percy Cochin, also one of the Soles, once said to me: "We
+are here to-day, and gone at the end of our month."
+
+Violet Orpington had an arresting appearance, and walked rather like a
+policeman also. Her hair was a rich raw sienna, and any man would have
+made love to her had she but carried an ear-trumpet. She is the
+"retiring Violet" of verse seven.[A] Millie Wyandotte was malicious and
+unintelligent; she looked well in white, but was too heavily built for
+my taste. I may add, as evidence of my impartiality, that she laid a
+table better than any woman I ever knew; in fact, she took first prize
+in a laying competition. Nettie Minorca was "black but comely," and had
+Spanish blood in her veins. She is the "gipsy" mentioned in verse
+one-and-a-half. Popsie Bantam was _petite_. Her profile was admired, but
+I always thought it a little beaky myself. I myself was the least
+beautiful, but the most attractive. Allusions to me will be found in
+verses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12-19, 24, 57-60, 74, 77, 87, 97, and 102-3468.
+
+[Footnote A:
+     _Publisher_: But you don't give the verses.
+
+     _Author_: I know. It's a little idea I got from an excellent Sunday
+     newspaper.]
+
+George Leghorn was an Albino, but his figure was very graceful. From the
+specimen which I have already given, it will be easy to believe that his
+wit was fluorescent, detergent, and vibratory. He afterwards became a
+well-known personality on the turf. He gained a considerable fortune by
+laying the odds; his family were all reputed to be good layers.
+
+Dear old Peter Cochin was staunch and true. He reminds me of something
+that my illustrious model says of another man. She says that he "would
+risk telling me or anyone he loved, before confiding to an inner circle,
+faults which both he and I think might be corrected." Grammar was no
+doubt made for slaves--not for the brilliant and autobiographical. All
+the same, a prize should be offered to anybody who can find the missing
+"risk" in mentioning to another a point on which both are agreed.
+
+She adds that she has had "a long experience of inner circles." There,
+it must be admitted, she is ahead of me. But the only inner circle of
+which I have had a long experience has been much improved since it was
+electrified.
+
+In congratulating Peter upon a new appointment, with three under him, I
+asked when I first met him. His reply was particularly staunch, and I
+quote from it:
+
+     "It was in May 28, 1913. The hour was 1.38.5 Greenwich Time, and I
+     shall never forget it. You were sixteen then, and the effect as you
+     came into the room was quintessential. Suddenly the sunlight
+     blazed, the electric light went on automatically till the fuses
+     gave way, the chimney caught fire, the roof fell in, the petrol
+     tank exploded, old R--y said that he should never care to speak to
+     his wife again, and the butler dropped the Veuve Clicquot. After
+     that the shooting party came in, but for some reason or other the
+     sentence was not carried out."
+
+I have very few staunch friends, and many of them have had to be
+discarded from weakness; but when they are staunch--well, they really
+are. The only trouble with Peter Cochin was that he was too cautious. He
+was given to under-statement. I do not think he gives a really full and
+rich idea of the effect I habitually produced.
+
+I sometimes think that I am almost too effective. Still, as I said
+before, the Latin word "margo" does mean "the limit."
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH EXTRACT
+
+MISFIRES
+
+
+My family had a curious dread that I should marry a groom. I never did.
+To be quite honest, I never had the opportunity. But I did get engaged
+to quite a lot of other things.
+
+My first engagement was when I was very, very young. He was a humorous
+man, and perhaps I was wrong in taking him so seriously. Still, he must
+have adored me. When I accepted him his hair turned completely white--an
+infallible test of the depth of emotion.
+
+He was an excellent whip. It used to be a wonderful sight to see him
+taking a pair of young horses down Ludgate Hill on a greasy day at noon,
+with the whole road chock-a-block with traffic, lighting a pipe with a
+wooden match with one hand, carrying on an animated conversation with
+the other with a fare on the front seat, dropping white-hot satire on
+the heads of drivers less efficient than himself, and always getting the
+'bus through safely with about an inch to spare on each side.
+
+On the other hand, he was almost entirely ignorant of Marcus Aurelius,
+Henry James, Step-dancing, Titian, the Manners and Customs of Polite
+Society, Factory-Girl Reclamation, Cardinal Newman, or the Art of
+Self-advertisement. He said, with an entire absence of pretension, that
+these things were not on his route.
+
+When I announced our engagement the members of my family who were
+present, about seventeen of them, all swooned, except dear papa, who
+said in his highly-strung way that if I married anybody he would put the
+R.S.P.C.A. on to me.
+
+I said what I thought, and fled for consolation to Casey, my married
+sister. But she also was discouraging.
+
+"Marge," she said, "give it a miss. You have a rich nature, beautiful
+hair, a knowledge of the world, nervous tension, some of the appearance
+of education, and four pound fifteen put by in the Post Office. You must
+look higher."
+
+I have always detested scenes--which, perhaps, seems strange in a girl
+as fond of the limelight as I was. I began to re-consider the question.
+Accidentally, I discovered that he had a wife already. What with one
+thing and another, I thought it best to write and give him up. He
+immediately resigned his appointment with the London General, gave me a
+long-priced certainty for the Oaks, and left for New York. When he
+returned, two years later, his hair was pale green.
+
+But if the engagement did not come off, the certainty for the Oaks did.
+In consequence of this I left for Ramsgate by the "Marguerite" some days
+later. Dressed? Well, you should have seen me.
+
+It chanced that one of the passengers on the boat was Mr. Aaron Birsch.
+He had been presented to me some weeks before by Mr. Bunting. I knew
+that he was a turf commissioner, had speculated with success in cottage
+property, and was commonly reported to be much richer than he looked.
+Beyond that, I know very little of him. Apparently, however, he had made
+it his business to know quite a good deal of me. Mr. Bunting was his
+informant, and I had always been a quite special favourite of the
+_doyen_ of the Soles.
+
+Mr. Birsch came up to me at once. We chatted on various topics, and he
+told me of something which was likely to be quite useful for Goodwood.
+Then he said suddenly:
+
+"Matter of fact, there was a bit of private business I wanted a word
+with you about. This boat's too full of what I call riff-raff.
+Mouth-organs. Bad taste. Can't hear yourself speak. But we get an hour
+at Ramsgate, and if you'll take a snack with me there, I can tell you
+what I've got to say."
+
+More from curiosity than from anything else, I accepted. And I must say
+that our luncheon conversation was rather remarkable.
+
+     BIRSCH: To come to the point, you're the very identical girl that I
+     want Alfred to marry.
+
+     MARGE (_innocently_): Alfred?
+
+     BIRSCH: Yes, my son.
+
+     MARGE: But I have never even seen him.
+
+     BIRSCH: And when you have you'll probably wish you hadn't. But
+     don't let that prejudice you. It's the inside of the head that
+     counts. That boy's got a perfect genius for cottage property and
+     real tact with it. Only last week he raised an old woman's rent a
+     shilling a week, and when he left she gave him a rosebud and said
+     she'd pray for him. It takes some doing--a thing like that. Now, I
+     want a public career for that boy, and if he marries you he can't
+     miss it. Do you know what Mr. Bunting said to me about you?
+
+     MARGE (_breathlessly_): But he's so flattering. I think he likes
+     me--I don't know why. I sometimes wonder----
+
+     BIRSCH (_just as if I'd never spoken_): Bunting said to me: "That
+     girl, Marge, will get into the newspapers. It may be in the Court
+     News, and it may be in the Police-court News. That will depend on
+     which she prefers. But she'll get there, and she'll stick there!"
+     That's what I want for Alfred. Everything's ready for him to start
+     firing, but he needs you to sight the gun.
+
+     MARGE: And if you can't get me, whom would you like?
+
+     BIRSCH: Well, Lady Artemis Morals has some gift for publicity. But
+     Alfred won't marry a title--say's he rather thinks of making a
+     title for himself. The boy's got ambition. The cash is forthcoming.
+     And you can do the rest.
+
+     MARGE: It is a flattering offer. You'll let me think over it?
+
+He kindly consented, and we returned to the boat. However, on the way
+back the sea became very rough and unpleasant; and I threw up the idea.
+
+(By the way, you don't mind me writing the dialogue, as above, just as
+if it were a piece out of a play? I've always brought the sense of the
+theatre into real life.)
+
+Poor Aaron Birsch! He was only one of the very many men who have been
+extremely anxious that I should marry somebody else. Two years later
+Alfred died of cerebral tumescence--a disease to which the ambitious are
+peculiarly liable. That cat, Millie Wyandotte, happened to say to Birsch
+that if I had married his son I should now have been a wealthy young
+widow.
+
+"Anybody who married Marge," said Birsch, "would not die at the end of
+two years."
+
+"I suppose not," said Millie. "He'd be more likely to commit suicide at
+the end of one."
+
+I never did like that girl.
+
+But I must speak now of what was perhaps my most serious engagement.
+Hugo Broke--his mother was one of the Stoneys--was intended from birth
+for one of the services and selected domestic service. Here it was
+thought that his height--he was seven foot one--would tell in his
+favour. However, the Duchess of Exminster, in ordering that the new
+footman should be dismissed, said that height was desirable, but that
+this was prolixity.
+
+However, it was not long before he found a congenial sphere for his
+activities with the London branch of the Auto-extensor Co. of America.
+The Auto-extensor Co. addresses itself to the abbreviated editions of
+humanity. It is claimed for the Auto-extensor system that there is
+absolutely no limit to the increase in height which may be obtained by
+it, provided of course, that the system is followed exactly, that
+nothing happens to prevent it, and that the rain keeps off.
+
+Hugo walked into the Regent Street establishment of the Auto-extensor
+people, and said:
+
+"Good morning. I think I could be of some service to this company as an
+advertisement."
+
+"I am sure you could," said the manager. "If you will kindly wait a
+moment while the boy fetches the step-ladder I will come up and arrange
+terms."
+
+In the result, the large window of the Regent Street establishment was
+furnished as a club smoking-room or thereabouts. In the very centre, in
+a chair of exaggerated comfort but doubtful taste, sat Hugo. He was
+exquisitely attired. He read a newspaper and smoked cigarettes. By his
+side, in a magnificent frame, was a printed notice, giving a rather
+fanciful biography of the exhibit.
+
+"This gentleman," the notice ran, "was once a dwarf. For years he
+suffered in consequence agonies of humiliation, and then a friend called
+his attention to the Auto-extensor System of increasing height. He did
+not have much faith in it, but in desperation he gave it a trial--and it
+made him what he now is. Look for yourselves. Facts speak louder than
+words. All we ask you to do is to trust the evidence of your own eyes."
+
+The window proved a great attraction. The crowd before it was most
+numerous about four o'clock, because every day at that hour a dramatic
+and exciting scene was witnessed. Putting down his newspaper, Hugo
+struck a bell on a little table by his side. A page entered through the
+excessively plush curtains at the back, and Hugo gave a brief and
+haughty order. The boy somewhat overacted respectful acquiescence,
+retired through the curtains, and reappeared again with tea and thin
+bread and butter. Of these delicacies Hugo partook _coram populo_. This
+carried conviction with it. One onlooker would say to another: "Shows
+you he's real, don't it? At one time I thought it was only a dummy." And
+for some time afterwards the assistant in the shop would be kept busy,
+handing out the gratis explanatory booklet of the Auto-extensor Co.
+
+It was in this window that I first saw Hugo. I arrived a little late
+that afternoon, and missed the first act, where he puts down the
+newspaper and rings the bell. But I saw the conclusion of the piece.
+
+My eyes filled with tears. Here--here at last--I had met somebody whose
+chilled-steel endurance of publicity equalled, and perhaps exceeded, my
+own.
+
+I entered the shop, procured the explanatory booklet, and asked at what
+hour they closed. At that hour I met him as he left business, and my
+first feelings were of disappointment. His clothes were not the
+exquisite raiment that he had worn as an exhibit in the window. The
+white spats, the sponge-bag trousers with the knife-edge crease, the
+gold-rimmed eye-glass, the well-cut morning coat, the too assertive
+waistcoat--all were the property of the Auto-extensor Co. and not to be
+worn out of business hours. He now wore a shabby tweed suit and a cap.
+But he was still a noticeable figure; a happy smile came into the faces
+of little boys as he went past.
+
+"Like your job?" I said shyly, as I took the seat next to him on the top
+of the omnibus.
+
+He replied rather gruffly that he supposed a bloke had to work for his
+living, and all work was work, whatever way you looked at it. Further
+questions elicited that the pay was satisfactory, but that he did not
+regard the situation as permanent. The public would get tired of it and
+some other form of advertisement would be found. He complained, too,
+that he was supposed to keep up the appearance of a wealthy toff smoking
+cigarettes continually for a period of seven hours, and the management
+provided only one small packet of woodbines per diem for him to do it
+on.
+
+I produced my cigarette-case. It was one which Lord Baringstoke--always
+a careless man--had lost. It had been presented to me by dear Mr.
+Bunting. Hugo said he had not intended anything of that sort, but helped
+himself.
+
+A quarter of an hour later we had our first quarrel. I asked him if it
+was cold up where he was. He said morosely that he had heard that joke
+on his stature a few times before. I told him that if he lived long
+enough--and I'd never seen anybody living much longer--he was likely to
+hear it a few times again. He then said that either I could hop off the
+'bus or he would, and he didn't care which. After that we both were
+rather rude. He got me by the hair, and I had just landed a straight
+left to the point when the conductor came up and said he would not have
+it.
+
+I became engaged to Hugo that night at 10.41. I remember the time
+exactly, because Mrs. Pettifer had a rule that all her maids were to be
+in the house by ten sharp, and I was rather keeping an eye on my watch
+in consequence.
+
+To tell the truth, we quarrelled very frequently. Different though we
+were in many respects, we both had irritable, overstrung, tri-chord
+natures, with hair-spring nerves connected direct to the high-explosive
+language-mine.
+
+On one occasion I went with him to a paper fancy-dress dance at the
+rooms attached to the Hopley Arms. I went as "The Sunday Times," my
+dress being composed of two copies of that excellent, though
+inexpensive journal, tastefully arranged on a concrete foundation.
+
+When Millie Wyandotte saw me, she called out: "Hello, Marge! Got into
+the newspapers at last?" I shall be even with that girl one of these
+days.
+
+I declined to dance with Hugo at all. I said frankly that I preferred to
+dance with somebody who could touch the top of my head without stooping.
+I went off with Georgie Leghorn, and Hugo sat and sulked.
+
+Later in the evening he came up to me and asked if he should get my
+cloak.
+
+I said irritably: "Of course not. Why should you?"
+
+"Well," he said, "I don't know whether you're aware of it, but you've
+got three split infinitives in your City article."
+
+"Ah!" I replied. "The next time Millie Wyandotte telephones up to your
+head, give her my love and tell her not to over-strain herself."
+
+Things went from bad to worse, and after he had alluded to my backbone
+as my Personal Column, any possibility of reconciliation seemed at an
+end. I did not know then what a terribly determined person Hugo was.
+
+Georgie Leghorn saw me home. I parted with him at the house, let myself
+in by the area-gate, locking it after me, and so down the steps and into
+the kitchen.
+
+There I had just taken off my hair when I heard a shrill whistle in the
+street outside. Hurriedly replacing my only beauty, I drew up the blind
+and looked out. There, up above me on the pavement, was Hugo, stretching
+away into the distance.
+
+"Called for the reconciliation," he said. "Just open this area gate,
+will you?"
+
+"At this time of night?" I called, in a tense whisper. "Certainly not."
+
+He stepped back, and in one leap jumped over the area-railings and down
+on to the window-sill of the kitchen. The next moment he had flung the
+window up, entered, and stood beside me.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he said calmly.
+
+"Hugo," I said, "I've known some bounders in my time, but not one who
+could have done that."
+
+We sat down and began discussing the Disestablishment of the Welsh
+Church, when suddenly the area-gate was rattled and a stern voice
+outside said "Police."
+
+Instantly, Hugo concealed as much of himself as he could under the
+kitchen table. There was no help for it. I had to let the policeman in,
+or he would have roused the household.
+
+"I'm just going to have a look in your kitchen," he said.
+
+"No use," I replied. "The rabbit-pie was finished yesterday."
+
+"Saucy puss, ain't you?" he said, as he entered.
+
+"Well, you might be a sport and tell a girl what you're after."
+
+"Cabman, driving past here a few minutes ago, saw a man jump the
+area-railings and make a burglarious entry by the kitchen window."
+
+"Is that all?" I said. "A man did enter that way a few minutes ago, but
+it was not a burglar. It was Master Edward, Mrs. Pettifer's eldest son.
+He'd lost his latch-key--he's always doing it--and that's how it
+happened. He went straight upstairs to bed, or he'd confirm what I say."
+
+"Went straight up to bed, did he? Did he take his legs off first? I
+notice there's a pair of them sticking out from under the kitchen
+table."
+
+"Yes," I admitted, "I've told better lies in my time. Oh, Mr. Policeman,
+don't be hard. I never wanted my young man to come larking about like
+this. But--he's not a burglar. He's the exhibit from the Auto-extensor
+Co.'s in Regent Street. You can pull out the rest of him and see if he
+isn't."
+
+"That's what I told the cabman," said the policeman. "I said to him:
+'You juggins,' I said, 'do you think a burglar who wants to get into a
+house waits till a cab's going past and then gives a acrobatic
+exhibition to attract the driver's attention? That's some young fool
+after one of the maids.' No, I don't want to see the rest of the young
+man--not if he's like the sample. Get him unwound as soon as you can,
+and send him about his business. If he's not out in two minutes, I
+shall ring the front door, and you'll be in the cart. And don't act so
+silly another time."
+
+Hugo was out in 1 min. 35 sec. He stopped to chat with the policeman,
+jumped the seven-foot railings into the square garden, and jumped back
+again, just to show what he could do, and went off.
+
+I gave a long, deep sigh. I always do that when an incident in my life
+fails to reach the best autobiographical level. I neither knew nor cared
+what the policeman thought. You see, I would never deserve a bad
+reputation, but there's nothing else I wouldn't do to get one.
+
+For eighty-four years--my memory for numbers is not absolutely accurate,
+but we will say eighty-four--for eighty-four years I wrote him a letter
+every morning and evening of every day, with the exception of Sundays,
+bank holidays, and the days when I did not feel like it.
+
+But it was not to be. He was not without success in the circus which he
+subsequently joined, but he was improvident. His income increased in
+arithmetical progression, and his expenditure in geometrical. This, as
+Dr. Micawber and Professor Malthus have shown us, must end in disaster.
+Looking at it from the noblest point of view--the autobiographical--I
+saw that a marriage with Hugo would inevitably cramp my style.
+
+And so the great sacrifice was made. Our feelings were so intense as we
+said farewell that my native reserve and reticence forbid me to
+describe them. But we parted one night in June, with a tear in the
+throat and a catch in the eye. As he strode from the park, I looked
+upward and saw in the brown crags above me some graceful animal
+silhouetted against an opal sky. I always have said that those Mappin
+Terraces were an improvement.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH EXTRACT
+
+TESTIMONIALS--ROYAL APPRECIATION
+
+
+Being what I am, it may readily be supposed that I have received many
+tributes to the qualities that I possess. I have already exposed many of
+these to the public gaze, still have some left, and it seems to me a
+pity that my readers should miss any of the evidence. The first
+testimonial is from my sister Casey, and a melancholy interest is
+attached to it. It was the last one she wrote for me before I took the
+momentous step which will be described in my last chapter:
+
+     "Marge Askinforit has been in my service for eight years. I should
+     not be parting with her but for the fact that I am compelled by
+     reasons of health to leave England. Askinforit is clean, sober,
+     honest, an early riser, an excellent plate-cleaner and valet, has
+     perfect manners and high intelligence, takes a great pride in her
+     work, and is most willing, obliging and industrious. She was with
+     me as parlour-maid (first of two), and now seeks temporary
+     employment in that capacity; but there is no branch of domestic
+     service with which she is not thoroughly well acquainted, and when
+     the occasion has arisen she has always been willing to undertake
+     any duties, and has done so with unfailing success. She is tall, of
+     good appearance, Church of England (or anything else that is
+     required), and anybody who secures such a treasure will be
+     exceptionally fortunate. I shall be pleased at any time to give any
+     further information that may be desired.
+
+                              "(Mrs.) C. MORGENSTEIN."
+
+I do not say that dear Casey's estimate had the arid accuracy of the
+pedant, but she had a rich and helpful imagination. In rare moments of
+depression and unhappiness I have found that by reading one of her
+testimonials I can always recover my tone. And they were effective for
+their purpose. By this time I was accepting no situations except with
+titled people; and some of the language that I heard used suggested to
+me that the reclamation of baronets during their dinner-hour might after
+all be my life's work.
+
+The next exhibit will be a letter from a famous author, a complete
+stranger to me, whose work I had long known and admired:
+
+     "Dear Madam, For a long time past it has been my privilege to
+     express in the daily newspapers my keen and heartfelt appreciation
+     of a certain departmental store. I thought that I knew my work. I
+     believe even that it gave satisfaction. I could begin an article
+     with fragments of moral philosophy, easily intelligible and certain
+     of general acceptance, modulate with consummate skill into the key
+     of _crepe de chine_, and with a further natural and easy transition
+     reach the grand theme of the glorious opportunities offered by a
+     philanthropical Oxford Street to a gasping and excited public. Or I
+     would adopt with grace and facility the attitude of a prejudiced
+     and hostile critic, show how cold facts and indisputable figures
+     reversed my judgment, and end with a life-like picture of myself
+     heading frantically in a No. 16 'bus for the bargain basement,
+     haunted by the terror that I might be too late. With what
+     dignity--even majesty--did I not invest an ordinary transaction in
+     _lingerie_, when I spoke of 'the policy of this great House'! Yes,
+     I believed I knew what there was to know of the supreme art of
+     writing an advertisement.
+
+     "But now the mists roll away and I see as it were remote peaks of
+     delicate and implicating advertising the existence of which I had
+     never suspected. It is to you I owe it. You have a theme that you
+     probably find inexhaustible. Fired by your example I shall turn to
+     my own subject (Government linen at the moment) with a happy
+     consciousness that I shall do a far, far better thing than I have
+     ever done before.
+
+                              "Your obedient servant,
+                                "CALLISTHENIDES."
+
+Of this letter I will only say that few have the courage and candour to
+acknowledge an inferiority and an indebtedness, and fewer still could
+have done it in the vicious and even succulent style of the above. It is
+a letter that I read often and value highly. The only trouble about it
+is that I sometimes wonder if it was not really intended for another
+lady whose name has one or two points of similarity with my own.
+
+I cannot refrain from quoting also one of the many letters that I
+received from my dear old friend, Mr. J. A. Bunting:
+
+     "And now I must turn to your request for a statement of my opinion
+     of you, to be published in case an autobiography should set in. It
+     was I who introduced you to a certain circle. That circle, though
+     to me an open sessimy, was no doubt particular, and I confess that
+     I felt some hesitation. Through no fault of your own, you were at
+     that time in a position which was hardly up to our level. But I
+     admired your spirit and thought your manners, of which I can claim
+     to be a good judge, had the correct cashy, though with rather too
+     much tendency to back-chat. At any rate, I took the step, and I
+     have never regretted it. You soon made your way to the front, and
+     it is my firm belief that if you had been dropped into a den of
+     raging lions you would have done the same thing. You are much
+     missed. You have my full permission to make what use you please of
+     this testimonial, which is quite unsolicited, and actuated solely
+     by an appreciation of the goods supplied.
+
+     "Society in London is very so-so at present, and we leave for
+     Scotland at the end of the week. His lordship's had one fit of his
+     tantrums, but I had a look in my eye that ipsum factum soon put an
+     end to it. I wish it was as easy to put a stop to his leaning to
+     third-class company. Three ordinary M.P.'s at dinner last night and
+     one R.A. I always did hate riff-raff, and should say it was in my
+     blood."
+
+Unfortunately, it is not everybody who will put into writing, with the
+simple manliness of Mr. Bunting, the very high opinion of me which they
+must inevitably have formed. Even George Leghorn has proved a
+disappointment. But in his case I am inclined to think there was a
+misunderstanding.
+
+I asked him to send his opinion of me as I thought of making a book. He
+replied on a postcard: "Don't approve of women in the profession, and
+you'd better cut it out. It's hard enough for a man bookmaker to scrape
+a living, with everybody expecting the absurd prices quoted in the
+press."
+
+Many of the contemporary testimonials that I have received are so
+cautiously framed and so wanting in warmth that I decline to make any
+use of them. I have always hated cowardice. I have the courage of my
+opinions. Why cannot others have the same.
+
+However, I have through my sister Chlorine succeeded in securing the
+opinions of some of the greatest in another century. I can only say that
+they confirm my belief in her powers as a medium, and in her wonderful
+system of wireless telephony.
+
+The first person that I asked her to ring up was Napoleon. She had some
+difficulty in getting through. He spoke as follows:
+
+"Yes, I am Napoleon. Oh, that's you, Chlorine, is it?... Quite well,
+thank you, but find the heat rather oppressive.... You want my opinion
+of your sister Marge? She is wonderful--wonderful! Tell her from me that
+if I had but married her when I was a young man, I am confident that
+Wellington would have met his Waterloo."
+
+I think he would have liked to say more, but unfortunately the receiver
+fused. I think it showed such nice feeling in him that he spoke English.
+Poor Chlorine knows no French.
+
+After the apparatus had been repaired, Chlorine got into communication
+with Sir Joshua Reynolds. She said that his voice had a fruity
+ceremoniousness, and I wish I could have heard it. But I have not
+Chlorine's gift of mediumship. Sir Joshua said:
+
+"The more I see of your sister Marge, the more I regret the time that I
+spent on Mrs. Siddons, who was also theatrical; my compliment that I
+should go down to posterity on the hem of her garment was not
+ill-turned, but she is more likely to go down to posterity as the
+subject of my art. Why, even Romney would have been good enough for her.
+Could I but have painted Marge, my fame had been indeed immortal. Who's
+President?... Well, you surprise me."
+
+To prevent any possibility of incredulity, I may add that I wrote those
+words down at the time, added the date and address, and signed them; so
+there can be no mistake.
+
+But far more interesting is the important and exclusive communication
+which Chlorine next received. It was only after much persuasion that I
+got her to ring him up; she said it was contrary to etiquette. However,
+she at last put through a call to Sir Herbert Taylor, who kindly
+arranged the matter for us.
+
+He--not Sir Herbert--showed the greatest readiness to converse. Chlorine
+says that he spoke in a quick staccato. He was certainly voluble, and
+this is what he said:
+
+"What, what, what? Want my opinion of marriage, do you, Miss
+Forget-your-name? I had a long experience of it. Estimable woman,
+Charlotte, very estimable, and made a good mother, though she showed
+partiality. If I'd had my own way though--between ourselves, what,
+what?--I should have preferred Sarah. More lively, more entertaining.
+Holland would have been pleased. But it couldn't be done. Monarchs are
+the servants of ministers now. Never admitted that doctrine myself.
+Kicked against it all my life. Ah, if North had been the strong man I
+was! But as to marriage....
+
+"What, what? You said 'Marge'--not 'marriage'--your sister Marge? You
+should speak more clearly. Get nearer the receiver--age plays havoc with
+the hearing. Fine woman, Marge, and you can tell her I said so. Great
+spirit. Plenty of courage. Always admired courage. If I were a young man
+and back on earth again, I might do worse, what, what?"
+
+And then I am sorry to say he changed the subject abruptly. He went on:
+
+"What's this about King Edward potatoes? Stuff and nonsense! I knew all
+about potatoes. Grew them at Windsor. Kew too. Wrote an article about
+them. Why can't they name a potato after me? What?"
+
+Here Chlorine interposed: "Do you wish for another three minutes, sir,
+or have you finished?"
+
+I hoped he would say, "Don't cut us off," but, possibly from habits of
+economy, he did not. I have not given his name, for fear of being
+thought indiscreet, but possibly those who are deeply read in history
+may guess it.
+
+It is the greatest tribute but one that I have ever received, and I
+think brings me very nearly up to the level of my Great Example. If I
+could only feel that for once I had done that, I could fold my little
+hands and be content.
+
+But it is not quite the greatest tribute of all. The greatest is my own
+self-estimate of me myself. It demands and shall receive a chapter all
+to itself. Wipe your feet, take off your hat, assume a Sunday
+expression, and enter upon it reverently.
+
+After all, the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us is not to be
+desired. In your case for certain it would cause you the most intense
+depression. Even in my own case I doubt if it would give me the same
+warm, pervading glow of satisfaction that obtain from a more Narcissan
+procedure.
+
+By the way, ought one to say "self-estimate" or "self-esteem"? What a
+silly girl I am! I quite forgot.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH EXTRACT
+
+SELF-ESTIMATE
+
+
+More trouble. Determined to give an estimate of myself based on the best
+models, I turned to the pages of my Great Example, and ran into the
+following sentence:
+
+"I do not propose to treat myself like Mr. Bernard Shaw in this
+account."
+
+Does this mean that she does not propose to treat herself as if she were
+Mr. Bernard Shaw? It might. Does it mean that she does not propose to
+treat herself as Mr. Bernard Shaw treats her? It is not impossible.
+
+What one wants it to mean is: "I do not propose to treat myself as Mr.
+Bernard Shaw treats himself." But if she had meant that, she would have
+said it.
+
+I backed away cautiously, and, a few lines further on, fell over her
+statement that she has a conception of beauty "not merely in poetry,
+music, art and nature, but in human beings." No doubt. And I have a
+conception of slovenly writing not merely in her autobiography, but in
+its seventeenth chapter.
+
+I had not gone very much further in that same chapter before I was
+caught in the following thicket:
+
+"I have got china, books, whips, knives, matchboxes, and clocks given me
+since I was a small child."
+
+If these things were given her since she was a small child, they might
+have been given her on the day she wrote--in which case it would not
+have been remarkable that she still possessed them. The nearest way out
+of the jungle would be to substitute "when" for "since." But it is
+incredible that she should have thought of two ways of saying the same
+thing, let them run into one another, and sent "The Sunday Times" the
+mess resulting from the collision.
+
+She must be right. Mr. Balfour said she was the best letter-writer he
+knew. With generous reciprocity she read Mr. Balfour's books and
+realized without external help "what a beautiful style he wrote."
+
+And for goodness sake don't ask me how you write a style. You do it in
+precisely the same way that you cook a saucepan--that is, by the
+omission of the word "in."
+
+Yet one more quotation from the last column of the last extract:
+
+"If I had to confess and expose one opinion of myself which might
+differentiate me a little from other people, I should say it was my
+power of love coupled with my power of criticism."
+
+No, never mind. The power of love is not an opinion; and in ending a
+sentence it is just as well to remember how you began it. But I
+absolutely refuse to let my simple faith be shaken. She records the
+bones that she has broken, but John Addington Symonds told her that she
+retained "_l'oreille juste_." Her husband said she wrote well, and he
+must know. Besides, am I to be convinced in my penultimate chapter that
+anything can be wrong with the model I have followed? Certainly not. It
+would be heartbreaking.
+
+Besides, the explanation is quite simple. When she wrote that last
+instalment in "The Sunday Times," the power of criticism had gone to
+have the valves ground in.
+
+I will now ask your kind attention for my estimate of me, Marge
+Askinforit, by myself.
+
+There is just one quality which I claim to have in an even greater
+degree than my prototype. She is unlike real life--no woman was ever
+like what any woman supposes herself to be--but I am far more unlike
+real life. I have more inconsistency, more self-contradiction, more
+anachronism, more impossibility. In fact, I sometimes feel as if some
+fool of a man were just making me up as he went along.
+
+And the next article? Yes, my imagination.
+
+I have imagination of a certain kind. It has nothing to do with
+invention or fancy. It is not a mental faculty at all. It is not
+physical. Neither is it paralysis, butterscotch, or three spades
+re-doubled. I should so much like to give some idea of it if I
+had any. Perhaps an instance will help.
+
+I remember that I once said to the Dean of Belial that I thought the
+naming of a Highland hotel "The Light Brigade" showed a high degree of
+imagination.
+
+"Half a moment," said the Dean. "I think I know that one. No--can't get
+it. Why was the hotel called that?"
+
+"Because of its terrific charges."
+
+"Yes," he said wearily. "I've heard it. But"--more brightly--"can you
+tell me why a Highland regiment was called 'The Black Watch'?"
+
+"I can, Massa Johnson. Because there's a 'b' in both."
+
+"Wrong again. It's because there's an 'e' in each."
+
+I gave him a half-nelson to the jaw and killed him, and the entire
+company then sung "Way down upon de Swannee Ribber," with harmonium
+accompaniment, thus bringing the afternoon performance to a close. The
+front seats were half empty, but then it was late in the season, and
+looked like rain, and--
+
+Certainly, I can stop if you like. But you do see what I mean, don't
+you? The imagination is something that runs away with you. If I were to
+let mine get away with me, it would knock this old autobiography all to
+splinters.
+
+But I do not appear to have the kind of imagination that makes me know
+what will hurt people's feelings. If I love people I always tell them
+what their worst faults are, and repeat what everybody says about them
+behind their back. That ought to make people say: "Thank you, Marge, for
+your kind words. They will help me to improve myself." It has not
+happened yet. It is my miraculous power of criticism that causes the
+trouble. Whenever I let it off the lead it seems to bite somebody; a
+muzzle has been suggested.
+
+The other day I said to Popsie Bantam: "You're quite right to bob your
+hair, Popsie. When you have not got enough of anything, always try to
+persuade people that you want less. But your rouge-et-noir make-up is
+right off the map. If you could manage to get some of the colours in
+some of the right places, people would laugh less. And I can never quite
+decide whether it's your clothes that are all wrong, or if it's just
+your figure. I wish you'd tell me. Anyhow, you should try for a job at a
+photographer's--you're just the girl for a dark-room."
+
+Really, that's all I said--just affectionate, lambent, helpful
+criticism, with a little Tarragon in it. Yet next day when I met her on
+the staircase she said she didn't want to talk to me any more. So I
+heaved her over the balustrade and she had a forty-foot drop on to the
+marble below. I am too impulsive--I have always said so. Rather a
+pathetic touch was that she died just as the ambulance reached the
+hospital. I have lost quite a lot of nice friends in this way.
+
+With the exception of a few teeny-weeny murders, I do not think I have
+done anything in my life that I regret. And even the murders--such as
+they were--were more the fault of my circumstances than of myself. If,
+as I have always wished, I had lived alone on a desert island, I should
+never have killed anybody at all. But when you go into the great world
+(basement entrance) and have a bad night, or the flies are troublesome,
+you do get a feeling of passionate economy; you realize that there are
+people you can do without, and you do without them. This is the whole
+truth about a little failing of which my detractors have made the most.
+Calumny and exaggeration have been carried to such an extent that more
+than once I have been accused of being habitually irritable.
+
+My revered model wrote that she had always been a collector "of letters,
+old photographs of the family, famous people and odds and ends." I have
+not gone quite as far as this.
+
+I have collected odds, and almost every autumn I roam over the moors and
+fill a large basket with them, but I have never collected ends.
+
+I do want to collect famous people, but for want of a little education I
+have not been able to do it. I simply do not know whether it is best to
+keep them in spirits of wine, or to have them stuffed in glass
+cases--like the canaries and the fish that you could not otherwise
+believe in. I have been told that really the best way is to press them
+between the leaves of some very heavy book, such as an autobiography,
+but I fancy they lose much of their natural brilliance when treated in
+this way.
+
+Another difficulty is that the ordinary cyanide bottles that you buy at
+the naturalist's, though excellent for moths, are not really large
+enough to hold a full-sized celebrity. At the risk of being called a
+sentimentalist, I may say that I do not think I could kill famous people
+by any method that was not both quick and painless. If anything like
+cruelty were involved in their destruction, I would sooner not collect
+them at all, but just make a study of them in their wild state.
+
+I am only a poor little girl, and I can find nothing whatever on the
+subject in any reference book in the public reading-room. I need expert
+advice. There is quite a nice collection of famous--and infamous--people
+near Baker Street Station, but I am told these are only simulacra. That
+would not suit me at all. I am far too genuine, downright, and truthful
+to put up with anything less than the real thing.
+
+There must be some way of doing it. I should like to have a stuffed M.P.
+in a glass case at each end of the mantelpiece in my little boudoir.
+They need not be of the rarest and most expensive kinds. A pretty Labour
+Member with his mouth open and a rustic background, and a Coalitionist
+lightly poised on the fence, would please me.
+
+It would be so interesting to display one's treasures when people came
+to tea.
+
+"Never seen a real leader-writer?" I should say. "They're plentiful
+locally, but mostly come out at night, and so many people miss them. It
+is not of the least use to put treacle on the trees. The best way is to
+drive a taxi slowly down Fleet Street about one in the morning and look
+honest. That's how I got the big leader-writer in the hall. Just press
+his top waistcoat button and he'll prove that the lost election was a
+moral victory.
+
+"In the next case? Oh, they're just a couple of little Georgian poets.
+They look wild, but they're quite tame really. Sprinkle an advance on
+account of royalties on the window-sill and they'll come for it. It used
+to be pretty to watch those two, pouring adulatory articles over each
+other. They sing chopped prose, and it seemed almost a pity to kill
+them; but there are plenty more.
+
+"And that very pretty creature is an actress; if you drop an interviewer
+into the left hand corner of the dressing-room you will hear her say: 'I
+love a country life, and am never happier than when I am working in my
+little garden,'--insert here the photograph in the sun-bonnet--'I don't
+think the great public often realizes what a vast amount of----'"
+
+But I am talking about collecting other people. I am wandering from my
+subject. I must collect myself.
+
+At a very early age I caught the measles and a little later on the
+public eye. The latter I still hold. But I do not often lose anything
+except friends, and occasionally the last 'bus, and of course my
+situations. My great model says it is a positive punishment to her to
+be in one position for long at a time, and I must be something like
+that--I rarely keep a place much longer than a month. On the other hand,
+I still have quite a number of metal discs that formed the wheels of a
+toy railway train which I had when I was quite a child. I should have
+had them all, but I used some to get chocolates out of the automatic
+machines.
+
+I should have liked to have appended here a list of my accomplishments,
+but I must positively keep room for my last chapter. So to save space I
+will merely give a list of the accomplishments which I have not got, or
+have not got to perfection.
+
+The E flat clarionet is not really my instrument, but I will give you
+three guesses what is.
+
+I skate beautifully, but not so well as I dance. However, I am saving
+the I's out of my autobiography for further practice.
+
+Some people perhaps have better memories. But that's no reason why they
+should write to the "Sunday Times" about it.
+
+I cannot write Chinese as fluently as English, though I might
+conceivably write it more correctly.
+
+I think I have mentioned everything in which I am not perfectly
+accomplished. Truth and modesty make me do it.
+
+I would conclude this estimate of myself as follows. If I had to confess
+and expose one opinion of myself which would record what I believe to
+be my differentiation from other people, it would be the opinion that I
+am a law unto myself and a judgment to everybody else.
+
+
+
+
+LATE EXTRA
+
+TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE OF MARGE ASKINFORIT
+
+
+I sometimes think that it must have been a sense of impending
+autobiography which made me seek employment in the Lightning Laundry.
+After all, the autobiographist merely does in public what the laundry
+does in the decent seclusion of its works at Wandsworth or Balham.
+
+The principal difference would appear to be that a respectable laundress
+does know where to draw the line.
+
+But I admit that I had other motives in seeking a new career. My attempt
+to reclaim baronets in their dinner-hour had broken down completely; in
+spite of everything I could do, the dirty dogs would persist in eating
+their dinner at that time. Then again, the beautiful and imaginative
+essays which dear Casey wrote, under different names and with varying
+addresses, on my suitability for domestic service, had begun to attract
+too much attention; and a censorious world stigmatized as false and
+dishonest what was really poetical. I wanted too, a position of greater
+independence.
+
+Of course, I had to learn the work. At first I was taught the leading
+principles of button-removal. Then I went on to the rough-edging. This
+consists in putting a rough edge on starched collars and cuffs with a
+coarse file. Afterwards I was promoted to the mixing department. This is
+where the completed articles are packed for delivery. It requires great
+quickness and a nice sense of humour. For instance, you take up a pair
+of socks and have to decide instantly whether you will send them both to
+an elderly unmarried lady, or divide them impartially between two men.
+Our skill in creating odd socks and stockings was gratefully recognized
+by the Amalgamated Hosiers' Institution, who paid the laundry an annual
+subsidy. A good memory was essential for the work. Every girl was
+required to memorize what size in collars each male client took, so
+that the fifteen-inch collars might be sent to the man with the
+seventeen-inch neck and vice-versa. As the manager said to me once:
+"What we are here for is to teach people self-control. The rest is
+merely incidental."
+
+I did not remain very long in the mixing department. My head for figures
+soon earned me a place in the office. Much of it was routine work. Four
+times every year we had to send out the notices that owing to the
+increased cost of labour and materials we were reluctantly compelled to
+increase our prices 22-1/2 per cent. We made it 22-1/2 per cent. with
+the happy certainty that very few of our customers would be able to
+calculate the amount of the increase, and still fewer would take the
+trouble; this left a little room for the play of our fancy. As one of
+our directors--a man with a fine, scholarly head--once said to me:
+"Bring the larger vision into the addition of a customer's account. The
+only natural limit to the charge for washing a garment is the cost of
+the garment. Keep your eyes ever on the goal. Our present prices are but
+milestones on the road." He had a beautiful, ecclesiastical voice.
+Nobody would have guessed that he was an engineer and the inventor of
+the Button-pulper and Hem-render which have done so much to make our
+laundries what they are.
+
+From the very first day that I took up my work in the office I became
+conscious that Hector, the manager, had his eye upon me. He would
+generally read a page or two of Keats or Shelley to us girls, before we
+began to make out the customers' accounts. This was all in accord with
+the far-seeing and generous policy of the laundry. The reading took a
+little time, but it filled us with the soaring spirit. It made pedantic
+precision and things-that-are repulsive to us. After I heard Hector read
+the "Ode to a Nightingale" I could not bring myself to say that two and
+two were four; nothing less than fourteen seemed to give me any
+satisfaction. Hector knew how quickly responsive and keenly sentient I
+was. A friend once told me that he had said of me that I made arithmetic
+a rhapsody. "This," I replied quietly, "means business."
+
+It did. One Saturday afternoon I had tea with him--not on the Terrace,
+as the A.B.C. shop in the High Street was so much nearer. He was very
+wonderful. He talked continuously for two hours, and would have gone on
+longer. But the waitress pointed out that the charge for a cup of tea
+and a scone did not include a twenty-one years' lease of the chair you
+sat on.
+
+He was, of course, a man of great scientific attainments. His work on
+the use of acids in fabric-disintegration has a reputation throughout
+the laundries of Europe. But he had not the habit of screaming
+blasphemies which my Great Example failed to convince anybody that she
+had discovered in Huxley. In brief, he did not conform to the
+unscientific idea of what a scientific man must be like. He was a
+cultured idealist. I will try to recall a few of the marvellous things
+he said that afternoon.
+
+In reply to some remark of mine, he said with authority and conviction:
+"Marge, you really _are_."
+
+And, indeed, I had to admit that very often I am.
+
+He was saying that in this world gentle methods have effected more than
+harsh, and added this beautiful thought: "In the ordeal by laundry the
+soft-fronted often outlasts the starched."
+
+Later, I led him on to speak of ambition.
+
+"I am ambitious. That is to say, I live not in the present, but in the
+future. At one time I had a bicycle, but in imagination I drove a
+second-hand Ford; and now I possess the Ford, and in imagination I have
+a Rolls-Royce. I once held a subordinate position in the laundry, but in
+imagination I was the manager; and now I am the manager, and in
+imagination am asked to join the Board of Directors. As the poet
+Longfellow so wisely said--Excelsior. Engraved in letters of gold on the
+heart of the ambitious are these words: 'And the next article?' At this
+present moment I am having a cup of tea with by far the most brilliant
+and beautiful girl of my acquaintance, but in imagination----"
+
+And it was just there that the tactless waitress interrupted us so
+rudely. It was in vain that I tried to lead him back to the subject.
+Almost his last words to me that afternoon were:
+
+"I suppose you don't happen to know what the time is?"
+
+Nor did I. It was just an instance of his subtle intuition. He
+understood me at once and without effort. Many men have made a hobby of
+it for years and never been within three streets of it.
+
+The clock at the post-office gave him the information he required, and,
+raising his hat, he said: "Well, I must be getting on."
+
+The whole of the man's life was in that sentence. Always, he was getting
+on--and always with a compulsion, as of destiny, shoving behind.
+
+Knowing my keen appreciation of art, of which I have always been a just
+and unfailing critic, he took me on the following Saturday to see the
+pictures. It was not a good show--too many comics for my taste, and I'd
+seen the Charlie Chaplin one before. However, in the dim seclusion of
+the two-shilling seats just as the eighteenth episode of "The Woman
+Vampire" reached its most pathetic passage, and the girl at the piano
+appropriately shifted to the harmonium, Hector asked me if I would marry
+him.
+
+(No, I shan't. I know I'm an autobiographer and that you have paid to
+come in, but there are limits. You know how shy and retiring I am. No
+nice girl would tell you what the man said or did on such an occasion,
+or how she responded. There will be no details. And you ought to be
+ashamed of yourself.)
+
+But just one of Hector's observations struck me particularly: "You know,
+Marge, there are not many girls in the laundry I would say as much to."
+
+That statement of preference, admitting me as it were to a small circle
+of the elect, meant very much to me. I could only reply that there were
+some men I wouldn't even allow to take me to a cinema. I asked, and was
+accorded, time for consideration.
+
+I was face to face with the greatest problem of my life. There was, I
+know, one great drawback to my marriage with Hector. An immense risk was
+involved. When the end of this chapter is reached the reader will know
+what the risk and drawback were.
+
+At the same time, everybody knew well that Hector was marked out for a
+great position. I had already, with a view to eventualities, had some
+discussion with one of the Directors, Mr. Cashmere, whom I have already
+quoted. I was a special favourite of his. But it is quite an ordinary
+thing in business, of course, for a Director to discuss the internal
+affairs of the Board with one of the Company's junior clerks.
+
+Mr. Cashmere expressed the highest opinion of Hector, and said he had no
+doubt that Hector would become a Director, as a result of a complicated
+situation that had arisen. Two of the Directors, Mr. Serge and Mr.
+Angora, while remaining on the best possible social terms with the
+chairman, Sir Charles Cheviot, were bitterly opposed to him on questions
+of policy. On the other hand, though agreed on questions of policy, Mr.
+Serge and Mr. Angora were bitterly jealous of each other, and a rupture
+was imminent. Under the circumstances, Mr. Cashmere, while assuring
+everybody of his whole-hearted support, had a private reservation of
+judgment to be finally settled by the directional feline saltation.
+
+Whichever turn the crisis took, he regarded it as certain that there
+would be a resignation, and that Hector would get the vacant place.
+
+"Why," I said, "it's rather like the Government of the British Empire."
+
+"Hush!" he said, warningly. "It is exactly like it, but in the interests
+of the shareholders we do not wish that to be generally known. It would
+destroy confidence."
+
+I myself felt quite certain that if Hector did become a Director he
+would very shortly be chairman of the Board. He was a man that naturally
+took anything there was.
+
+It was in my power to marry a man who would become the chairman of a
+Laundry Company with seventeen different branches. It was a great
+position. Had I any right to refuse it? If I did not take it, I felt
+sure that somebody else would. Was anybody else as good as I was? Truth
+compelled me to answer in the negative. The voice of conscience said:
+"Take a good thing when you see it. People have lost fortunes by opening
+their mouths too wide."
+
+On the other hand there were two considerations of importance. I might
+possibly receive a better offer. If I had been quite sure that Hector
+would have taken it nicely, I would have asked him for a three months'
+option to see if anything better turned up, but I knew that with his
+sensitive nature he might be offended.
+
+The second consideration was the terrible risk to which I have already
+referred. Do be patient. You will know all about it when the time comes.
+
+I had to decide one way or the other, and--as the world knows now--I
+decided in favour of Hector. And immediately the storm broke.
+
+Every old cat that I knew--and I knew some--began to give me advice.
+Now, nobody takes advice better than I do, when I am conscious that I
+need it and am sure that the advice is good. Of this I feel as sure as
+if such an occasion had ever actually arrived. In an International
+Sweet-nature Competition I would back myself for money every time.
+
+I was told that in the dignified position which was to be mine I must
+give up larking about and the use of wicked words when irritated. It
+seemed to me that if I was to surrender all my accomplishments I might
+just as well never marry Hector at all. I avoid a certain freedom of
+speech which my great predecessor uses on a similar occasion.
+
+Dear old Mr. Cashmere found me in almost a bad temper about it, and
+listened gravely to my complaint. Placing one hand on my shoulder, he
+said:
+
+"Marge, I have lived long, and in the course of my life I have received
+much advice. My invariable rule has always been to thank for it,
+expressing my gratitude with some warmth and every appearance of
+sincerity. This is all that the adviser requires. It gives him, or her,
+complete satisfaction. It costs nothing. Afterwards, I proceed precisely
+as if no advice had been given."
+
+That freak, Millie Wyandotte, sent me a plated toast-rack and a letter
+from which I extract the following:
+
+     "If you were half as extraordinary as you think you are, this
+     would be a miserable marriage. Anybody who married it would get
+     lost, bewildered, and annoyed, and the hymn for those at sea should
+     be sung at the wedding ceremony. But cheer up, old girl. Really
+     extraordinary people never think it worth while to prove that they
+     are extraordinary, and mostly would resent being told it. You'll
+     do. Psychologies like yours can be had from any respectable dealer
+     at a shilling a dozen, including the box. They wear very well and
+     give satisfaction. Here's luck."
+
+Mr. J. A. Banting sent me a travelling-clock at one time the property of
+Lord Baringstoke, and a letter of such fervent piety and tender
+affection that it is too sacred for me to quote.
+
+Fifty-eight rejected suitors combined to send me a hand-bag of no great
+intrinsic value. I cannot but think that the principle of syndication is
+more suited to business than to generosity.
+
+But I will not weary the reader with a list of the numerous and costly
+gifts that I received. Suffice it to say that one of my brothers, an
+excellent judge, offered me a fiver for the lot, and said that he
+expected to lose money by it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Immediately after the wedding ceremony the blow fell. I had foreseen the
+danger of disaster from the very first, and that disaster came. I can
+hardly bring myself to write of it.
+
+I have spoken of my husband as Hector, but his surname was Harris--his
+mother was one of the Tweeds. Consequently, I had become Mrs. Harris.
+
+The tendency of a Mrs. Harris to become mythical was first noticed by an
+English writer of some repute in the nineteenth century. I forget his
+precise name, but believe that it was Thackeray.
+
+It was in the vestry that I seemed to hear the voice of an elderly and
+gin-bemused female telling me that there was no sich person. I did not
+cease to exist, but I became aware that I never had, and never could
+have, existed. I was merely mythical. Gently whispering "The Snark was a
+Boojum," I faded away.
+
+The last sound I heard was the voice of Hector calling to me:
+
+"Hullo, hullo! Are you there? Harris speaking.... Hullo, hullo.... Are
+you there?"
+
+And, as not infrequently happens, there was no answer.
+
+
+
+
+ H. G. WELLS'
+ Best Novels
+
+
+ TONO BUNGAY
+     (11th Edition)
+
+ THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
+     (10th Edition)
+
+ MARRIAGE
+     (12th Edition)
+
+ MR. POLLY
+     (9th Edition)
+
+ THE
+ ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
+     (10th Edition)
+
+ DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to be true to the author's words and intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marge Askinforit, by Barry Pain
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