On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (10 page)

Well, what must be must be, and what will be will be, and if the
Rich are upon us with great open jaws and having power to enslave
all by the very fatal process of unalterable laws and at the bidding
of Blind Fate as she is expounded by her prophets who live on milk
and newspapers and do woundily talk Jew Socialism all day long; yet
is it proved by the same intellectual certitude and irrefragable
method that we shall not be caught before the year 1938 at the
earliest and with luck we may run ten years more: why then let us
make the best of the time we have, and sail, ride, travel, write,
drink, sing and all be friends together; and do you go about doing
good to the utmost of your power, as I heartily hope you will,
though from your faces I doubt it hugely. A blessing I wish you all.

One cannot do a greater service now, when a dangerous confusion of
thought threatens us with an estrangement of classes, than to
distinguish in all we write between Capitalism—the result of a
blind economic development—and the persons and motives of those who
happen to possess the bulk of the means of Production.

Capitalism may or may not have been a Source of Evil to Modern
Communities—it may have been a necessary and even a beneficent
phase in that struggle upward from the Brute which marks our
progress from Gospel Times until the present day—but whether it has
been a good or a bad phase in Economic Evolution, it is not
Scientific and it is not English to confuse the system with the
living human beings attached to it, and to contrast "Rich" and
"Poor," insisting on the supposed luxury and callousness of the one
or the humiliations and sufferings of the other.

To expose the folly—nay, the wickedness—of that attitude I have
but to take some very real and very human case of a rich man—a very
rich man—who suffered and suffered deeply merely
as
a man:
one whose suffering wealth did not and could not alleviate.

One very striking example of this human bond I am able to lay before
you, because the gentleman in question has, with fine human
sympathy, permitted his story to be quoted.

The only stipulation he made with me was first that I should conceal
real names and secondly that I should write the whole in as
journalistic and popular a method as possible, so that his very
legitimate grievance in the matter I am about to describe should be
as widely known as possible and also in order to spread as widely as
possible the lesson it contains that
the rich also are men
.

To change all names etc., a purely mechanical task, I easily
achieved. Whether I have been equally successful in my second object
of catching the breezy and happy style of true journalism it is for
my readers to judge. I can only assure them that my intentions are
pure.

* * * * *

I have promised my friend to set down the whole matter as it
occurred.

"The Press," he said to me, "is the only vehicle left by which one
can bring pressure to bear upon public opinion. I hope you can do
something for me…. You write, I believe", he added, "for the
papers?"

I said I did.

"Well," he answered, "you fellows that write for the newspapers have
a great advantage …!"

At this he sighed deeply, and asked me to come and have lunch with
him at his club, which is called "The Ragamuffins" for fun, and is
full of jolly fellows. There I ate boiled mutton and greens, washed
down with an excellent glass, or maybe a glass and a half, of
Belgian wine—a wine called Chateau Bollard.

I noticed in the room Mr. Cantor, Mr. Charles, Sir John Ebbsmith,
Mr. May, Mr. Ficks, "Joe" Hesketh, Matthew Fircombe, Lord Boxgrove,
old Tommy Lawson, "Bill", Mr. Compton, Mr. Annerley, Jeremy (the
trainer), Mr. Mannering, his son, Mr. William Mannering, and his
nephew Mr. "Kite" Mannering, Lord Nore, Pilbury, little Jack Bowdon,
Baxter ("Horrible" Baxter) Bayney, Mr. Claversgill, the solemn old
Duke of Bascourt (a Dane), Ephraim T. Seeber, Algernon Gutt,
Feverthorpe (whom that old wit Core used to call "_Feather_thorpe"),
and many others with whose names I will not weary the reader, for he
would think me too reminiscent and digressive were I to add to the list
"Cocky" Billings, "Fat Harry", Mr. Muntzer, Mr. Eartham, dear, courteous,
old-world Squire Howle, and that prime favourite, Lord Mann. "Sambo"
Courthorpe, Ring, the Coffee-cooler, and Harry Sark, with all the
Forfarshire lot, also fell under my eye, as did Maxwell, Mr. Gam——

However, such an introduction may prove overlong for the complaint I
have to publish. I have said enough to show the position my friend
holds. Many of my readers on reading this list will guess at once
the true name of the club, and may also come near that of my
distinguished friend, but I am bound in honour to disguise it under
the veil of a pseudonym or
nom de guerre
; I will call him Mr.
Quail.

Mr. Quail, then, was off to shoot grouse on a moor he had taken in
Mull for the season; the house and estate are well known to all of
us; I will disguise the moor under the pseudonym or
nom de
guerre
of "Othello". He was awaited at "Othello" on the evening
of the eleventh; for on the one hand there is an Act most strictly
observed that not a grouse may be shot until the dawn of August
12th, and on the other a day passed at "Othello" with any other
occupation but that of shooting would be hell.

Mr. Quail, therefore, proposed to travel to "Othello" by way of
Glasgow, taking the 9.47 at St. Pancras on the evening of the
10th—last Monday—and engaging a bed on that train.

It is essential, if a full, Christian and sane view is to be had of
this relation, that the reader should note the following details:—

Mr. Quail had
engaged
the bed. He had sent his cheque for it
a week before and held the receipt signed "T. Macgregor,
Superintendent".

True, there was a notice printed very small on the back of the
receipt saying the company would not be responsible in any case of
disappointment, overcrowding, accident, delay, robbery, murder, or
the Act of God; but my friend Mr. Quail very properly paid no
attention to that rubbish, knowing well enough (he is a J.P.) that a
man cannot sign himself out of his common-law rights.

In order to leave ample time for the train, my friend Mr. Quail
ordered dinner at eight—a light meal, for his wife had gone to the
Engadine some weeks before. At nine precisely he was in his carriage
with his coachman on the box to drive his horses, his man Mole also,
and Piggy the little dog in with him. He knows it was nine, because
he asked the butler what time it was as he left the dining-room, and
the butler answered "Five minutes to nine, my Lord"; moreover, the
clock in the dining-room, the one on the stairs and his own watch,
all corroborated the butler's statement.

He arrived at St. Pancras. "If," as he sarcastically wrote to the
company, "your
own clocks
are to be trusted," at 9.21.

So far so good. He had twenty-six minutes to spare. On his carriage
driving up to the station he was annoyed to discover an enormous
seething mob through which it was impossible to penetrate, swirling
round the booking office and behaving with a total lack of
discipline which made the confusion ten thousand times worse than it
need have been.

"I wish," said Mr. Quail to me later, with some heat, "I wish I
could have put some of those great hulking brutes into the ranks for
a few months! Believe me, conscription would work wonders!" Mr.
Quail himself holds a commission in the Yeomanry, and knows what he
is talking about. But that is neither here nor there. I only mention
it to show what an effect this anarchic mob produced upon a man of
Mr. Quail's trained experience.

His man Mole had purchased the tickets in the course of the day;
unfortunately, on being asked for them he confessed in some
confusion to having mislaid them.

Mr. Quail was too well bred to make a scene. He quietly despatched his
man Mole to the booking office with orders to get new tickets while
he waited for him at an appointed place near the door. He had not been
there five minutes, he had barely seen his man struggle through the
press towards the booking office, when a hand was laid upon his
shoulder and a policeman told him in an insolent and surly tone to
"move out of it." Mr. Quail remonstrated, and the policeman—who, I am
assured, was only a railway servant in disguise—
bodily and physically
forced him from the doorway.

To this piece of brutality Mr. Quail ascribes all his subsequent
misfortunes. Mr. Quail was on the point of giving his card, when he
found himself caught in an eddy of common people who bore him off
his feet; nor did he regain them, in spite of his struggles, until
he was tightly wedged against the wall at the further end of the
room.

Mr. Quail glanced at his watch, and found it to be twenty minutes to
ten. There were but seven minutes left before his train would start,
and his appointment with his man, Mole, was hopelessly missed unless
he took the most immediate steps to recover it.

Mr. Quail is a man of resource; he has served in South Africa, and
is a director of several companies. He noticed that porters pushing
heavy trollies and crying "By your leave" had some chance of forging
through the brawling welter of people. He hailed one such; and
stretching, as best he could, from his wretched fix, begged him to
reach the door and tell his man Mole where he was. At the same time—as
the occasion was most urgent (for it was now 9.44)—he held out half a
sovereign. The porter took it respectfully enough, but to Mr. Quail's
horror the menial had no sooner grasped the coin than he made off in
the opposite direction, pushing his trolley indolently before him and
crying "By your leave" in a tone that mingled insolence with a coarse
exultation.

Mr. Quail, now desperate, fought and struggled to be free—there
were but two minutes left—and he so far succeeded as to break
through the human barrier immediately in front of him. It may be he
used some necessary violence in this attempt; at any rate a woman of
the most offensive appearance raised piercing shrieks and swore that
she was being murdered.

The policeman (to whom I have before alluded) came jostling through
the throng, seized Mr. Quail by the collar, and crying "What!
Again?" treated him in a manner which (in the opinion of Mr. Quail's
solicitor) would (had Mr. Quail retained his number) have warranted
a criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile Mr. Quail's man Mole was anxiously looking for him, first
at the refreshment bar, and later at the train itself. Here he was
startled to hear the Guard say "Going?" and before he could reply he
was (according to his own statement) thrust into the train which
immediately departed, and did not stop till Peterborough; there the
faithful fellow assures us he alit, returning home in the early
hours of the morning.

Mr. Quail himself was released with a torn coat and collar, his
eye-glasses smashed, his watch-chain broken, and smarting under a
warning from the policeman not to be caught doing it again.

He went home in a cab to find every single servant out of the house,
junketing at some music-hall or other, and several bottles of wine,
with a dozen glasses, standing ready for them against their return,
on his own study table.

The unhappy story need not be pursued. Like every misfortune it bred
a crop of others, some so grievous that none would expose them to
the public eye, and one consequence remote indeed but clearly
traceable to that evening nearly dissolved a union of seventeen
years. I do not believe that any one of those who are for ever
presenting to us the miseries of the lower classes, would have met a
disaster of this sort with the dignity and the manliness of my
friend, and I am further confident that the recital of his suffering
here given will not have been useless in the great debate now
engaged as to the function of wealth in our community.

There was once a little Whig….

Ugh! The oiliness, the public theft, the cowardice, the welter of
sin! One cannot conceive the product save under shelter and in the
midst of an universal corruption.

Well, then, there was once a little Tory. But stay; that is not a
pleasant thought….

Well, then there was once a little boy whose name was Joseph, and
now I have launched him, I beg you to follow most precisely all that
he said, did and was, for it contains a moral. But I would have you
bear me witness that I have withdrawn all harsh terms, and have
called him neither Whig nor Tory. Nevertheless I will not deny that
had he grown to maturity he would inevitably have been a politician.
As you will be delighted to find at the end of his short biography,
he did not reach that goal. He never sat upon either of the front
benches. He never went through the bitter business of choosing his
party and then ratting when he found he had made a mistake. He never
so much as got his hand into the public pocket. Nevertheless read
his story and mark it well. It is of immense purport to the State.

* * * * *

When little Joseph was born, his father (who could sketch remarkably
well and had rowed some years before in his College boat) was
congratulated very warmly by his friends. One lady wrote to him:
"
Your
son cannot fail to add distinction to an already famous
name"—for little Joseph's father's uncle had been an Under
Secretary of State. Then another, the family doctor, said heartily,
"Well, well, all doing excellently; another Duggleton" (for little
Joseph's father's family were Duggletons) "and one that will keep
the old flag flying."

Little Joseph's father's aunt whose husband had been the Under
Secretary, wrote and said she was longing to see the
last
Duggleton
, and hinted that a Duggleton the more was sheer gain
to This England which Our Fathers Made. His father put his name down
that very day for the Club and met there Baron Urscher, who promised
every support "if God should spare him to the time when he might
welcome another Duggleton to these old rooms." The baron then
recalled the names of Charlie Fox and Beau Rimmel, that was to say,
Brummel. He said an abusive word or two about Mr. Gladstone, who was
then alive, and went away.