Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Four

As Mrs. Shimoda held a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, a portion of a woman's pale hand outstretched and pointing towards the distant prospect of Cherry blossoms, she savoured the pleasure in placing it snugly in its finely cut destination, and hovered for a moment over the image that was gradually taking form, a colourful panorama of three Japanese women in patterned kimonos. A gift from her son Paul. Puzzles, cross-word and jigsaw, the latter most especially, allowed her to forget the everyday worries and concerns of her life.

Her concentration was slightly offset as she heard a distinct thud coming from her tenants above. She had seen Amelia leave earlier in the morning, so she assumed it to be Duncan, or 'adorable Hugh.' It seemed to come from the kitchen area. She listened a bit longer, heard a faint sound like wood scraping against wood, and then returned her full attention to the puzzle looking for the edge of a blue sleeve.

Duncan Strand was on his hands and knees half-way inside a lower kitchen cupboard looking much like the stereotypical image of a plumber. Hugh looked on intently stationed near his slippered right foot. Duncan had knocked a hefty can of chick peas off an inner shelf while trying to ascertain the diminishment of dog food supplies. It had rolled to the edge of the cabinet, dislodging a portion of the cabinet wall. He thought it was odd that the wood was so loose, and having pulled the piece of wood away, he saw something glisten in the dim light. Pulling it out, he found it to be a package sealed in shrink-wrap plastic. Hugh looked rather perplexed when Duncan emerged from the darkness without a shiny circular object holding his food.

Duncan's first thought was that it might be a manual for a dishwasher that had fallen between the cabinet and the wall during a renovation period, but as he placed it on the table, he realized it was a white, eight and a half by eleven, unmarked envelope, shrink-wrapped in a fairly thick plastic. He was unsure what to do. It didn't look like it had weathered much time in its enclosure. At that moment, he heard Hugh behind him scratching the wood within the cabinet. He turned to see Hugh's little tail sticking out of the open cabinet door. Time to take Hugh on his walk and do a little shopping as he had planned. He was content to wait for Amelia's return when they could open it together. He had learned in his 53 years the importance of sharing moments.

As he put his jacket on and wrestled with the dog leash, he remembered a lesson in sharing which had been a memorable awakening. Walking down the long corridor towards the apartment of his girlfriend's parents, the unnerving sound of mahjong tiles being shuffled accompanied by the sounds of voices speaking Cantonese, he arrived as Yiyin opened the door still speaking to her family preoccupied with their game, her supple brown leather jacket, plaid skirt and leather boots a picture of sophistication. Their long descent in the elevator where he mentioned he had picked up the pictures he had taken of them in and around Hong Kong and Macau earlier that week, and her severe reaction on hearing that he had looked at the photographs without her. His defence that he had wanted to make sure they had turned out had been interpreted as an unworthy excuse. It had been one of the defining moments in their relationship. Photographs. She had refused to look at them. Mystified as to whether it was her nature or her culture that was so formal in its expectations, he had sat in a daze while she drove fiercely down the steep curving roads, shifting gears with precision and skill. Eventually she did look at the photographs, but they were forever tainted with his selfishness and lack of understanding. Looking back, he saw he was so young, so naive. He knew so little of her relations with her family. He had felt sorry for her seeing she had been brought up in an old fashioned family where the sons were sent for higher education but not the daughter, but he could never decipher the inner workings of their relationships. Not speaking the language, he had always been in the shadows when conversations took place, never quite knowing what they or Yiyin were thinking. He felt, however, that this lesson in sharing had been the moment when he relinquished the vision of his own path for that of two.

He picked Hugh up and made his way down the staircase to the front door, and as Hugh licked his chin, he thought accommodation was a key to growth and maturity. He placed Hugh on the stoop, and they made they way down to the sidewalk. When he was just a kid, he remembered wanting to be old, mature, on his own, established, in control of his life, images of a pipe smoking sailor on the high seas, or an older man in a library surrounded by books, leather chairs, and paintings of seas and ships. It was the hard life lessons in between that he, and everyone, had to weather to get to those so called golden years. Life itself. The irony now, was at the age of 53, he was beginning to think more fondly of his younger selves. The robust health of twenty-five or even thirty-five looked very good.

They made their way along their little quiet side street, and turned right and briskly made their way up to that much reduced boulevard, Dorchester. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and CSIS building on the far corner, was not unattractive in its concrete and glass exterior. It could easily pass for an apartment complex or a small office tower. As Hugh sniffed along the grassy verge at the corner, Duncan mused that he had never seen a Mountie in formal outfit in the vicinity, only men and woman in smart suits and business wear. Not even a flashy tie or two. He often thought that when he was buying his bagels at a nearby shop the customer in front of him could quite likely have been perusing some top secret documents that morning, decoding some message from an operative: “Golf on Sunday?” Their jobs, he imagined, could be just as mundane as any. He was reminded of a sentence in Ulysses, where the viscerally grounded Bloom refers to a policeman as prime sausage. You have to be prime sausage to be a Mountie Bloom would have said.

Up Greene Avenue they walked, Hugh getting all the attention, the oohs and aahs at how small, how cute, how, yes, adorable he was. He stopped in front of the old Double Hook bookshop, their old graphic icon still above the door, a part of the old building's gingerbread. It was now Babar, a children's book store. He wondered if Yiyin had ever had children. Her marriage and whirlwind honeymoon in 1983 had been the last he'd heard of her. She could be living anywhere. Her children could be lawyers, doctors, engineers by now. Pedestrians passed the man seemingly lost in thought on the sidewalk as if he were a statue with a dog attached. His eyes were now looking behind and above the shop where Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Westmount Square rose up like a dark sail. For all he knew, she could be living there. Standing at one of those windows looking out towards the western sky, wondering what to do on such a glorious Sunday. He had known early on, that their relationship was not for keeps. They had been so different. He hoped she was happy wherever she was.

“Qu'elle est mignonne,” he heard a woman's voice behind him say. Turning, he saw an older woman and her husband looking down at Hugh, whose tail revealed himself appreciative of the adoration. Duncan smiled and said "bonjours", but he hesitated to correct the woman who was now petting Hugh, by telling her his name, “comme Hugh Laurie,” seeing that he might enter a maze of unnecessary confusion, not sure if Hugh Laurie was a known quantity. The couple smiled and sauntered off murmuring to each other. Only now, did he think he could have used Hugh Grant as a reference. He was quite sure the latter had a reputation beyond language. He looked at Hugh and tried to see if there was any resemblance. Probably not. But charm he had. Yes, he had Hugh Grant's charm.

As he looked down at Hugh, he realized he was standing on a piece of street art in coloured chalk. It was a square of pale yellow with a portrait of Babar, his hat and clothes in muted colours. The clever artist had also drawn lines over the artwork to resemble a jigsaw puzzle. A very talented artist. Duncan stepped back for he had been standing on Babar's trunk.

The sound of music drew his attention to the cars stopped for the light, a dark model Audi with its windows down was playing a song he recognized. Julie, his young secretary at the shop, kept him up to date on the latest music, for she brought her own music to listen to, and she was a fan of many modern bands, including the composer of the music coming from the expensive car. A song called Only the Young by the unusually named artist Brandon Flowers. The coincidence was strange. Just last week at the office he had heard the song, and going to Julie's desk, had found her watching the video for the song while she was on her lunch break, a video showing high wire artists which reminded him of the Cirque du Soleil. And now the song again. He felt a bit dizzy as he watched the car drive slowly off, two young women with dark sunglasses, blond hair in the breeze, smiling in his direction, but not for him, for his adorable Hugh.

© ralph patrick mackay

Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Three

Dust motes rose in the morning sun from the faux-fur slipper--a sacrifice of Amelia's--which Hugh grappled with on the kitchen floor. He paused to look up at Duncan who sat at the kitchen table, pen poised over a company note pad, Strand Cordage Ltd., with the beginnings of a list, Bananas. Hugh sighed and rested his nose in the slipper, the illusion of a rabbit between his paws fading. The human scent, the reassuring scent of Amelia, a balm to his intrinsic instincts. They shared eye contact, blinking in unison, both thinking of her.

Bananas. Duncan tried to think of the other items they needed which had occurred to him only minutes ago, but they seemed elusive as fruit flies. Amelia would be greeting her friend Jacqueline at about this moment, kissing each other on the cheek, admiring each others outfit and entering their favourite café for a little brunch and conversation. He pictured them, two translators from different factions, exchanging stories of recalcitrant authors, manipulative editors and unruly deadlines. He heard the stories too, but it was different when she shared them with Jacqueline. He could sympathize, be a sounding board, be understanding and comforting, but her friend could truly identify. He was glad they had met at a conference.

Bananas, Cucumbers. He looked down and wondered if there was a theme here. Baguette. . . dish soap, capers, artichoke hearts. That was good enough to get him going he thought.

The radio played softly in the background, an eighties song. The eighties, a nostalgia dovetailed with commercial interests, were popular again.

After having looked through the weekly flyers for sales, he turned over a few pages of the free arts paper and noticed an advertisement for the latest Cirque du Soleil show. He closed his eyes as he gathered all the papers into a pile, and sat quietly as memories rose up like bubbles, a natural effervescence in search of release. He took the papers and placed them in the small recycling bin under the sink, and then stood at the back door trying to remember the exact year. It had been quite cold he remembered. Late January or February. Yes, the year he believed was 1982. February 1982.

He saw his twenty-three year old self emerge from the Metro station on a cold dark evening, uncertain, anxious and late. The Maurice Richard Arena lay before him in the distance like a dimly lit space ship. He felt for his wallet in his back pocket where his ticket to see the Great Circus of China was neatly ensconced. Entering the building, he was enveloped in the exotic and strange music of the east, gongs, cymbals, erhu and other instruments putting speed into his steps for the show had already begun. An attendant seemingly annoyed at his appearance pointed the way with his flash light down the aisle and to the right. Seeing a few seats to the right on the third row, he begged forgiveness in his best French as he awkwardly progressed towards them. A few grumbles and sighs arose from those less empathetic, not seeing themselves in such a position. Feeling quite fortunate to have an empty seat beside him, he draped his winter coat over it and gave himself over to the wonderment of this very special performance.

Never before had he experienced such skill and beauty combined. The young Chinese women were very attractive in their colourful silk outfits and exaggerated eye make-up. They twirled plates on multiple long thin sticks, smiling demurely, their dark eyes radiant with controlled emotion as they walked with graceful movement.

The next thing he realized, there was a white light flashing in his direction and he looked to his left to see the attendant making his way towards him. Not his night he thought. He asked for his ticket. Duncan blushed with embarrassment in the dark. The anxiety which had risen like a spasm, began to spin like the performer's plates as the attendant informed him that Duncan's ticket was for the first row. A domino effect in motion, he watched the attendant make his way between the stacking seats to talk to a young man in the front row. Duncan saw the dark outlines of two people in the aisle waiting for the seats he occupied, and he also noticed the older woman MC of the show looking over his way, wondering why there was a commotion. The attendant waved him forward with that most ancient of hand gestures. As he approached his real seat, the young man who had for reasons unknown placed himself in the first row, passed Duncan and they shared an exchange of looks that remained vivid to this day. He could see his face as if it were the reflection in the window before him. There was no animosity to be read from his passing expression. A tinge of guilt at having ousted his impostor made him say, "pardonnez-moi" as they passed. Sitting down, he felt the residual warmth of the now phantom occupant.

He was not one to draw attention to himself. He had been quite content in the third row, yet here he was, ushered into the limelight that splashed the first row around the ring. Some of the performers and a few of the musicians sitting sideways on the curtained stage behind, looked his way, naturally inquisitive in the scene taking place. For a moment it made him feel like a VIP being shown his seat, arriving fashionably late, and this thought seemed to give him confidence to overcome his embarrassment. He pretended to look slightly important, and was pleased he had dressed in his fine wool turtle neck sweater and sports jacket.

Then two pretty young women came out, placed themselves on their backs on curved platforms, and began to juggle an assortment of large items with their slippered feet: chairs, enormous colourful Chinese vases, boxes, and carpets. Their finely contoured posteriors were elevated by the platforms and at a slight angle towards Duncan's seat. He felt a rise in his temperature and heart rate both due to such breath taking skill and for his trying not to to stare at their shapely physiques and keep his eyes on the spinning objects above them. At one moment during their twirling of the fine woven carpets around in circles like horizontal dervishes, the performer closest to him looked sideways and caught his eye for a few seconds.  The eye contact brought him closer to the experience, overcoming the spectacle with the personal, overcoming their divergent cultures with a shared moment. She was not just a circus act, but a young woman behind the make-up.

An evening filled with a display of 2,000 year old athletic astonishments: young male acrobats flying through flaming hoops, martial arts with swords, high wire acts, contortionists bending themselves in half and balancing items on their heads, and the rousing finale of a bicycle slowly circling the ring picking up a few acrobats each time until its metamorphosis into a towering tree-like form, a colourful peacock with its feathers expanded to full extent, left him in awe.

Duncan brought his hands up to his face and rubbed his eyes. Thirty years ago, he thought. It seemed like another life. The young man he had supplanted was, he believed, the man who was now worth almost three billion dollars. It was unlikely he would ever know for certain that it was the future founder of the Cirque du Soleil, but the resemblance was there. Who knows, it could very well have been a bartender from Beloeil, but it was Duncan's personal myth, a cautionary tale in making him mindful of opportunity, even though, at the time, he was not a street performer finding influences from the east, but a young man having escaped a family business and adrift from a relationship with a young woman from Hong Kong.

© ralph patrick mackay

Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Two

"What about Hugh?"

"What about Hugh?"

Before his wife could respond to his laconic parry to her initial question, they heard Hugh coming down the hallway. A pleasurable sound, his little paws with their nails softly clipping along the oak floorboards. Even their landlady who lived alone beneath them found it reassuring.

Though they had  been recommended to her as good tenants, they didn't know that Hugh was possibly the deciding factor in their getting the flat. Mrs. Shimoda, who owned the duplex, had interviewed them as if they were applying for a job, a sheet of questions and her pen hovering over a point system they could not decipher. It had reminded her husband of a short story with the archangel Michael interviewing the latest inductee to heaven, a mystery writer who had been murdered.
"Loud music?"
No, they had both assured her, they didn't like it themselves. Her husband had admitted he collected classical and jazz records, but he only used headphones so as to appreciate the instrumentation and nuances of the sound.
"Parties?"
No, again. They rarely entertained, and if they did, it would be for a small quiet dinner party of not more than two other couples. They explained further that they were both quiet, mature, bookish types who spent most of their free time reading and drinking tea. Mrs. Shimoda had made a number of marks on her papers at these revelations.
"Pets?"
They had looked at each other as if they had forgotten a crucial piece of paper. His wife had taken the lead by revealing that they did have a miniature dachshund named Hugh.
"Miniature Hugh," she had repeated, pen poised over her papers. "Does he bark?"
Rarely, if at all, they had assured her. "We can bring him over so you could make your decision whether he is acceptable," her husband had offered, adding, "he is quite adorable."
"Adorable Hugh," she had said quietly.

They agreed to bring Hugh over that afternoon and sure enough, Hugh proved adorable. Thence forward she referred to him as 'adorable Hugh.' They didn't know at the time that Mrs. Shimoda's son also collected records, and her late husband had had a childhood pet dog named Itsuke, a full size dachshund.

She had then shown them her garden. It was not a large backyard, but it was exquisitely laid out with flowering shrubs, small trees, wooden plank walkways, large potted plants, a rock and sand feature and the  soothing sound of rippling water. Hugh had perked up at the sight of the garden and dipped his nose in the small pond of cool refreshing water before seeing a squirrel on the fence and advancing as if protecting his new territory. The squirrel had puffed its tail, shaking it up and down like a lion tamer's whip, before deciding to scamper along and leap into a tree, thinking, quite possibly, it had never seen such a big squirrel before.

Mrs. Shimoda had smiled.

She had shown them a section of her garden where she grew tomatoes and basil plants, touching the basil leaves and releasing their fragrant pungent scent into the air, a scent that would remind them of that moment. She had told them they were free to help themselves. She also mentioned that Hugh would have to take his ablutions, however, along the sidewalks and in the parks nearby. They had not thought otherwise.

The four of them had stood in the garden sharing a moment of rare stillness, with only the sparrows chattering above them in the dappled sun. As he breathed in the fragrance of the garden, Duncan was reminded of the scene in The Decay of the Angel, where the now aged protagonist of the Mishima tetralogy meets the Abbess of the temple.  Having his literary memory trying to place itself in his day to day life, made him wonder if it enhanced his reality by adding colour, light, and nuance, or if it diminished his reality by obscuring it with layers of fictional shadow.

They had then noticed  movement  beside what was soon to be their new balcony. An elderly couple approached the wrought iron railing, both well-dressed and looking slightly apprehensive. Mrs. Shimoda raised her arm in greeting and they waved back. "I feel autumn will arrive early this year," the old man had said, supporting himself on the railing like a priest at his pulpit, issuing dire admonishments of fire and brimstone to his flock. Mrs. Shimoda had responded that it could well be. She knew this was his first lob over the fence, and the ball was in her court, so she introduced her new tenants, Amelia, Duncan and their dog Hugh to her neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Stirling. The Stirlings had wished them well and hoped they found the neighbourhood to their liking, saying it was a quiet, close knit little group of people on the small street. Amelia and Duncan had thanked them with many smiles, head shaking and waves preceding their entry into Mrs. Shimoda's flat to sign the documents.

They both looked to the doorway as Hugh made his appearance. Hugh looked from on to the other trying to figure out why his name was in the air.
"Yes old Hugh, we're going away and we have to find a place for you," he said, scratching Hugh's head. "We can't leave you here all alone can we?"
Amelia picked him up and gave him a hug before placing him on her lap and stroked his long back. She said that they could ask Nancy to take care of Hugh while they were away.
"Nancy, hmm," was his response.
"Or your brother perhaps." she said.
The thought of his brother George taking Hugh for over three weeks left him feeling slightly nauseated. An image came to him of Hugh on a couch licking George's fingers covered with that cheese coating they put on puffed cheesy bits, and watching loud sporting events on television. Hugh might never be the same. Who could they rely on? A kennel was out of the question for them. All he could offer was another "hmm," thinking it was too early in the day for a difficult conversation. He decided to change the subject, one of his reliable modes of interchange.

"I had the oddest dream last night," he revealed.
His wife sipped her tea and looked at him intently, seeing through his ploy, but being too tired to persist said, "Really, what was it about?"
"Well," he said, feeling much more at ease, "we had just entered this enormous sumptuous room, gorgeous period furnishings, rugs, paintings, fine bindings, a veritable grand country home." He liked to include his wife in his dreams even if she was not present in all of them, for the thought of his being independent in that other realm might signal desires which were not present in actuality, might put doubts of his loyalty and solidarity in play. The thought that his wife might think he was gallivanting about in his dreams with movie stars and strange women, leading a bachelor existence in effect, might be a disruption to their equilibrium. But in this case, she was indeed in his dream as she often was, although, seeing and recognizing faces was more of a feeling than a direct visual sense.

"You sat in a lovely tapestry chair behind me to my left, and I sat down at an extraordinarily carved harpsichord, fine in-layed woods and an elaborate painting on the inside panel. The keyboard was unusual for it had only brown keys, as if the white and black had melded. They looked and felt like some rare wood which was very odd. Then I began to play. Beautifully. The keyboard took on a strange form in that it extended far to the left of me, seemingly twice the length of a modern piano keyboard, and I was pulling it back and forth like an old typewriter to play the lower chords. There I was playing away, and leaning back on the bench to look out a window to my right. I noticed a statue on the lawn, which made me think it must be of the original owner of this stately home, and this gave me a frisson of nervousness realizing that this was not our house. The statue then came to life. He was a tall bearded man with a cane and a book under his arm. He stepped down from his plinth and walked towards the window. The former statue peered into the house, and began talking, but to whom I couldn't say. Then I noticed two other former statues, at least I felt they were, walking on the lawn. I felt we had just waltzed into this beautiful room and I had the audacity to start playing this rare instrument, and wake up these statues from their statue existence."
"And then what happened?"
"A stately women appeared in the entrance to the room and approached the harpsichord, bending over slightly and leaning on the edge. I didn't feel she was angry though."
"And . . ." she probed.
"I woke up," he said.
 After a pause, he resumed, "It just hit me how quiet dreams are. 'As quiet as a dream' would be a good expression don't you think? Do you hear in your dreams"
"Yes, I think I do," she said, "or at least the mental equivalent of sound. But that is a fascinating dream."
"I know, where did that one come from? Sometimes I think I must be dipping into other people's dreams." It was only later that night while looking through his bookshelves, and coming across a paperback collection of J. G. Ballard's best science fiction stories and looking at the contents page seeing The Garden of Time, that he thought there might be a slight connection. But he hadn't read the story for years. And he had dreamed the dream before coming across the paperback.  It was one of those moments when he realised how much the unconscious mind was working away like the proverbial mysterious individual behind the curtain.

They both sat drinking their tea while Hugh propped his little front legs on the kitchen table and wagged his tail against Amelia's ribs, oblivious to the uncertainty of his fate and the strange inner nature of humans.

© ralph patrick mackay

Long Poem Excerpt

I have been working on a long poem sequence which may go on for some time.  Some poetry comes quickly. These poems feel like sculpture to me. Like terracotta or clay, sometimes marble, chips flying here and there. I thought I would share the sixth in the sequence.

-A lyric sadness in the air. Mozart?

Or Haydn? Almost sounds like Arvo Part.

-She is superb this busker near the curb.

-A balm for equine meditated flight.

-She raises all our darkness to the light.

We join the crowd. The pigeons we disturb

Advance and peck the concrete looking lost.

Our coins, festina lente, tempest-tost.

 

The sharps and flats and pitch are anchors thrown

To still our stride, like snares of sound our own

Hearts recognize. Becalmed in placid seas

Of melody, she bows us into port,

Slow sarabandes for landfalls soft. They court

Our wayward variations with a breeze

Of interlude. You take my arm and draw

Me on, exempla of Newtonic Law.

© ralph patrick mackay

Yes Cecil: a Long Story Short, Part One

While re-reading a compilation of Ford Madox Ford's various books of memoirs and reminiscences he found himself periodically interrupting his wife's reading in order to share some of the more amusing impressions, stories, and anecdotes with her; as he did so, he began to experience the edge of a vague déjà vu, and he realised, quietly to himself, that when he first read the book, he had fallen into the same pattern of reading aloud the very same passages to his wife, leading him to wonder, quietly to himself, if he had entered his repetitive dotage.

He thought, however, that they both realised, quietly to themselves, that though he may not yet be in his repetitive dotage, they were in fact revisiting a memory whose due date had passed, leaving them, as it were, in its pale shadow, a shadow with out defined edges. Then again, his wife's recall was rather good, so it was quite possible she was cognizant of the repetition, and, being the kind person she was, did not stem the flow of his interruptions for they produced both an echo and an anticipation of the anecdotes and stories which stirred her memory and disrupted her reading of the latest freshest novel of the day, a novel her husband was unlikely to venture near, stuck as she sometimes thought he was, although not wholly, in the past.

He found some of the most amusing stories in the book involved Henry James.  The Master and humour did not generally come to his mind at the same time, certainly not the broad concepts of humour as found in Wodehouse or Rabelais, but there was a wit and an inner laughter that seemed to be living between the lines of Henry James's novels and stories, and as he experienced the portraits of the author as seen through the eyes of le jeune homme modeste, Henry James's fond moniker for Ford Madox Ford (or Hueffer as he was then known), the more he realised that these portraits were rather like archaeological digs into the Man himself. They were vivid and evocative enough to make him want to have been the proverbial fly, and travel back in time, if only for a few moments, just to witness the verbal and behavioural extremes of the Master and his moods, which seemingly could shift on a moment between sardonic wit, mimicry and comic tale telling, to blazing-eyed anger over some insignificant occurrence.

Ford was living in Winchelsea, Sussex, he told his wife, and Henry James was at Lamb House in Rye, a few miles away. His wife knew all about Lamb House and dreamed of visiting the house where one of her favourite authors, Rumer Godden, had also lived. She reminded her husband of her knowledge of Lamb House and Rumer Godden and prefaced her reminder with a playfully emphasized phrase, "Yes Cecil". This two word phrase was a private joke between them, the origins of which found their source in the poet C. Day Lewis. In showing his wife an edition of Modern Love by George Meredith edited by C. Day Lewis which he had bought when he was quite young, he had explained in an aside, that the C. stood for Cecil. She knew this of course, and so whenever he recounted some literary bibs and bobs thinking she would be fresh ears to such facts, she used the phrase, "Yes Cecil". He knew his wife had a wider knowledge and a finer recall than his so he generally anticipated--at least he thought he did--and enjoyed the playful quality of this game.

"Oh, yes, sorry dear, Rumer Godden, that's right. Wouldn't it be lovely to visit? I wonder if it they rent out rooms? Wouldn't it be wonderful to wake up in Lamb House and look out the window upon the garden that Godden and James both gazed upon. It would be a great B&B don't you think?" Although as he mentioned this idea, he did think it rather blasphemous of him. His wife mused aloud that she thought the house was lived in, but was open to the public at certain times of the year. She privately envied the individual or individuals who lived there and wondered how they found themselves in such a position as housekeepers of Lamb House.  What good fortune to be at the axis of a requirement, and a desire. There must be others, she thought, like herself, who had structured a life near their origins, and yet occasionally longed to escape to another way of living in another country.

"It seems," her husband continued, " that there was a novelist named Mrs. W. K. Clifford, who was friends with both Ford Madox Ford and Henry James, and, living in London as she was, she was concerned for the well-being of the older author living in the wilds of Sussex, and asked Ford to look in on him and keep her posted. It seems, however, that Ford wasn't keen." He then read from the book a choice bit of Ford's reflections:

I was in those days of an extreme shyness and the aspect of the Master, bearded as he was then and wearing, as he habitually did in those days, a great ulster and a square felt hat, was not one to dissipate that youthful attribute. I must have been seeing him in the streets of Rye on and off for eighteen months after Mrs. W. K. Clifford had asked me to go and see him.

Her husband's reading-aloud voice was good for prose but she found his voice for reading poetry often as not drifted off into a rather purplish phrasing and accented in an English that reminded her of Alan Bates reading A. E. Houseman, or perhaps Derek Jacobi reading a menu. He continued on with another quote:

For myself, I disliked virtue, particularly when it was pressed between the leaves of a book. I doubt if, at the date, when I was twenty three or -four, I had read anything of his and the admiration that was wildly showered from Bloomsbury in the direction of Rye made me rather stubbornly determined not to so so for some time. I daresay I was not a very agreeable young man. But unbounded admiration quite frequently renders its object disagreeable to outsiders.

That last observation of Ford's was too true he thought. He re-read the previous phrase, "I daresay I was not a very agreeable young man," and thought how it might be used in a humourous way in lieu of describing that group of 1950s authors, the "angry young men," as that group of 'not very agreeable young men,' a phrase more akin to an Oscar Wilde play perhaps, or a remark by a character in a E. F. Benson novel. "Well, Ford gave in finally" he continued, "and was received at Lamb House for dinner." He read further along before chuckling to himself after reading about Henry James's butler. His wife put her book down on her lap, and crossed her arms realising her husband was in this for the long haul. "What did James do now?" she inquired. "Well, it is his butler actually" and he read her the anecdote about the suitably eccentric butler:

His methods of service were startling. He seemed to produce silver entrée dishes from his coat-tails, wave them circularly in the air and arrest them within an inch of your top waist-coat button. At each such presentation James would exclaim with cold distaste: 'I have told you not to do that!' and the butler would retire to stand before the considerable array of plate that decorated the side-board.

Laughter coming from a bedroom at 12: 30 in the morning could be interpreted as odd, but their window was closed and their elderly neighbors, they believed, long retired. 

He related to his wife the fact that Ford found himself to be the trusted autumn, winter and spring friend with whom James could consult and converse. Summers for Henry James were devoted to visitors of a more distinguished background. Their friendship included many excursions between Winchelsea and Rye on foot when such means of transportation still retained a pastoral perambulating quality. Her husband resumed his reading aloud from the book:

But, as soon as the leaves fell, there he was back on my door-step, asking innumerable advices--as to his investments, as to what would cure the parasites of a dog, as to brands of cigars, as to where to procure cordwood, as to the effects of the Corn Laws on the landed gentry of England . . . And I would accompany him, after he had had a cup of tea, back to his Ancient Town; and next day I would go over and drink a cup of tea with him and wait whilst he finished dictating one of his sentences to his amanuensis and then he would walk back with me to Winchelsea. . . . In that way we each got a four-mile walk a day. . . .

The husband stopped reading and stared at the wall facing the end of the bed where a print of a veduta of Florence failed to capture his attention. "Is that it for James?" she inquired. "I just had the oddest thought," he said, "I could live in Winchelsea, and you could live in Rye, preferably Lamb House, and we could be writers and visit each other like James and Ford. Wouldn't that be interesting? Certainly it would keep us fit walking between the towns." It was certainly a strange concept she thought but she didn't go there. "Somehow I don't think the road, and its traffic, will be as pastoral as it was over a hundred years ago" she ventured, though she liked the romantic dream quality of the suggestion. "If we were rich, of course." He was silently contemplating the possibilities. "Well, we could just try it for a holiday, check out the lay of the land. See if the locals are friendly, the sheep aggressive and all that." They both returned to their books in silence, the fanciful notion settling in their minds like the sheets upon their bed.


© ralph patrick mackay 2012.

Cicada Summer

In casual conversation with a neighbor on the sidewalk before my house, he noticed--keen sighted for a man in his early 70s--an insect on the tree trunk behind me on my lawn. I turned to investigate and discovered a cicada newly emerged from its simulacrum, drying its new-born wings beside the phantom of its old body which had crawled out of the ground after perhaps six years as a grub and nymph. It had crawled up the trunk about seven feet from the base and attached itself there facing the street.  An odd and rather vulnerable place. It was a rare chance, I thought, to see a cicada beside its cast off shell, and I am grateful to my neighbor's sharp sight. Our conversation continued apace, some of it dealing with cicadas, all the while I was thinking I should try and take a picture. We parted and I did manage to take a few photographs. My camera, an old, inexpensive digital model, was not adequate for the job, but enough to capture the moment.  A few minutes after taking the pictures, the cicada disappeared.  Now when I listen to the cicada in the trees, I think it might be this very one, together with the other harbingers of heat in their short life of a few weeks.

I wrote two haiku inspired by this sight:

New born wings, poised, warm,
Beside aged nymphal shroud
Clinging to silence.


Shrill the pine tree sings
Above silent bamboo chimes,
Shadowless and still.

©ralph patrick mackay, July 21, 2012.

I have long had an interest in Japanese literature and culture even before discovering Lafcadio Hearn in the late 1970s. In his Shadowings, he devotes a chapter to Sémi, the Japanese cicada.




Anyone wanting to learn more about the unusual lives of Cicada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has an excellent site devoted to this fascinating insect.

Librarians in Lit: A Periodical Perusal

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pnin is delightful and yet dolefully melancholic too. There is a scene in Chapter 3, Section 6, where Pnin is on his way to his "favorite haunt," the Waindell College Library.  There he is, almost losing his balance as he crosses the campus on the icy flag stone path and up the slippery library steps. The requisite campus squirrel makes an appearance stage left, or right. It is Tuesday, post lunch, and his afternoon at the library is before him. Pnin, with a query, stands before Mrs Thayer, the librarian:

"Mrs. Fire, permit me to ask something or other.  This card which I received yesterday--could you maybe tell me who is the other reader?"
"Let me check."
She checked.  The other reader proved to be Timofey Pnin; Volume 18 had been requested by him the Friday before. It was also true that this Volume 18 was already charged to this Pnin, who had had it since Christmas and now stood with his hands upon it, like an ancestral picture of a magistrate.
"It can't be!" cried Pnin.  "I requested on Friday Volume 19, year 1947, not 18, year 1940."
"But look--you wrote Volume 18. Anyway, 19 is still being processed. Are you keeping this?"
"Eighteen, 19," muttered Pnin. "There is not great difference! I put the year correctly, that is important! Yes, I still need 18--and send to me a more effishant card when 19 available."
"Growling a little, he took the unwieldy, abashed book to his favourite alcove and laid it down there, wrapped in his muffler.


Perhaps only employees of libraries would appreciate the fun of this passage, all too common in every day work.

The next selection may seem dated, but it is so rich in memory of old libraries and odd patrons:

He was still at the blissful stage of collecting his material; and many good young people considered it a treat and an honor to see Pnin pull out a catalogue drawer from the comprehensive bosom of a card cabinet and take it, like a big nut, to a secluded corner and there make a quiet mental meal of it, now moving his lips in soundless comment, critical, satisfied, perplexed and now lifting his rudimentary eyebrows and forgetting them there, left high upon his spacious brow where they remained long after all trace of displeasure or doubt had gone.


And last, this humorous bit, almost a precursor to a Mr. Bean skit:

Before leaving the library, he decided to look up the correct pronunciation of "interested," and discovered that Webster, or at least the battered 1930 edition lying on a table in the Browsing Room, did not place the stress accent on the third syllable, as he did.  He sought a list of errata at the back, failed to find one, and, upon closing the elephantine lexicon, realized with a pang that he had immured somewhere in it the index card with notes that he had been holding all this time.  Must now search and search through 2500 thin pages, some torn! On hearing his interjection, suave Mr. Case, a lank, pink-faced librarian with sleek white hair and a bow tie, strolled up, took up the colossus by both ends, inverted it, and gave it a slight shake, whereupon it shed a pocket comb, a Christmas card, Pnin's notes, and a gauzy wraith of tissue paper, which descended with infinite listlessness to Pnin's feet and was replaced by Mr. Case on the Great Seals of the United States and Territories.


Since it is Friday, perhaps Mr. Bean would not be out of place.

Terza Rimas for Virgil Burnett's Terra Cottas

There is to me something so incomprehensible in death, that I can neither speak nor think on the subject. -Lord Byron in a letter to John Hobhouse, August 10, 1811.

When we heard of the death of Virgil Burnett, my wife and I were overcome with a great sadness.  We had both been thinking about him, he was in our thoughts.

Books brought us all together. He came to our bookshop and often visited the library where my wife works and we always enjoyed his visits. We were not close friends but we did cherish the occasional invitations to his beautiful house and the fine dry white wine he shared, much like his wit. We both have fond memories of his graciousness and kindness.

For a number of years I was selling a small portion of his personal library on consignment.  I enjoyed sitting at a table at the back of his living room cataloguing his books and having his youthful cat, Arlequino, constantly curl his way around me as I worked.

Virgil's terra cotta sculptures fascinated me.  In a letter to me, in thanks for the poem I wrote about his sculptures, he said, "I am very flattered and so are my clay ladies, vainglorious baggages that they are." His wit and humour always hovering nearby. The poem is an acrostic one and he said, in his usual understated manner, "I have never been acrosticized before--not to my knowledge anyway."  The small appendages to his sentences, little afterthoughts and reflections, are to be found in his novels and stories as well as in his speech. His very style. Le style est l'homme meme. His patience too can be seen in the lines of his illustrations.

Many, many, many people will miss him. I know we will.

Terza Rimas for Virgil's Terra Cottas

Voluptuous embodiments alight,
In stasis, dancing to an ancient song;
Redeeming Love, and Fortune's round delight.
Gyrating with this earthen world, yet strong
In vigil, burnished with a fixed desire,
Life-giving forms to guide our souls along.

By silent stillness, sculptures do inspire,
Unveiling what is ripe within.  One's hope
Renews, that truth and beauty do conspire.
Noetic visions through the figure's scope.
Eternal shapes transcendent into thought,
Transparent with the weight of mythic trope,

Though sensual, through tactile passions sought.

-ralph patrick mackay

feburary 2006.

Peter Brooke By Any Other Name

When I find a book by an author I am unfamiliar with, it is a good thing.  A chance to fill in the blank space of my seemingly ever increasing ignorance.  A Rose by Any Other Name by Anthony Carson (Penguin Books No. 1847, published in 1962, originally Methuen, 1960).  Who in the world is Anthony Carson I wondered?  The cover art was by the familiar and ever whimsical Quentin Blake.  Perhaps the only cover of a Penguin Book that extends over the edges of the center panel (prior to the Marber grid), but then again, my knowledge of Penguin covers is of course not complete.  Quentin Blake has drawn a circle around the Publisher's device and made radiating lines outward to suggest a sun.  Brilliant.  The Penguin looks rather surprised, is brought into the drawing and confronted with a mad poet on a bicycle.  It suits the text very well.  Short chapters of humorous autobiographical tales involving much travel and experience.  Experience with a capital "E" perhaps.

Anthony Carson, Anthony Carson?  I couldn't place the name.  It is a good feeling to find something new, but the other side of the coin--there's generally one--is that I felt at once rather shaky in my knowledge. Luckily no one in the past has ever asked me whether I liked the work of Anthony Carson.  "Anthony who?" I would have replied honestly; or if I was dishonest, which I'm not, I could have faked my way saying "Oh, yes, wonderful stuff.  Didn't like his last book though.  Losing it mate, losing it," and then changed the subject to an author I did know something about.

His real name was Peter Brooke.  Well, it was the name given to him by his 'preparatory school headmaster' when, at the age of seven, during the WWI, his family name of 'von Bohr' was deemed rather inconvenient as the other children began to accuse him of being a German spy.  Peter Brooke it was.  Such is the past. During the twenties he was a sort of remittance man in New Zealand and Australia where many of his tales of vagabondage are derived.  His days as a swagman in the outback, and trying to shear sheep as a pseudo-Kiwi, and that sort of thing.  Experience with a capital "E." Truly.

It seems he was a denizen of Fitzrovia and Soho, raising elbows at the The Wheatsheaf pub with Dylan Thomas, Julian Maclaren-Ross, George Barker, Peter Vansittart, Mulk Raj Anand, Fred Urquhart, the Canadian poet Paul Potts, Meary Tambimuttu, and later, Quentin Crisp, who were all perhaps trying to live up to the earlier denizens of the Fitzroy Tavern, Roy Campbell, Anthony Powell, Jack Lindsay and Patrick Hamilton.

Peter Brooke published his first novel, Our Lady of the Earthquakes (London: Cresset Press, 1940), but it was not successful.  He did achieve some financial success co-writing a song however: Violin: Sweet and Low Played the Bow written by Allan Gray and Peter Brooke, (Sydney: J. Albert and Son, 1941.) After WWII, he was involved in various jobs and began to write humorous travel books under the name "Anthony Carson."  I don't know how he came to choose this name.  Another blank space. Perhaps it came to him on an index card as he worked at the Income Tax Office.  Possible.

The author, Rupert Croft-Cooke--another author I am less than familiar with, though under his pseudonym, Leo Bruce, he wrote many an interesting mystery--was extremely prolific, and wrote over 20 autobiographical works known as 'The Sensual World Series,' and in The Wintry Sea (1964) he wrote of his meetings with Peter Brooke:

I used to meet him at a pub called Wheatsheaf in the 1940s. Solemn, dedicated and ponderous, he hungered after two things--publication and food.  .  .  He talked of 'experience' as though it were a commodity in which he had invested, of which he now held a large stock ready to put on the market.  .  .  Nearly everyone who came to the Wheatsheaf in those days had an inkling that he himself and the rest of us were somewhat laughable figures, even Julian Maclaren-Ross who wore a disintegrating teddy-bear coat, carried an ornate walking-stick and bagged the corner place at the bar so that he could lecture the rest of us from a vantage point....But not Peter Brooke.  He could see nothing funny in himself, or in not being able to get his work published when it was so full of experience, and nothing funny at all in having a perpetually unassuaged appetite.

Croft-Cooke later wondered over the transformation of Peter Brooke, the serious writer, into the comic writer Anthony Carson, whom Colin MacInnes described in the Observer as 'one of the few great English humorous writers of the century.'

It appears that all of Brooke's 'experience' was well exploited for the humor rather than for the drama.  Whatever works.  Each short chapter of A Rose by Any Other Name shows the signs of having debuted in Punch or the New Statesman with their sharp wit and comic hook at the end. I imagine he is better known in England and Europe than here in Canada. His popular humorous travel works have perhaps dated and time has faded the spines of his works into dusty obscurity (though all are available on those obscure hidden shelves of on-line book sellers). Still, a light read and enjoyable.  Nice cover art too.

His other works under Anthony Carson are:

A Train to Tarragona (Methuen, 1957)
On to Timbuctoo (Methuen, 1958)

Looking For A Bandit (Methuen, 1961)
Poor Man's Mimosa (Methuen, 1962)
Carson Was Here (Methuen, 1963)
The Sin of Summer (Methuen 1965)
The Golden Kiss (Methuen, 1966)
Any More for the Gondola (Hurst & Blackett, ?)

I imagine there may be others...

P.S.  I believe there is a photograph of  Anthony Carson / Peter Brooke in a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Famous in the Fifties: Photographs by Daniel Farson

Words, and Numbers, and Rhyme

Weeding papers, shedding years as fable,

Years of numbers, dollars, gross and net;

Riffling ordered files upon the table,

Measurements like music, of love, regret.

Rain was seeping mist, my tea was cold,

A pinching darkness lay upon the room.

Feeling less than able, feeling, old.

Dieffenbachia and Spathiphyllum gloom.

Then, appeared the poet. Not in a dream

Distant, yet so near, asking for a light,

But on the cover of a McGill magazine,

Dapper, poised, looking at the camera's sight.

How he came to be within “Utilities”

I don't know. But out he slipped fresh as print.

Nineteen eighty-two, “Scrivener” volume three,

Slightly yellowed, nick or two, not quite mint.

Memories arose, cross-hatched with thought,

Bookshops, cafés, parks and mountain shade;

Mezzotint musings in nostalgia caught.

Halcyon days. Perhaps. The dues were paid.

Purchased at The Word, the source, the stream,

Captured by the poet's poker face.

Chosen over Pynchon, or a Henry Green,

Two bucks proffered for a soul of grace.

Twenty-four in nineteen eighty-two,

Blind, adrift, still plodding in the maze,

(Rereading books like Soren's 'Point of View.')

Did I see a way within his Zen-like gaze?

Ladies' man at forty-seven, lover,

Troubadour poet, and singer of fame.

Thirty years have not quite seen another

Suit and cowboy boot on la rue Saint-Urbain.

Forty-four years I lived in the city,

Happenstance never once crossed our ways,
Sharing a bench, and views of women so pretty,

Feeding dry bread to the birds and the strays.

Would it be too late if this native returned

Recognitions faltering dense with time,

New steps, old paths to movements long adjourned,

Papers in pockets, words, and numbers, and rhyme?

ralph patrick mackay, april 30, 2012.

In for a Penny, In for a Powell

I know very little about Anthony Powell.  Although, I do believe he was rather tall and possibly forbidding.  Well, I guess I am being disingenuous for I do know a bit more about him than that.  I know he was fond of figs.  No, I am just making that up.  From his pictures he doesn't look like a fig fancier.  More a Banbury cake fancier I think. Although he may not have wanted anyone to know of his predilection for pastry.  

I am sorry, I must be in a whimsical mood, or perhaps merely hungry, or both. I am sure I know what anyone can know about Anthony Powell by looking up his information on wikipedia, reading an obituary or two, a few critical works and essays.  Or best of all, perhaps, by reading his Memoirs (4 vols.), his Journals (3 vols.) and his Novels (20 vols.) and miscellaneous plays and essays. I am not, however, a Powellite or whatever the followers and devotees of the man and his work call themselves, but I have read a few of his novels. 

Faced with the stack of Anthony Powell's  Dance to the Music of Time does seem a rather forbidding reading task (although, perhaps not as forbidding as the seemingly forgotten ten volumes of Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe.)  All that clever wit and subtle satire in volume after volume after volume. To be a reader in 1951, and pick up the first novel in the sequence, A Question of Upbringing, would be the easier task. To read one Anthony Powell book every odd year or so, and enjoy the anticipation and uncertainty of when the next one would arrive in the bookshops, would be the ideal reading pattern.  I imagine even the author himself would find the complete sequence to be a daunting challenge to read all at one go. To see and hear through the eyes of Nicholas Jenkins for so many pages would likely drive one to read a Ross Macdonald hard-boiled mystery, an Alice Munro short story collection or a Samuel Beckett novel (in French) for a change of style and subject matter. Reading one a month would be more feasible. Such a schedule would likely save one's sanity and would limit the influence of his style--enjoyable though it is--from seeping too deeply into one's conversation and letter writing.

The different cover art for his novels over the years can be a source of interest. The original illustrator for his twelve volume sequence published by William Heinemann was James Broom-Lynne, who was certainly a talented and prolific (a word that is beginning to loose its power, shall we say, fecund, creative, cornucopian, yes cornucopian seems apt for his dustjackets, illustrations, novels and plays) artist and writer.  His covers are heraldic in design with the use of a rather dour grey punctuated by various bright colours with the details hinting at, in a general way, the content. The size of the books, crown octavo, small by today's standards, make them easy to read and the original red cloth bindings and gilt titles make them handsome enough books. It is an achievement in design continuity since the first book was published in 1951, and the last in the series, in 1975.  Broom-Lynne also designed the four volume set by Heinemann using the lower portion of the painting by Poussin and overlaying vertical colour strips, a design which was then modified by the American edition published by Little, Brown and Co., and more recently by the University of Chicago Press.

The Penguin Books paperback editions which came out in the 1960s sported cover art by Osbert Lancaster and they were a mix of finely detailed exterior architecture, like Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, and finely detailed interiors, such as A Question of Upbringing. Some of the covers featured interiors or exteriors with groups of people but without a defining representation of any one character. There is a lightness that reflects Lancaster's style and to a certain extent, the satire and situations within the novels.

Berkley Books issued a series of paperbacks with odd covers which were still-lifes with objects that reflected the content, including a small pocket watch being one object that appeared in each design.

Fontana Books first issued a series in the late 1960s with rather stilted paintings of characters from the novel.  The effect is weak.  They followed this up in the early 1970s with richly defined photographs of still-lifes reflecting the subject matter within.  Then in the late 1970s they brought out a new series with cover art by Mark Boxer.  These depicted characters from the novels in a more idiosyncratic manner, being essentially caricatures. Boxer's black ink sketches with a colour wash to various details are certainly interesting, and although they represent specific characters in the books, they don't subvert the reader's own imagination of what the characters may look like.  The caricatures evoke character rather than define their appearance. (Although I have to admit that the caricature for Temporary Kings makes me think of Martin Amis in his mod, long-hair years--the image on the back of his novel The Rachel Papers for instance. Martin Amis was friends with Boxer and their lifestyles did have a certain resonance with the books. It is just that the caricature on this book is of a woman, Pamela Widmerpool. My perception only I am sure.)

The paperback covers, in tending to represent the time of the novels, also reflect their own time in their style of illustration or design. If someone were to redesign the covers for the 21st Century, I wonder what they would come up with.  There is a modern tendency to have the art work span all the spines in a multi-volume work to create one visual image. That could be one possibility. Using the painting by Poussin seems too easy. Something fresh would be needed.  I wonder what.

Sham on You: Reflections on Dummy Book Titles

There is the occasional pastime on Twitter where twitterites participate in making up humorous book titles based on existing book titles. One I recall was under the hashtag 'Junk Food Novels.' My wife came up with quite a few such as The Spoils of Poutine, The End of the Eclair, and The Hors d'oeuvres of Gilbert Pinfold among many others. Such a pastime can find its roots not only in basic word play, but in sham book titles created for dummy books for library doors in English historic country house libraries. Doors that would be camouflaged in bibliographic detail in order to hide a main entrance, a passage to another room, a hidden staircase, or merely a closet where the owner might keep the cigars. Booksellers were often requested to provide interesting titles for these curiosities, perhaps even changing them from time to time when the titles became rather, old.

I can imagine that the bookbinders would enjoy arriving at humorous titles and plying the gold leaf on to these more than decorative bindings. The library doors of Chatsworth and Gad's Hill have some interesting examples. (The picture is of Oxburgh Hall.)

Lamb on the Death of Wolfe.
Cursory Remarks on Swearing.
John Knox on Death's Door.
Boyle on Steam.
Lever on Lifts.
The Scottish Boccaccio by D. Cameron.
Dr. Kitchener's Life of Captain Cook.
Mr. J. Horner on Poet's Corner.
On Sore Throat and the Migration of the Swallow.
The Corn Question by John Bunyan.
The Art of Turning by Handle.
Bleak Houses.
The Male Coach.
Lochs and Quays of England.
Plurality of Living With Regard to the Common Cat.
Nine Tails by a Cat.
On Cutting off Heirs with a Shilling.

For additional titles, my old blog Postman's Horn has a letter by Thomas Hood which provides a few.

In Aldous Huxley's early novel, Crome Yellow (1921) there is a scene in a country house library which I shall leave off with a quote:

For their after-luncheon coffee the party generally adjourned to the library. Its windows looked east, and at this hour of the day it was the coolest place in the whole house. It was a large room, fitted, during the eighteenth century, with white painted shelves of an elegant design. In the middle of one wall a door, ingeniously upholstered with rows of dummy books, gave access to a deep cupboard, where among a pile of letter-files and old newspapers, the mummy-case of an Egyptian lady, brought back by the second Sir Fernando on his return from the Grand Tour, mouldered in the darkness. From ten yards away and at a first glance, one might almost have mistaken this secret door for a section of shelving filled with genuine books. Coffee-cup in hand, Mr. Scogan was standing in front of the dummy book-shelf. Between the sips he discoursed.

"The bottom shelf," he was saying, "is taken up by an Encyclopaedia in fourteen volumes. Useful, but a little dull, as is also 'Caprimulge's Dictionary of the Finnish Language.' The 'Biograhical Dictionary' looks more promising. 'Biography of Men who were Born Great,' 'Biography of Men who Achieved Greatness,' 'Biography of Men who had Greatness Thrust Upon Them,' and 'Biography of Men who were Never Great at All.' Then there are ten volumes of 'Thom's Works and Wanderings,' while the 'Wild Goose Chase, A Novel,' by an anonymous author, fills no less than six. But what's this, what's this?" Mr. Scogan stood on tiptoe and peered up. "Seven volumes of the 'Tales of Knockespotch.' The 'Tales of Knockespotch,' he repeated. "Ah, my dear Henry," he said, turning round, "these are your best books. I would willingly give all the rest of your library for them."

The happy possessor of a multitude of first editions, Mr. Wimbush could afford to smile indulgently.

"Is it possible," Mr. Scogan went on, "that they possess nothing more than a back and a title?" He opened the cupboard door and peeped inside, as though he hoped to find the rest of the books behind it. "Phooh!" he said, and shut the door again. "It smells of dust and mildew. How symbolical! One comes to the great masterpieces of the past, expecting some miraculous illumination, and one finds, on opening them, only darkness and dust and a faint smell of decay. After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads above all, to prevent oneself thinking. Still--the 'Tales of Knockespotch'...."

He paused, and thoughtfully drummed with his fingers on the backs of the non-existent, unattainable books.