Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  ANSWERS HERE

  1. ‘Of books’ is superfluous. It is not usual to refer to collections of bananas, goldfinches, colza-oil bottles or sewer men’s dungarees as ‘libraries’ of those articles.

  2. New shoes do not usually have a restrictive effect on the throat, groin or shoulders but only on the feet. The feet need not therefore be specified.

  3. Tailors make suits only of clothes and will not, save in the rarest cases, agree to make suits of ratskin, cocoa-beans or decayed vegetable matter.

  4. Homicide is no murder unless it is wilful.

  OLD ETIQUETTE BOOKS and the like are not very funny but my honourable lordship has come across a ‘National Encyclopedia of Business and Social Forms’ published in America in 1882 and assumes that a few extracts from it from time to time will be found diverting. This publication takes the view—quite reasonably—that you are illiterate and gives you the text of your own letters—even your love letters. Naturally, it also gives the replies which you should receive, thus making the whole correspondence rather pointless.

  The first example is entitled A Formal Declaration of Love. It is too long and embarrassing to quote but in the middle of it the ardent party says, with pauperish dignity: ‘I am not, as you know, a man of wealth, but my means enable me to marry, and although I cannot promise you the luxury a wealthier man could bestow upon you, I can promise a faithful and enduring love, and a home in which your comfort will be my chief aim.’

  Nice, ah? For ‘my means’ read ‘your means’ and possibly you have something nearer the truth. Next comes A Favourable Reply and An Unfavourable Reply, the latter concluding with ‘let me hope that you will find some woman, worthy of you, who will make you the good wife you deserve.’ Then comes A Less Formal Offer.

  ‘Dear Rosy: On returning from skating yesterday afternoon, and reflecting alone on the pleasant morning we had passed, I was more than ever impressed by my wretched, solitary existence. Will you break for me this monotonous routine of life by saying, “It need not be, Charlie”?

  ‘I have loved you fondly and long; your parents and mine are intimate friends; they know my private character. Will you accept me as your husband, dearest Rosie? Believe me ever your attached, Charlie.’

  Then The Reply:

  ‘“It need not be, Charlie.” I shall be at home this evening. Rosy.

  Rosy was a smart dame. But why did Charlie misspell her name?

  The next letter relates to A Declaration of Love at First Sight.

  ‘Dear Miss Logan: Although I have been in your society but once, the impression you have made upon me is so deep and powerful that I cannot forbear writing to you, in defiance of all rules of etiquette …’

  Mark this villainy—the etiquette of violating etiquette!

  ‘Affection is sometimes of slow growth; but sometimes it springs up in a moment. In half an hour after I was introduced to you my heart was no longer my own. I have not the assurance to suppose that I have been fortunate enough to create any interest in yours; but will you allow me to cultivate your acquaintance in the hope of being able to win your regard in the course of time? Petitioning for a few lines in reply, I remain, dear Miss Logan, yours devotedly, W—P—.’

  Now comes the supreme refrigeration—An Unfavourable Reply:

  ‘Sir: Your note has surprised me. Considering that you were, until last evening, an entire stranger to me, and that the few words which passed between us were on common-place subjects, it might be called impertinent. But I endeavour to view it in a more favourable light, and am willing to attribute your extraordinary and sudden professions of devotion to ignorance of the usages of society. You will oblige me by not repeating the absurdity, and I think it best that this note should close the correspondence and our acquaintance. By attending to this request, you will oblige, Your obedient servant, Susan L—.’

  Here the system broke down completely, for there is no Forceful Reply to the Foregoing, such as would give Walter an alternative to immediate emigration.

  I could write Miss Logan a pretty fine one myself but as the lady must now be 86 (if she’s a day), I will spare her my scorpious tongue.

  Here is another model letter from my 1882 American ‘National Encyclopedia of Business and Social Forms’, being From a Son, who has Misconducted himself towards his Employer, to his Father.

  ‘Dear Father—I am in such distress I scarcely know how to commence my letter. Without the least reason, without the least provocation, I left my employer at the most busy season, just for a temporary trifling amusement. He—the best of employers—for the moment was forgotten by me; self predominated. I ran away from my place, and here I find myself disgraced and miserable, and grieve to think how indescribably shocked you will be when Mr Evans communicates with you relative to my absence.

  ‘However, dear father, there is one consolation: I cannot be accused of dishonesty; so I hope my character is not irretrievably ruined.

  ‘Will you see my employer, and tell him how deeply I regret my fault, and entreat him to forgive it, and allow me to return to my place? It shall hereafter be my constant study to perform my duty in the most upright manner, and with the most assiduous attention. Let me hear also, dear father, sending me Mr Evans’ reply, that you also forgive Your erring and repentant son, John Thompson.’

  FUNNY THING happened the other day. A young friend of mine (I think he is my son as a matter of fact, though we haven’t spoken for years) was found ‘guilty’ following some quaint ritual in that well-known Carpathian hamlet, Kamara. My son is highly educated and has long lost his taste for (those sort of) parlour games, and throughout the proceedings he leant contemptuously on the back wall of the corps, Tauss, pardon me, courthouse. But when the proceedings were over he got a frightful shock. He was put back. There he was leaning against a twofootsix masonry wall in coursed random rubble and begob before he knew what was going on he was put back. He tells me (sign language, of course—we haven’t spoken for years) that no one except the man who has been (personally) put back through a stone wall by twelve respectable pushing, sweating, cursing pious Irishmen (with the Law behind them) can understand the humiliation of this. He says his ribs are full of mortar yet, he says there are skewbacks under his oxters and a big kneeler at the base of his skull, there’s a bondstone still stuffed into the small of his back and his heels are full of external plinth. He says he wouldn’t go through it again and I am with him there—once is enough to go through a wall.

  D.O. Fogg was in the case.

  RESOLVE IN FUTURE to peruse the daily papers thoroughly, particularly the editorial which is always full of current interest, and when you have this course in topical education completed, there will be at least one subject on which HE will be able to say you can ‘talk intelligently’.—Woman’s Life.

  It astonishes me that anybody should be so anxious to get married as to go over there ——→* and get a lift on the crossbar in the daily cycle journeys between Kharkov, Bryansk and Orel. And surely the result of such a course would be formidable.

  Hello, Jack. There is certainly something brewing on the Orel sector.

  Yes dear. Time alone will tell.

  Jack, it would not surprise me at all if we were to see a new pincer thrust next week with Kharkov as the nodal point, one claw turning southward through the Donbas to the Dnieper valley.

  I agree.

  Because, Jack, it is known that the Russians have vast masses of men and material concentrated in that sector.

  (What’s up with this unfortunate woman?) Yes, dear.

  And Jack … Do you know the firing power of the new Mark III tank?

  ‘Again, do not ignore the classics as something which bored you to tears in schooldays. Read them again now, when your mind is more cultured and better able to appreciate them, and you will find that they are “surprisingly” fascinating.’

  I know. A little of the Oracula Sibyllina, Polyzelus, Lycurgus Orator, a peep into Dioscorides’ colourful tracts on physics, Homer, H
orace, Virgil, and a very small pinch of Ovid. To describe all this as ‘surprisingly fascinating’ is to toy with words. And the young lady will get a drop when she first mentions the classics to her young man and hears him straightway deliver a discourse on the plans of Hartigan, Butters and Jarvis and how the books were a better proposition than the tote at the last Junction meeting.

  It’s many a man they ruined the same horses.

  I SEEN that thing at the Abbey—

  ‘My Dear Father.’

  Was it any good?

  Very well done and well acted but that’s all that was in it.

  I see.

  You couldn’t get a laugh out of it.

  I haven’t been inside that place for two year.

  I seen meself sittin there for 2 hours and I couldn’t get a laugh out of it anywhere. You like a bit of humour do you know.

  I haven’t put me head in there since before the war.

  It was heavy stuff about clergymen do you know. There’s not a laugh anywhere in it. The wife was with me. The best thing I ever seen there was ‘Professor Tim’. But this other stuff wasn’t much good. One thing I couldn’t get a laugh there anywhere.

  I’ll tell you what my dish is.

  Another thing I seen there was Double Trouble be Laurel and Hardy.

  I’ll tell you what I like. Maritana.

  Them’s a very mad pair, Laurel and Hardy.

  Maritana and the Yeoman of the Guard. You know the one with Jack Point. I-polished-up-the-knocker-of-the-king’s-front-door.

  The fat lad is a terrible madman. Another time the pair was for bringin a piana up a long stairs.

  And-now-I’m-the-ruler-of-the-king’s-navee.

  Your men got stuck. Your man Hardy is above pullin an sweatin and the thin lad below. Wan was pushing the piana down and the other pushin it up. Begob I nearly passed out laughin. You’d hear the roars of me a mile off. I’d go anywhere for a laugh.

  Th’Abbey has new rules out about smokin, Jack was tellin me.

  I remember long years ago a Saturday never passed that I wasn’t in d’Abbey. There used to be great laughs there in years gone by.

  Did you ever see ‘Savings Bank’ written over the door high up?

  That was the old Mechanics Institute, many a time I heard the old man talking about it, workin with blow-lamps there and playin billiards. That was before the Free State.

  I tell you what—there’s a very queer class of a play put on there now. The sister Annie put on a show there for the orphanage in 1924. There was a lot of lads there with bagpipes.

  Well I didn’t fancy that ‘Father’ play. No laughs bar one where a fella slipped goin out of a door. He nearly creased himself. Of course the actors there is very good. There’s men there that was over in America.

  The sister put on a great play with step-dancers and bagpipes, real Irish stuff. Jack had bottles of stout for the band inside in the pay-box.

  Some of the actors was across doin ‘Professor Tim’ at the World’s Fair. All the Irish in America was crowdin in. Take out the green flag over there and you’re right. Your men were flyin about in special trains. There was wan particular actor that passed out in the middle of a play.

  The sister was very strict about that. She asks Jack what’s all the men doin in the pay-office. This is back in ‘24. Checkin the money for the Revenue, says Jack, fixin up the entertainment tax.

  Jack was the boy.

  One of the bagpipe lads was found mouldy in Marlboro’ St the next mornin, kilts an’ all lyin up against a railins.

  You could get a good laugh in them days. But that thing the other night there was no laugh anywhere in it bar the wan. I seen meself yawnin in the middle of it.

  D’Abbey’s gone to hell this ten year.

  I didn’t get a laugh anywhere bar the wanst.

  An’ it’ll be worse before it’s better.

  I never seen a play that it was so hard to get a laugh out of. That’s wan thing I do like—a good laugh. I’ll go anywhere for a good laugh. And that’s the truth. A good laugh.

  I LEARNED from a recent news item that my best friend, Mr E. J. Moeran, is ‘going to Kerry to write a concerto for ‘cello and orchestra …’

  Well, all I can say is this: it would not be my way, it would not be my way at all and more I will not say. With me, you see, music is an obsession, not a profession. When the feeling for … creation … suddenly wells up in me … like … the sea … I become—it is fascinating—I become completely passive, the activated rather than the actor … and that is why I can be so devastatingly humble about my best oeuvres—I become the vessel, the medium through which something … call it what you will but of this world it is not … expresses itself. I become almost … female. What is it Goethe says? ‘Art is the Mediatrix of the Unspeakable.’ How true that is! The … horrible, really horrible thing is, though, that … for the artist … art is a humiliation. When one is a genius, one keeps remembering that one’s great gifts entail the most frightening responsibilities … one is … one is simply not as other men. My God the agony of it all, there have been nights when I have nearly gone mad. Mad, do you hear me. But to say quite calmly I am going to write for instance a concerto for Klavier and Orch … No, that would be impossible, quite completely out of the question. For I, you see, I, simply … never know when this … this … thing happens to me, I simply never know what the result will be. It may, for instance, be a colossal Kunstfilm in which the statement of overtonal montage is taken yet a step further in the higher reaches of a rather Russian hierarchy of the spatio-temporal values relating to the metric of colour in the visual-acoustic ‘world’—it may be a completely épatant experiment in the grisaille where the contrapuntal possibilities of the tone texture, form and content are balanced against the searing harmonics of sensibility i.e., ‘feeling’ in the sense of europäischer Geist. It may be a poem in which withering humanity, seen in the heartbreaking immediacy of sense-experience, takes on the sweetly occidental aspect of a dying god, terrible yet tender and somehow immaculate. It may be a ‘novel’ so vast in scope, so perfect in execution, so overwhelming in conception, so sited in unheard-of dimensions that … no responsible publisher could risk bringing it before the world. It may be a monumental Minority Report on Some Aspects of the Housing Problem in Europe and the Middle East, with special reference to Occidental Sewage Disposal Its Rise and Fall. It may yet be detailed drawings and specifications for a new locomotive, it may be a modest proposal for the recodification of our somewhat hare-brehon laws, it may be a play so grandiose that the side wall of the theatre has to be torn down to get the scenery in … or again … it may be a … symphony (in Remineur) dedicated to the People of Ireland; all written so that it can be played on the Perry fiddles now in the National Museum and on no others. It may be a new brand of porter which can intoxicate but not inebriate. A new elastic guaranteed not to stretch. Grandiose plans for a new National University. A device for buying county councillors. A forte piano. A sacred weapon. An aeroplane suitable for use on land. A pan-knife. An entirely new type of District Justice that hears evidence, announces a decision and says absolutely nothing else. A machine for rinsing out old stomachs. A plan for repatriating Sudetenland Corkmen. In fact, I mean … anything, absolutely anything.

  And if you ask me what I am doing now, I reply that I do not know, I only work here.

  ANY READER who feels he or she would like to meet myself and family should write to the Editor asking for particulars as to when I am at home, the best time to call, and whether it is necessary to leave cards beforehand. You will find us, I fear, just a little bit formal. My wife, for instance, keeps her hands in a hand-bag. This, however, need not disturb you. Again, if it happens that you come to dinner, you must be prepared for certain old-world customs—out-moded if you like, but still capable of imparting grace and charm to a gathering of those who knew the vanished world of yesteryear. First a glass of pale sherry, exquisite in its thin needle-like impact on the palate, pot
ent of preprandial salivation. Then fine-tasted bouillon in china bowls, served with white rolls, those clandestinely-sieved American cigarettes. My jewelled hand has now strayed to the Turkish bell-tassel and the great triple peal that calls for the dinner proper rings out in the distant servants’ hall. This is where the guest who is accustomed to the rougher usage of today may receive a slight surprise. When the dinner is brought in, he will note that it is … well … in a dinner jacket. Big mass of roast beef in the breast, sleeves stuffed with spuds, sprigs of celery up through the button-holes, gravy sopping out everywhere. A bit formal if you like, but if one does not observe the punctilious regimen of good behaviour, one is, after all, very little better than the beast of the field. Indeed, remembering the execrable manners of a colleague of mine in this great newspaper organisation, I had almost said that one is very little better than the beast of The Field.

  When the coffee stage is reached, nothing will do my eccentric wife but have it accompanied by an odd confection of her own invention—longbread.

  MISCELLANEOUS

  The Irish Times has been full of grand news these days. ‘The Maoris,’ I read ‘are sometimes called “the brown Irish” because they are always smiling and happy.’ Fancy! New Zealand I do not know, but strange that it should be the seat of so monstrous a sarcasm. I know that we are morose, crypt-faced, inclined to the view that life is a serious disorder which ultimately proves fatal. But why should these antipodean britishers see fit to send this sneer to us three thousand miles across the sea in the middle of a world war?