Judge others as you would be judged, had been a declared rather than an innate axiom even in Andy’s younger mind. As Sir Andrew, he was ageing, and the elderly are apt to err in the direction of worldly wisdom and, above all, of caution, masked as sagacity. He detested these reflections even in the act of admitting them.
Besides, would he not presently ‘be gone’ himself? Let alone ‘persons’, Death is no respecter of personages – nor for that matter of pigs. Another Chairman must some day take this very chair he now amply occupied in his stead. And in the inexorable course of time, one such who had ‘never heard of Joseph’. Meanwhile, how had he himself come to admit and even to tolerate the notion that his life’s work, although it could not possibly have been wasted, had fallen short of its full fruition? With quivering chin, he muffled a profound yawn with his pocket handkerchief and – like an idling schoolboy, gently oscillating on his sister’s swing in the family orchard – continued to day-dream.
Few things in modern life had pleased him better than the counsel of ‘Safety First’ – a sort of second cousin of course to ‘Out of the frying pan …’, and a distant relative of ‘Look before …’ Years ago the Society’s Council of the day had decided, though not quite unanimously, against drawing within its orbit other familiar and meritorious inmates of the domestic farmyard – Calf, Sheep, Lamb, Rabbit, Turkey, Goose, Duck, Chicken, Pigeon, Guinea-fowl. Discretion had won the day. Pig, the whole Pig, and nothing but the Pig had remained the Society’s specific official protégé. After all, the Society’s main, its consuming incentive was a natural central and condensed sympathy, a fervent fellow-feeling; rather than any ethical or aesthetic ideal.
So Sir Andrew might have continued to lull his mind with day-dreams into the very middle of Lord Sounders’s peroration – which, since he had composed it – he already knew all but by heart. But at that moment (as with the sleeper who is awakened by the stopping of his clock) his Lordship gave utterance to a minute statement entirely off his own bat – a sort of brisk little cut to leg. Basking in his rambling reverie, Sir Andrew however caught but one brief sentence, which, nonetheless, abruptly brought his slumbering brains to life – a life resembling some little Etna in violent eruption. How harmlessly the sentence had begun: ‘No,’ had said the speaker, a little unctuously perhaps, ‘I cannot profess to be anything approaching a specialist in this matter. I have heard of the astonishingly youthful Mrs Beaton (mild amusement) and of her notorious hare (much amusement) but am no master of how the victim should be jugged (loud laughter). But what matter? Have we not as ever in our midst this morning, that Tower of Strength – our Chairman? Simple though this question just presented to me is, surely it should be resolved by our fountain head. Sir Andrew! He is of age. Ask him.’
Sir Andrew’s eyelids very exquisitely widened. His lips fell a hair’s-breadth apart. His massive head jerked back in his chair – well, say a centimetre. What the – could the question have been? His mind practically fell into ruins, e.g. ‘What, Mr Chairman, is actually in our Product? Our “Sorbo”?’ Incredible fact, it had never been asked before. Still more incredible, Sir Andrew had clean forgotten what was. In the passage of years every single detail of the work of pure genius – the magic recipe, the magic formula, which poor Jimmie had concocted and which only by pure assumption was still actually in operation, had abandoned him. He could no more at this moment have separated the ‘Sorbo’ from its contents or listed its differentia from the Sorbeau, than he could have presented Lord Sounders with his well-worn soul on a charger. Ruin, as they say, stared him in the face, and, by good fortune, there and then sent him off into a faint! He fell back in his chair. Striped trousers, morning coat, claw-pearled cravat became merely the carapace of a small modicum of the enormous Unconscious. He was inundated with smelling salts, and nearly drowned with water, and all but suffocated with smouldering brown paper. But – how odd a paradox! – in some exotic fashion he had definitely saved his bacon.
* Selected for inclusion in Beg (1955) but omitted at the galley-proof stage.
Dr Iggatt*
Doctor Iggatt’s evening surgery hour was from seven to eight, and any observant patient could tell how long the doctor had kept him waiting simply by one glance at his hair. It grew over his head very much as if it were pretending to be a wig; and owing to his habit of thrusting his fingers through it when listening, the longer he was at work the more dishevelled it became. On this particular evening his work was done.
Thin clouds were racing over a half-moon – the rain had but just ceased to fall – when, the scarecrow figure of Dr Iggatt, in its small pepper-and-salt jacket appeared at his front door to bid, as he supposed, his last patient, good-night. He watched him for a moment or two, mildly, and without the least interest, then once more thrusting his stumpy hand over his cranium, he turned back into his consulting room preparatory to making his evening meal.
It was not till then he noticed, in the long gloomy room beyond, that yet another fellow-creature was waiting to be attended to. A queerish creature too, to judge from appearances. A rather ungainly man in dark, loose-fitting clothes, standing bolt upright and immobile, with just three fingers of his right hand resting on the corner of the adjoining table, and his hat (a ‘high’ hat) and kid gloves in the other, almost as if in an attitude of gallantry, pressed to his hip.
‘Aha,’ said Dr Iggatt involuntarily, but not aloud. ‘I am afraid the maid didn’t mention that you were here.’
‘My name is Laman,’ said the stranger.
‘Pray come in,’ said Dr Iggatt, followed by what really at last appeared to be his last patient for this evening. Dr Iggatt sat down at his table, and entered Mr Laman’s name in his book. ‘And address?’ he murmured.
‘4 The Grove,’ said Mr Laman, after a seemingly profitable pause and with stress on the last word.
‘Ah, yes, thank you,’ said Dr Iggatt, and revolved himself once more in his patent chair. Mr Laman then proceeded to explain that he had sought Dr Iggatt’s advice solely on account of one unfortunate disability. He was an extremely bad sleeper. Seated there on the bench, his tall hat now on his left knee, and that long face angling downwards, so to speak, towards his chin, and his thick sweep of black hair, longish nose, and eyes only darker in themselves than the deep dark sockets in which they dwelt – his general appearance certainly corroborated his complaint. Not that he appeared to be complaining with any bitterness, or even with much interest. He was holding himself perfectly erect, and merely stating his case.
As Dr Iggatt lifted his head a little to observe him better in the incandescent gaslight, the actual thought, How devilishly odd it is that being too much awake in a world so rich and abundant and diversified should have such questionable results – no such thought actually occurred to him. But a good many others did, and every one of them suggested to a more or less automatically professional mind that it was high time Mr Laman exercised a period of unconsciousness.
‘You have no other symptoms to suggest?’ he remarked with that curious burbling voice of his, and the odd little jerk of his large tousled head to one side.
‘I am complaining of nothing, Dr Iggatt,’ said his patient. ‘All that I am asking you is if you will be kind enough to prescribe a really efficacious soporific; and if you would please give me your prescription in writing.’
If anything, Dr Iggatt looked at him more benevolently than ever, though his face had set a little with the kind of attention a thrush shows on a lawn as it pauses hearkening betwixt worm and worm.
‘You say a really efficacious sedative,’ he remarked amiably. The stranger lifted his hand a little, his serene yet tortured eyes fixed unswervingly on the doctor’s face. ‘I was not suggesting for one moment that you would prescribe anything that in ordinary circumstances would not be immediately effective. But mine, Dr Iggatt, is a rather exceptional case. The sleep I want has not been mine for seven years or more.’
‘And he is now – and he is now about forty-one,’ thou
ght Dr Iggatt. ‘May I inquire what the cause of the insomnia is?’
‘Ah, there,’ said Mr Laman, ‘I must ask you to forbear. Will it be sufficient if I say that it was not due to any particular illness, nor, as might be said, to any particular shock. All I would add is that there are very few prescriptions of the nature which I have not experimented with. And none has been successful.’
‘I assume then that anything already in tabloid form will not serve?’ The stranger nodded.
Dr Iggatt gave him one last close but well-mannered scrutiny. ‘Well, Mr Laman, yours is rather an unusual request. May I feel your pulse? … Thank you. And tongue? … Thank you.’ He turned about in his chair and engaged for a moment or two in writing. Having blotted his paper, folded it, placed it in an envelope, he once more turned to his patient. ‘That is one dose, Mr Laman. It is in no sense dangerous as such. And it is not necessary to warn a man of your experience that these things must be taken with a certain amount of caution.’
The stranger accepted the envelope, with the ghost of a bow, and tucked it carefully into an inner pocket. There was a brief pause, occupied by the gas-jet with a remote hissing whistle – during which the professionalism that had stood between them, gently evaporated. Dr Iggatt had really not taken his eyes off that shrouded face, though he was accustomed to practically every eccentricity of which the human face is capable. Mr Laman, on the other hand, had fallen apparently into vacant thought – certainly there was little indication in that abstracted eye of one who was at last about to enjoy a long refreshing sleep.
With a trace almost of shyness, Dr Iggatt put out his hand. ‘I am sure I hope, er – Mr Laman, that the prescription will be of some service. Insomnia is an obstinate enemy. And every attention of course should be paid to one’s general health. Merely old grandmotherly remedies you know: gruel, bread and milk, onion porridge – I don’t pooh-pooh them.’
The stranger once more turned his slow dark eyes away from the doctor’s face, to fix them on the spirited engraving of the stag at bay. ‘You are very kind indeed,’ he said. ‘But one may have given up hope – if you will forgive me for saying so – without being actually in a state of despair.’
With yet another almost demure little bow, he stooped and took up his hat and gloves, and took his leave.
Dr Iggatt closed the door sharply after him; returned to his bright-lit room, where now the faint trickling of his water-tap was engaging in a duet with the gas-bracket, paused a moment, trod lightly across the floor and gently drew aside a corner of the blind. The lank figure of his visitor was already approaching the gate. In the midst of a semi-circle of metal upon it hung a lamp, casting its light chiefly among the green leaves of a lime tree that grew beside the pavement of the road beyond. Without even glancing behind him, the insomniac swiftly withdrew Dr Iggatt’s envelope from his pocket, pulled out the prescription folded within, and examined it under the rays of the lamp. With what was uncommonly like a slow shrug of his shoulders, he scrunched up the fragment of paper in his hand, and flung it into the roadway. Then turning abruptly to the left, in a moment he had disappeared, leaving nothing but the still lamp shining up into the vacancy of the linden tree behind him.
It is odd how, when some men vanish from sight, it is almost as if they had never been in the place which they vanish from. Dr Iggatt had noticed this peculiarity without remarking it. He had turned from the window with the little smile on his plain honest features which invariably accompanied any slight show of eccentricity in his patients. He was a man without the slightest trace of vanity, yet perfectly and tacitly confident of his commonsense, of his large experience, and of the general valuelessness of the exceptional. ‘Threw it away, by Gad,’ he muttered to himself; ‘as if he knew …’ He bent, read over the terms of the scorned prescription, shut up the book with a slap, turned out his light, and, being for that evening a man bereft of his sister and housekeeper, went in at once to his dinner.
* Selected for inclusion in Beg (1955) but omitted at the galley-proof stage.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
The entries under the eight main collections, R (1923), DDB (1924, 1936), Br (1925), C (1926), OE (1930), LF (1933), WBO (1936) and Beg (1955), which have been used as the framework for Short Stories, include all the known information about:
(a) the serialization of stories and their publication in book form before they appeared in those collections, and
(b) their later inclusion in other collections of de la Mare works during his lifetime.
It has occasionally been difficult to establish definitely whether serializations and appearances in book form were before or after the publication of a main collection (e.g. Lispet, Lispett and Vaine (1923) and some of the stories in Br (1925)), and in such cases they have been listed under (a), even if some of them were a month or two later. They have also been assumed to be earlier in the footnotes to the stories for the sake of convenience. Except where there are indications to the contrary, all the books mentioned were published in London. Finally, where texts other than those in the eight main collections have been used in Short Stories, they have been asterisked (*). For abbreviations, see page x.
Story and Rhyme (1921)
A selection of his writings de la Mare made for schools and colleges. It included ‘The Almond Tree’ and ‘The Riddle’ that were collected in R (1923).
Lispet, Lispett and Vaine (1923)
Published by itself in a limited edition of 200 signed copies, with wood-engravings by W.P. Robins. The story was collected in R (1923) and later included in CT (1950).
The Riddle and Other Stories (R) (1923)
De la Mare’s first volume of short stories, published in May 1923. It contained fifteen stories:
‘The Almond Tree’ (originally written in or before 1899)
(a) English Review, August 1909
Story and Rhyme (1921)
(b) SEP (1938)
BS (1942)*
The Almond Tree (1943)
CT (1950)
‘The Count’s Courtship’ (originally written in or before 1899)
(a) Lady’s Realm, July 1907
‘The Looking-Glass’
‘Miss Duveen’ (originally written in or before 1907)
(b) SSS (1931)
SEP (1938)
The Picnic and Other Stories (1941)
BS (1942)*
CT (1950)
‘Selina’s Parable’
(a) New Statesman, 1 November 1919
Living Age, 6 December 1919
(b) The Nap and Other Stories (1936)*
‘Seaton’s Aunt’ (originally written in or before 1909)
(a) London Mercury, April 1922
(b) Seaton’s Aunt (1927)
BS (1942)*
CT (1950)
‘The Bird of Travel’
(a) Lady’s Realm, October 1908
(b) SSS (1931)
‘The Bowl’ (originally written in or before 1904)
(b) The Nap and Other Stories (1936)*
CT (1950)
‘The Three Friends’
(a) Saturday Westminster Gazette, 19 April 1913
(b) SEP (1938)
The Picnic and Other Stories (1941)*
CT (1950)
‘Lispet, Lispett and Vaine’
(a) Yale Review, January 1923
Bookman’s Journal, February 1923
Lispet, Lispett and Vaine (1923)
(b) CT (1950)
‘The Tree’
(a) Century, August 1922
London Mercury, October 1922
(b) SSS (1931)
CT (1950)
‘Out of the Deep’
(b) GS (1956)
‘The Creatures’
(a) London Mercury, January 1920
(b) CT (1950)
‘The Riddle’ (originally written in or before 1898)
(a) Monthly Review, February 1903
Story and Rhyme (1921)
(b) SEP (1938)
The
Magic Jacket and Other Stories (1943)
CSC (1947)*
CT (1950)
‘The Vats’
(a) Saturday Westminster Gazette, 16 June 1917
(b) BS (1942)*
CT (1950)
Ding Dong Bell (DDB) (1924, 1936)
The original edition, published in April 1924, consisted of three short stories written round groups of epitaphs. It had a wood-engraving by Reynolds Stone. A fourth story was added in the 1936 edition. (See also ‘De Mortuis’ in Short Stories 1895–1926, which has epitaphs in common with ‘Lichen’ and ‘Winter’.)
‘Lichen’
(a) Lady’s Realm, September 1907
(b) SEP (1938)*
‘“Benighted”’
(a) Pall Mall Magazine, July-December 1906
‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ (1936)
(a) Yale Review, March 1936
(b) CT (1950)
‘Winter’
Miss Jemima (1925)
Published by itself at Oxford, with illustrations by Alec Buckels. The story was collected in Br (1925), and later included in The Magic Jacket and Other Stories (1943) and CSC (1947).
Broomsticks and Other Tales (Br) (1925)
The first volume of short stories for children, with designs by Bold, the second being LF (1933). It had twelve stories, of which three were omitted from CSC (1947): ‘Pigtails, Ltd.’, ‘The Thief’ and ‘A Nose’.
Short Stories 1927-1956 Page 82