“The brothers lived together in a house of their own. One evening the elder took his stand in front of the fire.
“‘This cursed leakage,’ he said. ‘Last year it amounted to more than three hundred pounds.’
“His brother shrugged his shoulders.
“‘Looks like we’ve got to bear it. Don’t say you’re going to call in the police again.’
“‘Yes,’ said his brother, ‘I am. But I’ll tell you something, Joe. I’m going to have the police here – and say nothing to George.’
“Joe Brown started to his feet.
“‘How can you?’ he cried. ‘How can you talk like that? George is the most faithful servant two fellows ever had. If he ever found out that we’d been behind his back, I think it’d break his heart.’
“‘He won’t find out,’ said the other. ‘He’ll never know. I’ll give you this – that I feel damned badly about it. I’m perfectly sure he’s honest. But – well, business is business, and we can’t go on like this. Damn it, Joe, the leakage is rising.’
“Reluctantly, Joe gave way…
“Unknown to George, the Yard was called in again, and a conference was held at the brothers’ house. Certain measures were decided upon.
“One week later, George was caught red-handed.
“He collapsed on arrest and admitted everything. He was wholly responsible for the leakage and had been robbing the brothers ever since their father had died.
“I assisted the case for the Crown.
“The man pleaded guilty, so it did not take very long. While one could have nothing but contempt for and horror of such treachery, I found it in my heart to pity the prisoner at the bar. He never raised his eyes to the bench or the witness box, and for most of the time he held his head turned to one side and his two hands in front of his face, as a man might do, whom someone was seeking to photograph against his will. When evidence of his religious fervour and activities was given, I thought he was going to crouch down out of sight: and when the police revealed that the money had been spent – not upon his wife and large family, but upon women of ill fame, he trembled so violently, that I thought he was going to collapse.
“I forget what his sentence was, but his exposure had hit him far harder than any imprisonment could do.
“But it’s no good blinking the fact that George shook my faith in human nature, as he shook that of everyone concerned in the case and of every hand employed in that timber-yard. And shook it right up. And what about his disciples? And all his neighbours and friends? ‘The evil that men do lives after them.’ You can’t get away from that.”
“Treachery,” said Berry. “To my way of thinking, treachery’s worse than murder. I have an idea that Dante agrees with me.”
“Tell me, Boy,” said Daphne. “Would you advise a young man to go to the Bar?”
“I’m not qualified, my sweet, to answer that question today. Remember – I left the Bar nearly forty years ago. The Bar was then a great profession. The Bar has produced some of our greatest men. To my membership and to all that I learned as a practising barrister, I owe no end. But, as I have said before, the ladder which the Bar was presenting before the first war was a very steep ladder to climb.”
“How did the war affect it – the first war, I mean?”
“Well, I had no practice to lose – at least, not one worth talking about – at the time of the outbreak of the first great war. But a great number of barristers, who were doing extremely well, threw everything up and joined His Majesty’s forces as soon as they could. Many never came back. Many came back, to find their practices gone. A few were able slowly to recapture the practices they had lost. Others, great-hearted men, had to start once more from scratch. Now it is, of course, a matter of arithmetic that, if you suddenly remove two-thirds of the Junior Bar, the third that is left will find itself confronted with an opportunity of doing not only its own work, but the work which the other two-thirds used to do. The foundations of some fine practices were, accordingly, well and truly laid between the outbreak of war and the weeks immediately preceding the coming into force of the first Military Service Act in 1916.”
“God give me strength,” said Berry.
“That is a fact. And I am not biased, for I had no practice to lose. I state what I know.”
“Though you had no practice,” said Berry, “in those five years you had a hell of a show.”
“I did. A hell of a show. Six years of the Law, in all, and what wonderful things I saw! I’ve told you some of them. There are many that I’ve forgotten and more that I have not told. I’ve seen Carson cross-examine – and, by sheer personality, force a hostile witness to play his game. I’ve heard Danckwerts QC correct the Lord Chief Justice in open court. I’ve seen Marshall Hall reduced by Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he was briefed to smash. I’ve seen Darling convulse the court with his exquisite wit. And I’ve heard and seen the ‘whips and scorns’ of irony, wielded by that great master, F E Smith. As I have said before, there were giants in those days. And I was lucky enough to see them at work.”
“A very great privilege,” said Daphne.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Looking back, I fear that I have been very outspoken. I’ve praised and blamed right and left. Who am I to set one man up, and another down?”
“There,” said Berry, “I take you up. And that, with vehemence. You have many lamentable faults. But I’ll give you this. Mercifully, you had few briefs. So you were a looker-on. Lookers-on, they say, see the best of the game. And you have the keenest sight of any looker-on that I ever met.” I rose and bowed, and Berry inclined his head. “That’s not saying much, really. If a hanger-on can’t be bothered to use his eyes…”
“The occasions were great,” said Daphne. “And Boy took care to improve them.” She stopped there and looked at me. “You might have gone back to the Bar, but you took to writing, instead. D’you ever regret your decision?”
“No. For an unambitious man, writing is – or was – the pleasantest profession in the world. Mark you, I was terribly lucky. I never had to fight – my stuff was taken right away. I haven’t got very far; but I’ve never had to look back. I’ve been very lucky in my publishers and very lucky indeed in my public. Of that, I am deeply sensible. People still read my old books, and write and tell me so. To so faithful a public as that, I owe a very definite duty. So long as I live, I must never let them down.”
“By which you mean?”
“Let anything go that isn’t up to my standard. I confess that’s not very high: but fall below that, I must not. That fear has haunted me for the last three years.”
“It has been done,” said Berry. “But you must never do it.”
“And I’m the judge,” said I. “I know if my tankard’s a good one. And if it isn’t, by God, it’ll stay in my safe.”
Jill slid an arm round my neck.
“Darling,” she said, “ you must be terribly tired.”
“Not tonight,” I said. “ Crippen always tires me. But I’m not tired tonight.”
18
“No more?” said Daphne.
“No more,” said I. “We’re both agreed upon that. Though each of us has a number of memories which we have not retailed, they are all too personal. Myself, I feel that that criticism can be levelled at much I’ve already said. But Berry thinks otherwise.”
“Yes,” said Berry, “I do. Your comic strips—”
“Comic strips?” shrieked Jill.
“Well, unconsciously humorous insights into the mind of a man who has published thirty books. Such insights have a value. They reveal the haphazard way in which books come to be made; they indicate the refuse upon which the writer draws; and they show how the latter views his completed tripe. Of course, Boy’s debunked himself – a work, I need hardly say, of almost criminal supererogation: but for such as like a good, hearty laugh—”
“Boy, I can’t bear it,” said Jill.
“And what about the stuff,” said Da
phne, “that you’ve shoved in?”
“My monographs may be relied on to save the book. I’d an outstanding one on Titles, but your brother turned it down.”
“Titles?”
“Yes. Why, for instance, the General Overseas Manager of the Hot Drop Forgers’ Goose and Loincloth Association and Many of Them, on being raised to the peerage, was not allowed to take the title of Lord Order of Merit. And things like that.”
“I must allow,” said I, “that your example has an allure that none of my confessions can boast. But not all were so innocuous.”
“Perhaps,” said Berry, “perhaps. Not everyone has the entrée to The Diet of Worms – I mean, The College of Arms. But there you are. As I say, my monographs are the high spots. You can’t get away from that.”
“I can,” said Daphne. “Easily.”
“That,” said her husband, “is because you have an inferiority complex. On the receipt of five guineas, any psychogeneticalist will confirm what I say.”
“Rot,” said Jill. “Boy’s law stuff leaves them standing.”
“The Police Gazette,” said Berry, “has always appealed to those of little taste. To associate myself with such sensational slush has caused me much pain. But through all the ages people have fought to be taken behind the scenes. And who am I to deny to my fellow creatures a chance of indulging an instinct, however base? Because I prefer gin and tonic, shall there be no more Gooseberry Crush?”
“If you ask me,” said Daphne, “ I think you’re terribly lucky to have a master of English to straighten out your burbling.”
“And here’s blasphemy,” said Berry. “Of course, you’ll be struck or something for talking like that. I was going to suggest that you brought me that beautiful decanter; but I shouldn’t be surprised if you’d lost the use of your legs.”
“I’m afraid,” said I, “I haven’t displayed much mastery of English in this book. But in my experience, unless you’re a Winston Churchill or some other superman, your ordinary conversation is not distinguished by a purity of style. And this is a conversation piece.”
“As such,” said Berry, “it’s human. Homer was an epic poet – the greatest of the four. But I’ll lay he didn’t call for wine in hexameters. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Fill it right up, you fool.’”
“I always thought,” said Daphne, “that Homer was blind.”
“Not all the time,” said Berry. “He had to do his job. Oh, I see what you mean. Well, he probably kept his thumb inside the pot. And now we must have an envoy.”
“Whatever’s that?” said Jill.
“A send-off,” said Berry. “The authors’ parting words. They do it in pantomimes. ‘And now it’s time to go. We hope you’ve liked the show.’”
“Can’t you say something,” said Jill, “about it all being true? I mean, it is true, darlings – every word. Berry’s monograms mayn’t be, but everything else is. Every fact, I mean. If people don’t believe it, it can’t be helped. The thing is, we know it’s true. People say all sorts of things about the old days, and lots of them are lies. But these aren’t. They mayn’t be frightfully exciting, like some of your books. But then you make those up. But Fate made up this book.”
“I can’t beat that,” said Berry.
Neither can I.
Introductory Titles
(in order of first publication)
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
1. The Brother of Daphne 1914
2. The Courts of Idleness 1920
Bertram ‘Berry’ Pleydell Titles
(in order of first publication)
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
1. Berry and Co 1921
2. Jonah and Co 1922
3. Adèle and Co 1931
4. And Berry Came Too 1936
5. The House that Berry Built 1945
6. The Berry Scene 1947
7. As Berry and I were Saying 1952
8. B-Berry and I Look Back 1958
Richard Chandos & Colleagues Titles
(in order of first publication)
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
1. Blind Corner 1927
2. Perishable Goods 1928
3. Blood Royal 1929
4. Fire Below alt: By Royal Command 1930
5. She Fell Among Thieves 1935
6. An Eye for a Tooth 1943
7. Red in the Morning alt: Were Death Denied 1946
8. Cost Price alt: The Laughing Bacchante 1949
Other Novels
(in order of first publication)
1. She Painted Her Face 1937
2. Gale Warning 1939
3. Ne’er-Do-Well 1954
Synopses of Yates’ Titles
Published by House of Stratus
Adèle & Co
This is the first full-length novel featxuring Yates’ finest comic creation, Bertram ‘Berry’ Pleydell. The popular character of Adéle is based on the author’s first wife, Bettine, a highly gregarious American dancer and actress. Written in response to massive public demand for the Berry stories, this is regarded as one of Yates’ best books. Amongst the madcap escapades of the Pleydell clan as they career about the French countryside you will find ‘crime, criminals, and some of the funniest writing in the English language’.
And Berry Came Too
Eight stories in which we encounter ‘the hair-raising adventures and idiotic situations of the Pleydell family’ (Punch). Along with John Buchan and ‘Sapper’, Yates dominated the adventure book market of the inter-war years, and Berry is regarded as one of British comic writing’s finest creations, including Tom Sharpe amongst his fans. Read these and weep (with laughter).
As Berry & I Were Saying
Reprinted four times in three months, this semi-autobiographical novel is a humorous account of the author’s hazardous experiences in France, at the end of the World War II. Darker and less frivolous than some of Yates’ earlier books, he describes it as ‘really my own memoir put into the mouths of Berry and Boy’, and at the time of publication it already had a nostalgic feel. A great hit with the public and a ‘scrapbook of the Edwardian age as it was seen by the upper-middle classes’.
B-Berry & I Look Back
This is Yates’ final book, a semi-autobiographical novel spanning a lifetime of events from the sinking of the Titanic to the notorious Tichborne murder case. It opens with Berry, one of British comic writing’s finest creations, at his funniest, and is a companion volume to As Berry and I Were Saying. Pure, vintageYates.
Berry & Co
This collection of short stories featuring ‘Berry’ Pleydell and his chaotic entourage established Dornford Yates’ reputation as one of the best comic writers in a generation, and made him hugely popular. The German caricatures in the book carried such a sting that when France was invaded in 1939 Yates, who was living near the Pyrenées, was put on the wanted list and had to flee.
The Berry Scene
These stories, written by huge popular demand, give us classic Berry Pleydell – Yates’ finest comic character – at the top of his form. The first story sees Berry capturing a German spy at a village cricket match in 1914, and things get more bizarre from then on. A self-consciously nostalgic work harking back to more decorous days, here are tense plotting and high farce of the best kind.
Blind Corner
This is Yates’ first thriller: a tautly plotted page-turner featuring the crime-busting adventures of suave Richard Chandos. Chandos is thrown out of Oxford for ‘beating up some Communists’, and on return from vacation in Biarritz he witnesses a murder. Teaming up at his London club with friend Jonathan Mansel, a stratagem is devised to catch the killer. The novel has compelling sequels: Blood Royal, An Eye For a Tooth, Fire Below and Perishable Goods.
Blood Royal
At his chivalrous, rakish best in a story of mistaken identity, kidnapping, and old-world romance, Richa
rd Chandos takes us on a romp through Europe in the company of a host of unforgettable characters. This fine thriller can be read alone or as part of a series with Blind Corner, An Eye For a Tooth, Fire Below and Perishable Goods.
Brother of Daphne
Daphne is ‘well-born, elegant, beautiful, and not especially bright’. In this, Yates’ earliest collection of stories, we meet the Pleydell clan and encounter their high-spirited comic adventures. It is a world of Edwardian gentility and accomplished farce that brought the author instant fame when the stories appeared in Windsor Magazine.
Cost Price
A story from Dornford Yates’ later career, of stolen treasure, set against a backdrop of World War II: adventure, a travelling circus and much more besides. Lots of favourite Yates characters are here, as well as some new ones, like the Portuguese mule in trousers, and a few striking villains. This is the legendary Chandos’ final fictional appearance. A tense, assured plot and vintage comedy from a master of the genre.
Courts of Idleness
These comic stories are set during World War I and the period just after, when the genteel world of Edwardian England had changed beyond recognition. One of Yates’ earliest books, it harks back to that more decorous, decadent time, and we encounter the madcap adventures of a group of well-to-do young people as they career across Europe from Madeira to Macedonia fighting heinous villains and solving mysteries.
Eye for a Tooth
On the way home from Germany after having captured Axel the Red’s treasure, dapper Jonathan Mansel happens upon a corpse in the road, that of an Englishman. There ensues a gripping tale of adventure and vengeance of a rather gentlemanly kind. On publication this novel was such a hit that it was reprinted six times in its first year, and assured Yates’ huge popularity. A classic Richard Chandos thriller, which can be read alone or as part of a series including Blind Corner, Blood Royal, Fire Below and Perishable Goods.
As Berry and I Were Saying Page 31