English drama -- 20th century; English fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, English
TWO months later the first instalment of _Heartsease Fitzroy: the
Story of a Young Girl_, by Pearl Bellairs, appeared in the pages of
_Hildebrand's Home Weekly_. Three and a quarter millions read and
approved. When the story appeared in book form, two hundred thousand
copies were sold in six weeks; and in the course of the next two years
no less than sixteen thousand female infants in London alone were
christened Heartsease. With her fourth novel and her two hundred and
fiftieth Sunday paper article, Pearl Bellairs was well on her way to
becoming a household word.
Meanwhile Dick was in receipt of an income far beyond the wildest
dreams of his avarice. He was able to realize the two great ambitions
of his life--to wear silk underclothing and to smoke good (but really
good) cigars.
IV
DICK went down from Canteloup in a blaze of glory. The most brilliant
man of his generation, exceptional mind, prospects, career. But his
head was not turned. When people congratulated him on his academic
successes, he thanked them politely and then invited them to come and
see his Memento Mori. His Memento Mori was called Mr. Glottenham and
could be found at any hour of the day in the premises of the Union, or
if it was evening, in the Senior Common Room at Canteloup. He was an
old member of the College, and the dons in pity for his age and
loneliness had made him, some years before, a member of their Common
Room. This act of charity was as bitterly regretted as any generous
impulse in the history of the world. Mr. Glottenham made the life of
the Canteloup fellows a burden to them; he dined in Hall with fiendish
regularity, never missing a night, and he was always the last to leave
the Common Room. Mr. Glottenham did not prepossess at a first glance;
the furrows of his face were covered with a short grey sordid stubble;
his clothes were disgusting with the spilth of many years of dirty
feeding; he had the shoulders and long hanging arms of an ape--an ape
with a horribly human look about it. When he spoke, it was like the
sound of a man breaking coke; he spoke incessantly and on every
subject. His knowledge was enormous; but he possessed the secret of a
strange inverted alchemy--he knew how to turn the richest gold to
lead, could make the most interesting topic so intolerably tedious
that it was impossible, when he talked, not to loathe it.
This was the death's-head to which Dick, like an ancient philosopher
at a banquet, would direct the attention of his heartiest
congratulators. Mr. Glottenham had had the most dazzling academic
career of his generation. His tutors had prophesied for him a future
far more brilliant than that of any of his contemporaries. They were
now Ministers of State, poets, philosophers, judges, millionaires. Mr.
Glottenham frequented the Union and the Canteloup Senior Common Room,
and was--well, he was just Mr. Glottenham. Which was why Dick did not
think too highly of his own laurels.
V
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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