To this joyous gem Capricorn has added a whole foison of annotations. He
asks at the end: "Which was 'him'? Important." And he underlines in red
ink the word "however," perhaps as mysterious a copulative as has ever
appeared in British prose. I should add that Capricorn himself was an
ardent sportsman and very rarely missed any of the first-class events of
the ring, though personally he did not box, and on the few occasions when
I have seen the exercise forced upon him in the public streets he showed
the greatest distaste to this form of athletics.
Lastly, I find this note with which I must close: it is taken from the
verbatim report of a great case in the courts, now half forgotten, but ten
years ago the talk of London:
"The witness then said that he had been promised an independence for life
if he could discover the defendant in the act of enclosing any part of
the land, or any document or order of his involving such an enclosure. He
therefore watched the defendant regularly from June, 1896, to the middle
of July, 1900. He also watched the defendant's father and mother, three
boys, married daughter, grandmother and grandfather, his two married
sisters, his brother, his agent, and his agent's wife--but he had
discovered nothing."
That such a sentence should have been printed in the English language and
delivered by an English mouth in an English witness-box was enough for
Capricorn. Give him that alone for intellectual food in his desert lodge
and he was happy.
Shall I tempt Providence by any further extracts? ... It is difficult to
tear oneself away from such a feast. So let me put in this very last,
really the last, by way of savoury. There it is in black and white and no
one can undo it: not all her piety, nor all her wit. It dates from the
year 1904, when, Heaven knows, the internal combustion engine and its
possibilities were not exactly new, and I give it word for word:
"The Duchess is, moreover, a pioneer in the use of the motor-car. She
finds it an agreeable and speedy means of conveyance from her country seat
to her town house, and also a very practical way of getting to see her
friends at week-ends. She has been heard to complain, however, that a
substitute for the pneumatic tyre less liable to puncture than it is would
be a priceless boon."
There! There! May they all rest in peace! They have added to the gaiety of
mankind.
ON UNKNOWN PEOPLE
You will often hear it said that it is astonishing such and such work
should be present and enduring in the world, and yet the name of its
author not known; but when one considers the variety of good work and the
circumstances under which it is achieved, and the variety of taste also
between different times and places, one begins to understand what is at
first so astonishing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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