Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle ManLewis, Sinclair
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Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man
Lewis, Sinclair
Courtship -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Middle-aged men -- United States -- Fiction
Dr. Mittyford grudgingly took Mr. Wrenn about, to teach him what not to
enjoy. He pointed at Shelley’s rooms as at a certificated angel’s
feather, but Mr. Wrenn writhingly admitted that he had never heard of
Shelley, whose name he confused with Max O’Rell’s, which Dr. Mittyford
deemed an error. Then, Pater’s window. The doctor shrugged. Oh well,
what could you expect of the proletariat! Swinging his stick aloofly,
he stalked to the Bodleian and vouchsafed, “That, sir, is the
_AEschylus_ Shelley had in his pocket when he was drowned.”
Though he heard with sincere regret the news that his new idol was
drowned, Mr. Wrenn found that _AEschylus_ left him cold. It seemed to
be printed in a foreign language. But perhaps it was merely a very old
book.
Standing before a case in which was an exquisite book in a queer
wrigglesome language, bearing the legend that from this volume
Fitzgerald had translated the _Rubaiyat_, Dr. Mittyford waved his hand
and looked for thanks.
“Pretty book,” said Mr. Wrenn.
“And did you note who used it?”
“Uh—yes.” He hastily glanced at the placard. “Mr. Fitzgerald. Say, I
think I read some of that Rubaiyat. It was something about a Persian
kitten—I don’t remember exactly.”
Dr. Mittyford walked bitterly to the other end of the room.
About eight in the evening Mr. Wrenn’s landlady knocked with, “There’s
a gentleman below to see you, sir.”
“Me?” blurted Mr. Wrenn.
He galloped down-stairs, panting to himself that Morton had at last
found him. He peered out and was overwhelmed by a motor-car, with Dr.
Mittyford waiting in awesome fur coat, goggles, and gauntlets, centered
in the car-lamplight that loomed in the shivery evening fog.
“Gee! just like a hero in a novel!” reflected Mr. Wrenn.
“Get on your things,” said the pedagogue. “I’m going to give you the
time of your life.”
Mr. Wrenn obediently went up and put on his cap. He was excited, yet
frightened and resentful at being “dragged into all this highbrow
business” which he had resolutely been putting away the past two hours.
As he stole into the car Dr. Mittyford seemed comparatively human,
remarking: “I feel bored this evening. I thought I would give you a
_nuit blanche_. How would you like to go to the Red Unicorn at
Brempton—one of the few untouched old inns?”
“That would be nice,” said Mr. Wrenn, unenthusiastically.
His chilliness impressed Dr. Mittyford, who promptly told one of the
best of his well-known whimsical yet scholarly stories.
“Ha! ha!” remarked Mr. Wrenn.
He had been saying to himself: “By golly! I ain’t going to even try to
be a society guy with him no more. I’m just going to be _me_, and if he
don’t like it he can go to the dickens.”
So he was gentle and sympathetic and talked West Sixteenth Street
slang, to the rhetorician’s lofty amusement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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