Nothing is so capable of diversity as the emotion we feel on
seeing our name unexpectedly in print. We may soar to the heights
or we may sink to the depths. Jimmy did the latter. A mere
cursory first inspection of the article revealed the fact that it
was no eulogy. With an unsparing hand the writer had muck-raked
his eventful past, the text on which he hung his remarks being
that ill-fated encounter with Lord Percy Whipple at the Six
Hundred Club. This the scribe had recounted at a length and with
a boisterous vim which outdid even Bill Blake's effort in the
London _Daily Sun_. Bill Blake had been handicapped by
consideration of space and the fact that he had turned in his
copy at an advanced hour when the paper was almost made up. The
present writer was shackled by no restrictions. He had plenty of
room to spread himself in, and he had spread himself. So liberal
had been the editor's views in the respect that, in addition to
the letter-press, the pages contained an unspeakably offensive
picture of a burly young man in an obviously advanced condition
of alcoholism raising his fist to strike a monocled youth in
evening dress who had so little chin that Jimmy was surprised
that he had ever been able to hit it. The only gleam of
consolation that he could discover in this repellent drawing was
the fact that the artist had treated Lord Percy even more
scurvily than himself. Among other things, the second son of the
Duke of Devizes was depicted as wearing a coronet--a thing which
would have excited remark even in a London night-club.
Jimmy read the thing through in its entirety three times before
he appreciated a _nuance_ which his disordered mind had at first
failed to grasp--to wit, that this character-sketch of himself
was no mere isolated outburst but apparently one of a series. In
several places the writer alluded unmistakeably to other theses
on the same subject.
Jimmy's breakfast congealed on its tray, untouched. That boon
which the gods so seldom bestow, of seeing ourselves as others
see us, had been accorded to him in full measure. By the time he
had completed his third reading he was regarding himself in a
purely objective fashion not unlike the attitude of a naturalist
towards some strange and loathesome manifestation of insect life.
So this was the sort of fellow he was! He wondered they had let
him in at a reputable hotel.
The rest of the day he passed in a state of such humility that he
could have wept when the waiters were civil to him. On the Monday
morning he made his way to Park Row to read the files of the
_Chronicle_--a morbid enterprise, akin to the eccentric behaviour
of those priests of Baal who gashed themselves with knives or of
authors who subscribe to press-clipping agencies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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