The Happy Hypocrite: A Fairy Tale for Tired MenBeerbohm, Max, Sir
Science
The Happy Hypocrite: A Fairy Tale for Tired Men
Beerbohm, Max, Sir
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Love stories; Masks -- Fiction
Lord George Hell did, at last, atone for all his faults, in a way that
was never revealed to the world during his life-time. The reason of his
strange and sudden disappearance from that social sphere in which he had
so long moved, and never moved again, I will unfold. My little readers
will then, I think, acknowledge that any angry judgment they may have
passed upon him must be reconsidered and, maybe, withdrawn. I will leave
his Lordship in their hands. But my plea for him will not be based upon
that Candour of his, which some of his friends so much admired. There
were, yes! some so weak and so wayward as to think it a fine thing to
have an historic title and no scruples. "Here comes George Hell," they
would say. "How wicked my Lord is looking!" _Noblesse oblige_, you see,
and so an aristocrat should be very careful of his good name. Anonymous
naughtiness does little harm.
It is pleasant to record that many persons were inobnoxious to the magic
of his title and disapproved of him so strongly that, whenever he
entered a room where they happened to be, they would make straight for
the door and watch him very severely through the key-hole. Every
morning, when he strolled up Piccadilly, they crossed over to the other
side in a compact body, leaving him to the companionship of his bad
companions on that which is still called the "shady" side. Lord
George--[Greek: schetlios]--was quite indifferent to this demonstration.
Indeed, he seemed wholly hardened, and when ladies gathered up their
skirts as they passed him, he would lightly appraise their ankles.
I am glad I never saw his Lordship. They say he was rather like
Caligula, with a dash of Sir John Falstaff, and that sometimes on wintry
mornings in St. James's Street young children would hush their prattle
and cling in disconsolate terror to their nurses' skirts, as they saw
him come (that vast and fearful gentleman!) with the east wind ruffling
the rotund surface of his beaver, ruffling the fur about his neck and
wrists, and striking the purple complexion of his cheeks to a still
deeper purple. "King Bogey" they called him in the nurseries. In the
hours when they too were naughty, their nurses would predict his advent
down the chimney or from the linen-press, and then they always
"behaved." So that, you see, even the unrighteous are a power for good,
in the hands of nurses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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