7 Y.W.C.A. The result can easily be guessed. "Peep ing in through the doorway Harvey observed that the municipal dustbin had been pierced with holes to accommodate the muzzles of imaginary cannon, J. S. Mill had been dipped in red ink and apparently stood for Marshal Saxe. "Louis orders his troops to surround the Y.W.C.A. and seize the lot of them. 'Once back at the Louvre 6 We must she says and the girls are mine,' he exclaims. As I said before, "Saki's" understanding of the psychology of childhood is profound. His old trick of happy simile returns with as good effect as ever, but on rarer occasions. 66 'Nowadays the Salvation Army are spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like a geranium bed with religious convictions." His brain never lost its cunning in coining perfectly fitting names : "Eleanor Bope" brings before us at once a realistic picture of the aunt with freak ideas about “ peace" toys. Crispina Umberleigh" could 66 only be a woman of martinet habits, born to sit in judgment. Octavian Ruttle" could not be other than amiable; you would expect Waldo Orpington to be frivolous and chirrup at drawing-room concerts; we know exactly the kind of novel to expect from Mark Mellowkent, while the home life of Mr and Mrs James Gurtleberry can be guessed without much explanation. How far it is permissible to search for a serious design in the work of a humourist it is hard to say, but one story so far stands out from the rest of his work as epitomising his attitude to life, that one is tempted to base a theory on the ideas contained in it. Why, we ask ourselves, does "Saki " so frequently have recourse to hoaxes for his plots? Why does he take an almost indecent delight in those of his characters who are fluent liars, who exercise their imagination at everybody else's expense? The reason, I think, will be found in The Mappined Life, which might almost have been written by Tchehov. "We are able to live our unreal, stupid little lives on our particular Mappin terrace, and persuade ourselves that we really are untrammelled men and women leading a reasonable existence in a reasonable sphere we are trammelled by restrictions of income and opportunity and, above all, by lack of initiative. Lack of initiative is the thing that really cripples one, and that is where you and I and Uncle James are so hopelessly shut in. There are heaps of ways of leading a real existence without committing sensational deeds of violence. It's the dreadful little everyday acts of pretended importance that give the Mappin stamp to our life. Take my case: I'm not a good dancer, and no one could honestly call me goodlooking, but when I go to one of our dull little local dances, I'm conventionally supposed to have a heavenly time,' to attract the ardent homage of the local cavaliers, and to go home with my head awhirl with pleasurable recollections. As a matter of fact, I've merely put in some hours of indifferent dancing, drank some badly-made claret-cup, and listened to an enormous amount of laborious light conversation. A moonlight hen-stealing raid with the merry-eyed curate would be infinitely more exciting.' That is "Saki's" secret. Behind the mask of the satirist and the elegant buffoon we can trace the features of one who so loved life that his affections always swayed his more sober reason, of one whose favourite companions were the Reginalds and Clovises of this world, because they, at least, could never grow up and worship at the shrine of routine. “Saki” was not only a child-lover, he was a child himself, with all the imagination, the irresponsibility and the harsh cruelty of children fully developed in him there is nothing sweet or mellow or restful in his genius: he surprises us just as "O. Henry" surprises us by turning a complete somersault in his last sentences after astonishing us with all manner of gymnastic capers in each paragraph before. It reminds one of music-hall acrobats who, after taking our breath away several times during their “turn,' make their adieux by performing some incredible antic that leaves us too shattered even to applaud. Such is the humour of "Saki," which never descends to caricature like so much of Dickens, is never aimless like that of W. W. Jacobs, is often bitter like his masters, Pope, Dryden, Swift, and (at times) Wilde, always verbally brilliant, polished, and cold: his exaggerations are all marked with a restraint which, of course, makes them all the more grotesque and mirthprovoking his accents are as precise as those of the most prim governess or the most literal Scotsman : "There is a goat in my bedroom,' observed the bishop. 666 Really,' I said, 'another survivor? I thought all the other goats are done for.' "This particular goat is done for,' he said, 'it is being devoured by a leopard at the present moment. That is why I left the room : some animals resent being watched while they are eating.' It is here that he differs from Stephen Leacock, his transatlantic counterpart both are prolific in verbal felicities, but Leacock is far less subtle: where 66 Saki" is giving full play to a wonderfully developed imagination, Leacock is confined by the bounds of his terrestial fancy; where "Saki" soars into the highest regions of the truly comic, Leacock is content with the slow, earth-borne car of Parody; the barbs of irony which Saki" employed were aimed at foolish humanity straying pitiably from paths where they might be happy, while Leacock's sarcastic darts are levelled at a particular failing of foolish "cranks." Leacock has intermittent flashes of great brilliance, but his intellect is that of a highly talented professor; Saki,” like “O. Henry," rises quite frequently beyond cleverness into that inexplicable, rarefied atmosphere where only the genius can survive. Like "O. Henry," and only too many other geniuses, he escaped recognition in his lifetime: “Saki" had only an eclectic public: but the passion of the devoted few always keeps the reputation of great men burning until the time comes for posterity to acknowledge the master, and there is no doubt whatever that the time will come when "Saki" will be given his niche among the great humourists. 66 T IX WOMEN HERE is no subject so constantly in man's thoughts as some member of the opposite sex. Wherever two or three men are collected together gossiping, in the end some generalisation about women will set them off: this is not to say that Englishmen, as a race, talk so incessantly about them as Frenchmen do: nor do I suggest that men give the same amount of time to talking about women as women do about men : it is rather in his thoughts that women take precedence with a man. He is able to concentrate on his work or his games when occasion demands, but in his leisure moments, at the theatre, in church, in the train, in the streets, at fashionable restaurants, he likes to delight his eyes with the sight of pretty women in books he gluts himself with vicarious love-making, he wallows in sentimental affection for fictitious heroines. If he is unmarried he is always more or less in love: if he is married he is either preposterously in love with his own wife or some one else. All this in spite of the fact that most women make men miserable, that men despise them as a sex, that as companions their own sex is in nearly every way superior. All bachelors suspect their married friends because they unite invariably in urging them to do as they have done: whereas no successful barrister, journalist, or prince of commerce ever yet did anything but try to put off all his acquaintances from taking up the profession in which he has made good. |