Part 1
CIRCULAR SAWS
_Other books by the same Author_
_Verse_
LONDON SONNETS SHYLOCK REASONS WITH MR. CHESTERTON
CIRCULAR SAWS
By
Humbert Wolfe
LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 1923
Printed in England at The Westminster Press 411a Harrow Road, London, W.9
Three or four of these tales have appeared in _The Weekly Westminster Gazette_ and _The Chapbook_. The author’s thanks are due for permission to reprint them here. Thanks are also due to the Editor of _The Saturday Review_ for permission to republish the verses in the story called “Dis Aliter Visum.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Waste not, want not 1
II. Looking for a needle in a haystack 2
III. All’s well that ends well 3
IV. Faint heart never won fair lady 5
V. Truth is stranger than fiction 7
VI. A rose by any other name 10
VII. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing 12
VIII. Two wrongs do not make a right 14
IX. Business is business 16
X. Let sleeping dogs lie 19
XI. It’s never too late to mend 20
XII. Ars longa, vita brevis 24
XIII. Sunt certi denique fines 30
XIV. Heaven helps those that help themselves 35
XV. “You never can tell” 37
XVI. United we stand 41
XVII. Ici-Gît 44
XVIII. Silence is golden 45
XIX. Look before you leap 48
XX. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 52
XXI. Quis separabit? 53
XXII. Men, not measures 55
XXIII. You cannot have your cake and eat it 62
XXIV. In vino veritas 66
XXV. Tantae religio 71
XXVI. On entertaining angels unawares 73
XXVII. Tempus fugit 77
XXVIII. You can take a horse to the water 78
XXIX. Half a loaf is better than no bread 80
XXX. In for a penny, in for a pound 84
XXXI. Quantity is better than quality 89
XXXII. Charity begins at home 95
XXXIII. Dis aliter visum 99
XXXIV. Parallel lines do not meet 109
XXXV. Cherchez le juif 111
XXXVI. [Greek: gnôthi seauton] 119
XXXVII. E pur si muove 120
XXXVIII. The game and the candle 124
XXXIX. Once bitten twice shy 126
XL. It takes two to make a peace 127
XLI. Vicisti Galilæe 130
I
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
When Haroun-al-Raschid (of whom I have told you before, and if I haven’t it is only because I have forgotten) was having a bath they wouldn’t let him splash. “By the beard of Allah,” he observed mildly to the Vizier, who was standing by with his favourite celluloid duck (guaranteed to float), “this is preposterous. Cannot the Commander of the Faithful splash a little water? What’s the good of being a King, that’s what I say?” “Sire,” replied the Vizier, handing him the celluloid duck, “the higher, the fewer the pleasures of life. And remember in season the saying, ‘Waste not, want not.’”
The following day torrential rains of unprecedented severity visited Bagdad, sweeping away houses and gardens and drowning, among others, in circumstances of peculiar discomfort, the Grand Vizier. “Well,” said Haroun, splashing in his bath (and hitting the opposite wall, mind you), “that only shows.”
II
LOOKING FOR A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK
Mr. Arthur Benacres--the celebrated philanthropist--suffered in private life the inconvenience of being an ostrich. This was due to the act of a rather deaf fairy friend of the family, who mistook an observation on the weather (addressed to him by a conversational curate at the christening) for a request for feathers.
This, as you suppose, caused Mr. Benacres some difficulty, and led him to consider methods of escape. For though it was agreeable to be able to subsist on odd scraps of broken rubbish, and to dig with his head (instead of a spade) in the nice clean sand, people did make a fuss on the Underground and at parties.
Till at last another fairy friend of the family, who was neither deaf or blind, said: “Why don’t you go into Parliament? Then nobody will notice.” And they didn’t.
III
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Once upon a time there was a princess whose mother would not buy her an umbrella. This was due to the wicked incompetence of the Prime Minister of that country, who, having no children of his own, spent all his money on swords instead of umbrellas. (Yes, I know swords are nicer generally, but these weren’t; besides they were two-edged.) Moreover, her mother went and bought her a most unbecoming mackintosh--the sort that cuts your chin. And so, as it was raining all the time (for this princess lived at Kilcreggan in Dumbartonshire), she asked to be turned into a frog or a toad, because they didn’t need umbrellas, and their mackintoshes fit at the neck.
Well, she was, and then she found that being a frog she couldn’t use her scooter, or read “Antony and Cleopatra” to her mother, or go into Kensington Gardens with her father. (No! Kensington Gardens isn’t at Kilcreggan, but this is a fairy princess, and so it doesn’t matter.) So she unwished herself, and she was a princess, and she had no umbrella and a mackintosh that didn’t fit at the neck. But it was a drought.[A] So all’s well that ends well.
[A] A drought is when it doesn’t rain at all. The scene of the story has been shifted from Scotland.
IV
FAINT HEART NEVER WON FAIR LADY
Miss June Mortifex was most beautiful--yes, and more beautiful than that. So that when she looked out of the window the Meteorological Department in Exhibition Road, Kensington, over the Post Office, said: “The westerly depression over London is now moving rapidly northward with a southern twist,” which means nothing, and only shows how excited they all were.
But on account of her very exceptional beauty everybody was afraid of marrying her because they said “She would cost a King’s Hansom,” and owing to the increase in the number of motor taxicabs nobody had one about them.
So one day she blacked her face and assuming a Mid-Victorian Cockney accent went down Piccadilly singing the well-known ditty:
“O Mr. Jansen, You kissed me in the hansom, ’Ansom is as ’ansom does, Now you push me off the bus.”
As may be supposed, this remarkable revival aroused the interest of a distinguished literary critic, who, recognising merit, even under an unpromising exterior, offered his hand, shortly after followed by his heart. “But, Edward,” whispered June, “I am not what I seem.” “You couldn’t be,” he answered triumphantly, “the Victorians never were.”
And with that he walked into St. George’s, Hanover Square, and ordered three of the best banns they had. And he gave her as a bridal gift the collected works of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for he was not faint-hearted.
V
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
It’s no good pretending that Petronella Gibbs was a good princess. For one thing, she was always asking questions. And if the nurses didn’t know the answer they were instantly beheaded. With the result that there was an unprecedented shortage in the supply of domestic labour. The Queen, her mother, indeed remarked to a friend of hers, another Queen living in the palace opposite, that “she never.” You may suppose therefore that things had reached a crisis.
But did Petronella care? She did not care. She could do without nurses, thank you. On the contrary, she decided to start answering questions. For instance. For a long time all the best people had wanted to know “Who’s Who.” And a very large and important book had been written about it. Petronella wrote as follows:
“Deer Editter. Nobody is. Yours evva, Petronella P.”
This, which was the obvious solution, created considerable consternation. The Queen--her mother--had a long consultation with the King--her father--on his return from the Royal Exchange, where he kept his bulls, bears and hyenas, and remarked, “I never.” But the King only laughed. That is why so many women are Republicans.
At last Petronella became so celebrated that the King of America, colloquially known as the President of the United States, asked for her hand in marriage. He and his subjects had been guessing so long that they thought that the time had come to find someone who knew.
The flattering offer was accepted by her royal parents, and Petronella, with great pomp and ceremony, embarked. Upon her arrival she was met by the leading citizens, who asked her, “What do you think of America?” “I don’t,” she replied, which was the right answer. At which they, being accustomed to the latter, and never previously having met the former, exclaimed, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” and adding, “not half so true either,” asked her with tears in their eyes to return where they asserted she belonged. Which she did. And both she and the King of America lived happily ever after.
VI
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET
When Arthur Nobbs was a little boy he believed in fairies. If, for example, he ate part of his sister’s jam (as he constantly did), he assured her that the fairies would put it back. And if they didn’t, well that was because she didn’t believe in them.
When he grew older and became a business man he naturally continued to entertain that belief. When he was successful (as he generally was) in his business transactions, he ascribed his success to the fairies, though the persons he so continuously and cleverly ruined thought that he had got the name wrong.
One day he met a starving sculptor whose father he had been able to put out of business. “What are these horrible objects that you have in your tray?” he asked severely. “These,” said the sculptor, “are the seven fairies in which you believe.” “But,” objected Mr. Nobbs, “they are labelled ‘The Seven Deadly Sins,’ and they look it.” “Oh,” said the sculptor, “the title is only a matter of taste.” “You are an impostor, sir,” exclaimed Mr. Nobbs; “but fortunately we are in a law-abiding country.” And he gave the young man in charge for seeking to obtain money by false pretences.
But you will be glad to learn that Arthur Nobbs was subsequently raised to the peerage and died universally beloved and respected, and on his tombstone they carved the simple phrase:
“He believed in fairies.”
VII
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS THING
The father of Miss Liddell was favourably known to the general public as the man who had written to the public prints during a strike a bold letter beginning: “Sir,--Let all strikers be shot. Then let ...” and again during a lock-out an equally bold letter with the following introduction: “Sir,--Let all employers be shot. Then let ...” (It is believed that it is from this use of “let” in public correspondence that the word “letter” is derived.)
Miss Liddell, therefore, naturally objected to the fact that the Prince, over whose education she presided, disliked the manly game of football. “Don’t you know,” she would say from time to time, “what Wellington said about the playing fields of Eton?” “No,” the Prince used to reply, “who was Wellington? One of those professional footballers one reads about in their newspapers?” “Certainly not,” Miss Liddell was wont to reply. “He was a great general who beat the French.” “What did he do that for?” the Prince would ask. “Because they were his country’s enemies.” “Ah!” the Prince would say, “but I thought the French were England’s friends.” “So they are now,” Miss Liddell would say. “And did Wellington beat them because of football?” the Prince would inquire. “Wellington said so,” Miss Liddell (slightly flushed) would reply.
“Will you give me my paint-box?” the Prince would murmur politely.
VIII
TWO WRONGS DO NOT MAKE A RIGHT
Listen. This is quite a new story. It is about a swan that wished he was an ugly duckling again. He was one of those two swans who stand at the edge of the Round Pond, have black feet and holes to put tape through in their beaks. Only they won’t let you put tape through.
What he said was (quite simply), “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” To which his mate said, “Then why do you always eat more than your share?” But the other swan was an idealist and took no notice.
He summoned a public meeting of the ducks after closing-time, and having elected himself to the chair after rather a protracted argument with a pertinacious old drake, told his audience that he was a duck at heart. “What is beauty,” he went on to say, “that it should put one on a lonely eminence. The exquisite shape of the swan, his girl-like neck, what right to rule do these confer?” “None,” said the old drake, heartily. “Did you say beauty?” said a young female duck, bridling her feathers. “Why you poor old antic, if you knew how we ducks sympathised with you on your deformity!”
But this was a little too much for the swan. “I did not come here to be insulted,” he said hotly, “by a brood of blasphemous pond-puddlers. Are you aware that the Great Swan made swans in his image?” “And are you aware,” said the old drake, “that the swans retorted by making him in theirs?”
“Well,” said his mate to the rather draggled swan who returned about midnight, “how did you get on?” “Get on,” he screamed, “those ducks think that equality means that I’m equal with them.” “And doesn’t it?” “Certainly not,” said the swan, tucking his head under his wings, “it means that they’re equal with me.” “And what’s more,” he said with sudden truculence as he emerged for a moment, “a swan’s a swan for a’ that.”
IX
BUSINESS IS BUSINESS
The electric bell had rung for the fourth time, when the door was opened by an agreeable young man dressed in the height of fashion.
“Who are you?” he inquired in the amiable tone of one who begins an interesting conversation.
“I’m the Milk,” retorted the young man with the cans a little shortly, for he was not pleased at being so long delayed.
“Will you not come in one moment?” the young householder retorted. “I have within the butcher, the grocer and the baker, and I have long desired to add you to the list of my visitors.”
The young milkman (still carrying his heavy can) followed the polite young gentleman into a fine, lofty room. The whole was arranged with exquisite taste, and many deep rugs indicated a luxurious vein in the young man’s character. At the further end of the room, arranged neatly in an isosceles triangle (for the baker was much shorter than the other two), were the corpses of the butcher, the baker, and the grocer.
“May I inquire,” said the Milk, after surveying the scene in silence for a minute, “why you have killed these three gentlemen?”
“You have the best of rights in the world to ask, and I shall be delighted to explain,” answered the young gentleman courteously. “You must know, then, that I have a speculative interest in the manner in which the smaller British tradesman meets death. I have been much charmed by the experience I have gleaned with the help of my three friends there. The butcher,” he added, pointing smilingly to a discolouration on his forehead, “was the least graceful. And now as I have answered you, perhaps you will allow me to ask you a question?”
“But pray do,” answered the Milk, not to be outdone in courtesy.
“I thank you. I was going to inquire whether you knew any reason why I should not add you to my list.”
“I apprehended,” returned the Milk, “that your question might be something of that sort. I had gone so far as to prepare an answering question.”
“And what might that be?” inquired the young gentleman?
“Why should I not kill you?” retorted the Milk affably.
“There is something in what you say,” exclaimed the young gentleman. “I had not considered the question. Will you give me a minute or two to meditate?”
“I must be about my business, I am afraid,” returned the Milk, quietly bludgeoning the young man as he spoke with his milk can. “Yet how sad it is,” he said reflectively surveying the four corpses, “that speculation must inevitably make way for practical affairs.”
And with that he proceeded to replace the milk he had spilled with water from a neighbouring table.
X
LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE
Once upon a time there was a wizard who could find the truth in a newspaper.
Fortunately he was discovered and hanged in time, and since then nobody has dared to tamper with the liberty of the Press.
XI
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND
North of Skelleffteå, in the kingdom of Sweden, there lived a more than usually repulsive troll, who was, however, the supreme Scandinavian authority on psycho-analysis. The pine-trees in that part of the world walk down to the water of the sea as though the weight of their own beauty had become too heavy for them. And the sea with blandishing whispers holds out to them the immense temptation of his cold peace.
On a rock at the rendezvous of sea and pines, under a midnight-sun-haunted sky of June, the troll sat with huge horn glasses on his twisted nose relentlessly reading the work which Mr. Freud was to write some centuries later....
Out of the shadows of the pine, as straight, as serious, and weighed down like them with the burden of her own loveliness, slipped the Princess Gurli on her way to the cold temptation of the sea. Like other princesses before and after, she was enchanted. When she looked at her almost flawless loveliness in the lily-pond of her father’s castle, she saw always a faint silver mist that trembled at her mirrored lips. The mist would draw together into a frangible bubble, a diaphanous ball of silver, and finally dissolve, leaving an infinite argent stain on the red of her mouth.
One day a fish had swum up from the marble floor, and rising to the surface, had said to her, “What will you give me if I drink the mist?” And she had answered, “What do you wish?” “Your soul,” he replied. This she was glad in any case to be rid of, for her soul had often interfered with the natural pleasures to which she was entitled by her loveliness.
The fish and the mist disappeared together, and for the first time she saw herself in flawless loveliness. But she was strangely cold.
Princes came to her from the North and the South, but when they looked into the green stain of her eyes they shivered and turned away. The Princess was not sorry, for she thought that men were a poor substitute for her own beauty. But with her twenty-first summer she was conscious that her beauty was threatened. For a neighbouring queen had been heard to say of her, “Yes, she is lovely. But for me her beauty has no soul.”
Therefore she decided to marry a prince of her own choice, who would ask all of her and nothing, whose castle has no lamps and whose palace gardens are visited neither by sun nor snow.
It was on her way to this alliance that she slipped out of the pines, and beheld on the rock under the midnight-sun-haunted sky the unusually repulsive troll reading the prenatal works of Mr. Freud.
“Ha,” neighed the troll, looking up, “you have come to consult me, Princess Gurli.” “I have not,” said the Princess. “I do not like trolls.” “But I,” said the troll, “am not like other trolls.” “That is what all trolls say,” replied the Princess scornfully. “Perhaps,” said the troll, “but I am the greatest Scandinavian authority on psycho-analysis!” “What in Valhalla,” said the Princess, “is that?” “The study of souls,” cried the troll with a significant chuckle. “Oh,” said the Princess, “you can’t study mine. I haven’t got one.” “This is interesting,” said the troll; “you are undoubtedly suffering from an advanced condition of mermaid-complex.” “What does that mean?” said the Princess. “It means that you have a suppressed passion for a Mer-King,” replied the troll, “and if you give way to it you will be cured immediately.” “I have never heard anything so disgusting,” said the Princess. “Why, a Mer-King is half a fish.” “Half a fish,” said the troll sententiously, “is better than no fish.” “I had meant,” said the Princess, “to drown myself in the sea because the loss of my soul troubled me. But now that I know that souls are things that can be studied by creatures like you, I am very glad I have not got one.”
The troll was so shocked at this outburst that he fell backwards into the sea, where he was instantly seized by mermaids and drowned. But the Princess went back, slim and gold, through the shadow of the pines, and married the youngest son of the nearest fishmonger.
XII
ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS
At about half-past eleven on a summer evening there might have been observed, wending her way slowly along the Rue du Soleil Levant into the Cour de St. Pierre at Geneva, a small black kitten with her tail straight up. There was nobody in the cobbled square except the beech-tree in the middle with a wooden seat round him. The kitten, who was being brought up on a severely anti-religious basis, doubted whether the tree might not have been influenced by the cathedral window, in whose shadow he had dreamed summer and winter for more than a hundred years. She was therefore on the point of slipping into a most engaging gutter of stone, like a deep mouse-track, that leads past the chapel of Calvin to the railings that overlook the Passage des Degrés des Poules.
But the beech wasn’t going to stand that. On the contrary! He dropped one little fidgety brown leaf--puff!--between the kitten’s paws, who, throwing religious prejudice to the winds, played with it as enchantingly as though it had been a convert to Epistemological Radicalism.
Then the moon looked over the crooked gables into the square, and proceeded to light her cold lamp in all the dark cathedral windows. But the beech rustled her leaves warningly at her. “What is it?” said the moon, and then she saw the little black kitten dancing with the leaf on the cobbles. “Who is your little black faun of a friend?” she inquired of the beech. “I don’t know her name,” said the beech, “but she certainly dances extremely well.”
At this point the kitten stopped abruptly and said a little harshly, “What are you two old ones whispering about?” “We were remembering,” said the beech, who was a kindly old fellow, “the time when we also danced with our shadows in the joy of our youth.” “How can that be?” said the kitten impatiently. “The moon never was young, and you never had but one leg, and that stuck in the ground. You are telling me fairy tales, and I have no patience with them. Let me tell you my dancing is merely automatic muscular reaction.” “Dear me,” said the moon mildly, “what long words that child uses! But tell me, little one, if you don’t like fairy tales, you won’t want to hear the story of the cat and the fiddle.” “Does it observe the dramatic unities?” inquired the kitten. “I don’t know what they are,” said the moon, “but it has a moral.” “Which is more than you have, you little wretch,” said the beech severely. “Oh well,” said the kitten ungraciously, “I suppose I must hear it, though I expect that it will be representational.”
“Once upon a time,” said the moon, “there was a cat that had the soul of a musician. But when she tried to render her thoughts into sound she excited no sympathetic response. On the contrary, people threw boots and bottles at her. ‘I do not care,’ said the cat, ‘my songs are for posterity.’ But nevertheless the constant succession of missiles disturbed her.”
“It is my considered opinion,” interrupted the kitten, “that she was no artist. The best art rejects appreciation.”
“So the dog said,” observed the moon, “when he was chasing the cat up the tree with yells of derision. But the cat was not comforted.