Read Ebook: This and That and the Other by Belloc Hilaire

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 609 lines and 48063 words, and 13 pages

Only the very next day Mr. Foley entered upon the responsibilities which are inseparable from the joys of an author. He received a letter from the publisher, saying that it seemed that another book had been written under the title "Man and Nature," that he dared not publish under that title lest the publishers of the other volume should apply for an injunction.

Mr. Foley suffered acutely. He left his breakfast half finished; ran into town in his motor, as agonized in every block of the traffic as though he had to catch a train; was kept waiting half an hour in the publisher's office because the principal had not yet arrived, and, when he did arrive, was persuaded that there was nothing to be done. The Courts wouldn't allow "Man and Nature," the publisher was sure of that. He kept on shaking his great big silly head until it got on Mr. Foley's nerves. But there was no way out of it, so Mr. Foley changed the title to "ART AND ENVIRONMENT"--it was the publisher's secretary who suggested this new title.

"Yes, is that Mr. Foley?"

"Yes, about that title."

"Oh, yes, I thought you'ld ring up. It's impossible, you know, it's been used before; and there's no doubt at all that the University printers would apply for an injunction."

"Well, I can't wait," shouted Mr. Foley into the receiver.

"You can't what?" said the manager. "I can't hear you, you are talking too loud."

"I can't wait," said Mr. Foley in a lower tone and strenuously. "Suggest something quick."

The manager could be heard thinking at the end of the live wire. At last he said, "Oh, anything." Mr. Foley used a horrible word and put back the receiver.

He went back to his golfing friend who was drinking some port steadily with cheese, and said: "Look here, that friend of mine I have just been telephoning to says he wants another title."

"What for?" said the golfing friend, his mouth full of cheese.

"Oh, for his book of course," said Mr. Foley sharply.

"Sorry, I thought it was politics," answered his friend, his mouth rather less full. Then a bright thought struck him.

"What's the book about?"

"Well, it's about art and ... climate, you know."

"Why, then," said the friend stolidly, "why not call it 'Art and Climate'?"

"That's a good idea," said Mr. Foley, stroking his chin.

He hurried indecently, turned the poor golfing friend out, hurried up to town in his motor in order to make them call the book "Art and Climate." When he got there he found the real publisher, who hummed and hawed and said: "All this changing of titles will be very expensive, you know." Mr. Foley could not help that, it had to be done, so the book was called "Art and Climate," and then it was printed, and seventy copies were sent out to the Press and it was reviewed by three papers.

One of the papers said:

"Mr. Charles Foley has written an interesting essay upon the effect of climate upon art, upon such conditions as will affect it whether adversely or the contrary. The point of view is an original one and gives food for thought."

Mr. Foley thought this notice quite too short and imperfect.

The second paper had a column about it, nearly all of which was made out of bits cut right out of the book, but without acknowledgment or in inverted commas. In between the bits cut out there were phrases like, "Are we however to believe that ..." and "Some in this connection would decide that...." But all the rest were bits cut out of his book.

Mr. Foley sold thirty copies of his book, gave away seventy-four and lent two. The publisher assured him that books like that did not have a large immediate sale as a novel did; they had a slow, steady sale.

It was about the middle of May that the publisher assured him of this. In June the solicitors of a Professor at Yale acting for the learned man in this country, threatened an action concerning a passage in the book which was based entirely upon the Professor's copyright work. Mr. Foley admitted his high indebtedness to the Professor, and wore a troubled look for days. He had always thought it quite legitimate in the world of art to use another person's work if one acknowledged it. At last the thing was settled out of court for quite a small sum, ?150 or ?200, or something like that.

Then everything was quiet and the sales went very slowly. He only sold a half-dozen all the rest of the summer.

In the autumn the publisher wrote him a note asking whether he might act upon Clause 15 of the contract. Mr. Foley was a business man. He looked up the contract and there he saw these words:

"If after due time has elapsed in the opinion of the publisher, a book shall not be warrantable at its existing price, change of price shall be made in it at the discretion of the publisher or of the author, or both, or each, subject to the conditions of Clause 9."

Turning to Clause 9, Mr. Foley discovered the words:

He puzzled a great deal about these two clauses, and at last he thought, "Oh, well, they know more than I do about it," so he just telegraphed back, "Yes."

On the other side of the document there was a whole regiment of items, one treading upon another's heels. There was paper, and printing, and corrections, binding, warehousing, storage, cataloguing, advertising, travelling, circularizing, packing, and what I may call with due respect to the reader, "the devil and all." The whole of which added up to no less than the monstrous sum of ?519 14s. 9d. Under this was written in small letters in red ink, "Less 50% as per agreement," and then at the bottom that nasty figure, "?259 17s. 4 1/2 d.," and there was a little request in a round hand that the balance of ?241 17s. 4 1/2 d. should be paid at Mr. Foley's convenience.

Mr. Foley, white with rage, acted as a business man always should. He wrote a short note refusing to pay a penny, and demanding the rest of the unsold copies. He got a lengthier and stronger note from Messrs. Towkem and Thingummebob, referring to his letter, to Clause 9 and to Clause 15, informing him that the remainder of the stock had been sold at a penny each to a firm of papermakers in the North of England, and respectfully pressing for immediate payment.

Mr. Foley put the matter in the hands of his solicitors and they ran him up a bill for ?37 odd, but it was well worth it because they persuaded him not to go into court, so in the long run he had to pay no more than ?278 17s. 4 1/2 d., unless you count the postage and the travelling.

THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH

Do you mark there, down in the lowest point and innermost funnel of Hell Fire Pit, souls writhing in smoke, themselves like glowing smoke and tortured in the flame? You ask me what they are. These are the Servants of the Rich: the men who in their mortal life opened the doors of the Great Houses and drove the carriages and sneered at the unhappy guests.

Those larger souls that bear the greatest doom and manifest the more dreadful suffering, they are the Butlers boiling in molten gold.

"What!" you cry, "is there then, indeed, as I once heard in childhood, justice for men and an equal balance, and a final doom for evil deeds?" There is! Look down into the murky hollow and revere the awful accomplishment of human things.

These are the men who would stand with powder on their heads like clowns, dressed in fantastic suits of gold and plush, with an ugly scorn upon their faces, and whose pleasure it was to forget every human bond and to cast down the nobler things in man: treating the artist as dirt and the poet as a clown; and beautiful women, if they were governesses or poor relations or in any way dependents, as a meet object for silent mockery. But now their time is over and they have reaped the harvest which they sowed. Look and take comfort, all you who may have suffered at their hands.

Come closer. See how each separate sort suffers its peculiar penalty. There go a hopeless shoal through the reek: their doom is an eternal sleeplessness and a nakedness in the gloom. There is nothing to comfort them, not even memory: and they know that for ever and for ever they must plunge and swirl, driven before the blasts, now hot, now icy, of their everlasting pain. These are those men who were wont to come into the room of the Poor Guest at early morning with a steadfast and assured step and a look of insult. These are those who would take the tattered garments and hold them at arm's length as much as to say: "What rags these scribblers wear!" and then, casting them over the arm with a gesture that meant: "Well, they must be brushed, but Heaven knows if they will stand it without coming to pieces!" would next discover in the pockets a great quantity of middle-class things, and notably loose tobacco.

Such thoughts one almost heard as one lay in the Beds of the Great despairing. Then one would see him turn one's socks inside out, which is a ritual with the horrid tribe. Then a great bath would be trundled in and he would set beside it a great can and silently pronounce the judgment that whatever else was forgiven the middle-class one thing would not be forgiven them--the neglect of the bath, of the splashing about of the water and of the adequate wetting of the towel.

All these things we have suffered, you and I, at their hands. But be comforted. They writhe in Hell with their fellows.

That man who looked us up and down so insolently when the great doors were opened in St. James' Square and who thought one's boots so comic. He too, and all his like, burn separately. So does that fellow with the wine that poured it out ungenerously, and clearly thought that we were in luck's way to get the bubbly stuff at all in any measure. He that conveyed his master's messages with a pomp that was instinct with scorn and he that drove you to the station, hardly deigning to reply to your timid sentences and knowing well your tremors and your abject ill-ease. Be comforted. He too burns.

It is the custom in Hell when this last batch of scoundrels, the horsey ones, come up in batches to be dealt with by the authorities thereof, for them first to be asked in awful tones how many pieces of silver they have taken from men below the rank of a squire, or whose income was less than a thousand pounds a year, and the truth on this they are compelled by Fate to declare, whereupon, before their tortures begin, they receive as many stripes as they took florins: nor is there any defect in the arrangement of divine justice in their regard, save that the money is not refunded to us.

But Game-Keepers, more particularly those who make a distinction and will take nothing less than gold , and Grooms of the Chamber, and all such, these suffer torments for ever and for ever. So has Immutable Justice decreed and thus is the offended majesty of man avenged.

Ah!... Of these the infernal plight is such that I dare not set it down!

There is a special secret room in Hell where their villainous hypocrisy and that accursed mixture of yielding and of false independence wherewith they flattered and be-fooled their masters; their thefts, their bullying of beggarmen, have at last a full reward. Their eyes are no longer sly and cautious, lit with the pretence of affection, nor are they here rewarded with good fires and an excess of food, and perquisites and pensions. But they sit hearthless, jibbering with cold, and they stare broken at the prospect of a dark Eternity. And now and then one or another, an aged serving-man or a white-haired housekeeper, will wring their hands and say: "Oh, that I had once, only once, shown in my mortal life some momentary gleam of honour, independence, or dignity! Oh, that I had but once stood up in my freedom and spoken to the Rich as I should! Then it would have been remembered for me and I should now have been spared this place--but it is too late!"

For there is no repentance known among the Servants of the Rich, nor any exception to their vileness; they are hated by men when they live, and when they die they must for all eternity consort with demons.

THE JOKE

There are two kinds of jokes, those jokes that are funny because they are true, and those jokes that would be funny anyhow. Think it out and you will find that that is a great truth. Now the joke I have here for the delectation of the broken-hearted is of the first sort. It is funny because it is true. It is about a man whom I really saw and really knew and touched, and on occasions treated ill. He was. The sunlight played upon his form. Perhaps he may still flounder under the light of the sun, and not yet have gone down into that kingdom whose kings are less happy than the poorest hind upon the upper fields.

It was at College that I knew him and I retained my acquaintance with him--Oh, I retained it in a loving and cherishing manner--until he was grown to young manhood. I would keep it still did Fate permit me so to do, for he was a treasure. I have never met anything so complete for the purposes of laughter, though I am told there are many such in the society which bred his oafish form.

He was a noble in his own country, which was somewhere in the pine-forests of the Germanies, and his views of social rank were far, far too simple for the silent subtlety of the English Rich. In his poor turnip of a mind he ordered all men thus:

First, reigning sovereigns and their families.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet