about it. For all I know they are in my system to this day, or else they were digestible beads. I looked in vain for their reappearance with a view to putting them back on the wires, but they never turned up.
I begged in vain for a bicycle. My father settled for a very low-built tricycle because it was impossible to fall off it. Even then my mother would not allow me to take it out of the playroom on the first floor. All the same, I rode it downstairs and through the front door, which was closed at the time. Carpenters had to be called to saw me out of the lower panel. As a result of this mishap I have an evil-looking scar which almost encircles my neck; this is always good for conversation—the politest woman in the world cannot help asking me how I came by it. I never tell the same story twice.
My beauty, again, was not enhanced by the Affair of the Bicycle Pump. Needless to say, with my record, I was not allowed to let off fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day and dance around a bonfire with the other boys. So I decided to make a little firecracker for myself. Somewhere or other I picked up an old nickel-plated bicycle pump, which struck me as being the very thing for the casing; the next thing was to find something to put in it. Now my father used to own a duck gun and I remembered having seen a box of fifty cartridges in one of his drawers. I cut open these cartridges and emptied the whole fifty into the barrel of the pump, ram ming the powder and the shot down hard with the piston. Then I made a fuse out of cotton string rolled in gunpowder, and attached it. With this firecracker I decided to surprise and delight the local police force on November the fifth. So I put it against an outside wall of the police station, set light to the fuse, and waited around the corner. The cracker was a success, only the wall came down and I was cut about the forehead with flying glass.
Everybody said it was anarchists. I kept my mouth shut about that one.
As if all this were not enough, I caught diphtheria (as they insisted) through eating pencils. I always was of a contemplative turn of mind. Even as a child, before committing myself to writing, I took a good mouthful of pencil. Most of my milk teeth had gone in the airplane crash, but I still had my molars, and made the most of them. The paint did not appeal to me much, but I enjoyed the savor of the cedarwood. I did not spit out the lead, having been politely brought up; I swallowed it. Lead, cedar splinters, paint, abacus beads—they all went the same way home. But eventually I contracted diphtheria. Considering this in the light of modern science, I believe I caught it from a gluttonous and feverish little boy who borrowed my pencil one drawing lesson and chewed all the goodness out of it. But our family doctor, a superannuated windbag who did not believe in microbes and diagnosed what ailed you by smelling your breath, swore that diphtheria was created by pencils. Anyway I caught it, and my throat seized up, so that they had to make an incision for me to breathe through. For a year or two after that I could not speak and when my voice came back it came in a sepulchralwhisper which later mellowed into a throaty purr; so that now my voice has something of the quality and timbre of Tallulah Bankhead’s, only it is deeper and more masculine. It is the kind of voice one associates with the most appalling depravity; it goes with the debauching of pious matrons, the buggering of young noblemen, the reciting of poetry with an ulterior motive, and seduction of convent-bred heiresses. In contrast with my face, it is really arresting.
But it was a long time, I assure you, before I was allowed to handle a pencil after that; and even then they coated my pencils with bitter aloes—the stuff they smear on leashes to discourage puppies from eating them. (Actually, when you get used to the stuff, bitter aloes isn’t bad at all.) But in the meantime I was given crayons to write with, which, being
I begged in vain for a bicycle. My father settled for a very low-built tricycle because it was impossible to fall off it. Even then my mother would not allow me to take it out of the playroom on the first floor. All the same, I rode it downstairs and through the front door, which was closed at the time. Carpenters had to be called to saw me out of the lower panel. As a result of this mishap I have an evil-looking scar which almost encircles my neck; this is always good for conversation—the politest woman in the world cannot help asking me how I came by it. I never tell the same story twice.
My beauty, again, was not enhanced by the Affair of the Bicycle Pump. Needless to say, with my record, I was not allowed to let off fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day and dance around a bonfire with the other boys. So I decided to make a little firecracker for myself. Somewhere or other I picked up an old nickel-plated bicycle pump, which struck me as being the very thing for the casing; the next thing was to find something to put in it. Now my father used to own a duck gun and I remembered having seen a box of fifty cartridges in one of his drawers. I cut open these cartridges and emptied the whole fifty into the barrel of the pump, ram ming the powder and the shot down hard with the piston. Then I made a fuse out of cotton string rolled in gunpowder, and attached it. With this firecracker I decided to surprise and delight the local police force on November the fifth. So I put it against an outside wall of the police station, set light to the fuse, and waited around the corner. The cracker was a success, only the wall came down and I was cut about the forehead with flying glass.
Everybody said it was anarchists. I kept my mouth shut about that one.
As if all this were not enough, I caught diphtheria (as they insisted) through eating pencils. I always was of a contemplative turn of mind. Even as a child, before committing myself to writing, I took a good mouthful of pencil. Most of my milk teeth had gone in the airplane crash, but I still had my molars, and made the most of them. The paint did not appeal to me much, but I enjoyed the savor of the cedarwood. I did not spit out the lead, having been politely brought up; I swallowed it. Lead, cedar splinters, paint, abacus beads—they all went the same way home. But eventually I contracted diphtheria. Considering this in the light of modern science, I believe I caught it from a gluttonous and feverish little boy who borrowed my pencil one drawing lesson and chewed all the goodness out of it. But our family doctor, a superannuated windbag who did not believe in microbes and diagnosed what ailed you by smelling your breath, swore that diphtheria was created by pencils. Anyway I caught it, and my throat seized up, so that they had to make an incision for me to breathe through. For a year or two after that I could not speak and when my voice came back it came in a sepulchralwhisper which later mellowed into a throaty purr; so that now my voice has something of the quality and timbre of Tallulah Bankhead’s, only it is deeper and more masculine. It is the kind of voice one associates with the most appalling depravity; it goes with the debauching of pious matrons, the buggering of young noblemen, the reciting of poetry with an ulterior motive, and seduction of convent-bred heiresses. In contrast with my face, it is really arresting.
But it was a long time, I assure you, before I was allowed to handle a pencil after that; and even then they coated my pencils with bitter aloes—the stuff they smear on leashes to discourage puppies from eating them. (Actually, when you get used to the stuff, bitter aloes isn’t bad at all.) But in the meantime I was given crayons to write with, which, being
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