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Authors: W. Somerset Maugham
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enormous and his eyes far from friendly I thought it prudent to make a slight detour: whereupon the whole file, though neither mules nor muleteers could have had my reason for anxiety, followed me into the elephant grass. I could not but reflect that an undue observance of thelaw may put you to a good deal of unnecessary trouble.
With abundant leisure before me and nothing to distract, I had promised myself to think out on this journey various things that had been on my mind for a long time. There were a number of subjects, error and evil, space, time, chance and mutability, which I felt I should really come to some conclusion about. I had a great deal to say to myself about art and life, but my ideas were higgledy-piggledy like the objects in an old junk shop and I did not know where to put my hands on them when I wanted them. They were in corners of my mind, like oddments stowed away at the back of a chest of drawers, and I only just knew they were there. Some of them hadnât been taken out and brushed for so long that it was a disgrace, the new and the old were all jumbled together, and some were of no use any more and might just as well be thrown on the dust heap, and some (like a pair of Queen Anne spoons long forgotten that with the four a dealer has just found you in an auction room make up the half dozen) would fit very well with new ones. It would be pleasant to have everything cleaned and dusted, neatly put away on shelves, ordered and catalogued so that I knew what my stock consisted of. I resolved that while I rode through the country I would have a regular spring-cleaning of all my ideas. But the pack-leader had round his neck a raucous bell and it clanged so loudly that my reflections were very much disturbed. It was like a muffin bell and it made me think of Sunday afternoon in the London of my youth, with its empty streets and its grey, cold and melancholy sky. I put the spurs to my pony so that I might trot on and escape the dreary sound, but as soon as I began to do so the leader trotted too and the whole cavalcade trotted after him; I galloped and in a moment mules and ponies, their packs jangling and bumping, were galloping helter-skelter after me, and the muffin bell rattled madly at my heels as though it were knelling the death agonies of all the muffin-makers inLondon. I gave it up as a bad job and settled down again to walk; the train slowed down and just behind me the pack-leader shuffled up and down the empty, respectable street offering muffins for tea, muffins and crumpets. I could not put two thoughts together. I resigned myself at least for that day to make no attempt at serious meditation and instead, to pass the time, invented Blenkinsop.
There can be nothing so gratifying to an author as to arouse the respect and esteem of the reader. Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured. There was once a man called Blenkinsop. He had no talent, but he wrote a book in which his earnestness and his sincerity, his thoughtfulness and his integrity were so evident that, although it was quite unreadable, no one could fail to be impressed by it. Reviewers were unable to get through it, but could not but recognise the authorâs high aim and purity of purpose. They praised it with such an enthusiastic unanimity that all the people who flatter themselves they are in the movement felt bound to have it on their tables. The critic of
The London Mercury
said that he would have liked to have written it himself. This was the highest praise he knew. Mr Blenkinsop deplored the grammar but accepted the compliment. Mrs Woolf paid it a generous tribute at Bloomsbury, Mr Osbert Sitwell admired it in Chelsea and Mr Arnold Bennett was judicious about it in Cadogan Square. Smart women of easy morals bought it so that people should not think they had no mind above the Embassy Club and banting. The poets who go to luncheon parties talked of it
With abundant leisure before me and nothing to distract, I had promised myself to think out on this journey various things that had been on my mind for a long time. There were a number of subjects, error and evil, space, time, chance and mutability, which I felt I should really come to some conclusion about. I had a great deal to say to myself about art and life, but my ideas were higgledy-piggledy like the objects in an old junk shop and I did not know where to put my hands on them when I wanted them. They were in corners of my mind, like oddments stowed away at the back of a chest of drawers, and I only just knew they were there. Some of them hadnât been taken out and brushed for so long that it was a disgrace, the new and the old were all jumbled together, and some were of no use any more and might just as well be thrown on the dust heap, and some (like a pair of Queen Anne spoons long forgotten that with the four a dealer has just found you in an auction room make up the half dozen) would fit very well with new ones. It would be pleasant to have everything cleaned and dusted, neatly put away on shelves, ordered and catalogued so that I knew what my stock consisted of. I resolved that while I rode through the country I would have a regular spring-cleaning of all my ideas. But the pack-leader had round his neck a raucous bell and it clanged so loudly that my reflections were very much disturbed. It was like a muffin bell and it made me think of Sunday afternoon in the London of my youth, with its empty streets and its grey, cold and melancholy sky. I put the spurs to my pony so that I might trot on and escape the dreary sound, but as soon as I began to do so the leader trotted too and the whole cavalcade trotted after him; I galloped and in a moment mules and ponies, their packs jangling and bumping, were galloping helter-skelter after me, and the muffin bell rattled madly at my heels as though it were knelling the death agonies of all the muffin-makers inLondon. I gave it up as a bad job and settled down again to walk; the train slowed down and just behind me the pack-leader shuffled up and down the empty, respectable street offering muffins for tea, muffins and crumpets. I could not put two thoughts together. I resigned myself at least for that day to make no attempt at serious meditation and instead, to pass the time, invented Blenkinsop.
There can be nothing so gratifying to an author as to arouse the respect and esteem of the reader. Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured. There was once a man called Blenkinsop. He had no talent, but he wrote a book in which his earnestness and his sincerity, his thoughtfulness and his integrity were so evident that, although it was quite unreadable, no one could fail to be impressed by it. Reviewers were unable to get through it, but could not but recognise the authorâs high aim and purity of purpose. They praised it with such an enthusiastic unanimity that all the people who flatter themselves they are in the movement felt bound to have it on their tables. The critic of
The London Mercury
said that he would have liked to have written it himself. This was the highest praise he knew. Mr Blenkinsop deplored the grammar but accepted the compliment. Mrs Woolf paid it a generous tribute at Bloomsbury, Mr Osbert Sitwell admired it in Chelsea and Mr Arnold Bennett was judicious about it in Cadogan Square. Smart women of easy morals bought it so that people should not think they had no mind above the Embassy Club and banting. The poets who go to luncheon parties talked of it
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