💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › occult › bloxam2.txt captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:02:10.
⬅️ Previous capture (2020-10-31)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This is part two of the text NOT THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF SIR ROGER
BLOXAM by Aleister Crowley.
N21.R1
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DOES GET TO THE HOUSEHOLD CAVALRY AT LAST.
Porphyria Poppoea was perhaps a trifle sore at the
rudeness of the Scotsman. A sensitive maiden -- and she was
that, God Knows! -- expects more consideration than she got. He
had no savoir faire, this James, this L., this Dickson; he
was restless, he fidgeted, he said nothing wise, or witty, or
even graceful; and he withdrew finally with abruptness. He had
had much the worst of the encounter to tell the truth; she had
been fully equal to the situation. She had taken his point, she
had pressed him closely, she had pumped him dry; finally she had
forced him to contribute all his present havings -- the savings
of weeks, or so he swore -- to her pet charity (The Seamen's
Mission, or some such name 'twas; I forget; this was in
Stockholm twenty years ago, and more). What a Portia she would
have made! I'm sorry for the man that asks a pound of flesh
where she is! Yet, despite her victory, she was perhaps a trifle
sore. ``Perhaps!'' screams the girl Renee, looking over my shoulder.
``Don't you know if she was sore or not?'' Silence is
golden; I turn round; she turns round; she has now the
opportunity to argue the point from analogy -- Mem: see Butler's
Analogy -- but she's not arguing; she's gone to the drug
store, and I can continue peacefully to record, in my own
charming way, with just the limitations I desire -- oh not The
Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam! But I think that I
shall go to sleep for awhile, and try (once more) to get to the
point in a new chapter. But I'll keep my promise, Cynara, in my
fashion. Sore or not, she was following Sir Roger Bloxam with
modesty and decorum through the streets, a few nights later,
when Sir Roger was accosted by a Mysterious Stranger -- ha! ha!
we come to it at last -- who was dressed in the gorgeous uniform
of the (now!) Household Cavalry.
N22.R1
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A PLENARY, VERACIOUS, AND METICULOUSLY SCRUPULOUS ACCOUNT OF
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BEST REGIMENT OF THE HOUSEHOLD CAVALRY OF
THE KING OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY: CALCULATED TO 33 PLACES OF
DECIMALS, BY THE METHOD OF HARD INDURATED HUNTERIAN
LOGARITHMS.
Admiral Fitzroy, by no means the least of English poets,
was wont to observe -- at least he was always putting it on his
barometers -- ``Long foretold, long last: Short notice, soon
past.'' So please settle down in that Oxford Basket Chair, draw
the table close, for you'll need that jar you bought at Bacon's
in your first teens because Calverle hypnotized you into doing
so, fill the old Meerschaum (the nigger with the hat is the
sweetest) with the pure Perique of St. James' Parish Louisiana,
throw some coals and a log or two on the fire, and put your legs
on the mantlepiece; for if the laws of weather apply to
literature, this ought to be a terribly long chapter.
You can smoke a pipe, and find the port, while you wait;
for I'm in no mood to write it just now. Do you realize it's
half past three in the morning?
It was about eleven at night when Sir Roger Bloxam met
Count Svendstrom. The Swede was under the influence of the
prudish Queen, I suppose; for all he said was this ``Come, come!
A boy of your age ought to be in bed at this time of night!''
Sir Roger realized the good sense of his adviser; he acted at
once on the word; and incidentally, he introduced the Count to
Porphyria Poppoea. The Delight was mutual; the soldier waxed so
enthusiastic that there was nothing for it but he must make a
luncheon party for his brother officers the very next day; and
Sir Roger made a hit indeed with his charming manners and his
delicate boyish beauty and his sly wit. Porphyria Poppoea
uttered not a single sound during the whole meal, though a
Swedish bayonet is a sore tempter in this matter -- believe me
who have eaten many such! -- but I never heard that her
demeanour diminished the popularity either of herself or of Sir
Roger Bloxam. You'll understand, dear Elizabeth, that as a self
respecting novelist, I should never let my hero -- or whom you
think my hero -- go gallivanting about, at his age, with all
sorts of strangers. No; the Cardinal and his followers were
always with him. They have not been assertive, up to now;
there's a time for everything; don't worry me, please!
Anyhow, after lunch, the old Colonel drew the Cardinal
out, for he possessed much linguistic ability. The learned dwarf
was encouraged, became excited. He expanded; he enlarged upon
his subject taking those words of the Saviour that that which
goeth into a man doth not defile him for his thesis. He touched
lightly upon the lips, showing how idle and useless action of
them must be accounted for at the Day of Judgment; passed by the
teeth with tender and graceful touch, dealt pleasantly with the
tonsils, which he compared to the pillars of King Solomon's
Temple, and the uvula, a sort of guardian to the shrine; but he
brought the head of his course to the throat itself, for it is
here that speech begins, and therefore here that it must be
brought to silence. The old Colonel sucked all this up with
avidity, like a cat lapping cream; and when the good Cardinal,
with a fierce spasm of eloquence, made that inimitable gesture
of Saint Paul ``Let me spend and be spent for you'' the soldier
bethought him that rarely if ever in all his life had he been so
overwhelmed with the passionate torrent of that life-giving
fervour which jets from the inmost being of the soul. Meanwhile
the younger officers were introduced one by one to the happy
Porphyria Poppoea. The party waxed merry, yea, exceedingly; but
all good things have an end -- I know more good things than one
that wouldn't be fun if they hadn't one -- and the time came at
last for Sir Roger Bloxam to return to his hotel.
The Colonel bowed very low to the Cardinal, and
addressed Sir Roger: ``I assure you, sir, that in my opinion
your guardian is indeed a Pillar of the Church. His utterance
had found all the force of a Bull.'' But the younger men, who
certainly were very drunk, cried in chorus: We have had a
wonderful time in the pull-pit!
N23.R1
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
RELAPSE OF A PROMISING YOUNG NOVEL INTO A JOLLY DEVIL-MAY-CARE
BOOK.
The fact is, I've been as sick as a dog. Not a nice dog,
either! I'm just over my tuberculosis, which has been neuralgia,
rheumatism, swamp fever, abscess of the liver, cancer,
arthritis, osteoma, and one or two other things in turn, and
last night I though it must be gall-stones. But undeniably
life's hard with gas leaking everywhere and poisoning one, and a
series of sopranos taking lessons o'erhead, and Seven Tatosian
Brothers ever and anon hammering tacks into carpets in the
exercise of their unholy trade. (Curse all Armenians, anyhow!)
But I'd take no heed to the pack of 'em had I but a story to
tell, and I've none; I'm setting down plain truth, as I see it,
for the God of Things as they Ought to Be. This novel's a tract
in praise of chastity and some such virtues of true Christian
man and woman; and I'll say nothing but the truth -- Shall be
Truth in armour, mind you, with rich furniture and a broidered
veil upon it; but Sir Truth shall his name be, and no
masquerader. And so I go aghast; for so great and so wonderful
is the story of the Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam that
it is well I have not That to write. (I told you a long while
since, did ye believe? Let him that did take another drink, and
a long one, praising me, and himself, and the sweet God of Truth
that did make such understanding between us!) But I was better
off before, in New Orleans, not a doubt of it, Edward or no
Edward; for there in Dauphine Street there was no need of
getting up or going to bed. I knew nobody, and nobody knew me;
my loves were casual and lonely as my lunches. This is the
proper life for the pure poet who would commune evermore with
Beauty, enjoy the Beatific Vision, pace the sapphire pavement of
the Throne of God, and compose hymns in praise of Apis over the
Filet de Boeuf Robespierre at Antoine's, or of Pitma over Sister
Green, the smooth, muscular, black-purple glory of her body was
like the stone of that many-breasted beauty Diana in Neapolis.
(Poor U.S.A.! as Porphyria Poppoea would Morse-Code if Sir Roger
Bloxam ate some horrible bad food, ``in England we've a New
Forest, date before 1100; and in Italy a New City, date before
their fabled Jesus.'') Which makes me wonder whether Jesus was
not an American. Joseph and Mary are both common names here
(`here', hell, hell, hell, that I must still write `here'!)
There are several people in New York who at least look like
Jews, talk like Jews, think like Jews, smell like Jews. The
parents of Jesus may well have been Americans touring in
Palestine. It is very American of Jesus that at twelve years old
he should have been teaching all the most learned men their
business, and that he should have `frozen out' the crowd in the
Temple, which appears to have been the Wall Street of Jerusalem.
The sublime ignorance of Jesus, his comic beliefs in the flood
and other idiotic fables, his imbecile Puritanism, his
determination to make God damn every one who disagreed with him,
though he was himself too proud to fight, his servility to the
Romans, his poor bluff about the `twelve legions of angels'
which impressed Pilate as much as the existing bluff impresses
Germany -- ``a million men between sunset and dawn'' Bryan, Wm.
Jennings of that ilk ( -- oh well, they made good; but no
matter!) -- all these things speak Jesus an American. Methinks
I'll quit me novel awhile, and write this up for the Sunday
papers, and get me some of their gods. N.B. There had better be
plenty; this chapter has hardly been `jolly' up to now as the
title did so loudly promise. Diseases -- Jews -- Americans:
there's a descent of Avernus for you! A little dinner might
brighten me up; say a Bronx, Little Necks, Gumbo, Shad, Jumbo
Squab, Squash, Terrapin, Individual Miss Jordan, Pecanisques,
Fudge Sundae: oh help! Great Sprites of Soy, of Brillat-Savarin,
of your pity hear me! Brighten me up? -- great Gaster, pardon me
my sins! My grandfather's grandfather laid down a pretty pipe of
gout-podagra in the cellars of my veins; but what should I hand
on to my descendants if I drank a `Welch-ball'? Don't worry, you
wouldn't have any descendants.
God help me! God help me! God help me! I've got to get
up; so that's the end of the chapter.
N24.R1
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
HOW SIR ROGER COMPORTED HIMSELF IN THE DEBATE WITH THE
C.U.N.T.S.
This book is getting along very slowly; so I shall skip
a century of chapters to encourage myself with the Illusion of
Progress.
To illustrate the remarkable precocity of Sir Roger
Bloxam, it may here be stated that he said, at the early age of
nine, that Women can never be any good, just as if he were grown
up and knew all about it. Well rebuked he the pudding-faced,
sausage-bodied, flabbinesses of feminism, did he, the saucy
youngster. ``Look you, thing'', quoth he courteously (all things
considered) to the Cambridge University New Testament Society
and the Cincinatti Uplift New Thought Society, and other such,
``look you, a woman must either be a mother or not a mother.''
And all they cried ``Ay'', assenting. ``Well then'', he went on
``what is a mother? The most animal of all traits is motherhood.
The nearer a mother is to the cow, the better mother she! What
is her life? A menstruation, a befutterment, a gestation, a
parturition, a suckling -- and so it goes. She cannot mix in
society; her duties as well as her vanity forbid it. She must
perforce leave dinner half tasted -- the baby's hungry! Oh God!
I nauseate to contemplate the revolting details -- the filthy
rags, the hideous sicknesses, the deformed belly, the foulness
of childbirth, the cow-udders that appease the brat's yell -- oh
God! How can she do aught human, when she is dragged down to
beastliness for half her life? No, say what you will, a mother
is but a sow, a wallowing sow.'' But one spake, saying: ``But
all this does not apply to the woman who is not a mother. What
of her?'' ``Pah!'' snorted Sir Roger, ``she is simply a bitch.''
But his opponent, staggering, struck his last blow. ``I'll grant
you that'', say he ``but what of the woman who, having been a
mother, is now so no more?'' ``Past bearing'' began the child --
but he fell to the floor in a fit, and was awarded the fight on
a foul.
By the coccyx of good Saint Antony of Padua, how I vomit
at them! But the bitches are the best.
N25.R1
(Memorandum to Publisher. Be sure to have this chapter
illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson and Mr. Harrison Fisher.)
CHAPTER CXXVI
SIR ROGER GOES TO SWITZERLAND.
It has been said, I think by Andre Tridon, that it is
such a pity that God has no Christian name -- for if He had,
what anecdotes could not Frank Harris tell about Him?
But I cannot see that this has anything to do with the
subject of our chapter, and though I could lead on to it --
quis dubi -- tat? -- why should I? Art cannot be forced.
Audax omnia perpeti gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas --
libellum! So I might call the chapter De amicitiis
Francisci Harris, tell the scandal about the Holy Ghost, and
call God Walter Pater.
N26.R1
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SIR ROGER REALLY DOES GO TO SWITZERLAND.
This adding on a hundred doesn't work at all; I am
merely in despair that after so many chapters I am so little
advanced with Our Story. (Yes, Our Story, Lionel, sweet boy!
never forget; this is Our Story.)
You may well ask why this insistence on Sir Roger's
visit to Switzerland. As you point out, he had been there
already, and to France too, as a mere boy; and he had been all
over Wales and Scotland even to Skye -- and what they did tell
him in Glasgie, I'd be ashamed to tell you -- and in the English
Lakes, and climbed all the mountains, and broke all the records
-- Direct Climb of Mickledoor, first solitary Descent of the
North Face of the Pillar Rock, first solitary ascent of Kenn
Knotts Chimney, Twyll-Du, and dozens of other; yet I never said
a word about it.
(Well, never mind that, says you: let's hear about the
Glasgow business.)
Well, it came indirectly only on Sir Roger; the foot of
the trouble was Cardinal Mentula. For that most learned and most
subtle prelate had not yet found how to spend his evenings. When
he got up every morning, he was still content to leave himself
(in a manner of speaking) in the hollow of Sir Roger's hand as
far as amusement was concerned. Happy indeed were the hours that
he spent! But 'o nights, no! He was of the secret service, may
be; he loved to seek out things usually hidden -- the Good, the
Beautiful, and the Trou, as he never wittily observed. For he
never spoke -- 'twas against his vow of silence -- though
paradoxically, he was easily brought to con-fesses. (I abhor
these Entente puns, don't you?) So in Glasgow his idea
was to relieve the necessities of the poor, and he would go out
slumming with Sir Roger and the rest of the gang. I can see them
now, the good knight as almoner with two shillings extracted
from an indulgent mother and his purse full to bursting (that
reads funnily, but it's quite all right), the Cardinal leaping
and dancing and thumping before him all down the street, brave
Coglio and gay Cojone as eager as you wish, and Porphyria
Poppoea following discontentedly in the background, sulking,
hidden in her cushions, and probably muttering to herself. Damn
it! she was right always, that girl! If Sir Roger had only taken
her advice all through, this would not have been so tragic a
story. She was a good friend, if ever a man had one! But that
pugnacious little devil of a dwarf, he was for ever getting his
ward into trouble. His only idea seems to have been to spend,
and spend, and spend; bad for him, and worse for Sir Roger, who
lost wealth and health in humouring his caprices, and had
nothing much but a hell of a good time to show for it. Well,
down Sauciehall Street they go, the crowd of them, and the devil
patron Saint of Glasgow) knows where else. And the result is
that poor God-damned Cardinal Mentula -- wished. What did poor
God- damned Cardinal Mentula wish? Poor God-damned Cardinal
Mentula wished that he could say with Saint Peter that he had
toiled all night and had caught nothing. Oh yes! He was
converted to the doctrine of Heraclitus PANTA 'PEI. When
somebody said ``Das Ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan'' his
unspoken comment was ``More German Schrecklichkeit!'' He would
deliberately mistranslate ``Ab ovo usque ad mala'' and
``Mulier desinit in piscem''. To him ``Nemo sapit
omnibus horis'' seemed like an Accusing Voice. Every morning
he awoke to the battle-cry of Sursum Chordee (have I got
that Latin right?) and if he was a dwarf before, he was now
twisted and deformed to excite the pity of a pirate or an
evangelical clergyman. By the Fallopian Tubes of Saint Theresa,
God bless her, the dainty little mystic! I tell you honestly as
man to man, he could hardly read a poem without feeling that the
bard was laughing at him. ``Men may come and men may go, But I
flow on for ever'' sounded like sarcasm. He hated the very name
of Rupert Brooke. You see the whole catastrophe came on him like
a thunder clap; and bless my psyche! if I haven't forgotten to
tell you what it was. (Loud applause.)
N27.R1
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
NOTHING PARTICULAR HAPPENS TO SIR ROGER BLOXAM IN SWITZERLAND;
SO WHY WORRY?
If two and a half years in -- that word Porphyria
Poppoea uses after too much dinner too unwise -- doesn't destroy
a man's sense of humour, it is probably time for him to die.
When poison has has merely the effect of laughing gas, there
msut be something radically wrong with the gassed. To proceed:
Sir Roger Bloxam enjoyed himself thoroughly in Switzerland. The
Cardinal never bothered him in such places. He doesn't know to
this day why he doesn't like the Swiss, who were always
perfectly charming to him. I refuse to describe glaciers, and
all that sort of thing; I shall not tell of Sir Roger's
adventures on the mountains. The whole subject bores me utterly;
I'm sorry I ever brought it in. He wasn't consumptive; he never
met a Maiden; he never had an accident; what in the name of the
Master of any College, and of my beloved Umfraville, who
pantamorphopsychonosophilographer that he is, writes a complete
novel without introducing a single incident of any kind -- I
refer to The Buffoon -- what, I say, is the use of going
on? This is worse than Clayhanger and Hilda Lessways and that
third pole-axe sequel -- God knows I never knew its name --
bound in one ghastly volume.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow
Sir Roger Bloxam had to go.
His safe return be now my boast:
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Amen
N28.R1
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SIR ROGER BLOXAM AT CAMBRIDGE, AMSTERDAM, AND BIRMINGHAM. AN
ADVENTURE OF PORPHYRIA POPPOEA.. THIS TIME WE MEAN BUSINESS.
(CHAPTER CCCXXXIII. How Sir Roger Bloxam put to shame the
vulgarity of a famous Wit. It was on the good ship Campania that
the darling of our dreams returned from Jew York. See him upon
the poop (yes, poop! poop! poop!) his eyes flooded with tears of
joy as the city fell away on the horizon. In this most religious
exercise he was joined by the world-famous wit Aleister Crowley.
They sobbed with gladness in each others' arms. A Yank
approached them. ``Waal, boys, what do you think of God's
country?'' Crowley looked at him with a tinge of sadness in his
glance, and smiled softly ``Pox et preterea nihil.'' But
Sir Roger liked it not; his mother had taught him to avoid the
obvious. He made a darling little mone at the Nooyarker. ``Oh,
sir, your national motto nearly serves us; why not Et
pluribus prunum?'')
I would I were Philomena for this one hour, to wound my
breast upon this thorn, or Hyacinth to stain this one flower
page from my heart's heart. Pray, think not so ill of my
Porphyria Poppoea; for in all her loves she had one love, and
that for all her life. He was a man with golden hair so fine and
pale, yet, glowing, that one thought of Sun-rays incarnate in
gossamer; and his face was like the harvest moon. He came up to
his University every year; and there he met Sir Roger Bloxam at
a club called the Knights of the Round Table. I must not tell
his name: besides, would it sound sweet in your ears also? When
he divined the presence of Porphyria Poppoea, he fell instant in
love with her, and dared not speak, because he feared to offend
Sir Roger Bloxam! 'Twas in a week of revelry, and this man
played and danced for a dramatic club. Will God not give me a
name for him? Some name of angel strength and sweetness? Surely
Porphyria yearned for him as Phoedra for Hippolytus -- let that,
then, serve! Well, the week parted and we did not see Sir Roger
again. But when he left, he left a book, the Legendes des
Sexes of Edouard d'Haraucourt, the Sieur de Chamblay, and in
it he wrote five words. These words mean nothing: a chess-player
might have used them in the beginning to enumerate his pieces;
but when Sir Roger Bloxam read them, Porphyria Poppoea divined
that Hippolytus loved her. She was a nymph of excellent modesty,
and impudence unmatched -- o paradox sublime of God's invention!
She lusted nobly for all love, and gave herself utterly and
shamelessly; yet, despite herself, she acted in true Panic fear
at the approach of her god. Thus, urgently desiring Sir Roger to
take her to the Lake where Hippolytus had his palace, she forced
the good knight to fly with her to Amsterdam; thence only she
dictated letters so fiercely burning that her whole soul was
lost in them. Safe, she became bold. Yet, by his letters,
mocking and provoking, yet eager as hers, he drew her to him. Oh
but she must turn to him, heliotrope! Thus she came back to
England. And Sir Roger must perforce meet Hippolytus at the
Queen's Hotel in Birmingham. ``What a place for a romance! You
jest!'' Oh love knows not of time and space -- Always the
time and place and the loved one all together! Sir Roger
registered in the hotel book; at that moment Hippolytus walked
in.
``Hullo, monkey tricks!'' cried he; and Porphyria Poppoea's
soul went into shuddering blackness; for in his manner was no
hint of all he had written. She was not loved! And after dinner
he sat talking in his room with Sir Roger -- endlessly! Ot was
the last day of the Old Year -- the last hour -- Heaven and Hell
in her heart. Sir Roger went to bed early, thank the Gods. And
she -- she could not sleep. But ere the midnight car of Helios
crossed the nadir Hippolytus had come into the room where she
was, and possessed her.
Of all her happiness I am quite unable to write; but
pray you, weep with me, for now cometh an end. Alas! Alas! I
will not speak of their joy by English lakes, of their
passionate delight among the fells, of the terms they spent in
Cambridge; for 'tis one monotone of honied music. But may Sir
Roger Bloxam be forgiven that he slew this loveliness! When he
came of age, he wished to be rid of guardian and of handmaid; he
thought them tyrants -- and then Porphyria Poppoea -- eternally
chaste even in her wildest wantonness, resigned her lover. She
made Sir Roger carry her to Switzerland. Yet in the Gare de Lyon
she bade him write ``Did I say `Always'?'' thinking that
Hippolytus would understand that she still loved him, and -- may
be -- follow her. Did he ever get the letter? Did he interpret
it amiss? False friends had crept into their intimacy -- and
also fear. I do not know how it was; but Porphyria Poppoea never
renewed those hours -- that love -- that infinite passion of
Hippolytus. Sir Roger Bloxam learned later that he, musing
deeply as was his wont when walking, had passed Hippolytus in
Bond Street, and that Hippolytus through that he had cut him
purp sely. Also, Porphyria Poppoea, fearful of a repulse, never
followed up on her letter from the Gare de Lyon. Seven times the
Father of all Light whirled Earth about him through the Zodiac
-- and she knew surely that he was her true lover for all time
and all eternity. So, weeping, she caused a great monument to be
set up, with an inscription in the Persian language. And now and
again she sent him messages; but his great heart was broken --
even as hers. Many a lover has possessed her since Hippolytus;
but she has scorned them even while she abandons herself to
their caresses. She loves Hippolytus. Hippolytus!
N29.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY
A SHORT CHAPTER AND A GAY ONE.
Come, let us be merry! This is the very devil, to moan
and mope over the miseries of a morbid maid -- mistress --
misanthrope -- melomaniac -- moll! Come, consider rather how
fine the weather is in June -- sometimes! Let us rejoice
together over the fact that the interior angles of every
triangle are together equal to the two right angles, barring the
non-Euclidian geometries! Let us recall the fact that once upon
a time we had Hope. It seemed possible to our blind sense that
we might do constructive work, that we might help humanity,
enrich the world with beauty and with music, with high thought
and ecstasy of holiness. We wished to proclaim Will, and Love.
And lo! the world has slipped over Niagara; it is smashed upon
the rocks, its wreckage voided through the whirlpools of
destruction. How shall I write poetry for the cave-man, about
me? Here's Kipling, who wrote `Recessional' not long ago; he
says ``Time shall count from the date when the English began to
hate.'' It seems instane to build amid the roar of earthquake --
and I'm fitted for no other work. I can't turn into the cave-man
overnight, and howl and trowl and hate, and cook the hearts and
livers even of my country's enemies. I can't agree that Goethe
was no poet, Beethoven no musician, Du;"rer no draughtsman,
Boehme no mystic, Frederick the Great no soldier, Kant no
philosopher, Helmholtz no physicist, Ostwalt no chemist. I'll
fight Germans, if the want to put ``Entritt verboten'' and a
sentry at the Great Gate of Trinity. I've met German tourists,
too, and I hate the whole tribe. I loathe German manners, German
methods, German brutality; and I think it mere bad taste in Mark
Twain to try to be amusing about the ``awful German language''
as I should resent a joke about the toothache if I had it. But I
don't see why I should go insane in order to fight Germans; I
think to keep a cool head were better policy. Baresark fury is
out of date, some centuries. So I'll not deny plain facts; I'll
not play into German hands by bringing false accusations and
giving them a genuine grievance.
But what does it all matter? Civilisation has broken
down; we must begin again, if any one of the white races
survive, on fundamentals. New principles of morality, of
politic, of economics. Well, there's one constructive work then
-- when the chance comes! ``I've often said to myself, I said,
Cheer up, old chappie, you'll soon be dead, A short life and a
gay one'' can wait a little after all. My business is to
proclaim Thelema, the New Aeon: Do what thou wilt shall be the
whole of the Law.
Such considerations never troubled Sir Roger Bloxam
during any part of his life at the University.
N31.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
APOLOGIA PRO NOVELLISSIMO SUO.
Who said, by this was a novel? Who (also and moreover)
defined a novel? Novellum -- that's a new little thing. Most
novels are not that. This is the newest little thing yet writ --
even Lippy Leila and Sawny Simeon agreed to that! So let me
flaunt it on my title: a novellisim! That will show that
Our Story is no ordinary novel. Some readers read so
wondrous carefully that it may be just the right time to tell
them that!
And so they tell me that Our Story has no
order, no form, no concentration -- ay! there's the rub! This
talk of concentration is vile Puritanical tyranny, with its
roots in bourgeois utilitarianism. Beauty is with the butterfly
at least as much as with the ant. What says the Broadway Jew
when he is `in love'? ``Get busy with your face, kid!'' I know
it saves time, but yet I feel a certain poignancy, as of loss,
somewhere. Need I make further apology for the method of this
novellissim? Well, Louis says, that we cannot help thinking a
little of Laurence Sterne and Rabelais; to which I answer
``Would Got 'twere so!'' when modern poetry scans, it must jbe a
theft from Swinburne; when it doesn't, from Browning; where it's
hashed prose, from Whitman. What's one to do? Faith, 'tis as bad
as morals in the English mind. If one happens at any time to be
alone, its onanism; with a woman, fornication; with a man or a
dog, something worse; in a crowd, a ``priapic orgie.'' You can't
get away from it. So why should we try, dear girls? We won't.
Come off the grass! And that reminds me that I ought to tell you
about Kitty Williams.
N32.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
OF KITTY WILLIAMS, HER LOVES PASTORAL, PAIDOPARTHENICAL, AND
EXTRATERMINUMUNIVERSITATIDUOMILLERADIODEMAGNAESANCTAEMARIAECCLESISTI-
CAL.
``Xanthous as golden sunset were you, Kitty, from the
curled hair to the flushed feet that lay like curled rose
petals, tiny in my hand. I quiver now, the glow of you yet
radiant across the chill abyss of twenty times twelve moons.''
'Twas thus that Roger wrote, as his trick is, to people who are
not there -- and then, after a phrase or two, he will break off,
and sacrifice to Memory, when Imagination happens to be busy
elsewhere, and actuality gone out for a walk.
Kitty was flushed from crown to heel; it was a tawny
gold of passion that flooded her. There was none of that
dreadful milkmaid rosiness in her; here skin was pale, but it
glowed like old ivory warmed through by blood itself. There was
a curious fieriness in the hair and in the nails, as well as in
the skin; yet 'twas so subtle a matter that it was rather felt
than seen. She was graceful as a tiger-cub, and lithe, and hot;
yet she had all the awkwardness of a young she-goat; for her
vitality tumbled over itself, fulvous as a burn in spate. Ay!
she was muscular, nor spare nor plump; tall, not too tall; but
what caught Sir Roger Bloxam was her temperament. There was the
lass for him -- the true religous type. For her the good
Cardinal never became tedious; never could he labour a point too
fully, ejaculate too often or too long. Her dear little sisters,
Connie and Annie, were full of him; brave Signor Coglio and gay
Don Cojone counted them, you may believe it. Does it not remind
you of Watteau, or of Corot, those scenes pastoral in that most
fortunate corner wood on the road to Bishop's Stortford that
lies just beyond the two miles from Great Saint Mary's, where
ends the empery of proctor and vice-Chancellor and Esquire
Bedell. All May term ye can revel it there, lasses and lads;
there's grass and moss, and many a wild flower, all soft for the
foot, or whatever ye dance withal. Nunc est bibendum, nunc
pede libero Pulsanda tellus. But Kitty had Nijinsky's spring,
even when her clinometer equation was cot 90. 'Twas in the
early days of Dunlop; and Sir Roger was wont to say that his
racing Humber had them, but Kitty never did. So there in the
woodland they played many a pageant: the mystery of St. George,
the Comedy of Pan, the Morality of the Wild Beast, the Argument
of the Flood, a thousand merry and joyous rites of Saturn and
Flora, of Dionysus and of Paphian Aphrodite, of her that reigns
in Panormus, of him that guards great Lampsacus in his
reverberating splendour. 'Twas wonder Cardinal Mentula took not
Clergyman's Sore Throat, and Kitty Housemaid's knee. Gay scholar
she, in every mood (??) and tense crissare: cevere,
too, although another conjugation. As for brave Coglio and gay
Cojone, they were involved in theological discussion anent the
Kinesis. This was before the love of Porphyria Poppoea for
Hippolytus, else there had been division of interest in the
little world of Sir Roger Bloxam. Eheu fugaces! Termini Maiae!
The May week ended; Sir Roger ruffles it to Norway, flies back
for one night to his sweet wench of Wales, then off he goes to
Russia. I'll tell you of his love for Mathilde Doriac, when I
feel in the mood.
N33.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A WORD ON PANTOMORPHOPSYCHOLONOSOPHILOSOPHY, INCLUDING ARTHUR
MACHEN.
Would I could write a glacous ineluctable novel, like
John Cowper Powys! With no more outfit than an ulcerated
duodenum, he produced Rodmoor. He presses seaweed into the
service of sadism, picks glacous and amphibian diatoms from
moonwort, and makes them inelectable and nearly everything
glaucous. And that is a very jolly feeling, when one has a bout
of malaria, as I have to-night, filling myself with quinine,
strychnine, arsenic, and cascara sagrada, almost ineluctably so.
I expect to be pretty glacous in the morning. What a lot of
words there are which are more atmosphere than meaning!
Definition is the curse of art; we want to wander in exotic
heady gardens amid small glaucous govins, mellicose at our
costals, ineluctably dalmatic! There should Euphorion woo
Eumolpe with pantoums and purfled wisps of moonrise, the
fritillaries of their pomegranate cusps fluttering mopishly in
the flambiance of Ra's cadenza. The wigsbane should plex its
arpling alianelle about their rampled olio; mammet and maropial
flooze emplishly upon the szyenite. See? You remember Arthur
Machen -- of the Angels of Mons, that gallant company! -- in his
``White People'' how he gets his horror from ``wicked Voorish
domes'' by simply failing to explain ``Voorish,'' and his final
tragedy by just not saying what occurred. I must do this (or
somewhat aequipollent, albeit solipsistically mine) for Sir
Roger Bloxam: what rotten asses writers are! They're alwasys
introducing `great Poets' without giving us a single line to
taste them by, and so on. They're always leaving everything to
the imagination of the reader. Poor fool of a reader! If he had
any imagination, he'd be a creative artist himself. Anyhow, Rule
One for writing a novellisim shall be to cross the `i's and dot
the `t's: except in the one show chapter, which I shall put in
to prove that I can do it. It can come in here, as well as
anywhere else; (be quiet, Elsie! I wasn't thinking of you) so
good-night. Sleep well, wake fresh, and tackle Chapter XXXV in
all its glaucous ineluctability. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
came!
N34.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE RUNIC PLASM
Ambiguous, Childe Roger rees the rune of Unna Klopstock.
Mobile Marry, but omen. ``The grey knight's at the ferry;
wink.'' He signed, pressed the plasm to his alb, pectoral-wise,
with a norm that made groined transept and waly welkin giddy as
the long-haired shagsters of Boeotia. Then clasps he speron to
palfrey, with whinnying jennet lank adown the wet west wind. I
now omit many adventures, but he gets to the ferry at last. The
Grey Knight Is Not There. There is however an unambiguous rune,
reading, in the character of Honorius: SVXIIV. The II is a Roman
Numeral; now it's quite easy, isn't it?
But when Childe Roger brings at last the mummied hand --
that had wrought such fearful mischief -- to the Master
Egyptologist, that person pales anaemically, glares goitrously,
yammers once, and then goes raving mad. At the same moment the
clock of Big Ben strikes Thirteen (don't you think? Something
ominous and totally disconnected). Of course, Childe Roger was
never the same man after this adventure of the runic plasm; he
retired to his castle -- but why did he always order Dinner for
Two, even when most alone? I doubt if even the old steward knows
about this. He is palsied and hoar already, on account of the
affair of the bedesman and the beldame, I suppose. Don't let us
load any more trouble on to the back of the poor old steward!
Whether Childe Roger's wife was a gorilla (thanks to clever
chaperones this can easily be done now-a-days) or whether the
First-Born son of the Bloxams is always a seal or a calf, as so
often happens in the best-regulated old Scottish families, I
shall leave, dear reader, to your imagination. You see, it would
be saving of much trouble to leave the whole damned thing! I'm
going on with this novellisim in the grand old way. SVXIIV.
(``Same to you, only louder,'' cries the Bunyip girl.)
N35.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
OF THE EARLY OPINIONS OF SIR ROGER BLOXAM CONCERNING THE
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
IN his third year at Cambridge Sir Roger Bloxam,
prompted by the Cardinal and his suite, was already a famous
poet. In his second year he had taken the Chancellor's medal
with a poem on `Gehenna' -- not Ravenna, Mr Clever, of course,,
you think you know everything. Ravenna was by Wilde and won the
Newdigate, which rather gives Oxford away. No, Gehenna was a
hell of a poem, and he ruined it quite correctly with `senna'.
But hje beat this hollow in a month. Yes: of course I mean to
give the chapter and verse; I told you before I would never
bluff. Here's the opening chorus. ``From life hath death the
power to bar souls? Are souls immortal? Are souls? Are souls?''
He goes on ``Are souls of boys with glamour gilded? Shall not
love right the wrong the pill did?'' referring, apparently, to
the bitter pill of punishment for sin. Cf. Milton
Paradise Lost: a much duller poem. The yearning
earnestness of this poem won him many a friend. The exordium is
truly superb.
Are souls divine? Those crimson piles
Bear witness, while the sun-god smiles.
Reared in the desert -- blood and wine
Answer our sob ``Are souls divine?''
Is that last Angel's trumpet-boom
Not puissant on the mortal's tomb?
Are souls divine? Yes, cries the heart;
By the strong argument -- of art!''
Porphyria Poppoea was indeed his Egeria -- that's the
cliche, isn't it? -- in philosophy. He was in her the whole of
divinity. She taught him that he could shed mortality, and feel
the better for it; and also that great lesson of unselfishness.
For he was never able to behold her face to face, but in a
glass, darklyl; and love must come to him f om another, and that
other one like unto himself, id est, God. As he spent many
an hour, his fingers coyly straying in her wine-dark hair, while
her voice, like perfume, declared the glory and the goodness of
God. I wish you could see her rosy lips pursed up and puckered
with merry impudence -- yet utter holiness. See them part softly
to the pressure of a gentle sigh! Hullo! what's this? what
golden god comes flaming from the portal, his disk cloud-capped
like a volcano? Let us cover our eyes in reverence, and begone
-- is it not written ``Upon whom this stone shall fall?'' You
may not be expert enough in Attic to read KOPROS `O TEOS
you are still playing with KUPRIS in the shade, or with
the tangles of Neaera's hair. Shame is the spur that the clear
spirit doth raise, that last infirmity of noble mind, But the
fair guerdon when we hope to find And think to burst out in
sudden blaze Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
and mixes our metaphors still more, I'm afraid. Surely this is
the place to insert Sir Roger Bloxam's views on Death, regarded
as an art, a science, and a social pleasure.
N36.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
OF FROU-FROU, AND FRISSON, AND DEATH.
There is no frisson possible without the element of
surprise, that is, of ignorance. AS one assimilates all books,
all pictures, all things beautiful, enjoyment increases, but
frisson becomes rare. To be blase is not to be impotent. But
after loving say 1500 women it is unlikely that one will often
discover a `new sensation'. A man may be most potent when he
does find the right woman; which was not so at eighteen, when
the rustle of every skirt produced its full physiological
effect. Sir Roger Bloxam had many a year of this early stage. It
was not only Kitty Williams; it was every landlady's daughter,
every skivey, every barmaid. But 'twas all butterfly love once,
twice, and thrice, and a new flower caught his fancy. Indeed, he
was short with them; a quick-firing gun was he, by Gosh. He grew
into a 16-inch gun, a 42-centimetre howitzer. It takes more to
load such a gun -- but 'tis not smaller and impotent because you
cannot fire it 600 times a minute! Don't be afraid of being
blase, darling; you're nearer `death', it's true; but that's
because you've finished life, mastered it, put it in your
breeches pocket. You've made yourself ready for a higher life by
your familiarity with the lower. How dreadful to be always 15 or
25 or 35 or 45! You'd get more bored every day; suicide would
soon seem the one way out. Surely by 35 the earnest man who had
had all opportunities and lived every minute ofhis time has
become one with all possible beauty. Is he likely to discover a
new Beethoven at 40? No: he has taken all life in; if he is an
artist, he can go on to give it out to others; bar that, his
life may be pleasant, but it must be nigh stagnation, as regards
new impressions. He must work on his material if grow he would.
Once his creative force is spent, he is ready for death; and I
cannot see but that death is a logical continuation of life. Not
by man's logic, but by nature's, whatever that may be; but be
sure, 'tis right, when we understand it. So as the poet says
``Give me passion, give me death!'' For the two are one; and
death shall be the orgasm wherein the true ego escapes the man,
-- to spend -- given a suitable menstruum -- in energy in
recreating body and mind, like a wanton God adorning himself
with flowers and laurels. ``What a serious chapter! And you
haven't mentioned the one great consolation to the dying, that
we have no evidence of the continued existence of Australia
beyond the grave.''
N37.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
HOW SIR ROGER BLOXAM BETHOUGHT HIM OF CHOOSING A CAREER.
A sapper, in sinking a well-shaft,
Was stricken by death with his fell-shaft
But Hindenburg said:
``He's much better dead --
``Kadaververwertungsgesellschaft!''
This is a very important passage, dear children, in the
life of any man, when he decides to what he shall devote his
life. For all courses are just equally vain and idle. This world
is so obviously a rotten practical joke that a wise man is
disgusted with it by the time he is twenty-five or so. The
everlasting guffaw of God at his horseplay irritates the nerves.
Only the artist who eschews the Learned Professions, and sticks
to Beauty, is likely to enjoy life. But -- Usefulness -- that is
not to be had. The Pragmatists define Truth as Usefulness -- and
one can see the ghost of Pilate decorously concealing mouth with
toga!
Sir Roger did not enter the School of Journalism,
although they promised to teach him to write like this
following:
HUNS CHEW PALS
EXTRA. VIA Amsterdam. June 19. The
Kadaververwertungsgesellschaft have added a kitchen department
by direct Imperial Order. Brochette d'Enfant Belge a la von
Bissing is now a regular feature of the goulash-cannon, the
children being spitted on bayonets, and toasted over burning
cathedrals, libraries, Rembrandts, and other combustibles. The
officers usually prefer the broiled breasts of violated nuns;
sometimes, however, these are seethed in their own milk. But on
those parts of the front where the supply of nuns and babies has
given out, owing to the rigour of the British blockade, the
German soldier subsists almost entirely on the bodies of his
comrades. The men actually in the trenches are said to be
lamentably tough, but the Landsturmers afford excellent tripe.
Men who have served in the German colonies and so ruined their
livers furnish an admirable pate de foie gras for the tables
of the higher officials. Bones not only supply glue for the
Kaiser to paste his press-cuttings, and gelatine, of which
motion-picture films are made, but commands a high price in
Catholic Germany and Austria as authentic relics of the Saviour.
The tough guts of the mountain regiments are used for violin
strings. The blood is invariably drained off and used as a
substitute for red wine; this is the favourite drink of the
Kaiser himself, Admiral Tirpitz, and Count von Reventlow.
Hindenburg, on the contrary, eats British prisoners, raw.
(Pad this to four columns, double-leaded, and add
confirmatory `statements of eye-witnesses', `what my wife's
brother's wife's aunt's best friend heard from the chauffeur of
somebody who once saw the Crown Prince at a review', `affidavit
of an American professional divorce court witness', etc.
etc.
Newspapers bribed by German gold may not accept this
article; then, try them with this other.
FRENCH BOOZE STUNT
The French are openly boasting that the failures of the vines,
ravaged by raiding Uhlans who have laid waste the country from
the Belfort to Bayonne -- the censorship has suppressed this
important news hitherto, but Truth will out -- has not
diminished their supply of alcohol. It is well known that
Frenchmen will not fight unless intoxicated. they have therefore
replaced wine by `esprit de corps' (Translation `spirit from the
body'). This beverage, a thousand times more pernicious even
then absinthe, is distilled in immense retorts (etc., pile in
with the scientific stuff). Frenzied by this demoniacal liquor,
the wretches, although starved, diseased, crippled, -- not one
per cent is between the ages of 8 and 80 -- beat off the
gallant, well-ordered, determined attacks of the noble German
soldiers, who are, besides, too kind-hearted to advance against
such miserable cowards.
(If this goes, try to derive `poilu' from `pois-elu',
i.e. `selected pea' and prove that they make their
soldiers into Erbsuppe. And write up Potage Bonne Femme.)
However, they tried to make Sir Roger reconsider his
decision, as will be explained, by trying to rouse his
indignation about the white slave traffic. Here is their little
paper of statistics, from which a clever journalist can earn a
fine income any day of the week, especially Sunday.
N38.R1
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
FACTS ABOUT THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC. 1917 A.D
Population of the United States 196,343,277
White Slavers (male) 85,671,242
ditto (female) 146,221,849
ditto (sexless) 196,343,277
Dope Fiends (all sexes) 621,387,551
Crooked politicians 91,729,984
Grafting policemen 112,478,236
Men higher up 38,211,719
Women spiders 29,322,963
Satyrs 84,716,437
Victims of lust 1,491,624,588
Sob-sisters .606
Clear-cut red-blooded straight-living young
men 462-891-468
ditto including the President 462-891-469
Mrs. Wilson 1
Annual profits of White Slave
Trust $998,444,591,876,212,641,982.45 and a plugged nickel.
Tons of Chloroform used annually to stifle
victims 611,343,528,941
Value of candy used annually for administering dope
(average of 5 years) $711,812,369,745,382,118.16
ditto ditto chewing gum $949,984,759,892,776,538.35
Pithy Points for Pornographers.
If the limousines used for kidnapping virgins were put
in a straight line, it would extend from the Knickerbocker Hotel
to Arcturus.
Mr. Lloyd George was awakened recently by the roar of
the British barrage at Messina, a distance of 140 miles. If the
shrieks of the chloroformed victims of lust in one week were
simultaneous, he could hear them too -- a distance of over 3000
miles.
Yesterday, housewreckers broke into a cellar in the
Bronx; they could not find a single body of a `Ripper' victim.
The unique event will be celebrated by a parade of the United
Body-Snatchers.
Every man, woman, and child in the United States
consumes daily, on an average, fourteen and a half times his own
weight in heroin.
The late Stanford White is said to have ruined 12,642
angel children in five months, when at the height of his
career.
Evelyn Thaw and Lilian Russell are almost the only
virgins left in the United States, if we exclude Vaudeville and
cabaret performers. All others who may be proved medically to be
virgins, must, according to a leading judge, be degenerates. The
american woman is the purest in the world. The American man is a
clean-cut, straight-living, red-blooded intellectual hero, a
satyr who lives only to drag pure women to his hell of lust, the
too easy dupe of the vile empresses of vice who throng every
street.
Any American woman loses her virtue if she drinks a
cocktail. The cocktails used for seduction in one night in the
Tenderloin, if collected, would raise the level of the Ocean by
eight feet and five inches.
Respectable looking old ladies are always procuresses.
The action of the pure, high-minded, self-sacrificing, heroic,
beautiful, fearless, dainty, pious, well-bred, chic, bully,
dandy, American woman journalist has stamped all vice out of
every corner of the country. Extra-marital intercourse is
absolutely unknown from Maine to Texas. It only remains to tread
upon the loathsome practice of intra-marital intercourse with a
firm hand; it is the serpent in the Eden of Marriage. The birth
rate must be increased some thirty-fold and some sixtyfold and
some an hundredfold; America needs workers.
I really cannot imagine why Sir Roger Bloxam declined
this fascinating field of labour.
N39.R1
CHAPTER FORTY
OF SIR ROGER BLOXAM'S SECOND CHOICE OF CAREER.
If was reasonably hoped by many that, under the direct
tutelage of so great and so upright a churchman as Cardinal
Mentula, it would come about that Sir Roger developed into a
theologian of the first water. The words ``Holy Orders'' were
freely mentioned in connection with his name. None doubted his
fundamental capacity. Yet -- could one so modest and so pious
face a multitude, and deliver a sermon? 'Twas this, naught else,
that determined his advisers to rehearse him. Fiat
experimentatum in corpore vilo, cried they; and summoned the
Master and Fellows of Saint Catherine's College to hear him, one
Shrove Tuesday. It may well be that they chose the day badly;
the God Pan is an ill councellor in speech and act, think you
not, Euphemia?
``My text for this morning, dearly beloved brethren,''
began Sir Roger, ``is taken from Saint Paul's Epistle to the
Romans, the Twelfth Chapter and the Fourth Verse. ``Many members
in one body.'' The Fourth Verse of the Twelfth Chapter of Saint
Paul's Epistle to the Romans. ``Many members in one body.'' What
can be more glorious, dearly beloved, than this wonderful
thought? Many members! Not one member only, not two, three or
four members; not even several members; no, brethren; many
members.
Many members! There is no limit to the Divine Love; and
in this fresh proof of the Great Mercy of God we are constrained
to lift up our hearts in utter overflowing. Think of this apex
and apostrophe of the Apostle, I beseech you: many members! Try
to represent them to yourselves. Think of them in rows -- in
files -- in squadrons. ``Not in single spies, but in
battalions.'' Think oif them as the stars squandered over the
whole field of fight. Think of the great loving-kindness of the
Lord, his munificence, his bounty, nay, if one dare say so with
reverence, his prodigality! Many members! Is it legitimate to
pursue this analogy of stars, dearly beloved? Surely we may do
so. Surely we may reckon on the uniformity of His creation! So,
just as no two stars are exactly alike, no two men, no two
roses, we may assume that of all these many members the variety
is infinite. Even as with the very noses upon our faces, where
we perceive short noses, long noses, straight noses, bent noses,
stumpy noses, lank noses, turned-up noses, pudgy noses, snouty
noses, broken noses, red noses, pale noses, sensitive noses,
vigorous noses, flabby noses, strong noses, fat noses, muscular
noses, bulbous noses, vinous noses, warty noses, port-wine
noses, itchy noses, greasy noses, dewy noses, Jewy noses, Hughie
noses, bluey noses, ticklish noses, ready-to-blow noses, hairy
noses, fairy noses, drooping noses, inquisitive noses, thoughful
noses, may it not be with these many members of which the
Apostle of the Gentiles speaks with such eloquence and fervour
even as it was given him of the Holy Spirit? Dearly beloved
brethren, were these two words alone -- many members -- the very
sum and apogee of the divine grace, what cause should we not
have for thanksgiving? Should we not praise Him? Should we not
extol Him? Yea, verily. But, by overplus and superstroke of
mercy, the Magnificence of the Heavenly Bounty beggars our
gratitude. How does the sublime phrase culminate? Many members.
Ah, but where? Scattered and lost, as sheep not having a
shepherd? Wasted as the sands of the desert? Nay, dearly
beloved, it is not so! These many members are collected,
concentrated, into One Body! It humbly seems possible to me that
Saint Paul may have had the figure of the Empress Messalina in
his mind when the Spirit of God led him to use this phrase of
joy. In one body! Many Members! Many members in one body! What
blessed words of comfort they are! Think of it; consider all
that it implies. It might have been that all these many members
were dispersed among an infinitude of bodies; it might have been
that you or I might have had to eke out the exiguity of a single
member with some such succeedaneum as a banana. But God is the
author of all true riches; and He does not leave His servants
without full provision. Many members in one body! Blessed,
year blessed for ever be His name! We all of us know how
unreliable is any single member; one may be weak, another weary,
a thirt sick, a fourth grown old. Brethren, the Lord has
foreseen all such calamities; He has provided against failure.
In one body -- many members! Let us pray!''
We shall touch but lightly upon the painful sequel to
this sermon; for a novelissim should be pleasant as ice-cream in
Hell, or in New York in Summer. Suffice it to say that the
congregation came up to congratulate the preacher, two by two,
and then four by four, so that Sir Roger had his hands full.
Ave Virgo, plena gratia! The boy remarked, after Blake,
that you never knew what was enough till you knew what was too
much -- and abandoned theology.
N40.R1
CHAPTER FORTH-ONE
HOW SIR ROGER BLOXAM REPUDIATED A NAVAL CAREER.
Carissima, do not fret; I shall not be horridly
technical. I hardly know the difference between a midshipmate
and a stopcock. My aquatics have been mostly on Cam and Indus. I
can tell a brig from a schooner if I am drunk enough; and I know
that once aboard a lugger, the girl is mine. I often recognise
nautical words, such as fore-top-mizzen-spanker and taffrail
boom and trysail and careen and rum, but I'm not sure of the
meaning of any but those `terms of endearment common among
sailors' which, oh well! We must do our little best. We must
bring a whiff of salty spindrift across the bows of our
novellissim; bos'un, pipe all hands! Half-a-gale o' wine
nor'nor'east and a pint to the nor'ard. Typhoon off the port
quarter, sir! `Bout ship, lads, hearty, yo-heave-ho! Ay, ay,
sir! Quartermaster, heave the lead! Ay, ay, sir! One-and-a-half,
one, mark six, one and eleven three, by God, she's struck! We're
sinking by the poop! Mr. Carpenter, sound the fo`mast! Ay, ay,
sir. Cyclone from sou'sou'west right of the larboard quarter.
B'gosh, the barometer's dropping. 29,28,27 -- glory be, it's
gone to zero. Oh! cracked the glass -- may be we'll live through
it then! Man the pumps, lads! Yo-heave-ho! We're in the
doldrums, and the ship's in stays. Put out the best bower, and
lower the yawl! Ay, ay, sir! Run up the pennant to the fore
halyards! Ring astern! Stand by to repel boarders! Our
cutlasses! Ay, ay, sir! Show the dirty swabs etcetera
etcetera!
Oh, I suppose it could be done; but please God it never
shall be: simply rotten, showing off, what? Per Bacco, a
straight narrative style is bad enough. In fact, between you and
me, Lavinia, darling, it may be that some of our nautical
writers conceal a certain disability in this respect by
overloading their frigates with all that ship Ahoy stuff, eh?
So -- driven by the mephitic blast of the Simoom, Her
Majesty's Ship `Electric Eel' plunged through the ruddy foam of
the Red Sea. ``Suez!'' cried the lookout suddenly; ``Suez
Canal!''
Devil take you all, my darlings! I'm not going to bother
to finish this rotten chapter. It's obviously meant to lead up
to a feeble joke about naval affairs being too shallow for a man
of Sir Roger's penetraton. Let's get on to something jolly --
why not the story of the Whistling Coon?
N41.R1
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
SIR ROGER'S OBJECTIONS TO THE STUDY OF LAW.
I shall leave this chapter entirely to the imagination
of the reader -- see Chapter XXXIV for reflections on the
morality of this procedure.
N42.R1
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
THE OMNIFIC AND GRANDIOSE INTERMEZZO OF THE WHISTLING COON.
In the antechamber of the Rosicrucian's cabinet stood a
strangely carven pedestal, on which the young and elegant woman
whom we have already introduced to the gentle reader as Flotilla
was leaning. Her lustrous eyes exuded unfathomable sorrow as she
gazed into the Magical Mirror of Zamboni. In those astral
horizons she saw many a mystery ineffable, many a wonder
mirific, many an arcanum irresolvable even in the limpid
luminance of theophany. But, search as she might, her soul
shrank from the Threshold of the Great White Way.
(That, you see, is how we link Lytton and Irvin S.
Cobb; that is how we get from Bologna to Broadway.)
On the stage of a famous variety theatre, by Castor and
Pollux, there stood a slight pale figure -- fill it up from the
waste paper basket, please, Mr. Dollar-a-Syllable! -- his name
don't matter; in the perfesh, he was The Whistling Coon. And in
the audience was a -- oh! you know: I'm a tired novellissimist
to-night -- call her Ethel. She wanted to get his job. She went
to the stage door, and sent in her card. (By Serapis, this is a
python of a story, cut it how you will!) He came out. They met.
``Walk as we talk?'' ``Yes.'' They walked. (And now my style's
getting like Aimee Gouraud's, or whoever wrote `Moon-madness'
for her.) Well, presently the Whistling Coon said to Ethel: ``I
suppose you have whistled before?'' She modestly replied: ``I
hardly like to call it whistling, you know, to you.''
``But you can whistle?'' ``Oh, well, I suppose I must say
I can whistle.'' And he smiled a long, low, sad, subtle
smile -- and they walked on. Now they were in the depths of the
Park -- and he smiled a long, low, sad, subtle smile -- and he
said ``Now you can't.''
N43.R1
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
VIVE L'ENTENTE CORDIALE!
Well I am aware that this is a second edition of Chapter
XLIV. But did not the first performance deserve an encore?
Good.
Glabrous was Cardinal Mentula as an emu's oef, chauv
from his nasence; I ditties you that there in the sub of this
over, not is this not? 'Twas as the crane of an old marcher in
the ledges of the Shepherd-Follies; but it redded like a spall
of agnew at the point, or like the altered drake at the blood,
when bezin was. The nayne was scarce grander than a jamb of
pullet, but never an hom dressed himself pluss superb, and he
brilled like a spey, the spey of Arthur, Excalibur, or like the
spew of Nimrod. Yes, he flamboyed like a stoil, like an aster
tumbling, nay, semblable to the solil at haught south, in
stey.
Perhaps we had better change the subject.
N44.R1
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
``WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.''
As Verlaine says, c'est a recommencer -- though
that only proves -- to my mind -- that it was not properly
finished. You don't expect an Eight to row over the course again
ten minutes after the race, do you? These machine-gun men
advertise their clumsiness, not their force.
The point is that we've got so mixed up over the chapters that
we had better begin again well ahead of the hunt.
And her name is Mrs. Hunt.
And she's ordered to the front
With no hair on -- hair on -- hair on
her old toot -- toot.
Good night, everybody! (No, not you, Belgacem!)
N45.R1
CHAPTER MII
OF HOW SIR ROGER BLOXAM MET MR. HANK FARRIS.
How? Why, how should they meet, Clorinda? It was at
lunch at Romano's, let me tell you that, in the grand days of
their hors d'oeuvre, and when the cheese was ``le Fromage
de M. Fromage.'' There was a pretty decent Moselle, too, -- oh
well, 'tis in vain to repine! Et puis, les filles! Merde pour
New York! No matter. You shall have a new automobile, Sadie,
if you can tell me why Hank Farris, on seeing Sir Roger, was
reminded of a night long ago when he had been driving with the
Empress Eugenie, poor dear fat old thing! and found himself in
the Marlborough Club with nothing to do, when who should stroll
up Pall Mall but dear old Willie Gladstone; ``Frank, dear old
top,'' cried the Premier, ``let's wander up to Bond Street, and
look for a bit of fluff!'' ``Charmed, dear man!'' I murmered,
and off we went -- and ran right into Tom Carlyle. ``Ouch, ye
sculduddery rapscallions!'' cried Carlyle, ``a braw day the day!
D'ye no ken I'll gang whiles we`ye!'' This was the very devil;
Willie couldn't possibly do any business with that peevish old
fool on his arm. But as luck would have it, we found the Prince
of Wales at the corner of Park Place, groping in the gutter for
a shilling he had dropped, and there was Lily in the hansom
screaming, and the cabman swearing that his fare was half-a
crown. ``Kommen Sie nur!'' I cried in German ``Ned,
Liebchen, wie geht's?'' (The Prince spoke hardly any English,
you know.) ``Donner und Blitzen,'' ye yelled, ``der
verfluchte Schweinkopf!'' and went on to curse the cabby in
thick gutteral broken English. I tossed the man a sovereign --
jthe thing was becoming scandalous -- Lily jumped out of the
cab, and in her hysteria threw her arms around Willie's neck.
``Take her home,'' I whispered, ``It's the only way out.'' For
already a little crowd had collected, and any one of us might
have been recognised at any moment! So poor dear Gladdie had to
take on the Langtry -- he was never his own man again, through
Hutch did his best, dear old Jonathan, what a man he was! As for
Ned, he took Tom down to Marlborough House, of course, I packed
them off, and damned glad I was to get out of it so easily. Poor
old Tom! I met him again a year later at Lady Devonshire's.
``Been back to Ned's, Tom?'' I cried laughingly. He frowned at
me. ``Na,'' says he, ``na! once a philosopher -- twice a pile
driver!'' I don't know what the devil he meant. So I fired off
Pokilothron' Athanat' Aphrodite at him on the chance of a
hit, and he went off growling to talk to Bobbie Salisbury, just
as Alf Tennyson came up, and pulled out the Manuscript of In
Memoriam, and asked me to put it right for him. ``In Memoriam,''
I cried, ``In Victoriam, you mean!'' digging his ribs, ``through
as a matter of fact I don't believe he ever had the old
girl!''
The effect of this sparkling anecdote was great upon Sir
Roger Bloxam. I'll tell you about it some other time when I'm
not so lazy, unless I forget, as I shall, for yours sakes, try
to do.
On with the revel!
N46.R1
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
OF THE DESPAIR OF SIR ROGER BLOXAM ANENT HIS CAREER; AND OF THE
APPEAL THAT HE MADE TO THE CARDINAL.
Well, you know, it was a bit thick, eh, what? Time was
passing; it's a damned bad habit of his; and Sir Roger was no
nearer to the choice of a career than when he first put on his
long trousers. His despair was positively frightful to witness.
He ate, drank, smoked, rode, played cards or chess, tennis or
cricket, went canoeing up to Byron's Fool, or pulled a skiff
down to Dilton, and in a thousand other similar ways strove to
express the anguish, agony, anxiety, worry, torture, grief,
pain, torment, horror, apprehension, woe and so on that bit,
clawed, scratched, tore at his vitals. It preyed upon hi so much
that his favourite bull-dog, whose name was John Thomas, did not
notice it. Nevertheless -- and that reminds me of a story. It
was at a music-hall in the old days, and the manager came
forward to introduce Miss Joconde Jujube, or whatever her name
was. A drunken man in the stalls rose to protest: ``She's the
lousiest old cow on the stage.'' The manager, unperturbed:
``That may bery well be, sir; nevertheless, she -- will --
perform.''
Now, dears, get your laugh over, and we'll go on with
the Awful Despair of Sir Roger. I feared that without the comic
relief you might have lost your reasons.
For I fear that you will be in suspense yet awhile. I
raised your hopes with the chapter-heading; you thought
naturally enough that the appeal to the Cardinal would fix the
whole caboodle. But alas! ``Oh woe to me that have to sing this
thing!'' as Victor Neuburg so selfishly says -- for his hearers
are in still more evil case -- through Sir Roiger did indeed
consult Cardinal Mentula -- the dwarf was absolutely absorbed in
Browning.
N47.R1
CHAPTER MIV
OF THE DESPAIR OF THE NOVELISSIMIST; ANENT HIS CAREER; AND OF
THE APPEAL THAT HE MADE.
`Twere unreasonable to expect me to write a novelissim
at Seaside, Long Island, with its vomit of sour-smelling
canaille. Thence did I flee to the verandah; the mob is but a
distant yowl, and the winds from the bay. But my legs are
scorched by the whips of my great Father; and despite all manner
of grease, they burn. Yet -- what else is there to do? Life's
naught to me but worship, art, or love; and love's impossible
amid these cattle -- 'tis plain bestiality. And so Religion too
wears thin, since Love under Will is the law. What's left but
art? What's art but St. Paul's `faith,' the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen? Then art should be
able to move mountains: oh if one could only dump the Central
Asiatic Plateau on to this infernal country! It's a curious
thing, perhaps even a little morbid, the way in which hatred of
America eats up all one's other passions. It's omnipresent. It's
not pure hatred; it's loathing and disgust. And it certainly
does interfere with the writing of a novelissim; for I'd more
easily write sonnets when I'm seasick.
Now, upon what God shall I call? It's a far cry to
Lochawe! There are no gods on the long-distance telephone. The
most disreputable outcast of Olympus would hide this shame
elsewhere -- so long as there was a latrine or a cicada outside
America he would not haunt their pinchback palaces. I fear me I
must call on their own deity, the dollar; and use him to get
out.
N48.R1
CHAPTER MV
HERIOC RESOLUTION OF THE NOVELISSIMIST.
No, by the anvil of lame Vulcan, I'll not budge. I'll
dree my weird. I'll take it out in art. Bricks without straw, by
the Phoenix Wand of Cheops, and by the Crowns of the Upper and
the Lower Nile! A puritan community can never breed artists, for
they feed on beauty; and in America one has to go for beauty to
the caterpillar. Yes, there are some pretty decent insects here,
I must admit. Thus comforted, let us return to those enthralling
vicissitudes in the career of Sir Roger Bloxam which were
interrupted about a month ago, something suddenly, by my taking
over The International.
You'll remember that Cardinal Mentula was absorbed in
Browning. (The reader is requested not to attempt to parse
Browning.) What's the object? cried Sir Roger. The Cardinal
handed him a copy of Tristam Shandy. ``How are you
working?'' Mentula passed him a Gulliver's Travels. ``Is
it hard?'' Down came a copy of The Channings. ``What's the
colour of his hair?'' He produced the Elegy in a Country
Churchyard. ``And how do you feel?'' The busy churchman pointed
to Jude the Obscure. ``Hot work, eh?'' The Cardinal
laughingly opened a Tam-o Shanter. ``Who is he?'' An
Erewhon was immediately indicated. ``What's the best part
of him?'' Cardinal Mentula got out a volume of sermons by Dean
Hole. ``How do you know?'' Evangeline was on the table in
an instant....
I could go on for an hour; but I do hate all this bloody
cleverness.
N49.R1
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
OF THE HALT CAUSED BY THE ABSENCE OF A NOVELISSIMATRIX; AND HOW
THE LORD TOOK PITY UPON THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN.
I am perfectly well aware, thank you, darling, that a
month has slipped by, without my doing a line of the novelissim.
You see, I hadn't time; for I had just taken up the work of
The International. But I would have found time if I had
had the One Thing Needful. And what's that, say you, Ambrosia?
Natuer-lich -- a novelissimatrix. Gewiss. I'm really rather
grateful to dear Maitland. He sent me to the Murray Hill Baths,
where, by the Missing Section of Osiris, I met a Popular Movie
Writer in the flesh. He calls hils films ``Shades and Shadows,''
``Right or Wrong?'' and sich, and he talks as he writes. He
spends a night of drunken orgie with a lady, and, on leaving,
thanks her for a very pleasant evening. I didn't know that these
things were! Then Maitland also told me of a Cingalese Joing,
where I could get a really truly curry. And of course I ran
right into my beloved Catherine. She was sitting in a little
inner room, by the window, in the twilight. I could not see her
clearly. But her magnetism drew me over to her. She was in a
coarse white dress, smoking endless cigarettes, and drinking
many an unfathomable seidel of beer. She looks a little like
Soror Hilarion, and, a little like Frank Harris, and altogether
like some kind of Chinese dog -- a barbarian brigand kind from
beyond the Wall. So I shall call her Tchao, and that will be all
right, won't it? I can lie about on the bed in our little room
on Central Park West, while she wraps up the laundry in copies
of the Evening Telegram, and write my nice novelissim.
And, praise the pigs, I didn't have to appeal to the dollar; it
was Father himself that gave me this dog. I'm telling you; it's
a most amazing thing; the dear old boy is there with the goods
from noon to noon. ``Everybody works but Father'' is no song for
our little menage, by Wilkins! I'm a member of the Upper
citcles, by Aaron's rod that budded! This is the Inner Life, all
right, my dear old H. P. B.! She's a Pennsylvania Dutch girl,
this Tchao, no Frankfurter about her; but she's the Original Hot
Dog. Also, b'gosh, one of Nature's children; she has no acquired
technique; it's all talent ab ovo. But what talent! No:
it's pure genius; she doesn't know how, and she doesn't know
why; but she gets there. She inscribes me among the lyric poets,
and the rest follow as Horace once indicated. A Week-end in this
house needs the very opposite kind; byt have no fear! In fact,
your only dread be this, that I cannot find time to write Our
Story.
N50.R1
CHAPTER MVII
REFLEXIONS UPON FREE WILL AND DESTINY: CALCULATED TO ELUCIDATE
THE COMPLEX OF THE CAREER OF SIR ROGER BLOXAM.
My labour, most ambiguous Henri, will indeed have been
waste matter, a very newspaper, if I have failed to bring into
assimilation with your Vinnanam the F.A.C.T. that whatever
Sir Roger was, he was, and be damned to you! How could he have
been otherwise? If he could, he would. And as otherwise I should
have drawn him. But he being himself (poor devil!) he was just
that. See you not how even our dreams, our wishes, all that we
are, dates back to hidden ancestor-work? Only the Freudians go
not far enough; the glowing seed that made my mind so brilliant
had its orgin in the Father of all brilliance, Our Lord the Sun.
Thus once again, by yet another path, we reach the brave ``There
is no part of me which is not of the Gods.'' Rejoice, o
brothers, we are altogether of the divine substance. We neither
think, nor feel, nor perceive, nor are, any other thing than
that all-bounteous, all-beautiful One, that Lord in his spendour
and his ecstasy that cometh and goeth in his chariot upon high,
giving light and praise, yet neither moveth nor uttereth any
Voice! For there is nothing in the Universe that is not of that
Unity -- rejoice! rejoice! All paths are spectra, in the prism
of consciousness, of that One Light; so that it mattered not to
Sir Roger whether he were tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,
gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief. Nor does it matter to
you, does it, what I do with him? Little ones, it seems to me
enough, maybe too much, that I should do aught at all. Very
good, then: Sir Roger entered the Diplomatic Service. That
finishes that, and I can take Tchao for a stroll in the Park.
N51.R1
CHAPTER MVIII
OF THE VICISSITUDES OF NOVELISSIMAKING, AN EXAMPLE.
Observe! Just as I was ready to begin, Tchao has taken
to looking like a potato, and I have to call her Murphy.
N52.R1
CHAPTER MIX
OF CANALS.
The very A.B.C. of True Love is that a Canal is either
Banal or -- not. Amen to that, with all my heart, quoth Sir
Roger, and applied himself to the brandy. At the end of a long
life let me lift up my voice and beaer witness to the eternal
glory of Pan!
N53.R1
CHAPTER MX
OF THINGS HUMAN AND DIVINE; BEING OTHER EPIGRAMS LABORIOUSLY AND
PERTINENTLY CONSTRUCTED BY SIR ROGER BLOXAM, IN THE VERY
PRIMROSE AND WOOD ANEMONE OF HIS YOUTH.
To a pretty woman I prefer an ugly one, the uglier the
better; for it is better to have a relief than a shock when I
turn to the business end.
==
I hate Heine; for it is impossible to deny that he was a
poet and impossible to deny that he was a Jew.
==
American women are anxious to safeguard the purity of
their girls, because if they make it difficult for men to get
them, the will be able to hire them for less money.
==
Woman is necessary to a man as a sewerage system is to a
city. Cities on mountains need less attention in this respect;
live therefore in the City of God upon the Mountain Abiegnus!
==
``It's love that makes the world go round.'' And round!
-- and round! -- and round!!!
==
The University of Oxford was founded by the son of a
butcher. (The bitterest remark that ever left those amiable
lips.)
==
(In America) I love American women ( -- it makes me
think I am crossing the Atlantic Ocean.)
(Meaning: all A. W.'s have immense vesicae and I loathe
to be in America.)
==
A woman's love. A play in 3 acts. For Mathematicians.
Act I 23
Act II 69
Act III 606
==
I like Lionel Parrish because he arouses in me precisely
the sense of satisfaction which I have in regarding an
exceptionally healthy motion.
==
Even when things are at the worst, one can always thank
God that They haven't got claws.
==
Lord Kitchener died like a gallant gentleman. A classic
example of protective mimicry.
==
Woman are like toilet paper. Use them for your comfort
and convenience, then put them where they belong.
==
Woman.
You dangle a carrot in front of her nose
And she goes wherever the carrot goes.
==
Cardinal Mentula once told me: The End justifies the
means. Morals, conventions, etc. are but the codifications of
those means which experience has shown to lead most directly to
the end. Exceptions occur, so that every act is a matter for
individual judgment. Up, guards, and at 'em!
==
A philosopher reminds me of a guinea-pig chasing its own
tail.
==
Half the joy of acquiring a new mistress is relief at
getting rid of the old one.
==
Humanity did well indeed to honour Charles Darwin; he
did his utmost to provide it with decent connexions.
==
Cardinal Mentula once began a play.
He. ``We've had our quarrel; but, on the whole, you've done
what I wanted you to, so -- ''
==
You can make a joke that even an Englishman can
understand, and only use two letters. Even an Englishman's
imagination can supply the rest. -- One doesn't have even to use
the two letters.
==
Married people are socially impossible; for you either
make love to the woman, and lose his friendship; or you don't,
and lose hers.
==
R78
CHAPTER SUPPOSE WE SAY FORTY-FOUR: Knobsworthy Bottoms.
CHAPTER ONE: The Love of a Pure Girl; the Quarrel; and the Mystery.
CHAPTER THREE: In Which the Reader is Introduced to the Hero.
CHAPTER FOUR: The Shadow of Tragedy.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Before the Beginning of Years.
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Dawn of a Brighter Day.
CHAPTER NINE: Alas! Poor Yorick!.
CHAPTER TEN: The Murder in Greencroft Gardens.
CHAPTER SIX HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-EIGHT: Kissed At Last.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Of Publishers: With an African Fable.
CHAPTER TWELVE: Horrific and Grotesque Corollary of the Foregoing
Argument,
Presented as an Epicene Paradox.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Of the Quality of the Ancestry of Sir Roger Bloxam;
His
Forebears, of their Chastity, Decency, Fidelity, Sobriety, and Many
Other
Virtues.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: How Sir Roger Got His Nick-Name.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Of the Logos That Spake Never, and of His Witnesses.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Silence -- To Take the Sound of the Last Capitulum Out
of the
Ears.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Of the Monologue Between Sir Roger and the
Mysterious Monk.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Of a Ladye Mine, and of the Dream She Had.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Of the Combat Between Sir Roger Bloxam and Cardinal
Mentula.
CHAPTER TWENTY: Of the Household Cavalry of the King of Sweden and
Norway,
What Came to its Best Regiment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Contains What I Meant to Write in Chapter Twenty.
Or
Nearly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: A Plenary, Veracious, and Meticulously Scrupulous
Account of What Happened to the Best Regiment of the Household Cavalry
of the
King of Sweden and Norway: Calculated to 33 Places of Decimals, by the
Method
of Hard Indurated Hunterian Logarithms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Relapse of a Promising Young Novel into a Jolly
Devil
May-Care Book.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: How Sir Roger Comported Himself in the Debate with
the
C.U.N.T.S.
CHAPTER CXXVI: Sir Roger Goes to Switzerland.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Sir Roger Really Does Go to Switzerland.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Nothing Particular Happens to Sir Roger Bloxam in
Switzerland; So Why Worry?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Sir Roger Bloxam at Cambridge, Amsterdam, and
Birmingham. An Adventure of Porphyria Poppoea. This Time We Mean
Business.
CHAPTER THIRTY: A Short Chapter and a Gay One.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: An Interlude with Certain Critics.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Apologia Pro Novellissimo Suo.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Of Kitty Williams, Her Loves Pastoral,
Paidoparthenical, and Extraterminumuniversitatiduomillera-
diodemagnaesanctaemariaecclesiastical.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: A Word on Pantomorphopsychonoso-philosophy,
including Arthur Machen.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: The Runic Plasm.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Of the Early Opinions of Sir Roger Bloxam
Concerning the Immortality of the Soul.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Of Frou-Frou, and Frisson, and Death.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: How Sir Roger Bloxam Bethought Him of Choosing a
Career.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: Facts About the White Slave Traffic. 1917 A.D.
CHAPTER FORTY: Of Sir Roger Bloxam's Second Choice of Career.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: How Sir Roger Bloxam Repudiated a Naval Career.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: Sir Roger's Objections to the Study of Law.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: The Omnific and Grandiose Intermezzo of the
Whistling Coon.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: Vive l'Entente Cordiale!
CHAPTER MI: ``Washed in the Blood of the Lamb''.
CHAPTER MII: Of How Sir Roger Bloxam Met Mr. Hank Farris.
CHAPTER MIII: Of the Despair of Sir Roger Bloxam Anent his Career; and
of the Appeal that He Made to the Cardinal.
CHAPTER MIV: Of the Despair of the Novelissimist; Anent His Career; and
of the Appeal that He Made.
CHAPTER MV: Heroic Resolution of the Novelissimist.
CHAPTER MVI: Of the Halt Caused by the Absence of a Novelissimatrix;
and How the Lord Took Pity Upon the Innocence of Father Brown.
CHAPTER MVII: Reflexions upon Free Will and Destiny: Calculated to
Elucidate the Complex of the Career of Sir Roger Bloxam.
CHAPTER MVIII: Of the Vicissitudes of Novellissimaking, an Example.
CHAPTER MIX: Of Canals.
CHAPTER MX: Of Things Human and Divine; Being Other Epigrams
Laboriously and Pertinently Constructed by Sir Roger Bloxam, in the
Very Primrose and Wood Anemone of His Youth.