Wandering Wits
This Blessed Plot. By Hesketh Pearson and Hugh Kingsmill. Illus- trated by Maurice Weightman. (Methuen. 8s. 6d.) WHILE wandering in the present these twin passengers let their thoughts wander in the past. Each is Boswell to the other's Johnson, though each is rather keen on being Johnson himself. While waiting for a train or walking along a village street they animadvert upon foreigners and politicians and the publess village.
"It is difficult to give a cut-and-dried idea of the book," says one of them, "our aim is to write a book from which the reader will be able to infer England." This is done by stating, under the head- ing of "The Church of England," that a rural landscape without a railway running through it is not a rural landscape. Ruskin, Kingsmill reflects, missed this truth for lack of railways. Our children, Pearson argues, will in middle life view pylons sentimentally.
Is it then just another of those books, much in evidence since the paper shortage began, which make you wonder whether a waste- paper basket has been sent to the printers? Not at all. This Blessed Plot has consistency, though "none of our readers will guess the plot, even when they've reached the end."
Neither "travel" nor " reminiscence " is a label that sticks. It is, like Boswell's work, the biography of a friendship. Here are two well-stocked middle-aged memories, suitably matched because an actor and a schoolmaster cannot reasonably contradict one another. But the reader can. That is part of the fun. Mr. Pearson, with all his air of experience, is more provocative than infallible about the stage.
Both, beyond all doubt, are good company. Whatever personage they recall seems to join them, for they have a happy knack of making not only the people they have known ?ppear, but also the great ones of the past. This faculty causes Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells to breathe the same air as Thackeray, Wordsworth and Cranmer. Of all these G. K. Chesterton alone comes in questionable shape. Surely, at the interview here recorded, he did not leave Mr. Pearson to say all the good things? There are nonentities of equal moment. One with an indeter- minate pale face, receding chin, and obstinate eyes, stays in the mind like Uriah Heep, or some other unsavoury "great character of fiction." He wanted Mrs. Elinor Glyn to write the story of his love-life which featured, as the films say, a legal document signed by his wife, to show good will in his frustrated infidelity.
Being thoroughly aware of other people, the chief asset of any well-spent middle-age, is the chief asset of these authors. Yet Mr, Pearson has his -blind spots. When distinguishing between characters and oddities he puts Mrs. Patrick Campbell among the latter. She was so at the time Mr. Pearson was on the stage, but she grew (or developed) out of it. And why was G. K. Chesterton merely an oddity? If his brother had lived to be his Boswell ,a volume of his recorded sayings might well have become a classic—representing him more truly than any of. his own books.
.This bears witness to the authors' power of drawing us agreeably into their company. When they are not starting an argument they are exciting laughter over, the comedies of everyday experience. Here is a specimen:
The most difficult thing hi the world is to break the news to a wire that her htisband is horizontally tight, while managing at the same time to convey : i. That you are entirely innocent in this case ; 2. That you have frequently been drunk yourself ; 3. That drink doesn't take you that way ; 4. That your sympathy is with the unfortunate fellow ; 5. That your sympathy is with his wife ; 6. That it's an awful pity ; and 7. That nevertheless men are men.
Nobody who reads This Blessed Plot will refrain from opening it again and again at random to see what chance will bring. Many of the jests are worth a second and a third hearing. Here 13 Pearson "not altogether suppressing an air of being responsible for the scene before them "; and here is Kingsmill getting querulous because the artist, whom he has called a genius to her face, is not taking his enthusiasm seriously enough.
Their spirit is matched exactly by Maurice Weightman's drawings. When they mention two kindly dogs he shows that these two were kindly above all others.
M. WILLSON DISHER.
Previous page
