Pendlebury's Pleasure

By STRIX How rarely one meets with perfection, and yet how instantaneously one recognises it! Loath though I am to use the word 'gem' in a figurative sense—for along with cameo, vignette, pot-pourri, warble and maestro it has undertones at once dowdy and arch—I find it difficult to describe otherwise a letter which appeared in The Times a few weeks ago and which I have treasured ever since.

It came from the Athenaeum Club and was a contribution to a protracted correspondence about envelopes which, although either incor- rectly addressed or wrongly routed by the postal authorities, had eventually reached their intended destinations. What it said was this : Sir, Charles Pendlebury, whose name was synony- mous for half a century with Arithmetic, was fond of showing an envelope which, addressed to him at Gunnersbury, had been to Johannes- burg and back.

Tha t was all.

In the cold light of reason it is not at all easy to analyse the recondite pleasure which I derive from this brief but pregnant communication, or to explain my firm conviction that it could not possibly be improved on, that it is perfect of its kind.

There is, to begin with, the contrast between the austere majesty of, the central figure and the Puckish nature of his recurrent lapses into a mild exhibitionism. How many of us can claim that our name is, ever has been, or is ever likely— • even for the briefest period—to be synonymous with anything? Professor Pendlebury, whose name was not only synonymous with Arithmetic but went on being synonymous with it for fifty years,, must have been the devil of a fellow. How agreeable it is to be told that this in- tellectual Titan had his human, his almost playful side! This envelope that he was 'fond of showing' —how often it must have broken the ice, mellowed the atmosphere, levelled those barriers of awe which separate the Top Brass of the mathematical world from those of us who are uncertain whether logarithms hang downwards from the roofs of caves or project upwards from their slimy floors! One can readily imagine how much, at a select dinner-party given during the proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, that yellowing scrap of paper must have meant to the shy bride of a rising young ichthyologist who found herself sitting next to Pendlebury.

* * *

Yellowing? Yes, surely. As the years went by this strange trophy must have undergone con- siderable wear and tear. Before it came on an ever-memorable morning into the Professor's hands, it had already been carried in the mails all the way to far-off Johannesburg; and although as regards the first leg of its journey 'far-off' may be a slightly misleading epithet (for we do not know where the letter was posted in the first place; it may have come from an admirer in Pretoria or Bloemfontein), it is beyond question that the missive must have completed the sea- voyage between South Africa and Gunnersbury at least once.

The most learned men are not always the most practical in small matters. One cannot help won- dering how long it was before the Professor realised that the envelope, if he continued to carry it loose in the pocket of his frock-coat with his slide-rule, his snuff-box and his copy of the multiplication tables, would undergo serious de- terioration. One must presume that much of the pleasure he found in showing it to people lay in drawing their attention to points of detail—to the striking resemblance (or alternatively to the total lack of any resemblance) between 'Gunners- bury,' as written by his correspondent, and 'Johannesburg,' and to the outlandish postmarks and superscriptions which the letter had collected on its long journey. Were these details to become indecipherable, the relic would lose much of, its peculiar fascination: if not indeed all. One rather imagines, and one certainly hopes. that this danger was recognised in time, and that the envelope, enshrined in a small glass frame, found a permanent home on the walls of the Professor's study at Gunnersbury (where in those days, I imagine, you could still shoot snipe if you were keen on that sort of thing).

One hopes this not only because one can hardly bear to think of Pendlebury discovering one day that his envelope had been reduced to a kind of Dead Sea Scroll, but also because, however innocently fond you may be of showing things to people, it is apt to get you the name of a bore. Even an exhibit as unique and astonishing as the Gunnersbury-Johannesburg envelope can- not be relied on to make upon members of the general public quite such an electric impact as it made on its original recipient. Then there is the difficulty of bringing the conversation round to a point at which you can decently say, 'Talking of that sort of thing, I don't know whether I ever showed you—.' And there is the danger, increasing as the years go by and memory fails, that the person thus addressed will reply, 'Yes, as a matter of fact you did.'

* * * I once knew a man of great charm and dis- tinction who attributed almost all the world's ills —starting, as I remember, with appendicitis—to the contents of its salt cellars. `Commercial salt,' he averred, was steadily undermining Western civilisation; and he brought in his pocket to the dining club at which I often sat next to him a small segment, wrapped untidily in paper, of the pristine raw material. From this he would crumble off particles as the need arose.

It could not be said that he was 'fond of showing' his little chunk of real salt; but my respect for him, which was great, would I think have been greater if he had transported the stuff, already ground, in some small, tastefully-designed container from which, having placed it unobtru- sively among the silver on the table, he could have transferred the beneficent contents to his plate. If you know him well enough, it is difficult to watch your neighbour at dinner working away with thumb and forefinger at what looks like a cross between a small flint and an ounce of dough without, sooner or later, asking him what he is at. I could not help suspecting that my friend was angling for a chance to let the bees out of his bonnet.

* *

So I like .to think that Pendlebury's envelope was, so to speak, grounded before his fondness for showing it to people began to play too dominant a part in- his social contacts. Up there on his mantelpiece it would still have been capable of acting, without any effort on his part, as a tiny little bombshell.

`Forgive my curiosity,' the distinguished visitor would enquire, after peering at the exhibit while the Professor fetched Marsala from the dining- room, 'but what is the story of this envelope in the glass frame?'

With a contented chuckle Pendlebury would broach the decanter.

`You may find it difficult to credit what I am going to tell you,' he would begin; and the strange, gripping saga would be unfolded once more.