First and Last
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H. Belloc >> First and Last
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These gentlemen sitting round the table before the shrouded figure laid
down their proposals, whereupon the manager briefly summed up what they
had said, and having done so, replied: "Gentlemen, his lordship is a man
of few words; but you will have your answer in a moment if you will be
good enough to rise, as he is at this moment expecting a deputation from
the Holy Men who are entreating him to provide the cost of a mosque in
one of the suburbs."
The proposers of the bargain rose, greatly awed and pleased by the
silence and dignity of the financier who apparently remained for a
moment discussing their proposals without gesture and in a tone too low
for them to hear, while his manager bent over to listen.
"It is ever so," said one of them, "you may ever know the greatest men
by their silence."
"You are right," said another, "he is not one to be easily deceived."
The manager in a moment or two rejoined them at the door. "Gentlemen,"
he said, smiling, "my chief has heard your arguments and has expressed
his assent to your conditions."
They went out, delighted at the success of their mission, and
congratulated Ahmed upon the financier's genius.
"He does not," said the manager, laughing in hearty agreement, "bestow
himself as a present upon all and sundry. Nor is he often caught
indulging in short bouts of sleep, nor are flies diabolically left to
repose undisturbed upon his features--but you must excuse me, I hear the
Holy Men," and indeed from the inner room came a noise of speechifying
in that doleful sing-song which is associated in Bagdad with the
practice of religion.
The gentlemen who had thus had the luck to interview Mahmoud's-Nephew
with such success in the matter of the Diamond Island, soon spread about
the news, and confirmed their fellow-citizens in the certitude that a
great financier is neither talkative nor vivacious. "Still waters run
deep," they said, and all those to whom they said it nodded in a wise
acquiescence. Nor had the Manager the least difficulty in receiving one
set of customers after another and in negotiating within three weeks an
infinite amount of business, all of which confirmed those who had the
pleasure of an audience with the stuffed dummy that great fortunes were
made and retained by reticence and a contempt for convivial weakness.
At last the ingenious man of affairs, to whom the whole combination was
due, was not a little disturbed to receive from the Caliph a note
couched in the following terms:
"The Commander of the Faithful and the Servant of the Merciful whose
name be exalted, to the Nephew of Mahmoud:
"My Lord:--
"It has been the custom since the days of my grandfather (May his soul
see God!) for the more wealthy of the Faithful to be called to my
councils, and upon my summoning them thither it has not been unusual for
them to present sums varying in magnitude but always proportionate to
their total fortunes. My court will receive signal honour if you will
present yourself after the morning prayer of the day after to-morrow. My
treasurer will receive from you with gratitude and remembrance upon the
previous day and not later than noon, the sum of one million dinars."
Here, indeed, was a perplexity. The payment of the money was an easy
matter and was duly accomplished; but how should the lay figure which
did duty in such domestic scenes as the negotiation of loans, the
bullying of debtors, the purchase of options, and the cheating of the
innocent and the embarrassed, take his place in the Caliph's council and
remain undiscovered? For great as was the reputation of Mahmoud's-Nephew
for discretion and for golden silence, such as are proper to the
accumulation of great wealth, there would seem a necessity in any
political assembly to open the mouth from time to time, if only for the
giving of a vote.
But Ahmed, who had by this time accumulated into his own hands the
millions formerly his master's, finally solved the problem. Judicious
presents to the servants of the palace and the public criers made his
way the easier, and on the summoning of the council Mahmoud's-Nephew,
whose troublesome affection of the throat was now publicly discussed,
was permitted to bring into the council-room his private secretary and
manager.
Moreover at the council, as at his private office, the continued
taciturnity of the millionaire could not but impress the politicians as
it had already impressed the financial world.
"He does not waste his breath in tub-thumping," said one, looking
reverently at the sealed figure.
"No," another would reply, "they may ridicule our old-fashioned, honest,
quiet Mohammedan country gentlemen, but for common sense I will back
them against all the brilliant paradoxical young fellows of our day."
"They say he is very kind at heart and lovable," a third would then add,
upon which a fourth would bear his testimony thus:
"Yes, and though he says nothing about it, his charitable gifts are
enormous."
By the second meeting of the council the lay figure had achieved a
reputation of so high a sort that the Caliph himself insisted upon
making him a domestic adviser, one of the three who perpetually
associated with the Commander of the _Faithful_ and directed his
policy. For the universal esteem in which the new councillor was held
had affected that Prince very deeply.
Here there arose a crux from which there could be no escape, as one of
the three chief councillors, Mahmoud's-Nephew, must speak at last and
deliver judgments!
The Manager, first considering the whole business, and next adding up
his private gains, which he had carefully laid out in estates of which
the firm and its employes knew nothing, decided that he could afford to
retire. What might happen to the general business after his withdrawal
would not be his concern.
He first gave out, therefore, that the millionaire was taken exceedingly
ill, and that his life was despaired of: later, within a few hours, that
he was dead.
So far from attempting to allay the panic which ensued, Ahmed frankly
admitted the worst.
With cries of despair and a confident appeal to the justice of Heaven
against such intrigues, the honest fellow permitted the whole of the
vast business to be wound up in favour of newcomers, who had not
forgotten to reward him, and soothing as best he could the ruined crowds
of small investors who thronged round him for help and advice, he
retired under an assumed name to his highly profitable estates, which
were situated in the most distant provinces of the known world.
As for Mahmoud's-Nephew, three theories arose about him which are still
disputed to this day:
The first was that his magnificent brain with its equitable judgment and
its power of strict secrecy, had designed plans too far advanced for his
time, and that his bankruptcy was due to excess of wisdom.
The second theory would have it that by "going into politics" (as the
phrase runs in Bagdad) he had dissipated his energies, neglected his
business, and that the inevitable consequences had followed.
The third theory was far more reasonable. Mahmoud's-Nephew, according to
this, had towards the end of his life lost judgment; his garrulous
indecision within the last few days before his death was notorious: in
the Caliph's council, as those who should best know were sure, one could
hardly get a word in edgewise for his bombastic self-assurance; while in
matters of business, to conduct a bargain with him was more like
attending a public meeting than the prosecution of negotiations with a
respectable banker.
In a word, it was generally agreed that Mahmoud's-Nephew's success had
been bound up with his splendid silence, his fall, bankruptcy, and
death, with a lesion of the brain which had disturbed this miracle of
self-control.
The Inventor
I had a day free between two lectures in the south-west of England, and
I spent it stopping at a town in which there was a large and very
comfortable old posting-house or coaching-inn. I had meant to stay some
few hours there and to take the last train out in the evening, and I had
meant to spend those hours alone and resting; but this was not permitted
me, for just as I had taken up the local paper, which was a humble,
reasonable thing, empty of any passion and violence and very reposeful
to read, a man came up and touched my left elbow sharply: a gesture not
at all to my taste nor, I think, to that of anyone who is trying to read
his paper.
I looked up and saw a man who must have been quite sixty years of age.
He had on a soft, felt slouch hat, a very old and greenish black coat;
he stooped and shuffled; he was clean-shaven, with long grey hair, and
his eyes were astonishingly bright and piercing and set close together.
He said, "I beg your pardon."
I said, "Eh, what?"
He said again "I beg your pardon" in the tones of a man who almost
commands, and having said this he put his hat on the table, dragged a
chair quite close to mine, and pulled a folded bunch of foolscap sheets
out of his pocket. His manner was that of a man who engages your
attention and has a right to engage it. There were no preliminaries and
there was no introduction. This was apparently his manner, and I
submitted.
"I have here," he said, fixing me with his intense eyes, "the plans for
a speedometer."
"Oh!" said I.
"You know what a speedometer is?" he asked suspiciously.
I said yes. I said it was a machine for measuring the speed of vehicles,
and that it was compounded of two (or more) Greek words.
He nodded; he was pleased that I knew so much, and could therefore
listen to his tale and understand it. He pulled his grey baggy trousers
up over the knee, settled himself, sitting forward, and opened his
document. He cleared his throat, still fixing me with those eyes of his,
and said--
"Every speedometer up to now has depended upon the same principle as a
Watt's governor; that is, there are two little balls attached to each by
a limb to a central shaft: they rise and fall according to their speed
of rotation, and this movement is indicated upon a dial."
I nodded.
He cleared his throat again. "Of course, that is unsatisfactory."
"Damnably!" said I, but this reply did not check him.
"It works tolerably well at high speeds; at low speeds it is useless;
and then again there is a very rapid fluctuation, and the instrument is
of only approximate precision."
"Not it!" said I to encourage him.
"There is one exception," he continued, "to this principle, and that is
a speedometer which depends upon the introduction of resistance into a
current generated by a small magneto. The faster the magneto turns the
stronger the current generated, and the change is indicated upon a
dial."
"Yes," said I sadly, "as in the former case so in this; the change of
speed is indicated upon a dial." And I sighed.
"But this method also," he went on tenaciously, "has its defects."
"You may lay to that," I interrupted.
"It has the defect that at high speeds its readings are not quite
correct, and at very low speeds still less so. Moreover, it is said that
it slightly deteriorates with the passage of time."
"Now that," I broke in emphatically, "is a defect I have discovered
in----"
But he put up his hand to stop me. "It slightly deteriorates, I say,
with the passage of time." He paused a moment impressively. "No one has
hitherto discovered any system which will accurately record the speed of
a vehicle or of any rotary movement and register it at the lowest as at
the highest speeds." He paused again for a still longer period in order
to give still greater emphasis to what he had to say. He concluded in a
new note of sober triumph: "I have solved the problem!"
I thought this was the end of him, and I got up and beamed a
congratulation at him and asked if he would drink anything, but he only
said, "Please sit down again and I will explain."
There is no way of combating this sort of thing, and so I sat down, and
he went on:
"It is perfectly simple...." He passed his hand over his forehead. "It
is so simple that one would say it must have been thought of before; but
that is what is always said of a great invention.... Now I have here"
(and he opened out his foolscap) "the full details. But I will not read
them to you; I will summarize them briefly."
"Have you a plan or anything I could watch?" said I a little anxiously.
"No," he answered sharply, "I have not, but if you like I will draw a
rough sketch as I go along upon the margin of your newspaper."
"Thank you," I said.
He drew the newspaper towards him and put it on his knee. He pulled out
a pencil; he held the foolscap up before his eye, and he began to
describe.
"The general principle upon which my speedometer reposes," he said
solemnly, "is the coordination of the cylinder and the cone upon an
angle which will have to be determined in practice, and will probably
vary for different types. But it will never fall below 15 nor rise over
43."
"I should have thought----" I began, but he told me I could not yet have
grasped it, and that he wished to be more explicit.
"On a king bolt," he said, occasionally consulting his notes, "runs a
pivot in bevel which is kept in place by a small hair-spring, which
spring fits loosely on the Conkling Shaft."
"Exactly," said I, "I see what is coming."
But he wouldn't let me off so easily.
"Yes, of course you are going to say that the whole will be keyed
together, and that the T-pattern nuts on a movable shank will be my
method of attachment to the fixed portion next to the cam? Eh? So it is,
but" (and here his eye brightened), "_anyone_ could have arranged
that. My particularity is that I have a freedom of movement even at the
lowest speeds, and an accuracy of notation even at the highest, which is
secured in a wholly novel manner ... and yet so simply. What do you
think it is?"
I affected to look puzzled, and thought for a moment. "I cannot
imagine," said I, "unless----"
"No," he interrupted, "do not try to guess it, for you never will. _I
turn the flange inward_ on a Wilkinson lathe and give it a parabolic
section so that the axes are always parallel to each other and to the
shaft.... There!"
I had no idea the man could be so moved: there was jubilation in his
voice.
"There!" he said again, as though some effort of the brain had exhausted
him. "It can't be touched, mind you," he added suspiciously; "I've taken
out the provisional patents. There's one man I know wants to fight it in
the courts as an infringement on Wilkinson's own patent, but it can't be
touched!" He shook his head decisively. "No! my lawyer's certain of
that--and so'm I!"
Here there was a break in his communications, so to speak, and he had
apparently run out. It was not for me to wind him up again. I watched
him with a sombre relief as he stood up again to full height, leaned his
head back, and sighed profoundly with satisfaction and with completion.
He folded up his specification and put it in his pocket again. He tore
off the incomprehensible sketch he had made with his pencil while he was
speaking, and put it by me on the mantelshelf. "You might like to keep
it," he said pathetically; "it's a document, that is; it will be famous
some day." He looked at it lovingly, almost as though he was going to
take it back again: but he thought better of it.
I was waiting, I will not say itching, for him to take his leave, when a
god or demon, that same perhaps which had treated the poor fellow as a
jest for a whole lifetime, inspired him to take a very false step
indeed. He had already taken up his hat and was turning as though to go
to the door, when the unfortunate thought struck him.
"What would you do?" he said.
"How do you mean?" I answered.
"Why, what would you do to try and get it taken up and talked about?"
Then it was my turn, and I let him have it.
"You must get the Press and the Government to work together," I said
rapidly, "and particularly in connection with the new Government Service
of Camion's Fettle-Trains and Cursory Circuits."
He nodded like one who thoroughly understands and desires to hear more.
"Speed," I added nonchalantly, "and the measure of it are of course
essentials in their case."
He nodded again.
"And they have never really settled the problem ... especially about
Fettle-Trains."
"No," said he ponderously, "so I understand."
"Well now," I went on, full of the chase, "you will naturally ask me who
are you to go to?" I scratched my nose. "You know the Fusionary Office,
as we call it? It is really, of course, a part of the Stannaries. But
the Chief Permanent Secretary likes to have it called the Fusionary
Office; it's his vanity."
"Yes," said he eagerly, "yes, go on!"
"They always have the same hours," I said, "four to eleven."
"Four to _what_?" he asked, looking up.
"To eleven," I repeated sharply; "but you'd much better call round about
three."
He looked bewildered.
"Don't interrupt," I said, seeing him open his lips, "or I shall lose
the thread. It's rather complicated. You call at three by the little
door in Whitehall on the Embankment side towards the Horse Guards
looking south, and _don't_ ring the bell."
"Why not?" he asked. I thought for the moment he might begin to cry.
"Oh, well," I said testily, "you mustn't ask those questions. All these
institutions are very old institutions with habits and prejudices of
their own. You mustn't ring the bell, that's all; they don't like it;
you must just wait until they open; and then, if you take _my_
advice, don't write a note or ask to interview the First Analyist. Don't
do any of the usual things, but just fill up one of the regular Treasury
forms and state that you have come with regard to the Perception and
Mensuration advertisements."
His face was pained and wrinkled as he heard me, but he said, "I beg
your pardon ... but shall I have it all explained to me at the office?"
"Certainly not!" I said, aghast; "it's just because you might have so
much difficulty there that I'm explaining everything to you."
"Yes, I know," he said doubtfully; "thank you."
"I hope you'll try and follow what I say," I continued a little wearily;
"I have special opportunities for knowing.... Political, you know."
"Certainly," he said, "certainly; but about those forms?"
"Well," I said, "you didn't suppose they supplied them, did you?"
"I almost did," he ventured.
"Oh, you did," said I, with a loud laugh, "well, you're wrong there.
However, I dare say I've got one on me." He looked up eagerly as I felt
in my pockets. I brought out a telegraph blank, two letters, and a
tobacco pouch. I looked at them for a moment. "No," said I, "I haven't
got one; it's a pity, but I'll tell you who will give you one; you know
the place opposite, where the bills are drafted?"
"I'm afraid I don't," he said, admitting ignorance for the first time in
this conversation and perhaps in his life.
"Well," said I impatiently, "never mind, anyone will show you. Go there,
and if they don't give you a form they'll show you a copy of Paper B,
which is much the same thing."
"Thank you," said he humbly, and he got up to move out. He was going a
little groggily, his eyes were dull and sodden. He presented all the
aspect of a man under a heavy strain.
"You've got it all clear, I hope?" I asked cheerfully as he neared the
door.
"Oh, yes!" he said. "Thank you; yes!"
"Anything else?" I shouted as he passed out into the courtyard.
"Anything else I can do? You'll always find me in the room over the
office, Room H, down the little iron staircase," I nodded genially to
him as he disappeared.
In this way did we exchange, the Inventor and I, those expert
confidences and mutual aids in either's technical skill which are too
rarely discovered in modern travel.
The Views of England
England is a country with edges and with a core. It is a country very
small for the number of people who live in it, and very appreciable to
the eye for the traveller who travels on foot or in a boat from place to
place. Considering the part it has in the making of the world, it might
justly be compared to a jewel which is very small and very valuable and
can almost be held in the hand. The physical appreciation of England is
to be reached by an appreciation of landscape.
It so happens that England is traversed by remarkable and sudden ranges;
hills with a sharp escarpment overlooking great undulating plains. This
is not true of any other one country of Europe, but it is true of
England, and a man who professes to consider, to understand, to
criticize, to defend, and to love this country, must know the Pennines,
the Cotswolds, the North and the South Downs, the Chilterns, the
Mendips, and the Malverns; he must know Delamere Forest, and he must
know the Hill of Beeston, from which all Cheshire may be perceived. If
he knows these heights and has long considered the prospects which they
afford, he can claim to have seen the face of England.
It is deplorable that our modern method of travel does cut us off from
such experiences. They were not only common to, they were necessary to
our fathers; the roads would not be at the expense of tunnelling through
hills, and (what is more important) when those men who most mould the
knowledge of the country by the country (the people who deal with its
soil, who live separate upon its separate farms) visited each other upon
horses; and horses, unlike railway trains, cannot climb hills. They
puff, they heave, they snort, as do railway trains, but they climb them
well.
On this account, because the roads for the carriages went over hills,
and because the method of visiting even a near neighbour would permit
you to go over hills, the England of quite a little time ago was
familiar with the half-dozen great landscapes of England. You may see it
in that most individual, that most peculiar, and, I think, that most
glorious school of painters, the English landscape painter, Constable
with his thick colours, Turner with his wonderment, and even the
portrait painters in their backgrounds depend upon the view of the
plains from a height. To-day our landscape painters sometimes do the
same, but the market for that emotion is capricious, it is no longer the
secure and natural way of presenting England to English eyes.
If you will consider these plains at the foot of the English hills you
will find in them the whole history of the country, and the whole
meaning of it as well. Two occur to me first: The view of the Weald
(both Kentish and Sussex) through which the influence of Europe
perpetually approached the island, not only in the crisis of the Roman
or the Norman invasions, but in a hundred episodes stretched out through
two thousand years--and the view of the Thames Valley as one gets it on
a clear day from the summits of the North Downs when one looks northward
and sees very faintly the Chilterns along the horizon.
This last is obscured by London. One needs a very particular
circumstance in which to appreciate it. The air must be dry and clear,
there must be little or no wind, or if there is a wind it must be a
strong one from the south and west that has already driven the smoke
from the western edge of the town. When this is so, a man looks right
across to the sandy heights just north of the Thames, and far beyond he
sees the Chilterns, like a landfall upon the rim of the world. He looks
at all that soil on which the government of this country has been
rooted. He sees the hill of Windsor. He overlooks, though he cannot
perceive at so great a distance, the two great schools of the rich; he
has within one view the principal Castle of the Kings, the place of
their council, and the cathedral of their capital city: so true is it
that the Thames made England.
Then, if you consider the upper half of that valley, the view is from
the ridge of the Berkshire hills, or, better still, from Cumnor, or from
the clump of trees above Faringdon. From such look-outs the astonishing
loneliness which England has had the strength to preserve in this
historic belt of land profoundly strikes a man. You can see to your left
and, a long way off, the hill where, as is most probable, Alfred thrust
back the Pagans, and so saved one-half of Christendom. Oxford is within
your landscape. The roll upwards in a glacis of the Cotswold, the nodal
point of the Roman roads at Cirencester, and the ancient crossings of
the Thames.
From the Cotswold again westward you look over a sheer wall and see one
of those differences which make up England. For the passage from the
Upper Thames to the flat and luxuriant valley floor of the Severn is a
transition (if it be made by crossing the hills) more sudden than that
between many countries abroad. Had our feudalism cut England into
provinces we should here have two marked provincial histories marching
together, for the natural contrast is greater than between Normandy and
Brittany at any part of their march or between Aragon and Castile at any
part of theirs. I do not know what it is, but the view of the jagged
Malvern seen above the happy mists of autumn, when these mists lie like
a warm fleece upon the orchards of the vale, preserving them of a
morning until the strengthening of the sun, the sudden aspect, I say, of
those jagged peaks strikes one like a vision of a new world. How many
men have thought it! How often it ought to be written down! It hangs in
the memory of the traveller like a permanent benediction, and remains in
his mind a standing symbol of peace.
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