XXIV IN VINO VERITAS

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“THE next story,” said the author, “will be an example of grim realism. It will have no characters and no incidents and no meaning. It will continue for some three or four hundred pages, and will begin in the middle and not end at all. There will also be a tendency for verbs and punctuation to disappear simultaneously, and a slightly stagnant atmosphere of muddled gloom will reproduce the sensation of a London fog.”

“I did not know,” said the publisher, “that you had read Tchekov. For my part I have not, and let me add I do not intend that my public should.”

“I do not even know,” replied the author, “what Tchekov is, though by the sound it might be a Slavonic parlour game. But if, as always, you are going to thwart me just when I am about to strike a modern note, I will tell you quite simply and (I hope) beautifully an old-fashioned Christmas story. About the year 1840,” said the author, “in the City of London, and to be particular in the immediate neighbourhood of a cosy, rosy, prosy old coaching inn in the Borough, lived, or rather existed (for he was a wicked old screw was Jonathan), a merchant in the tea trade (at least he let it be understood that it was the tea trade, but the gossips, who stood about at the street corners with very blue noses waiting for the muffin-boy, had their suspicions that——)”

“I do not,” interjected the publisher, “wish to be unduly curious. But may I ask whether there are any other sentences in this story?”

“Of course,” retorted the author, with justifiable heat, “but if I am to tell this story at all perhaps you will permit me to tell it in an old-fashioned way. Let me tell you that in 1840 people had time to finish sentences like that, yes and to understand them. A man who could stand the factory system of the time could stand anything.

“Well,” continued the author, “there existed in that neighbourhood Jonathan Gogglesnape, and as is general with persons who had acquired names of that sort, he was the hardest, grindingest miser that you would find in a smart day’s walk, east, west, south or north of the pump on the left hand corner of the square of St. Runnymede-in-the-East. Jonathan was at all times of the year a cold, pinched figure of a man in a tight, rusty surtout, and not an inch of linen showing either at the mean, scraggy throat or the large red wrists, but at five o’clock on Christmas Eve he was a circumstance, like the whistling wind, to make comfortable folks draw closer to the fire and to thank their Maker and the Spirit of Christmas that they were not as other men.

“A sharp fall of snow, as yet untrodden into filth and mud, had smoothed out the vices of the pavement and given that touch of happy contrast between the radiant revellers within and the homeless wanderers without so typical of Christmas feeling.”

“I do not think that I can stand much more of this,” said the publisher faintly.

“In that case,” said the author, “I shall, without delay, recite a poem which I have called ‘In vino veritas.’”

In Vino Veritas.
“Singing ’e was. I tell yer, singing
as sweet as kiss me ’and—
a drunken sort o’chune, but swinging
the feet like if yer understand.
“I stood and watched ’is dancin’ shadder,
Lord wot a dancer! ’eel an’ toe.
‘Oo’s for the ladder—Jacob’s ladder—
one good ’eave and up yer go!’
“Drunk as God ’e was—the liquor,
like a flare of naphthaline,
burning as it run, but quicker—
brightest thing I ever seen!
“’Appy? well I arsk yer! Drinking,
laughing, singing, dance ’e went,
Tell yer straight I kep’ on thinking—
’appy! that’s wot ’appy meant.
“‘I’ve a ladder—Jacob’s ladder—
one good ’eave and up yer go.
Men are mad, but God is madder—’
Meaning? ‘Ow am I ter know?’
“Laughing, singing, dancing, mumming—
looking soft and sly behind ’im,
‘Are yer coming? Aren’t yer coming?’
Damn ’is eyes—I’m off to find ’im.”

“There is a good deal,” remarked the publisher, “to be said for Prohibition.”


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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