Crome Yellow/Chapter XIV
FOR their after-luncheon coffee the party generally adjourned to the library. Its windows looked east, and at this hour of the day it was the coolest place in the whole house. It was a large room, fitted, during the eighteenth century, with white painted shelves of an elegant design. In the middle of one wall a door, ingeniously upholstered with rows of dummy books, gave access to a deep cupboard, where, among a pile of letter-files and old newspapers, the mummy-case of an Egyptian lady, brought back by the second Sir Ferdinando on his return from the Grand Tour, mouldered in the darkness. From ten yards away and at a first glance, one might almost have mistaken this secret door for a section of shelving filled with genuine books. Coffee-cup in hand, Mr. Scogan was standing in front of the dummy bookshelf. Between the sips he discoursed.
"The bottom shelf," he was saying, "is taken up by an Encyclopaedia in fourteen volumes. Useful, but a little dull, as is also Caprimulge’s ‘Dictionary of the Finnish Language’. The Biographical Dictionary looks more promising. Biography of Men who were Born Great, Biography of Men who Achieved Greatness, Biography of Men who had Greatness Thrust upon Them, and Biography of Men who were Never Great at All. Then there are ten volumes of Thom’s Works and Wanderings, while the Wild Goose Chase, a Novel, by an anonymous author, fills no less than six. But what’s this, what’s this?" Mr. Scogan stood on tiptoe and peered up. "Seven volumes of the ‘Tales of Knockespotch’. The Tales of Knockespotch,” he repeated. "Ah, my dear Henry,” he said, turning round, "these are your best books. I would willingly give all the rest of your library for them."
The happy possessor of a multitude of first editions, Mr. Wimbush could afford to smile indulgently.
"Is it possible," Mr. Scogan went on, "that they possess nothing more than a back and a title?" He opened the cupboard door and peeped inside, as though he hoped to find the rest of the books behind it. "Phooh!" he said, and shut the door again. "It smells of dust and mildew. How symbolical! One comes to the great masterpieces of the past, expecting some miraculous illumination, and one finds, on opening them, only dark- ness and dust and a faint smell of decay. After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking. Still—the Tales of Knockespotch . . ."
He paused, and thoughtfully drummed with his fingers on the backs of the non-existent, unattainable books.
"But I disagree with you about reading," said Mary. "About serious reading, I mean."
"Quite right, Mary, quite right," Mr. Scogan answered. "I had forgotten there were any serious people in the room."
"I like the idea of the Biographies," said Denis. "There's room for us all within the scheme; it's comprehensive."
"Yes, the Biographies are good, the Biographies are excellent," Mr. Scogan agreed. "I imagine them written in a very elegant Regency style—Brighton Pavilion in words—perhaps by the great Dr. Lemprière himself. You know his classical dictionary? Ah!" Mr. Scogan raised his hand and let it limply fall again in a gesture which implied that words failed him. "Read his biography of Helen; read how Jupiter, disguised as a swan, was 'enabled to avail himself of his situation' vis-à-vis to Leda. And to think that he may have, must have written these biographies of the Great! What a work, Henry! And, owing to the idiotic arrangement of your library, it can't be read."
"I prefer the Wild Goose Chase," said Anne. "A novel in six volumes—it must be restful."
"Restful," Mr. Scogan repeated. "You've hit on the right word. A Wild Goose Chase is sound, but a bit old-fashioned—pictures of clerical life in the fifties, you know; specimens of the landed gentry; peasants for pathos and comedy; and in the background, always the pictur-esque beauties of nature soberly described. All very good and solid, but, like certain puddings, just a Uttle dull. Personally, I like much better the notion of Thom’s Works and Wanderings. The eccentric Mr. Thom of Thom’s Hill. Old Tom Thom, as his intimates used to call him. He spent ten years in Tibet organizing the clarified butter industry on modern European lines, and was able to retire at thirty-six with a handsome fortune. The rest of his life he devoted to travel and ratiocination; here is the result.” Mr. Scogan tapped the dummy books. “And now we come to the Tales of Knockespotch. What a masterpiece and what a great man! Knockespotch knew how to write fiction. Ah, Denis, if you could only read Knockespotch you wouldn’t be writing a novel about the wearisome development of a young man’s character, you wouldn’t be describing in endless, fastidious detail, cultured life in Chelsea and Bloomsbury and Hampstead. You would be trying to write a readable book. But then, alas! owing to the peculiar arrangement of our host’s library, you never will read Knockespotch.”
“Nobody could regret the fact more than I do,” said Denis.
“It was Knockespotch,” Mr. Scogan continued, “the great Knockespotch, who delivered us from the dreary tyranny of the realistic novel. My life, Knockespotch said, is not so long that I can afford to spend precious hours writing or reading descriptions of middle-class interiors. He said again, ‘I am tired of seeing the human mind bogged in a social plenum; I prefer to paint it in a vacuum, freely and sportively bombinating.’”
“I say,” said Gombauld, “Knockespotch was a little obscure sometimes, wasn’t he?”
“He was,” Mr. Scogan replied, “and with intention. It made him seem even profounder than he actually was. But it was only in his aphorisms that he was so dark and oracular. In his Tales he was always luminous. Oh, those Tales—those Tales! How shall I describe them? Fabulous characters shoot across his pages like gaily dressed performers on the trapeze. There are extraordinary adventures and still more extraordinary speculations. Intelligences and emotions, relieved of all the imbecile preoccupations of civilized life, move in intricate and subtle dances, crossing and recrossing, advancing, retreating, impinging. An immense erudition and an immense fancy go hand in hand. All the ideas of the present and of the past, on every possible subject, bob up among the Tales, smile gravely or grimace a caricature of themselves, then disappear to make place for something new. ‘The verbal surface of his writing is rich and fantastically diversified. ‘The wit is incessant. The . . .”
“But couldn’t you give us a specimen,” Denis broke in—‘‘a concrete example?”
“Alas!”Mr. Scogan replied, “Knockespotch’s great book is like the sword Excalibur. It remains stuck fast in this door, awaiting the coming of a writer with genius enough to draw it forth. I am not even a writer, I am not so much as qualified to attempt the task. The extraction of Knockespotch from his wooden prison I leave, my dear Denis, to you.”
“Thank you,” said Denis.