Amusement

Sir Limpidus — By Marmaduke Pickthall

‘Come hither, all who love a merry jest!’ cries the small boy who discovers that Limpidus Fitzbeare has made no end of an ass of himself. His words might be taken as Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall's advice to his readers while he unfolds, with immense gusto and high spirits, the tale of one whose success in life was the result of his quite remarkable talent for doing and saying the asinine thing. And the asinine thing is, in this connection, the right thing, the sound thing, the kind of thing which stamped an Englishman as superior to the whole rest of the world, as a being whose life was divided (and rightly divided) between enjoying his vast preserve, England, and keeping the foreigner, the outsider, and the man whom one did not know, in his rightful place.

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Sir Limpidus Fitzbeare was born at Clearfount Abbey in the 'sixties under a cloudless sky, and he might be said to have basked his life through in the same brilliant weather. He was the heir to vast estates; his income was seventy thousand pounds a year, and his excellent father, Sir Rusticus, so ordered his constitution that by the time he came of age he was capable of enjoying to the full these by no means paltry advantages. From a ‘priver’ he passed to the famous old school which, in his father's words, ‘takes the corners off a man and forms him on the proper pattern for an Englishman of our condition who doesn't want to be stared at in the streets of London.’

A fellow who has not been through it is handicapped in life, especially one who has been brought up by women who give too much importance to religion…. You'll find out what is done by people of your sort, and learn to do it naturally. You'll learn to put religion, art, learning and literature, and all such matters in their proper place, and not attach too much importance to 'em….

It was while there that his remarkable talent for discovering the right thing first pushed into the light, and, the conditions being perfectly congenial, grew at such a rate that by the time he was ready for Cambridge, it had attained to its full height. Indeed, such was its power that he became absorbed into it—part of it—and could not be seen, except for a moment or two, for its flowers and leaves and fruits. So that in spite of Cambridge, London, the diplomatic service, a seat in Parliament, fame, lovely women, and finally a place in the Cabinet, he remained the boy he was, walking in the middle of the street ‘with a certain swing, the chin in air, the elbows raised and managing a tightly-rolled-up umbrella in a certain way.’

Had the perfect weather continued, we see no reason why Sir Limpidus should not have been one of the most successful Prime Ministers England has ever had. But, page 146 alas! a year or two before the war the glass began to fall, and there was such an ugly look in the political sky, such a disagreeable sense of an impending storm, that he and his colleagues welcomed wholeheartedly the Supreme Diversion.

Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall's energy never flags. He carries his book along at a great pace, yet he misses nothing on the way that will give point to his story. But—time—time! Have we the time to spare for it all? Once we have been given the sum—once we have added it up and found it comes to ‘Sir Limpidus’—have we the time to go on proving and proving it, and finding, with a chuckle that lasts through two hundred and fifty-four pages, that ‘the answer is always the same’?

We are the children of an ungracious and a greedy age. Perhaps it is not so much that we are difficult to amuse, but we are quickly tired. Repetition—the charm of knowing what is coming, of beating the tune and being ready with the smile and the laugh at just the right moment, no longer has the power to soothe and distract us. It wakes in us a demon of restlessness, a fever to break out of the circle of the tune, however brilliant the tune may be.