Part 7 (1/2)
ON DISGUISE
It was pointed out that one of the most striking novelties of the Peace Day revels in London was the number of girls dressed as men, chiefly as soldiers and sailors. Men who were dressed as women--at least recognisably so--I did not observe, but then in a crowd at night they might be more difficult to detect, whereas no woman can be a really plausible man. The idea dominating these girls was less to deceive than to be hilarious, and most of them, I am sure, before the evening was over, achieved genuine male company.
For a man to pretend to be a woman is a less savoury proposition; but it can be done without offence (as in ”Charley's Aunt”), and I heard the other day a pleasant story of such a disguise, the hero of which is a comedian of great acceptance by the youthful every Christmas. This popular performer laid a wager with the _maitre d'hotel_ of a famous London restaurant that some time or other within the coming year he would enter the restaurant dressed as an old woman, and be served with lunch as though he were an ordinary customer. The _maitre d'hotel_, who had been maintaining that men dressed as women were, at any rate in broad daylight, always to be detected, accepted, and a sum was fixed sufficient to make the enterprise worth while, the conditions being that if the disguise were penetrated the _maitre d'hotel_ should indicate the discovery by a somewhat idiomatic form of words, more suitable to be applied to a sham lady than a real one; and if the actor succeeded he should send for the manager and thank him for his lunch. Each winner would add a request for the amount of the bet.
A few weeks ago the comedian won. But the cream of the story is that during the year no fewer than three unoffending and genuine old ladies, as female as G.o.d created them, were, on different occasions, more than astonished to be accosted by the _maitre d'hotel_ in the midst of their meals with a triumphant and not too refined catch-phrase, and to be asked for a tenner.
People look now so little at the clothes of others that disguise must have become easier than it was. The War brought so many strange costumes into being that we stare hardly at all, and at uniforms never. A man wearing a kilt, leggings, and spurs might, before the War, have attracted attention; we now merely mutter, ”Another of those Mounted Highlanders,” and pa.s.s on. In fact, we look more at members of the no-hat brigade than at anyone else, and at them only to see if they are authentic bare-heads or chance to have their hats in their hands.
Although the princ.i.p.al reasons for disguise are to a.s.sist in evading justice (the criminal) and to a.s.sist in pursuing crime (the detective), there are, I hope, a few whimsical humourists left who take to it for its own sake or to make things more possible. A dull July day with a north wind, such as in 1919 was the price of a divine May and June, might be made quite tolerable if we masqueraded through it and pulled the legs of our friends, like Sir Walter Scott's friend, the lady of the ”Mystifications.” I am sure that it would enable us to have better holidays. But we should have to be thorough: it is no use dressing up as a policeman and walking fast, or a.s.suming the mien of a Jewish financier and taking long steps, or borrowing a scarecrow's wardrobe to beg in and forgetting to supplant our natural a.s.surance with a cringe. In fact, all the real work is to come after the clothes are on. You may sit in Clarkson's for a couple of hours having a beard attached to your face (as I once watched a friend of mine doing), but, when it is finished, you must look and behave not merely like a man with a beard, as he did, but like a bearded man. He came away so painfully aware of a transfigured chin that he collected every eye and the police began to follow him merely on suspicion.
Indeed, to carry a disguise well requires unremitting concentration. The walk comes first: one would have continually to remember it. Then the carriage of the hands. Dressed as a curate, for example, you would give it all away by strolling along with your hands in your pockets; just as if you affected to be a seller of motor-cars you would fail if you had them anywhere else. This need of unrelaxing thought is the reason why disguise would be such a useful ally of the holiday maker. The completest escape from one's ordinary preoccupations could be obtained by a resolute simulation of this kind. It is not enough to go to Brighton; that is only half a holiday. But to go to Brighton as a bishop, say, or a taxi-driver, an American soldier or an Indian law student, and keep it up--that would be a total change, a vacation indeed.
BROKEN ENGLISH
Two examples of broken English have recently fallen upon my grateful ear--both from the lips of foreign door-keepers of restaurants.
The first touched upon an untimely, although welcome, heat-wave.
”It is,” I remarked with an affability equalled only by want of originality, ”almost too warm.”
”Yes,” the porter replied; ”ze 'ot, 'e come all in one.”
On the second occasion I was waiting for a guest who was late. After a while I commented, pleasantly, to the door-keeper on the tendency of the fair s.e.x to be behind time.
He laughed the light, easy laugh of one who has deep intimacy with the world we live in. ”Ladies always late,” he said; ”always make themselves wish and desire for.”
However faulty in construction, both those phrases are epigrammatic. I should not go so far as to say they could not be improved upon, yet it would be difficult to make them more vivid. To endow the heat with gender is a.s.suredly to add to its reality: a blast from Vulcan's furnace, for example; while the remark about the tarrying ladies enshrines a great verity such as restaurant door-keepers are perhaps better fitted to understand than most of us. At any rate, if a restaurant door-keeper does not learn such things, who can? Both phrases also show that neither speaker, after I know not how many years in England, is yet making any effort to talk English, but is content to clothe his own native thoughts in the most adequate English apparel that he can collect; just as I, for one, never have done in France other than translate more or less faithfully my English sentences into French. As for talking French--never! No such good fortune. But I am quite sure that, however amusing my blunders have been, no one has ever thought them epigrammatic, because the English syntax does not automatically tend to witty compression as the French does.
That illiteracy can get there as quickly and surely as the highest culture, though by a different route, is proved by the following instance.
Once upon a time there was a Little Tailor in a little shop in Soho. Not a tailor in the ordinary sense of the word, but a ladies' tailor. He was never seen out of s.h.i.+rt sleeves which might have been whiter, and he came from one of the foreign lands where the youths seem to be under conscription for this trade. What land it was I cannot say for certain, but I should guess Poland.
Once upon a time--in fact, at the same time--there was also a lady connected with the stage, and as her theatre was contiguous to the Little Tailor's place of business, it was only natural that when one of her gowns was suddenly torn her dresser should hasten to him to have it put right. But the charge was so disproportionate to the slight work done that the dresser deferred payment, and deferred it so long that the Little Tailor had to lay down the shears and take the pen in their place. And this is what he wrote:--
DEAR MISS,--I don't feel like exactly to quarrel with somebody. But it is the first time in my life happens to me a thing like that. And therefore I am not going to let it go. I was just keeping quiet to see what you would do. But what I can see you think I have forgotten about it. But I may tell you this much. It is not the few s.h.i.+llings but it is the impudence to come in while I am away to ask the girl to do it as a special, and then to come in and take it away, and then tell the girl you would come in to-morrow to see me. And this is six weeks already and you have not come yet.
The only thing I can say now, Miss, if you will kindly send the money by return, because I tell you candidly. I will not be had by you in this manner. Should you not send the money I shall try to get to know you personally, and will have something to say about it.
--If the art of letter-writing is to state clearly one's own position, that is as good a letter as any written. Every word expresses not only the intention of the writer but his state of mind. No one could improve upon it except in essentials.
And here is a letter by a Pole partially Americanised. It was recently addressed to a Chicago firm:
DEAR GENTLEMEN,--Seaing Your Advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Daily News that you wanted a Agent in Chicago I am a Temperance Polish bachelor. I am 35 years of age, I live 30 years in Chicago have a clear record. I love all Nations, I am inteligent i worked in Metal line 10 years. I am a fine talker I lived in 4 parts of Chicago. I have a mild disposition I have 100.
cash. I am a Orphan. I work for a Jewish Real Estate man on Commission he is worth 50,000 dollars he made that in 7 years. i want a small salary and Commission to act as General Agent. I have a 4 room flat and furnished for my own money and i have a roomer he has 5000 cash. I am a fine Business talker used to being in Cigar and Grocery and Candy Business some years agow. I will purchase a 25000 dollar share in your Business Dear Gentlemen if you find me a wife that has 50000 dollars cash or more. with best success to you dear gentlemen, I will take a Widow, a white woman i love children.
Very truly, etc.