Plum Pudding by Christopher Morley

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Poetry is the log of man's fugitive castaway soul upon a doomed and
derelict planet. The minds of all men plod the same rough roads of
sense; and in spite of much knavery, all win at times "an ampler
ether, a diviner air." The great poets, our masters, speak out of
that clean freshness of perception. We hear their voices--

I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,
Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air.

So it is not vain, perhaps, to try clumsily to tell how this
delicious uneasiness first captured the spirit of one who, if not a
poet, is at least a lover of poetry. Thus he first looked beyond the
sunset; stood, if not on Parnassus, tiptoe upon a little hill. And
overhead a great wind was blowing.

[Illustration]

THE OLD RELIABLE

"Express train stalled in a snowdrift," said one. "The irascible old
white-haired gentleman in the Pullman smoker; the good-natured
travelling salesman; the wistful young widow in the day coach, with
her six-year-old blue-eyed little daughter. A coal-black Pullman
porter who braves the shrieking gale to bring in a tree from the
copse along the track. Red-headed brakeman (kiddies of his own at
home), frostbitten by standing all night between the couplings,
holding parts of broken steampipe together so the Pullman car will
keep warm. Young widow and her child, of course, sleeping in the
Pullman; white-haired old gentleman vacates his berth in their
favour. Good-natured travelling salesman up all night, making
cigar-band decorations for the Tree, which is all ready in the
dining car in the morning----"

* * * * *

"Old English inn on a desolate moor," said another. "Bright fire of
coals in the coffee room, sporting prints, yellow old newspaper
cutting framed on the mantelpiece describing gruesome murder
committed in the house in 1760. Terrible night of storm--sleet
tingling on the panes; crimson curtains fluttering in the draught;
roads crusted with ice; savoury fumes of roast goose, plum pudding,
and brandy. Pretty chambermaid in evident anxiety about something;
guest tries to kiss her in the corridor; she's too distrait to give
the matter proper attention. She has heard faint agonized cries
above the howling of the gale----"

* * * * *

"I like the sound of hymns," ventured a third. "Frosty vestibule of
fashionable church, rolling thunders of the organ, fringes of
icicles silvered by moonlight, poor old Salvation Army Santa Claus
shivering outside and tinkling his pathetic little bell. Humane
note: those scarlet Christmas robes of the Army not nearly as warm
as they look. Hard-hearted vestryman, member of old Knickerbocker
family, always wears white margins on his vest, suddenly touched by
compassion, empties the collection plate into Santa's bucket. Santa
hurries off to the S.A. headquarters crying 'The little ones will
bless you for this.' Vestryman accused of having pocketed the
collection, dreadful scandal, too proud to admit what he had done
with it----"

* * * * *

"Christmas Eve in the Ambrose Channel," cried a fourth. "A blizzard
blowing. The pilot boat, sheathed with ice, wallowing in the teeth
of the blinding storm, beats her way up to the lee of the great
liner. The pilot, suddenly taken ill, lies gasping on the sofa of
the tiny cabin. Impossible for him to take the great liner into
port; 2,000 passengers eager to get home for Christmas. But who is
this gallant little figure darting up the rope ladder with
fluttering skirts? The pilot's fourteen-year-old daughter. '_I_ will
take the _Nausea_ to her berth! I've spent all my life in the Bay,
and know every inch of the channel.' Rough quartermaster weeps as
she takes the wheel from his hands. 'Be easy in your mind, Captain,'
she says; 'but before the customs men come aboard tell me one
thing--have you got that bottle of Scotch for my Daddy?'"

* * * * *

"Big New York department store," insisted the fifth. "Beautiful
dark-haired salesgirl at the silk stocking counter. Her slender form
trembles with fatigue, but she greets all customers with brave,
sweet courtesy. Awful crush, every one buying silk stockings. Kindly
floorwalker, sees she is overtaxed, suggests she leave early. Dark
girl refuses; says she must be faithful to the Christmas spirit;
moreover, she daren't face the evening battle on the subway.
Handsome man comes to the counter to buy. Suddenly a scream, a thud,
horrified outcries. Hold back the crowd! Call a physician! No good;
handsome man, dead, murdered. Dark-haired girl, still holding the
fatal hat-pin, taken in custody, crying hysterically 'When he gave
me his name, I couldn't help it. He's the one who has caused all the
trouble!' Floorwalker reverently covers the body with a cloth, then
looks at the name on the sales slip. 'Gosh,' he cries, aghast, 'it's
Coles Phillips!'"

* * * * *

The gathering broke up, and the five men strolled out into the
blazing August sunshine. The sultry glow of midsummer beat down upon
them, but their thoughts were far away. They were five popular
authors comparing notes on the stories they were writing for the
Christmas magazines.

[Illustration]

IN MEMORIAM
FRANCIS BARTON GUMMERE

I often wonder what inward pangs of laughter or despair he may have
felt as he sat behind the old desk in Chase Hall and watched us
file in, year after year! Callow, juvenile, ignorant, and
cocksure--grotesquely confident of our own manly fulness of worldly
_savoir_--an absurd rabble of youths, miserable flint-heads indeed
for such a steel! We were the most unpromising of all material for
the scholar's eye; comfortable, untroubled middle-class lads most of
us, to whom study was neither a privilege nor a passion, but only a
sober and decent way of growing old enough to enter business.

We did not realize how accurately--and perhaps a trifle grimly--the
strong, friendly face behind the desk was searching us and sizing us
up. He knew us for what we were--a group of nice boys, too sleek,
too cheerfully secure, to show the ambition of the true student.
There was among us no specimen of the lean and dogged crusader of
learning that kindles the eye of the master: no fanatical Scot,
such as rejoices the Oxford or Cambridge don; no liquid-orbed and
hawk-faced Hebrew with flushed cheek bones, such as sets the
pace in the class-rooms of our large universities. No: we were a
hopelessly mediocre, well-fed, satisfied, and characteristically
Quakerish lot. As far as the battle for learning goes, we were
pacifists--conscientious objectors.

It is doubtful whether any really great scholar ever gave the best
years of his life to so meagrely equipped a succession of
youngsters! I say this candidly, and it is well it should be said,
for it makes apparent the true genius of Doctor Gummere's great
gift. He turned this following of humble plodders into lovers and
zealots of the great regions of English letters. There was something
knightly about him--he, the great scholar, who would never stoop to
scoff at the humblest of us. It might have been thought that his
shining gifts were wasted in a small country college, where not one
in fifty of his pupils could follow him into the enchanted lands of
the imagination where he was fancy-free. But it was not so. One may
meet man after man, old pupils of his, who have gone on into the
homely drudging rounds of business, the law, journalism--men whose
faces will light up with affection and remembrance when Doctor
Gummere's name is mentioned. We may have forgotten much of our
Chaucer, our Milton, our Ballads--though I am sure we have none of
us forgotten the deep and thrilling vivacity of his voice reciting:

O where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son?
O where hae ye been, my handsome young man?
I hae been to the wild wood; mither, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting and fain wald lie doun.

But what we learned from him lay in the very charm of his
personality. It was a spell that no one in his class-room could
escape. It shone from his sparkling eye; it spoke in his
irresistible humour; it moved in every line of that well-loved face,
in his characteristic gesture of leaning forward and tilting his
head a little to one side as he listened, patiently, to whatever
juvenile surmises we stammered to express. It was the true learning
of which his favourite Sir Philip Sidney said:

This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of
judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call
learning, under what name soever it come forth or to what
immediate end soever it be directed, the final end is to lead
and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls,
made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of.

Indeed, just to listen to him was a purifying of wit, an enriching
of memory, an enabling of judgment, an enlarging of imagination. He
gave us "so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to
enter into it."

He moved among all human contacts with unerring grace. He was never
the teacher, always the comrade. It was his way to pretend that we
knew far more than we did; so with perfect courtesy and gravity, he
would ask our opinion on some matter of which we knew next to
nothing; and we knew it was only his exquisiteness of good manners
that impelled the habit; and we knew he knew the laughableness of
it; yet we adored him for it. He always suited his strength to our
weakness; would tell us things almost with an air of apology for
seeming to know more than we; pretending that we doubtless had known
it all along, but it had just slipped our memory. Marvellously he
set us on our secret honour to do justice to this rare courtesy. To
fail him in some task he had set became, in our boyish minds, the
one thing most abhorrent in dealing with such a man--a discourtesy.
He was a man of the rarest and most delicate breeding, the finest
and truest gentleman we had known. Had he been nothing else, how
much we would have learnt from that alone.

What a range, what a grasp, there was in his glowing, various mind!
How open it was on all sides, how it teemed with interests, how
different from the scholar of silly traditional belief! We used to
believe that he could have taught us history, science, economics,
philosophy--almost anything; and so indeed he did. He taught us to
go adventuring among masterpieces on our own account, which is the
most any teacher can do. Luckiest of all were those who, on one
pretext or another, found their way to his fireside of an evening.
To sit entranced, smoking one of his cigars,[*] to hear him talk of
Stevenson, Meredith, or Hardy--(his favourites among the moderns)
to marvel anew at the infinite scope and vivacity of his
learning--this was to live on the very doorsill of enchantment.
Homeward we would go, crunching across the snow to where Barclay
crowns the slope with her evening blaze of lights, one glimpse
nearer some realization of the magical colours and tissues of the
human mind, the rich perplexity and many-sided glamour of life.

[* It was characteristic of him that he usually smoked _Robin
Hood_, that admirable 5-cent cigar, because the name, and the
picture of an outlaw on the band, reminded him of the 14th
century Ballads he knew by heart.]

It is strange (as one reviews all the memories of that good friend
and master) to think that there is now a new generation beginning at
Haverford that will never know his spell. There is a heavy debt on
his old pupils. He made life so much richer and more interesting for
us. Even if we never explored for ourselves the fields of literature
toward which he pointed, his radiant individuality remains in our
hearts as a true exemplar of what scholarship can mean. We can never
tell all that he meant to us. Gropingly we turn to little pictures
in memory. We see him crossing Cope Field in the green and gold of
spring mornings, on his way to class. We see him sitting on the
verandah steps of his home on sunny afternoons, full of gay and
eager talk on a thousand diverse topics. He little knew, I think,
how we hung upon his words. I can think of no more genuine tribute
than this: that in my own class--which was a notoriously cynical and
scoffish band of young sophisters--when any question of religious
doubt or dogma arose for discussion among some midnight group,
someone was sure to say, "I wish I knew what Doctor Gummere thought
about it!" We felt instinctively that what he thought would have
been convincing enough for us.

He was a truly great man. A greater man than we deserved, and there
is a heavy burden upon us to justify the life that he gave to our
little college. He has passed into the quiet and lovely tradition
that surrounds and nourishes that place we all love so well. Little
by little she grows, drawing strength and beauty from human lives
around her, confirming herself in honour and remembrance. The
teacher is justified by his scholars. Doctor Gummere might have gone
elsewhere, surrounded by a greater and more ambitiously documented
band of pupils. He whom we knew as the greatest man we had ever
seen, moved little outside the world of learning. He gave himself to
us, and we are the custodians of his memory.

Every man who loved our vanished friend must know with what
realization of shamed incapacity one lays down the tributary pen. He
was so strong, so full of laughter and grace, so truly a man, his
long vacation still seems a dream, and we feel that somewhere on the
well-beloved campus we shall meet him and feel that friendly hand.
In thinking of him I am always reminded of that fine old poem of Sir
Henry Wotton, a teacher himself, the provost of Eton, whose life has
been so charmingly written by another Haverfordian--(Logan Pearsall
Smith).

THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE

How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death
Not tied unto the world by care
Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend;

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.

Such was the Happy Man as Sir Henry Wotton described him. Such, I
think, was the life of our friend. I think it must have been a happy
life, for he gave so much happiness to others.

[Illustration]

ADVENTURES AT LUNCH TIME

This window by which we sit is really very trying to our spirit. On
a clear fluid blue day the sunlight pours over the cliffs and craggy
coves and angles of the great buildings round St. Paul's churchyard.
We can see the temptation of being a cubist painter as we study all
those intersecting planes of light and shadow. Across the way, on
Fulton Street, above the girl in a green hat who is just now
ingurgitating a phial of orangeade, there are six different roof
levels, rising like steps toward the gold lightning bolts of the
statue on top of the Telephone and Telegraph Building. Each of
these planes carries its own particular impact of light or shadow.
The sunshine seems to flow like an impalpable cataract over the top
of the Hudson Terminal, breaking and shining in a hundred splashes
and pools of brightness among the stone channels below. Far down the
course of Church Street we can see the top floors of the Whitehall
Building. We think of the little gilt ball that darts and dances so
merrily in the fountain jet in front of that building. We think of
the merry mercators of the Whitehall Club sitting at lunch on the
cool summit of that great edifice. We think of the view as seen from
there, the olive-coloured gleam of the water, the ships and tugs
speckled about the harbour. And, looking down, we can see a peaceful
gentleman sitting on a bench in St. Paul's graveyard, reading a
book. We think seriously of writing a note, "_What are you
reading?_" and weighting it with an inkwell and hurling it down to
him. This window continually draws our mind outward and sets us
speculating, when we ought to be answering letters or making
inquiries of coal dealers as to whether there is any chance of
getting a supply for next winter.

* * * * *

On such a day, having in mind that we ought to write another chapter
of our book "How to Spend Three Hours at Lunch Time," we issued
forth with Endymion to seek refreshment. It was a noontide to stir
even the most carefully fettered bourgeois to impulses of escapade
and foray. What should we do? At first we had some thought of
showing to Endymion the delightful subterranean passage that leads
from the cathedral grottoes of the Woolworth Building to the City
Hall subway station, but we decided we could not bear to leave the
sunlight. So we chose a path at random and found ourselves at the
corner of Beekman and Gold streets.

Now our intention was to make tracks toward Hanover Square and there
to consider the world as viewed over the profile of a slab of
cheesecake; but on viewing the agreeable old house at the corner of
Gold Street--"The Old Beekman, Erected 1827," once called the Old
Beekman Halfway House, but now the Old Beekman Luncheonette--no
hungry man in his senses could pass without tarrying. A flavour of
comely and respectable romance was apparent in this pleasant place,
with its neat and tight-waisted white curtains in the upstairs
windows and an outdoor stairway leading up to the second floor.
Inside, at a table in a cool, dark corner, we dealt with hot dogs
and cloudy cider in a manner beyond criticism. The name Luncheonette
does this fine tavern serious injustice: there is nothing of the
feminine or the soda fountain about it: it is robust, and we could
see by the assured bearing of some well-satisfied habitues that it
is an old landmark in that section.

But the brisk air and tempting serenity of the day made it seem
emphatically an occasion for two lunches, and we passed on, along
Pearl Street, in the bright checkerboard of sunbeams that slip
through the trestles of the "L." It was cheerful to see that the
same old Spanish cafes are still there, though we were a little
disappointed to see that one of them has moved from its old-time
quarters, where that fine brass-bound stairway led up from the
street, to a new and gaudy palace on the other side. We also admired
the famous and fascinating camp outfitting shop at 208 Pearl Street,
which apparently calls itself WESTMINSTER ABBEY: but that
is not the name of the shop but of the proprietor. We have been told
that Mr. Abbey's father christened him so, intending him to enter
the church. In the neighbourhood of Cliff and Pearl streets we
browsed about enjoying the odd and savoury smells. There are all
sorts of aromas in that part of the city, coffee and spices, drugs,
leather, soap, and cigars. There was one very sweet, pervasive, and
subtle smell, a caressing harmony for the nostril, which we pursued
up and down various byways. Here it would quicken and grow almost
strong enough for identification; then again it would become faint
and hardly discernible. It had a rich, sweet oily tang, but we were
at a loss to name it. We finally concluded that it was the bouquet
of an "odourless disinfectant" that seemed to have its headquarters
near by. In one place some bales of dried and withered roots were
being loaded on a truck: they gave off a faint savour, which was
familiar but baffling. On inquiry, these were sarsaparilla. Endymion
was pleased with a sign on a doorway: "_Crude drugs and spices and
essential oils._" This, he said, was a perfect Miltonic line.

Hanover Square, however, was the apex of our pilgrimage. To come
upon India House is like stepping back into the world of Charles
Lamb. We had once lunched in the clubrooms upstairs with a charming
member and we had never forgotten the old seafaring prints, the
mustard pots of dark blue glass, the five-inch mutton chops, the
Victorian contour of the waiter's waistcoat of green and yellow
stripe. This time we fared toward the tavern in the basement, where
even the outsider may penetrate, and were rejoiced by a snug table
in the corner. Here we felt at once the true atmosphere of lunching,
which is at its best when one can get in a corner, next to some old
woodwork rubbed and shiny with age. Shandygaff, we found, was not
unknown to the servitor; and the cider that we saw Endymion beaming
upon was a blithe, clear yellow, as merry to look at as a fine white
wine. Very well, very well indeed, we said to ourselves; let the
world revolve; in the meantime, what is that printed in blackface
type upon the menu? We have looked upon the faces of many men, we
have endured travail and toil and perplexity, we have written much
rot and suffered much inward shame to contemplate it; but in the
meantime (we said, gazing earnestly upon the face of Endymion), in
the meantime, we repeated, and before destiny administers that final
and condign chastisement that we ripely merit, let us sit here in
the corner of the India House and be of good cheer. And at this
point, matters being so, and a second order of butter being already
necessary, the waiter arrived with the Spanish omelet.

Homeward by the way of South Street, admiring the slender concave
bows of fine ships--the _Mexico_ and the _Santa Marta_, for
instance--and privily wondering what were our chances of smelling
blue water within the next quinquennium, we passed in mild and
placid abandonment. On Burling Slip, just where in former times
there used to hang a sign KIPLING BREW (which always interested us),
we saw a great, ragged, burly rogue sitting on a doorstep. He had
the beard of a buccaneer, the placid face of one at ease with
fortune. He hitched up his shirt and shifted from one ham to another
with supreme and sunkissed contentment. And Endymion, who sees all
things as the beginnings of heavenly poems, said merrily: "As I was
walking on Burling Slip, I saw a seaman without a ship."

[Illustration]

SECRET TRANSACTIONS OF THE THREE HOURS FOR LUNCH CLUB

The doctor having been elected a member of the club, a meeting was
held to celebrate the event. Bowling Green, Esq., secretary, was
instructed to prepare carefully confidential minutes. Weather: fair
and tepid. Wind: N.N.E. Course laid: From starting line at a Church
Street bookshop, where the doctor bought a copy of "Limbo," by
Aldous Huxley, to Pier 56, N.R. Course made good: the same.

The doctor was in excellent form. On the Fourteenth Street car a
human being was arguing fiercely and loudly with the conductor about
some controversial matter touching upon fares and destinations. The
clamour was great. Said the doctor, adjusting his eye-glass and
gazing with rebuke toward the disputants: "I will be gratified when
this tumult subsides." The doctor has been added to the membership
of the club in order to add social tone to the gathering. His charm
is infinite; his manners are of a delicacy and an aplomb. His
speech, when he is of waggish humour, carries a tincture of Queen
Anne phraseology that is subtle and droll. A man, indeed! _L'extreme
de charme_, as M. Djer-Kiss loves to say what time he woos the
public in the theatre programmes.

The first thrill was when Bowling Green, Esq., secretary, cast an
eye upward as the club descended from the Fourteenth Street
sharabang, and saw, over the piers, the tall red funnels of the
_Aquitania_. This is going to be great doings, said he to himself. O
Cunard Line funnels! What is there that so moves the heart?

Bowling Green, Esq., confesses that it is hard to put these minutes
into cold and calculated narrative. Among ships and seafaring
concerns his heart is too violently stirred to be quite _maitre de
soi_.

The club moved forward. Welcomed by the suave commissionaire of the
Cunard Line, it was invited to rise in the elevator. On the upper
floor of the pier the members ran to the windows. There lay the
_Aquitania_ at her pier. The members' hearts were stirred. Even the
doctor, himself a hardened man of the sea, showed a brilliant spark
of emotion behind his monocular attic window. A ship in dock--and
what a ship! A ship at a city pier, strange sight. It is like a lion
in a circus cage. She, the beauty, the lovely living creature of
open azure and great striding ranges of the sea, she that needs
horizons and planets for her fitting perspective, she that asks the
snow and silver at her irresistible stern, she that persecutes the
sunset across the purple curves of the longitudes--tied up stiff and
dead in the dull ditch of a dockway. The upward slope of that great
bow, it was never made to stand still against a dusty pier-end.

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