The Chronicles of Clovis | Page 4

to ourselves. The secret of our favourite
restaurant, to take a case, is guarded jealously from all but a few
intimates; the secret, to take a contrary case, of our infallible remedy
for seasickness is thrust upon every traveller we meet, even if he be no
more than a casual acquaintance about to cross the Serpentine. So with
our books. There are dearly loved books of which we babble to a
neighbour at dinner, insisting that she shall share our delight in them;
and there are books, equally dear to us, of which we say nothing,
fearing lest the praise of others should cheapen the glory of our
discovery. The books of "Saki" were, for me at least, in the second
class.
It was in the WESTMINSTER GAZETTE that I discovered him (I like
to remember now) almost as soon as he was discoverable. Let us spare

a moment, and a tear, for those golden days in the early nineteen
hundreds, when there were five leisurely papers of an evening in which
the free-lance might graduate, and he could speak of his Alma Mater,
whether the GLOBE or the PALL MALL, with as much pride as, he
never doubted, the GLOBE or the PALL MALL would speak one day
of him. Myself but lately down from ST. JAMES', I was not too proud
to take some slight but pitying interest in men of other colleges. The
unusual name of a freshman up at WESTMINSTER attracted my
attention; I read what he had to say; and it was only by reciting rapidly
with closed eyes the names of our own famous alumni, beginning
confidently with Barrie and ending, now very doubtfully, with myself,
that I was able to preserve my equanimity. Later one heard that this
undergraduate from overseas had gone up at an age more advanced
than customary; and just as Cambridge men have been known to
complain of the maturity of Oxford Rhodes scholars, so one felt that
this WESTMINSTER free- lance in the thirties was no fit competitor
for the youth of other colleges. Indeed, it could not compete.
Well, I discovered him, but only to the few, the favoured, did I speak of
him. It may have been my uncertainty (which still persists) whether he
called himself Sayki, Sahki or Sakki which made me thus ungenerous
of his name, or it may have been the feeling that the others were not
worthy of him; but how refreshing it was when some intellectually
blown-up stranger said "Do you ever read Saki?" to reply, with the
same pronunciation and even greater condescension: "Saki! He has
been my favourite author for years!"
A strange exotic creature, this Saki, to us many others who were trying
to do it too. For we were so domestic, he so terrifyingly cosmopolitan.
While we were being funny, as planned, with collar- studs and
hot-water bottles, he was being much funnier with werwolves and
tigers. Our little dialogues were between John and Mary; his, and how
much better, between Bertie van Tahn and the Baroness. Even the most
casual intruder into one of his sketches, as it might be our Tomkins,
had to be called Belturbet or de Ropp, and for his hero, weary
man-of-the-world at seventeen, nothing less thrilling than Clovis
Sangrail would do. In our envy we may have wondered sometimes if it

were not much easier to be funny with tigers than with collar-studs; if
Saki's careless cruelty, that strange boyish insensitiveness of his, did
not give him an unfair start in the pursuit of laughter. It may have been
so; but, fortunately, our efforts to be funny in the Saki manner have not
survived to prove it.
What is Saki's manner, what his magic talisman? Like every artist
worth consideration, he had no recipe. If his exotic choice of subject
was often his strength, it was often his weakness; if his insensitiveness
carried him through, at times, to victory, it brought him, at times, to
defeat. I do not think that he has that "mastery of the CONTE"--in this
book at least--which some have claimed for him. Such mastery infers a
passion for tidiness which was not in the boyish Saki's equipment. He
leaves loose ends everywhere. Nor in his dialogue, delightful as it often
is, funny as it nearly always is, is he the supreme master; too much
does it become monologue judiciously fed, one character giving and
the other taking. But in comment, in reference, in description, in every
development of his story, he has a choice of words, a "way of putting
things" which is as inevitably his own vintage as, once tasted, it
becomes the private vintage of the connoisseur.
Let us take a sample or two of "Saki, 1911."
"The earlier stages of the dinner had worn off.