CHAPTER XIX

IN WHICH INADVERTENTLY I BECOME A PUBLIC CHARACTER AND, ALSO INADVERTENTLY, GIVE AN OPPORTUNIST AN IDEA

Mr. Furley overtaking me recently on my way into London asked if I should be in the neighbourhood of Parliament Square about a quarter to three.

"Be there if you can," he said.

As it happened I was lunching at Queen Anne's Gate, and so I did pass through the square at the time named, glanced at our legislators--or at men who wished to look like our legislators and be taken for them, and, as far as I was concerned, succeeded--entering the House, and so went on to Chelsea, whither I was bound, by the Embankment.

The next day Mr. Furley sent down a note to Naomi asking her to be sure to drop in at the Shakespeare Electric Theatre (shameless name!) in Tottenham Court Road, if she was in that neighbourhood. So we both dropped in, and there, suddenly, as a series of pictures representing the meeting of Parliament on the day of the great debate was thrown upon the screen, my blood turned cold, for among the other passers-by I saw myself. No one who has ever seen himself walk is likely to get over the shock, especially in the slightly accelerated gait of the cinema. Swift's "forked radish" does not compare as a reminder of littleness and mortality, and I am now convinced that Parliament should be approached either in cabs or on roller skates.

One sometimes wonders if the New World was not invented to destroy the mental balance of the Old. There is something sinister in the thought that America was discovered in the year that Lorenzo de' Medici died. With Lorenzo's life the richest period of generous and stimulating intellectual activity that man has seen--that revival of art and learning which we call the Renaissance--may be said to have come to an end. At that moment Columbus ran his prow against the land which was to produce in its greatest profusion everything which Giotto and his followers would most cordially condemn. Sitting in this picture palace, where my own gauche contours had been so disconcertingly sprung upon me, and watching scenes comic and scenes dramatic, carefully built up false stories of wild life and so forth, all passing dazzlingly across the sheet to the accompaniment of a clockwork _obbligato_ and a piano, and all due to that amazing Edisonian inventiveness, I realized for the first time what a menace to human endeavour it has the chance of becoming, and how opposed to the humanist spirit. How many picture palaces London boasts I have no notion, but let us say at a hazard two hundred. Each is open from noon till eleven at night continuously, and each contains daily, let us say, six hundred persons. These figures are probably far too low, but they will serve. That makes twelve thousand persons for every day of the year (for they open on Sundays), in London alone, watching a mechanical device which illustrates the activities of others. Not an ounce of personality--just sheer hard mechanism, whose only purpose is to beguile, to prevent thought.

I have not said all this to Mr. Furley, but if I did he would agree with me; for, like all men who derive their livelihood from concerns that exist for the amusement of their fellows, he is a cynic.

The next time I met him after the Tottenham Court Road experience he had an amused expression. "How did you like it?" he inquired.

"It was horrible," I said. "But where was your photographer? I saw no one about."

He laughed. "Did you notice a small furniture van pulled up at the side of the road?" he asked. "If you had examined it closely you would have noticed a little hole at the back. The photographer was inside and the camera was at that hole."

We were walking through Regent's Park at the time of this conversation and suddenly I sneezed, and I can sneeze louder than most men. It was fortunate I did so, for it showed me Mr. Furley's brain in action. He stopped dead.

"By Jove," he said, "there's an idea!"

I asked him to explain.

"Why," he said, "for a film. A comic one. 'Mr. Splodgers catches cold,' or, if you like, 'The Fatal Sneeze.' You begin with Mr. Splodgers being caught in a shower and drenched; or falling into a river would perhaps be better. Anyhow, he gets wet through. Then you show him trying to prevent a cold. He tries everything, including the home Turkish bath, but in vain; the cold comes on. You see him in a sneezing-fit. The first sneeze brings down the chandelier, the second the bookcase, the third all the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the fourth the ceiling itself, and so on. It will be great. I'll arrange it right away. How would you like to be Mr. Splodgers?"

I declined.

"I must pay you for the idea, anyway," Mr. Furley continued. "What do you think would be fair? Five guineas?"

"No," I said; "the idea was yours. All that I did was to sneeze. I make you a present of it."

But you can't make a free gift to men like that. Although I was at home again in less than two hours I could not beat Mr. Furley's sense of reciprocity, and on my table was a package containing a hundred of the choicest cigars I ever owned.