It is very pleasant to be a nobody. To begin with, there is the obvious advantage that nothing is expected of one. The world will not be disappointed if one remains commonplace and unsensatonal.
Then there is the realization that, as a nobody, one is filling a real need in the motion of the world. For the progress of civilization, the great must be encouraged to thrive and flourish, and if it weren't for the obscure, they would have a sony time of it. For whence the spell-bound audiences, the acclaiming crowd, the huzzahing populace—but for the nobodies? They arc the given of banquets, the tenderers of floral tributes, the subscribers to memorials. They are the constituents, and the acceptors of theories. They really read Who's Who and the Social Register.
They leaven society, and form a sort of perpetual fire extinguisher to the incipient volcanic eruptions which threaten, where a fraction too many of the great are gathered together. For centuries the nobodies have struggled manfully to keep the lighted cigarette away from the open gasoline tank—to temper, by their presence, meetings between the Bernard Shaws and the Emersons, the Cooks and the Perrys, the Fiona Macleods and the Theodore Dreisers. Due to them, mammoth intellectual casualties have been averted. The great take comfort in them—soft, silent buffers against which their theories may bounce with abandon, unchallenged, uninjured.
On the other hand, the nobodies, secure in their obscurity, draw satisfaction from observing that they, the uiifamed, share certain human qualities in common with the mighty ones of earth. Both react in a measure similarly to the gentle influences of affection, humor, and food—a pleasant observation that I have delighted in.
The great have always fascinated me, alive or dead. When they have been in the latter state, I have revelled In their personal memoirs, finding more of absorbing inzeraej I blush to tate, in the discovery of their human qualities, than in their lashes of genius. Napoleon poring over his Dream Book is far more thrilling to me than Napoleon directing the Italian campaign. (I have a Dream Bock, but have never been to Italy.) I glow over the accounts of George Washington's butchers' and grocers' bills, while the winter at Valley Forge leaves me cold.
As for the living great, whenever chance has thrown me in their presence, I have reconciled the incongruity of the situation by remembering the maxim about the cat and the king, and have forthwith fallen to observing the very thrilling demonstration of their humanness.
Edward Penfleld, the eminent illustrator, from whom colors have actually taken their names (you may either be an artist or a daughter of a President to have a color named for you—no one else is eligible) once observed of the shade of my new fall costume:
“That will be the doggy color for autumn.“
More than ever was I convinced of his eminence. Sir Harry Johnston, author of delightful novels and serious scientific books on the fauna and flora of Africa, was host one sunny day at a small luncheon at his thirteenth century Priory home at Arundel in England. Someone asked him whether it was true that a certain variety of oysters “grew on trees." Sir Harry explained that there are oysters, which when the tide is high, fasten to the lower branches of trees—submerged for the time in water. When the tide recedes, it leaves them clinging to the branches.
"There they hang," he said, sympathetically, "having a nice, dry time."
Afterwards, on the seat under the long, low leaded window of his study, I gazed out into the most enchanting of rose gardens, intoxicating with its color and fragrance—a garden such as one sees only in England. Behind me, imbedded in the wall, stretched the long gave-stone of a crusader, with its simple cross hen down its length. It had been dug up in the Priory pounds. Sir Harry took me over the lovely, winding passages of the house, showed me the exquisite ceiling of what had been the old chapel, and the little stone holy water fount that the workmen had uncovered under layers and layers of walls.
"I don't like old houses," said his charming, quaint little Victorian sister, Miss Johnston, who also lives in the Priory, and who read our palms in the afternoon. Shc seemcd to be looking past us at things unseen by us. We had heard before our visit, rumors of a "haunt" at the Priory—but Sir Harry only laughed when an ancient tapestry, stirred by we knew not what, fluttered on thc wall.
It was during the same summer that P. D. Ouspensky, thc Russian psychologist and mystic, author of Tertium Organum, was lecturing twice a week in London to a limited group. Of the literary great, it included Katherine Mansfield, A. R. Orage, Algernon Blackwood, and other well known writers. There was, in the group, a suitable leavening of nobodies. The Iccturcs were preparatory to morc advanced study at the Institute Gurdjicff at Forztainebleau, and thither, as everyone knows, Katherine Mansfield followed the teaching, only to meet her death there a few months later—the result of a prolonged illness. In the course of the work in London arose the need of an Englishspeaking person to help Mr. Ouspensky in his translations of certain things from the Russian. What an opportunity for a nobody! Thereafter II had the privilege on certain days of working alone with him. The first dine, I was somewhat awed at his intellectual grandeur. Then suddenly into his library where we were working, walked a great gray cat.
"Vaska I" cried Mr. Ouspensky (or something that sounded exactly like that—he told me it was Russian for Pussy), and papers and pencils and books fluttered and fell, regardless, from his lap, as he delightcdly stroked the soft, gray back rubbing against him. Immediately I was happy, for even as I have a Dream Book like Napoleon, so have I a pct cat like Ouspensky. Frequently when we were struggling far the proper English ~quin1ent to some Russian term of mysticism or psychology, Quspensky, glancing out of the window into thc Kensington street, would jump up, papers flying like snow flakes, to dash for his camera. From the window, I would see Vaska poised graccfully on a fence, holding convene with anothcr of his kind. If they scampered off before the camera was adjusted we would stand eagcrly, patiently, waiting Yaska's rcturn—psychology neglected and forgotten.
One of England's distinguished writers; John Ayscough, who, away from the backs of his books, is Morisignor Bickerstaff c-Drew, a venerable retired chaplain of the British army, has white hair that falls over a face illumined by the spiritual and the intellectual. Meeting him for the first time after he had delivered a lecture on English literature, I sought in my mind a proper way in which to express my appreciadon of it. But before I had found it, I heard him exclaim, seriously:
“I say—What a smart hat you've got on!"
It dangled a long silver tassel, and while I was proud of it, I had never dared hope that it would excite the admiration of such an eminent ecclesiastic. However, the sympathy of the great for a pretty hat, immediately made the nobody beam, and we became friends.
This friendship was later irrevocably cemented. Travelers of that year remember that in England the children (and more grown-ups than will admit) played Beaver. For the uninitiated, the technique of the game consists in being the first one to shout irreverently "Beaver!" on the appearance of whiskers. Red whiskers are the mark of a Royal Beaver. Monsignor Bickerstaffe-Drew undertook to show me Salisbury Cathedral, near which his charming Queen Ann residence lies. Into its dim, glorious vastness we entered one summer day, and proceeded up the nave, examining the carved tombs of crusaders and nobility that stretch on either side—under some of which lie ancestors of the Monsignor.
"This," said thc vcricrable author-ecclesiastic, pausing before one of the tombs, "is perhaps the most perfect piece of carving in the Cathedral. The delicate—Bcaver I"
And my startled gaze rose to see a whiskered sightseer peering at something opposite us. It was then I discovered, that alike to the great and the obscure, whiskers are humorous.
One evening I went to a dinner party at The Hill, the estate of Viscount Leverhuhrie, who began his brilliant career as untitled William Lever. When I was placed next to our delightful septuagenarian host —England's lord of commerce—at the table, I frankly told him I was perturbed.
"Why?" he asked.
"I come from America—a land shorn of titles—and though I've been told a letter addressed to you should read 'The Right Honorable the Viscount Leverhulme' (how do the English ever find envelopes wide enough?] frankly, I really don't know what to call you.
"Call me Wall," promptly said the Right Honorable, the Viscount Leverhuline.
Not long afterwards, a very great, very famous literary giant was invited to dinner in the house where I was visiting. I was suffering from a heavy cold, and when whiskey was brought after dinner, my hostess insisted that I partake, to cure my cold. The literary giant, though austere, had a smile in his eye. Therefore I said, cycing the full bottle:
"Do you think there is enough here for both of us?"
"Not if you take the first drink," quoth he.
Yes, it is pleasant to be a nobody. There is the mind of genIus and the commonplace mind; but pussy cats, and hats with silver tassels, and whiskers, arid whiskey—recognize no distinction. They kindle the same spark in each.
