GETTING FIXED.
"Now mind, my boy, what you've got to do is to tell all your friends you are out looking for a job, and they'll give you introductions. Nothing like 'em; a friend at court, you know, and all that." This was from one of the friends to whom I had applied for a post. The advice was all he had to offer me.
I acted on it, and found my friends only too ready to give the required introductions. With alacrity they minuted me on from one to another till I felt as if "passed to you, please" had been scrawled all over me. But I persevered, and eventually weeded out from my list of introductions half-a-dozen that were addressed to solid men, high up in the City, who might be counted on not to miss the chance of a good thing. That is how in the early days of the Peace I was disposed to regard a demobilized young officer who had worn red tabs.
The first name on my selected list was John Pountney, of the firm of Laurence, Pountney & Co. My wife's uncle had been at school with John Pountney's brother, who unfortunately had no connection with the firm. But no matter; I filled up a form in the outer office—"Nature of Business, personal"—and sent it in with my note of introduction attached. John Pountney saw me. He did all the talking in quite an affable manner, told me of his son's experiences in the War, deplored the high price of petrol and his wife's difficulties in obtaining servants, and then: "Well, let's get to business. So you would like good employment in the City? What can you do?"
I began: "Well, Sir, when I was on the Staff——" He interrupted: "Now, don't go on to say that you can organise;" and he shook a finger at me playfully and was off once more with an anecdote about an officer in his son's regiment.
Eventually I found myself being bowed out in a rather dazed condition. Only one thing emerged at all clearly out of the whole interview; and I took from my pocket a sheet of paper, on which I had jotted down my most telling qualifications, and with a stub of blue pencil regretfully but firmly biffed out item No 1, Organising Ability.
I next approached the firm of Walbrook Bros., armed with a letter from a man who had once belonged to the same golf-club as the senior Walbrook brother.
"I can't read your friend's name," said this magnate, "but whoever he is he seems to think that you are the sort of man who might be useful in my business. What can you do?" and he leaned back patiently in his chair, finger-tips to finger-tips, but with all the appearance of one ready to pounce at my first weak statement.
"For the best part of four years," I began, "I have been living in France, and——"
He pounced. "Ah, French! I thought so. Now if you had said Spanish, or even Russian ..."
He frowned as the thought crossed his mind that I might yet say either of them. But I didn't, and he was free to expatiate on the alleged advantages of Spanish and a sound commercial education. The end was that I found myself once more in the street, this time erasing the word "Languages" from my dwindling list.
And so it went on. Mr. Hall, of the firm of Copt and Basing Hall, begged me not to speak of any capacity I might possess for controlling men. (Item No. 3: Disciplinary Power and Habit of Command.) He himself was able to do all the controlling that his staff would be likely to require. Mr. Throgmorton, managing director of the firm of Capel Sons and Threadneedle, Ltd., hoped at the outset that I would not speak of my mathematical proficiency. Many men were inclined to make a fetish of mathematics. He feared I might be one of them from the fact that I had begun to speak of (item No. 4) the tabulation and co-ordination of statistics.
After a week of this sort of thing I had acquired nothing but experience, and my experience now gave me an idea. I drew up a new list of important firms to which I had received no introductions at all, and selected one which I knew was presided over by a man of almost world-wide fame. Taking my courage and nothing else in my hands, I entered the inquiry-office.
"Slip, please," I said briskly to the youth behind the counter, and he handed me the customary form. Disregarding the spaces to be filled in, I scribbled diagonally across the paper the name of the great man, and wrote underneath: "Have called in passing, and cannot stay many minutes."
This I signed and handed to a messenger, remarking in a hurried and off-hand manner, "Say that, if he's engaged, I'd rather come another day, as I don't want to miss the 12.5 to Hatfield."
I had no desire to catch it either; but Hatfield is where the great man lives. This was my ingenious method of getting through the outer defences, and it worked. The youth behind the counter supposed I must be a personal friend (did I mention that I have an "air" and a power of controlling?... Ah, yes, item No. 3), and sped the messenger on his way. Not only so, but my message must have deceived the great one himself, for I was admitted to the Presence immediately.
He stood before me, holding my slip in his hand, with a puzzled frown on his face. The frown deepened as he failed to recognise me.
"You need have no fear," I said; "I have no letter of introduction." And I smiled pleasantly at him.
His look of apprehension vanished, and I continued, unfolding my blue-pencilled list of accomplishments:—"Listen: I am no organiser; my knowledge of French may be dismissed as negligible (this from the man with whom Jeanne Vincent had deigned to converse in her own tongue!); I profess no power of controlling my fellow-men; my mathematical ability isn't worth a rap, and, as to statistics, I neither tabulate nor co-ordinate them with any degree of readiness." Thereupon I bowed, with hands extended, as who should say, "You behold me; that's the sort of man I am."
He smiled faintly. "Excuse me, but what can you do?"
"That," said I, "is for you to discover. If, when I shall have worked in your office for say three months"—he started—"you are unable to find any use for me, then you are not the kind of man I take you for." And I drew myself up, striking what I hoped was a dignified attitude.
He stared at me for some seconds.
"You have references?" he asked.
"Of course," I answered, "but I know enough not to produce them till they are called for."
Then he pressed a bell. "I am going," he said, "to introduce you to my manager. You have certain qualifications which I think may be useful to us."
Member. "What's the beef like to-day? Is it eatable?"
Club Waitress. "Some says it is and some says it isn't; but you never can go by what people say."
Bored Little Girl. "Aren't you nearly clean now, Mummy?"