THE REAL DALRYMPLE.
You would feel quite uncomfortable if you heard Dalrymple talk. He conveys the impression that everything is badly in the way and ought to be removed at once. That's his view. Dalrymple has no patience with the social system. This includes everything, from the washing bill to the House of Commons.
Dalrymple said the General Election made him impatient. By the way, Dalrymple is a fine upstanding personage, with just the coloured hair the lady novelists dote on, and eyes in harmony; but despite his handsome placid bearing Dalrymple is a fire-eater of the hungriest.
"What you want to do is to make a clean sweep of everything," he said. "Money is an anachronism, and in a perfectly ordered State would not be required."
Of course it is no more use arguing with Dalrymple than it would be to attempt a controversy on naval affairs with Lord Nelson on his pedestal.
And then there is this about Dalrymple—you remember what some Court poet said concerning Louis THE FOURTEENTH; it was to the effect that quand le Roi parle—well, apparently everything and everybody else had to put up the shutters. I forget exactly how the thing ran. It is just so with Dalrymple. He comes into my room in the City and warms himself, though no fire is needed to fan his enthusiasm for destruction. The Bolsheviks are peaceable Sunday folk compared with him. A Nihilist on a war footing would be considered Quaker-like in his symptoms.
Dalrymple is neck or nothing. He is a whole-hogger even to the most indigestible bit of crackling.
"What we want is a fresh start," he said. "Then you could begin anew and everybody would have a chance. Burn things, blow them up, leave nothing; then we should see something. Your whole scheme is faulty. Your Underground—" Dalrymple has an irritating habit of fathering things on me, which is unfair, for, as regards the Tubes, for instance, I am sorry to say I have not even a share, and often not as much as a strap.
"But the Underground is only a bit overcrowded," I ventured to say. "It can't help that, you know."
"It is all wrong," said Dalrymple. "The entire gadget is defective. Look at France, look at America, look at Germany and Russia and the Jugo-Slavs."
It was rather breathless work looking at all these nations and peoples, but I did my best. Dalrymple is particularly strong when it is a question of the Jugo-Slavs, and he always gave me the idea that he spent his Saturday afternoons enunciating chatty pleasantries in Trafalgar Square and on Tower Hill.
But—you might just see the finish—Dalrymple was not doing anything of the sort the afternoon that I was out house-hunting. Yes, it is true. You will scarcely credit the fact that I found any difficulty in tracking down an eligible villa, but that is the case.
The quest took me to a pleasant semi-rural neighbourhood where there was room for gardens with the borders edged with the nice soft yellow-tinted box, and rose walks, and dainty little arbours, and fandangled appurtenances which amateur gardeners love with perfect justification.
And there was Dalrymple. I won't deceive you. I recognised him on the other side of a low oak fence. He was wearing an old hat of the texture of the bit of headgear which the man who impersonates Napoleon at the music-hall doubles up and plays tricks with, only Dalrymple's hat had obviously been white and was now going green and other colours with wear and tear.
And wherever Dalrymple went a small cherub in a holland frock went too. The cherub would be about five. Dalrymple was fashioning a hen-coop out of two or three soap-boxes. Both he and the cherub ceased activities when I hailed and approached; and I stopped to dinner. Dalrymple told me he rather fancied he could wangle me a bungalow.
"I know the agent chap," he said, as we sampled a very pleasant glass of port. "Of course they want to keep it fairly dark or we should be swamped. I have taken a lot of trouble myself, you know, and am just starting gardening lectures at our club."
So he went on—the house, his new roses, the hens, the jam his wife made, the idea he had for a winter garden in the interests of his wife's mother, who could then take the air in her Bath-chair.
"But," I said, "you want to sweep everything away. You aim at sending villages like this to pot—your own word, you remember. And then there are the Jugo-Slavs—"
Dalrymple winked and handed me the cigars.
I fancy he is a fraud.
"AEROPLANE FLIGHT TO INDIA.
"PREPARATIONS FOR DECEPTION IN DELHI."—Englishman (Calcutta).
But the aviators, in order that there might be no doubt about their bona fides, wisely landed at Karachi.