It would be so interesting to display one’s treasures when people came to tea.
“Never seen a real leader-writer?” I should say. “They’re plentiful locally, but mostly come out at night, and so many people miss them. It is not of the least use to put treacle on the trees. The best way is to drive a taxi slowly down Fleet Street about one in the morning and look honest. That’s how I got the big leader-writer in the hall. Just press his top waistcoat button and he’ll prove that the lost election was a moral victory.
“In the next case? Oh, they’re just a couple of little Georgian poets. They look wild, but they’re quite tame really. Sprinkle an advance on account of royalties on the window-sill and they’ll come for it. It used to be pretty to watch those two, pouring adulatory articles over each other. They sing chopped prose, and it seemed almost a pity to kill them; but there are plenty more.
“And that very pretty creature is an actress; if you drop an interviewer into the left hand corner of the dressing-room you will hear her say: ‘I love a country life, and am never happier than when I am working in my little garden,’—insert here the photograph in the sun-bonnet—‘I don’t think the great public often realizes what a vast amount of——’”
But I am talking about collecting other people. I am wandering from my subject. I must collect myself.
At a very early age I caught the measles and a little later on the public eye. The latter I still hold. But I do not often lose anything except friends, and occasionally the last ’bus, and of course my situations. My great model says it is a positive punishment to her to be in one position for long at a time, and I must be something like that—I rarely keep a place much longer than a month. On the other hand, I still have quite a number of metal discs that formed the wheels of a toy railway train which I had when I was quite a child. I should have had them all, but I used some to get chocolates out of the automatic machines.
I should have liked to have appended here a list of my accomplishments, but I must positively keep room for my last chapter. So to save space I will merely give a list of the accomplishments which I have not got, or have not got to perfection.
The E flat clarionet is not really my instrument, but I will give you three guesses what is.
I skate beautifully, but not so well as I dance. However, I am saving the I’s out of my autobiography for further practice.
Some people perhaps have better memories. But that’s no reason why they should write to the “Sunday Times” about it.