From the Angle of Seventeen

by Eden Phillpotts

I had never seen the great British public coming in to insure its goods and chat-tels before; but they continually poured in at our West-End Branch; and to see Mr. Bright and Mr. Bewes and Mr. Walter stand at the counters of the office and deal with the fearful complexities of the highest insurance problems was a great experience for me.

Mr. Walter was even more wonderful than Mr. Blades said he would be. His knowledge ranged over every branch of Art, and he was just as much at home in a Surrey-side theatre, laughing at a melodrama, as he was in the National Gallery among masterpieces of painting, or at St. James’ Hall listening to the thunderous intricacies of Wagnerian music. He understood nearly as much as Mr. Merridew about the stage, and was himself an accomplished histrion, well known to many professional actors. At Trafalgar Square there are, of course, great natural facilities for approaching the Strand; and Mr. Walter had availed himself of them, with a result that he knew the haunts of the sock and buskin as few knew them.

In person he was of medium stature, with an eye wherein Momus had made his home. He extracted humour from everything, and his facial command was such that while his audience might be convulsed with merriment, not a muscle moved. Occasionally he and Mr. Bright would indulge in a war of wit across the floor of the house, as they say; and on these occasions it was utterly impossible for me to pursue my avocation of registering policies.

Of Mr. Bewes I need only say that he was a silent and an obviously brainy man. He had a short black beard, a penetrating glance from behind his spectacles, and was a Roman Catholic. Of this important but secretive man I can mention one highly interesting fact. He never went out of doors for lunch, but descended to a lower chamber, where one might have a chop or steak, cooked by the Senior Messenger of the West-End Branch. Mr. Bewes always had a chop, except on Friday, when, being a staunch Catholic, he denied himself this trifling pleasure. But the extraordinary thing was that he never varied his lunch, or branched off in the direction of a steak or sausage. Thus he ate five chops every week, year after year, excepting when away for his holidays, when, of course, the staff did not know what he ate. For fifty weeks in the year he persisted in this course, with a result that the simplest statistics will show he ate two hundred and fifty chops per annum. A further calculation was also possible, which produced even more remarkable results, for it transpired that Mr. Bewes had been in the Apollo Fire Office for forty-eight years, and had persisted in his regular habits within the memory of man. Therefore, it followed that during his official career he had devoured no less than twelve thousand chops! One might work this out in sheep, and doubtless find that Mr. Bewes had consumed a very considerable flock in his time. His health was good, and his memory unimpaired; but he was now nearly seventy years of age, and proposed retiring on a pension fairly soon.

It gave one a good idea of the age and solidity of the Apollo, when one heard of a life like this devoted to its service. In fact, in the words of the poet, it can truly be said that “men may come and men may go; but the Apollo goes on forever.”

It would be impossible to describe how Mr. Bright and Mr. Walter enlarged my mind. They did not do it on purpose, or in an improving manner, but they just showed me, in casual conversation, their knowledge of life and its realities and the things that matter and the things that do not. And over it all was cast a mantle of easy tolerance and patience with the fools who came to insure, and the idiots who didn’t understand the very rudiments of the science, and the occasional shady customers, who gave wrong change and pretended they had made a mistake, and so on. It was the hand of steel in the velvet glove with Mr. Bright. I should think he must have been the hardest man to score off in the entire Apollo. His repartee was of the deadliest sort, and, on principle, he never allowed himself to be worsted in argument. You might have described his line of action as a combination of the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re; while Mr. Walter trusted almost entirely to the suaviter style, combined, of course, with a sense of the ludicrous which constantly enabled him to see funny things that nobody else saw. He was a mine of rich and rare quotations from the dramatists, and would apply these with an aptitude little short of miraculous. He would make puns at a moment’s provocation, and his draughtsmanship, in the impressionistic style, was such that he would make a lightning sketch of a man to his very face, while engaged in insuring his household goods. Occasionally Mr. Harrison felt called upon to check the universal hilarity; but he always did it with reluctance, for he also had a keen sense of humour, especially for jokes involving the Irish dialect.

Into this cheerful and exhilarating hive of industry I came, to find everybody most kindly disposed towards me. The work was, of course, hard; but it was lightened by occasional gleams of Mr. Bright or Mr. Walter; while another most excellent and genial man also came and went. He flitted in and out mysteriously, and proved to be called Mr. Macdonald. He was, therefore, of Scottish origin, and his work concerned the mysteries of Life Insurance. The science is even more abstruse than Fire Insurance, and needs what is known as the actuarial instinct. This must be rare, for I heard Mr. Bright declare to Mr. Macdonald that the great actuary is born, not made. Then there were also surveyors—men of special knowledge—who also came and went, and other junior clerks, who were rather more austere to me than the senior ones.

It was here, on the third day of my visit, that Mr. Bright kindly corrected my views with regard to demand and supply and other pressing questions of the day.

In politics I was a Conservative, but only by birth, and only up to the time of going to the West-End Branch of the Apollo. Then, under the greater knowledge and more philosophical intelligence of Mr. Bright, I began to calm down. It happened over a matter of a tailor. My Aunt Augusta, womanlike, attached importance to my clothes, and now directed me to buy a new suit. Mr. Walter was good enough to tell me of his tailor, who was a man of temperate views in the matter of cost, and I went to him. It was not far to go, as his emporium happened to be next door to the Apollo.

Well, this man was distinctly haughty. He was a large, amply-made man with a yellowish beard and full eye; and he looked down the sides of his nose like a camel. I told him that I had come to be measured for a suit of clothes, and he showed no interest whatever, but merely beckoned a lesser man and left me with him. Presently he strolled back, while I was being measured; and when, to show the gulf there must always be fixed, as I thought, between the customer and the tradesman, I hoped his business was prosperous and offered to let him have a pound or two in advance. At this he appeared amused, and asked me if I was one of those American millionaires in disguise. In fact, he was not content with putting himself on my level, but rather clearly indicated that he thought himself above it. This view from a tailor had all the charm of novelty to me; but I felt myself grow rather hot, and in my annoyance I tried a repartee in the style of Mr. Bright.