As Berry and I Were Saying by Dornford Yates

another Court was ready to hear him argue a difficult point of law. He might or might not have done by half-past four, when the Court would rise. Smith would leave at once for his chambers, there to hold consultations on three or more different cases soon to be tried. And about half-past six he would return to the House.
    “I may be wrong, but I don’t think that sort of life could be led by the average man. I mean, all Smith touched, he distinguished. The point of law which he argued could not have been argued so well by anyone else. (Perhaps I should except Danckwerts, for he was the greatest lawyer of them all.) I confess that nothing he did compares with the station-master’s feat, but I think you may fairly say that Smith made his brain obey him. And he was but one of several, almost as good.”
    “Supermen all,” said Berry. “About that, there can be no doubt. Their power of concentration resembled a spotlight which they could focus first upon one case and then upon another, to the complete exclusion of everything else. And now let me add a rider, which may make some people think. How was Smith able to do as much as he did? To sit up all night in the House and pull such a hell of a weight on the following day? Because he was perfectly served – waited on hand and foot. A chauffeur to drive him: a valet to help him undress and prepare his bath: other servants to produce his breakfast… Because he was spared every atom of physical effort. If he’d had to stoke his own furnace, before he could have a bath; clean his own shoes; help his wife to get breakfast and help her again to wash up before he went off; drive himself to the Temple – well, a very great man would never have left the ruck. Of such is the price of the death of domestic service. No man, they say, is a hero to his own valet. That may or may not be true. But no man becomes a hero who hasn’t got one. Conceive the one and only Arthur cleaning his own boots on the eve of Vittoria.”
    “Or Waterloo,” said Daphne.
    “Ah, he was a Field-Marshal then. And I think a Field Marshal has a share in a batman today. And now it’s Boy’s turn. My gorge must be allowed to subside.”
    “You said last night,” said my sister, “that you put Monseigneur Dixon into two of your books?”
    “So I did.”
    “The portrait was unmistakable?”
    “I can’t say that. You see, I didn’t know him so very well. But I had him full in my mind.”
    “And you did it again,” said Berry, “with that very prince of masters, Norman Kenneth Stephen of Harrow School.”
    “As well you know – in the Prologue of The Berry Scene .”
    “And that was recognized?”
    “Yes.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “I don’t think so. Bell in the Chandos books was inspired by the second ‘first servant’ I had in the first great war. He was – perfection. But every one of my characters is a composite picture of persons I’ve seen or known.”
    “Even Aunt Harriet ?” said Jill.
    “In Ann ? Yes.”
    “ Ann ,” said Berry, “is the very best short story you ever wrote. Most are tripe, so that isn’t saying much. But Ann —”
    “They aren’t,” shrieked Jill. “Boy’s never written tripe.”
    “Well, mediocre, then.”
    “And that’s untrue,” said Daphne. She looked at me. “How long was your name put first?”
    “On the covers of magazines? For exactly twenty years. To tell you the truth, I’m rather proud of that.”
    “Where was it put after that?”
    “Not even inside,” I said. “You see, I stopped writing short stories before I lost my place.”
    “Very wise,” said Berry. “ Did you always insist upon being given precedence?”
    “I never once raised the point. The editors did as they pleased.”
    “Are short stories easier to write than novels?”
    “I wouldn’t say that they were. The two are entirely different. When I’m writing a novel, after a very few pages the book takes charge.”
    “That is a saying,” said Daphne, “I never can