short?”
“I’ll have a beer,” I said. “So you don’t like Dickens?”
“‘E was phony to the backbone. So are they all, most of ‘em. Liars, every last one of ‘em practically.... Hoy, you! A Bass and a Scotch, you deaf bastard!... That’s the only way to talk to the working classes—or the middle classes, or the upper classes, for that matter. The crook of the arm in the ... I mean, treat ‘em rough. Never argue, never give ‘em a chance to think. Take ‘em individually, one by one. I’ll show you ‘ow Saturday night. The public is muck; shovel it! Bloody rabble. Divide and conquer. When in doubt, pick out the one with the loudest voice. Don’t break your knuckles on ‘im—the ‘eel of your ‘and under the tip of ‘is nose, a swift poke in the Adam’s apple, and let ‘im welter—prink ‘earty!”
“Sam Yudenow warned me—” I began.
“Yudenow! Pay no attention to ‘im, I warn you. You’ve read ‘ow they can concentrate a ‘ole pig into a pill? That’s Yudenow—a one-man Saturday-night crowd—the bloody Gadarene swine compressed. Just add water. That de’ydrated cesspool!”
He drank his whisky. My beer was, indeed, very flat I ordered again, and then said, “So you’ve read Dickens, have you?”
“Every last word,” said Copper Baldwin, “and did I enjoy ‘im? Yes, I did. Like Mickey-bloody-Mouse. ‘E ain’t true, ‘e ain’t real. And don’t give me all that stuff about ‘aving met Dickensian characters. I know you ‘ave, the same way you’ve met Gloria Swanson, or King George, or Jesus Christ in the Old Kent Road. Give the stinking rabble something easy to copy—that’s all—and there you are: ‘true to life,’ as they say. ‘Umbug! Crappy little sods like Dickens aren’t true to life—life is true to Charles Dickens. And that goes for that poor bastard William Shakespeare, too—though I admit ‘e done ‘is best within ‘is limitations.... And don’t let the Frenchmen or the Russians fool you, either; you mark my words. They never wrote about anything they saw or knew. Zola got it all out of the newspapers; and those ‘e ‘ad to read with a magnifying glass. ‘E was ‘alf blind, like Kipling or Rider ‘Aggard. You don’t see anything with a microscope or a telescope.” “What do you see then?”
“Nothing. Did you ever see a church? No. Or a ‘ouse? No. Or a man? No. Your poor bloody eyes are only made to take in a tiny little bit of anything at one time. You don’t see a thing, cocko, you see a mess of blobs. The closer you get the less you see. The farther away you get the less you see. And when you get in range, what d you see? Something in your imagination. And these poor stinkpots think they’re writing about life. Why, Gorblimey, it would take all of ‘em all their lives put together to write about one second! ... And then some crackpot like Tolstoy, or somebody,sits down on his arse and writes about a million pages all about war—and you say ‘Darling, isn’t it marvelous?’ Was ‘e in that war? No. Was Zola in the Franco-Prussian War? Bet your life ‘e wasn’t—’e buggered off to Marseilles, and pieced that book of ‘is together afterwards. But: ‘Stark realism,’says you. Is anybody ever in a war? The answer is no. I know—I was in the last one from beginning to end.”
“Get hurt?” I asked.
“Not a scratch,” said Copper Baldwin impatiently. “Peace, so-called, is a bloody sight more dangerous. But did I see any war? No. I froze in the mud, I sweated in the dust, I washed when I could and went lousy when I couldn’t; took orders from stinkpots that wasn’t fit to run a cockle stall— it was the same as I’d always been used to. But as for seeing the war—Christ, nobody ever saw it, and whatever you read about it is a lot of eyewash, ‘umbug, ‘earsay, common bloody lies. Like when you read about somebody who ‘knows ‘is London,’ or ‘knows women,’ or something. Why, not one man in a million
“I’ll have a beer,” I said. “So you don’t like Dickens?”
“‘E was phony to the backbone. So are they all, most of ‘em. Liars, every last one of ‘em practically.... Hoy, you! A Bass and a Scotch, you deaf bastard!... That’s the only way to talk to the working classes—or the middle classes, or the upper classes, for that matter. The crook of the arm in the ... I mean, treat ‘em rough. Never argue, never give ‘em a chance to think. Take ‘em individually, one by one. I’ll show you ‘ow Saturday night. The public is muck; shovel it! Bloody rabble. Divide and conquer. When in doubt, pick out the one with the loudest voice. Don’t break your knuckles on ‘im—the ‘eel of your ‘and under the tip of ‘is nose, a swift poke in the Adam’s apple, and let ‘im welter—prink ‘earty!”
“Sam Yudenow warned me—” I began.
“Yudenow! Pay no attention to ‘im, I warn you. You’ve read ‘ow they can concentrate a ‘ole pig into a pill? That’s Yudenow—a one-man Saturday-night crowd—the bloody Gadarene swine compressed. Just add water. That de’ydrated cesspool!”
He drank his whisky. My beer was, indeed, very flat I ordered again, and then said, “So you’ve read Dickens, have you?”
“Every last word,” said Copper Baldwin, “and did I enjoy ‘im? Yes, I did. Like Mickey-bloody-Mouse. ‘E ain’t true, ‘e ain’t real. And don’t give me all that stuff about ‘aving met Dickensian characters. I know you ‘ave, the same way you’ve met Gloria Swanson, or King George, or Jesus Christ in the Old Kent Road. Give the stinking rabble something easy to copy—that’s all—and there you are: ‘true to life,’ as they say. ‘Umbug! Crappy little sods like Dickens aren’t true to life—life is true to Charles Dickens. And that goes for that poor bastard William Shakespeare, too—though I admit ‘e done ‘is best within ‘is limitations.... And don’t let the Frenchmen or the Russians fool you, either; you mark my words. They never wrote about anything they saw or knew. Zola got it all out of the newspapers; and those ‘e ‘ad to read with a magnifying glass. ‘E was ‘alf blind, like Kipling or Rider ‘Aggard. You don’t see anything with a microscope or a telescope.” “What do you see then?”
“Nothing. Did you ever see a church? No. Or a ‘ouse? No. Or a man? No. Your poor bloody eyes are only made to take in a tiny little bit of anything at one time. You don’t see a thing, cocko, you see a mess of blobs. The closer you get the less you see. The farther away you get the less you see. And when you get in range, what d you see? Something in your imagination. And these poor stinkpots think they’re writing about life. Why, Gorblimey, it would take all of ‘em all their lives put together to write about one second! ... And then some crackpot like Tolstoy, or somebody,sits down on his arse and writes about a million pages all about war—and you say ‘Darling, isn’t it marvelous?’ Was ‘e in that war? No. Was Zola in the Franco-Prussian War? Bet your life ‘e wasn’t—’e buggered off to Marseilles, and pieced that book of ‘is together afterwards. But: ‘Stark realism,’says you. Is anybody ever in a war? The answer is no. I know—I was in the last one from beginning to end.”
“Get hurt?” I asked.
“Not a scratch,” said Copper Baldwin impatiently. “Peace, so-called, is a bloody sight more dangerous. But did I see any war? No. I froze in the mud, I sweated in the dust, I washed when I could and went lousy when I couldn’t; took orders from stinkpots that wasn’t fit to run a cockle stall— it was the same as I’d always been used to. But as for seeing the war—Christ, nobody ever saw it, and whatever you read about it is a lot of eyewash, ‘umbug, ‘earsay, common bloody lies. Like when you read about somebody who ‘knows ‘is London,’ or ‘knows women,’ or something. Why, not one man in a million
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