The Pritchett Century by V.S. Pritchett Page B

a servant or a workman by Christian or nickname. The voice in which Hobbs was addressed was reverent; it might have been used to a duke who had, for some reason, condescended to slum with us all; it was a tone of intimacy, even of awe. He was on simple, equal terms with everyone from the old gentleman down to the boys. One finds his type more often in the north of England than in the south, and indeed he came from Leeds and had a faint, flat weary Yorkshire accent. His speech was plain but caressing. He had walked into the business, in his deceptively idle way, some years before and discreetly appointed himself to be the brains of the firm. To everybody and to me especially, he was the only person to whom I could talk. He was a man of about thirty.
    One saw him, a tall thin figure, a sort of bent straw, but paddling down Weston Street early in the winter mornings, in his patent leather shoes, his fur-lined overcoat reaching to his ankles, his bowler hat tipped back from a lined forehead and resting, because of the long shape of his head, upon a pair of the ugliest ears I have ever seen. His little remaining hair rose in carefully barbered streaks over the long, egg-like head. A cigarette wagged in his mouth, his face was pale, seamed, ill and amused. Hobbs was a rake and his manner and appearance suggested days at the races and evenings at the stage door of the Gaiety, and the small hours at the card table. He looked as if he were dying—and he was—the skull grinned at one and the clothes fluttered about a walking skeleton.
    Eyes bloodshot, breath still smoking gin or whisky of the night before,he arrived almost as early as the office boys in order to get at the office mail before anyone else saw it. He memorized it; he was now equipped to deal with all the intrigue, quarrels and projects. By some nervous intimation he knew whenever a girl came into the office and he smiled at them all and his large serious eyes put them into a state. To all, at some time or other, he said “Darling, I’d like to bite your pretty shoulders.” Except to the dragon, the old man’s secretary, who often handed out religious tracts. She saw in Hobbs, no doubt, an opportunity for rescue and he deferred to her and started reading a line or two of the tracts at once while she was there and making expert comments on a passage in Exodus or Kings, so that the old lady began to blush victoriously. Girls liked to be caught in the warehouse lift with him for he instantly kissed their necks and looked their clothes over. His good manners overwhelmed Mrs Dunkley-Dunkerley in her kitchen. All office work stopped, even the cashier stopped his call-over of the accounts, when Hobbs went to the telephone and smiling at it, as if it were a very old raffish crony, ordered a chauffeur-driven Rolls to collect him in the evening and pick up one of his girls to take them to dinner at the Ritz. The partners listened to him in fright, wondering aloud about his debts, but would soon be confiding in him, as everyone else did and be angling for his advice.
    “Look what Father has done. James has told Father that Fred …”—Hobbs who always wore his bowler hat in the office and was the only one who was allowed to smoke, nodded and listened with religious attentiveness. The appearance of physical weakness and dissipation was a delusion. The firm chin, strong coarse mouth, the rapidity of mind, were signs of great nervous strength. The partners were gentlemen of the cheerfully snobbish kind. Hobbs was an intellectual from a provincial university who had read a lot and was a dilettante. His brain was in a continuous and efficient fever. If trade was slack and he had no business or customers to deal with, he’d go round the office and, with a smile that they could not resist, would take the clerks’ pens from them with a “By your leave, laddie” and do all their accounts and calculations in a few minutes while they gaped at him. Their lives were ruled by having