Twixt Desk and Shelves
by James Leatham
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE EIGHT – A Large Man and Some Small Topics.
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE EIGHT – A Large Man and Some Small Topics.
First published in The Gateway in February 1917.
He was a very large man and his size was exaggerated by the heavy coat, with collar and cuffs of astrakhan, which he wore. His face was clean-shaven, and the jaw stood out aggressively, but the impression of determination it gave was corrected by the smiling eyes. The large man was really a pleasant and sympathetic companion, fond of a joke, and would laugh till his eyes ran tears.
The printer, who had known him of old, but had not seen him for years, watched him through the machine room windows as he stood surveying the home of the press and reading the lettering on the windows. Presently he came in, by the shop entrance, and as they met there was a great fire of salutations and reciprocal inquiries, the visitor speaking in a high-set voice which seemed disproportionate to his corporeal bulk. But there were many tones in the voice all the same and its owner could make it telling and impressive. He had the careful delivery of one who did much well-considered platform speakings for he was a lecturer and writer, equally at home on platform and in pulpit.
He was calling, he explained, on the Reverend Gordon Fife, and would be in again later in the day.
Printer: Well, we close at one on Saturday. I reckon myself a workman, not a shopkeeper.
Visitor: What a fine, light, roomy place you have here!
Printer; Well, it’s all that; but there are drawbacks too, and the chief of these is damp – from that back wall, you know. There is an earthen bank behind, and where should it drain but through the wall?
As they passed through among the books, the large man said: ‘You should have plenty of work here?’
Printer: Yes, there’s rather too much at present, for all the staff. Work! I have never had any difficulty in finding plenty of work. The difficulty has been to find leisure for the enjoyment of life. I do not misunderstand you. But the way in which some people ask if you have plenty of work makes one wonder what these people will do in heaven. They seem to need work for its own sake. Nobody asks if you are getting plenty for your work. They talk as if work were its own reward; as if they couldn’t put in the time unless there were work to do, and as if anybody who gave them yet another job was a benefactor.
Visitor: Oh, yes, and I daresay many of them find it so. When one sees the way in which they wickedly waste their evenings and week-ends, one can’t help feeling that anybody who puts their necks into the work-collar is doing them a service… How do you like St Congans?
Painter: Oh, you’re coming in again. I should like to take time to tell you. I like the place and I’m not a pezzer; but I know what I want and I can tell whether I’m having it or not.
Visitor: You’re away from Zepps anyhow.
Printer (laughing): They were dropping bombs within seven or eight miles of here a few weeks after I came. However, there won’t be an alarm four times in a week, and month after month, the sort of thing I came away from.
(an interval of two hours)
The large Visitor returns, and the Printer places a chair for him in the machine-room.
Visitor: Have you read Neil Lyons?
Printer: A dozen years ago. I read Arthur’s’ ‘Sixpenny Pieces’, and lots of short stories of his as they appeared in Clarion. Don’t you see Clarion?
Visitor: I don’t.
Printer: Well, I am not seeing it now – since I came here. I must order it again. It’s a great shame to drop a sheet like that merely because it has fallen off. We don’t cut an old friend merely because his mind has given way a little. The Clarion was a splendid experiment, and for a time it was even commercially successful. Just after the General Election of 1906, when ‘C.B.’ swept the country, and Labour won thirty seats, the Clarion went up to 85,000 a week. I suppose everybody wanted to see a Socialist paper that had had a great hand in the great change.
Visitor: And you say it has fallen off?
Printer: Yes; a funny thing! Blatchford gets the most prominent place in the Sunday Chronicle, and will probably have not much less than his owl ‘retainer’ which was £1,000 a year - £20 a week. A. M. Thompson, also, writes for the Chronicle, to my thinking the cleverest, most original articles that appear in it. And Thompson is, as you know, the most steadily and deservedly successful writer of musical comedy in Britain or probably anywhere else. ‘The Blue Moon’, ‘Tom Jones’, ‘The Dairymaids’, ‘The Arcadians’, ‘The Mouseme’ are all his. And yet, although both these men and other clever writers put some of their best into the Clarion, in which they had a free hand, since they were its owners, the British public wouldn’t buy the sheet.
Visitor: But you say the Clarion has as high as 80,000 of a circulation!
Printer: Yes, but that was the high-water mark. Anyhow, it is nothing like the circulation of Reynolds, or John Bull, or Lloyds’ or The Daily Mail will have; and there used to be as much talent in one Clarion as would fit out half-a-dozen numbers of any of these sheets. Indeed , the kind of things that found their way into Clarion would never by any chance have had a show in any of those other papers, except perhaps the Sunday Chronicle.
Visitor: And so they lost heart, and the Clarion, you say, has fallen off?
Printer: Something of the kind. Their daughters now write, or did recently, a good deal of the Clarion. And they are nice, clever girls; but they are not their fathers, but only their fathers’ daughters.
Visitor: Well, well. But what is your point?
Painter: Oh, I don’t know that it is much of a point; but I can’t help marvelling that people who read with avidity what these men have to say when they say it in somebody else’s paper don’t want to read what they have to say, with an absolutely free hand, in their own paper. The ways in which prejudice work out in practice are a constant source of amazement and speculation to anybody who makes mankind his chief study, as we are told it ought to be.
The Visitor probably feels that his reference to Neil Lyons is a little unfortunate, since the reproach of neglecting the Clarion men evidently applies to himself. Anyhow he changes the subject.
Visitor: You promised to tell me how you liked St Congans. You know I like Mr Fife.
Printer: Well, as I said before, I like the place. As I go to and fro between my temporary home and this place, I like the wide view of the valley, with the stream glinting in its windings, and the dark woods on the surrounding heights. All about is charmingly wooded, and wood-fires are no luxury here.
Visitor: Every prospect pleases and man alone –
Printer: NO, no. I am delighted to be back in my ain countrie, and although St Congans is – different – it is perhaps just because I never sojourned in so small a place before.
Visitor: St Congans seems a nice place to come to. I’ve had some very good meetings here.
Printer: Well, the young men are mostly away. But I haven’t met a bookman or an enthusiastic student since I came here. In my young manhood I knew the contents of every second-hand book shop in the city; although I was an active politician and a printer’s foreman living a pretty busy life during the day. But only one of the male teachers at the higher grade school has ever crossed my threshold, and he has only been once. And he is a Yorkshireman.
Visitor: You surprise me. There ought to be more reading done in a small inland town than in a city, in proportion to population; because, of course, there is so little else going on.
Printer: Well there isn’t. Everybody seems to go to bed at ten.
Visitor: But that will only mean they rise earlier.
Printer: Not a bit of it. In cities the milk used to come not later than seven. Here it never comes earlier than eight. There are a great many out-workers who do not start till eight in the winter time, whereas in the cities and large towns the factories start at six. I’m not saying that eight isn’t quite early enough. The point is that a person who hasn’t to start work till eight does not need to be in bed at ten the previous night. To sleep, or to lie in bed, more than eight hours when one is in health is a form of sensuality and a fearful waste of life.
Visitor (smiling): Yes, unless one can read in bed.
Printer: In this case I see the lights go out at ten.
At this point a neighbour came in; and the large man, sitting up in his chair with great dignity, asked: ‘Is this your friend?’
Printer: This is my landlord and nearest neighbour, and we have never had a cross word in nine months.
The Large Man, speaking rather crossly, expressed the hope that everybody else in the town was treating the Printer as well; that he hoped they knew who they had, and referred to fancy salaries that people with half the brains, etc.
The Printer: Oh, come! All this pity and indignation are a trifle wasted. You have been hobnobbing with the clergy today. Does it occur to you that I address a very large congregation, and that it is a silver collection every time.
The Large Man: Yes, I suppose you’re happy. You have your freedom and your influence.
Sculptor (smiling): Yes, he works verra hard. There’s only one thing. He neglects to sweep his chimney till she jibs and smores him oot.
And then it was discovered that it was dinner time: the sederunt broke up, the large man made some purchases, and after swopping a few jokes, they parted with a hearty handshake.
He was a very large man and his size was exaggerated by the heavy coat, with collar and cuffs of astrakhan, which he wore. His face was clean-shaven, and the jaw stood out aggressively, but the impression of determination it gave was corrected by the smiling eyes. The large man was really a pleasant and sympathetic companion, fond of a joke, and would laugh till his eyes ran tears.
The printer, who had known him of old, but had not seen him for years, watched him through the machine room windows as he stood surveying the home of the press and reading the lettering on the windows. Presently he came in, by the shop entrance, and as they met there was a great fire of salutations and reciprocal inquiries, the visitor speaking in a high-set voice which seemed disproportionate to his corporeal bulk. But there were many tones in the voice all the same and its owner could make it telling and impressive. He had the careful delivery of one who did much well-considered platform speakings for he was a lecturer and writer, equally at home on platform and in pulpit.
He was calling, he explained, on the Reverend Gordon Fife, and would be in again later in the day.
Printer: Well, we close at one on Saturday. I reckon myself a workman, not a shopkeeper.
Visitor: What a fine, light, roomy place you have here!
Printer; Well, it’s all that; but there are drawbacks too, and the chief of these is damp – from that back wall, you know. There is an earthen bank behind, and where should it drain but through the wall?
As they passed through among the books, the large man said: ‘You should have plenty of work here?’
Printer: Yes, there’s rather too much at present, for all the staff. Work! I have never had any difficulty in finding plenty of work. The difficulty has been to find leisure for the enjoyment of life. I do not misunderstand you. But the way in which some people ask if you have plenty of work makes one wonder what these people will do in heaven. They seem to need work for its own sake. Nobody asks if you are getting plenty for your work. They talk as if work were its own reward; as if they couldn’t put in the time unless there were work to do, and as if anybody who gave them yet another job was a benefactor.
Visitor: Oh, yes, and I daresay many of them find it so. When one sees the way in which they wickedly waste their evenings and week-ends, one can’t help feeling that anybody who puts their necks into the work-collar is doing them a service… How do you like St Congans?
Painter: Oh, you’re coming in again. I should like to take time to tell you. I like the place and I’m not a pezzer; but I know what I want and I can tell whether I’m having it or not.
Visitor: You’re away from Zepps anyhow.
Printer (laughing): They were dropping bombs within seven or eight miles of here a few weeks after I came. However, there won’t be an alarm four times in a week, and month after month, the sort of thing I came away from.
(an interval of two hours)
The large Visitor returns, and the Printer places a chair for him in the machine-room.
Visitor: Have you read Neil Lyons?
Printer: A dozen years ago. I read Arthur’s’ ‘Sixpenny Pieces’, and lots of short stories of his as they appeared in Clarion. Don’t you see Clarion?
Visitor: I don’t.
Printer: Well, I am not seeing it now – since I came here. I must order it again. It’s a great shame to drop a sheet like that merely because it has fallen off. We don’t cut an old friend merely because his mind has given way a little. The Clarion was a splendid experiment, and for a time it was even commercially successful. Just after the General Election of 1906, when ‘C.B.’ swept the country, and Labour won thirty seats, the Clarion went up to 85,000 a week. I suppose everybody wanted to see a Socialist paper that had had a great hand in the great change.
Visitor: And you say it has fallen off?
Printer: Yes; a funny thing! Blatchford gets the most prominent place in the Sunday Chronicle, and will probably have not much less than his owl ‘retainer’ which was £1,000 a year - £20 a week. A. M. Thompson, also, writes for the Chronicle, to my thinking the cleverest, most original articles that appear in it. And Thompson is, as you know, the most steadily and deservedly successful writer of musical comedy in Britain or probably anywhere else. ‘The Blue Moon’, ‘Tom Jones’, ‘The Dairymaids’, ‘The Arcadians’, ‘The Mouseme’ are all his. And yet, although both these men and other clever writers put some of their best into the Clarion, in which they had a free hand, since they were its owners, the British public wouldn’t buy the sheet.
Visitor: But you say the Clarion has as high as 80,000 of a circulation!
Printer: Yes, but that was the high-water mark. Anyhow, it is nothing like the circulation of Reynolds, or John Bull, or Lloyds’ or The Daily Mail will have; and there used to be as much talent in one Clarion as would fit out half-a-dozen numbers of any of these sheets. Indeed , the kind of things that found their way into Clarion would never by any chance have had a show in any of those other papers, except perhaps the Sunday Chronicle.
Visitor: And so they lost heart, and the Clarion, you say, has fallen off?
Printer: Something of the kind. Their daughters now write, or did recently, a good deal of the Clarion. And they are nice, clever girls; but they are not their fathers, but only their fathers’ daughters.
Visitor: Well, well. But what is your point?
Painter: Oh, I don’t know that it is much of a point; but I can’t help marvelling that people who read with avidity what these men have to say when they say it in somebody else’s paper don’t want to read what they have to say, with an absolutely free hand, in their own paper. The ways in which prejudice work out in practice are a constant source of amazement and speculation to anybody who makes mankind his chief study, as we are told it ought to be.
The Visitor probably feels that his reference to Neil Lyons is a little unfortunate, since the reproach of neglecting the Clarion men evidently applies to himself. Anyhow he changes the subject.
Visitor: You promised to tell me how you liked St Congans. You know I like Mr Fife.
Printer: Well, as I said before, I like the place. As I go to and fro between my temporary home and this place, I like the wide view of the valley, with the stream glinting in its windings, and the dark woods on the surrounding heights. All about is charmingly wooded, and wood-fires are no luxury here.
Visitor: Every prospect pleases and man alone –
Printer: NO, no. I am delighted to be back in my ain countrie, and although St Congans is – different – it is perhaps just because I never sojourned in so small a place before.
Visitor: St Congans seems a nice place to come to. I’ve had some very good meetings here.
Printer: Well, the young men are mostly away. But I haven’t met a bookman or an enthusiastic student since I came here. In my young manhood I knew the contents of every second-hand book shop in the city; although I was an active politician and a printer’s foreman living a pretty busy life during the day. But only one of the male teachers at the higher grade school has ever crossed my threshold, and he has only been once. And he is a Yorkshireman.
Visitor: You surprise me. There ought to be more reading done in a small inland town than in a city, in proportion to population; because, of course, there is so little else going on.
Printer: Well there isn’t. Everybody seems to go to bed at ten.
Visitor: But that will only mean they rise earlier.
Printer: Not a bit of it. In cities the milk used to come not later than seven. Here it never comes earlier than eight. There are a great many out-workers who do not start till eight in the winter time, whereas in the cities and large towns the factories start at six. I’m not saying that eight isn’t quite early enough. The point is that a person who hasn’t to start work till eight does not need to be in bed at ten the previous night. To sleep, or to lie in bed, more than eight hours when one is in health is a form of sensuality and a fearful waste of life.
Visitor (smiling): Yes, unless one can read in bed.
Printer: In this case I see the lights go out at ten.
At this point a neighbour came in; and the large man, sitting up in his chair with great dignity, asked: ‘Is this your friend?’
Printer: This is my landlord and nearest neighbour, and we have never had a cross word in nine months.
The Large Man, speaking rather crossly, expressed the hope that everybody else in the town was treating the Printer as well; that he hoped they knew who they had, and referred to fancy salaries that people with half the brains, etc.
The Printer: Oh, come! All this pity and indignation are a trifle wasted. You have been hobnobbing with the clergy today. Does it occur to you that I address a very large congregation, and that it is a silver collection every time.
The Large Man: Yes, I suppose you’re happy. You have your freedom and your influence.
Sculptor (smiling): Yes, he works verra hard. There’s only one thing. He neglects to sweep his chimney till she jibs and smores him oot.
And then it was discovered that it was dinner time: the sederunt broke up, the large man made some purchases, and after swopping a few jokes, they parted with a hearty handshake.
About the Author
James Leatham was born in Aberdeen in 1865 and apprenticed to a printer aged 13½. Over his life he worked for a range of papers/periodicals in the North East of Scotland and England, including the St Nicholas Press, The Workers Herald and The Peterhead Sentinel (editorship of which he took over from David Scott in 1897). He wrote for radical socialist papers throughout his life at a time when socialism and the Labour Party were a febrile battleground of theory and practice. He more than once lost his job because of his political views. In his 50’s he moved back to Aberdeenshire, setting up the Deveron Press in 1916 from his Turriff base. He published many ‘penny pamphlets’ and in book form his publications include the political work Socialism and Character (1897); William Morris: A Master of Many Crafts (1900); and a tribute to David Scott, Daavit (1912).