Marge Askinforit.

by Barry Pain.

NOTE

This book was suggested by the reading of some extracts from the autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait for posterity and perspective will pardon a little contemporary distortion.

In adding my humble wreath to the flatteries--in their sincerest form--which she has already received, I should like to point out that a parody of an autobiography should not be a caricature of the people biographed--some of whom must already have suffered enough. I have lowered the social key of the original considerably, not only to bring it within the compa.s.s of the executant, but also to make a distinction.

I have increased the remoteness from real life--which was sometimes appreciable in the original--to such an extent that it should be impossible to suppose that any of the grotesques of the parody is intended for anybody in real life. n.o.body in the parody is intended to be a representation, or even a misrepresentation, of any real person living or dead. For instance, Inmemorison is not intended to be a caricature of Tennyson, but the pa.s.sage which deals with him is intended to parody some of the stuff that has been written about Tennyson.

No doubt the author of the original has opened to the public several doors through which it is not thinkable that a parodist would care to follow her. Apart from that, parody should be brief, just as autobiography should be long--_ars brevis, vita longa_.

BARRY PAIN.

_October_ 8, 1920.

_The quotations are from the articles which appeared in "The Sunday Times." It does not of course follow that these pa.s.sages will appear in the same form, or will appear at all, when the complete autobiography is published._

MARGE ASKINFORIT

FIRST EXTRACT

THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY

I was christened Margarine, of course, but in my own circle I have always been known as Marge. The name is, I am informed, derived from the Latin word _margo_, meaning the limit. I have always tried to live right up to it.

We were a very numerous family, and I can find s.p.a.ce for biographical details of only a few of the more important. I must keep room for myself.

My elder sister, Casein--Casey, as we always called her--was supposed to be the most like myself, and was less bucked about it than one would have expected. I never made any mistake myself as to which was which. I had not her beautiful l.u.s.trous eyes, but neither had she my wonderful cheek. She had not my intelligence. Nor had she my priceless gift for uttering an unimportant personal opinion as if it were the final verdict of posterity with the black cap on. We were devoted to one another, and many a time have I owed my position as temporary parlour-maid in an unsuspicious family to the excellent character that she had written for me.

She married Moses Morgenstein, a naturalized British subject, who showed his love for his adopted country by trading as Stanley Harcourt. He was a striking figure with his coal-black hair and nails, his drooping eye-lashes and under-lip, and the downward sweep of his ingratiating nose. The war found him burning with enthusiasm, and I give here one verse of a fine poem which he wrote and, as I will remember, recited in Mrs. Mopworth's _salon_:

I vos in Luntun since t'ree year, In dis lant I holt so tear, Inklant, my Inklant!

Mit her overbowering might If she gonquer in der fight, M. Morgenstein vill be all right-- _Nicht?_-- Inklant, my own!

He was a man of diverse talents, and I used to regret that he gave to the tripe-dressing what was meant for the muses. Alas, he was, though indirectly, one of the many victims of the Great War. His scheme for the concealment of excess profits was elaborate and ingenious, and practised with a.s.siduity. His simple mind could not apprehend that elemental honesty was in process of modification. "Vot I maig for myself, dat I keeb, _nicht?_" he often said to me. And then the blow fell.

However, he has earned the utmost remission to which good conduct could ent.i.tle him, and we are hoping that he will be out again by Christmas.

My next sister, Saccharine, was of a filmy and prismatic beauty that was sufficient evidence of her Cohltar origin--our mother, of course, was a Cohltar. I never thought her mind the equal of my own. Indeed, at the moment of going to press I have not yet met the mind that I thought the equal of my own. But about her beauty there was no doubt. In those days--I am speaking of the 'nineties--it was quite an ordinary event for my sister, inadvertently, to hold up an omnibus. The horses pulled up as soon as they saw her, and refused to move until they had drunk their fill of her astounding beauty. I well remember one occasion on which the horses in a West Kensington omnibus met her at Piccadilly Circus and refused to leave her until she reached Highgate, in spite of the whip of the driver, the blasphemy of the conductor, the more formal complaints of the pa.s.sengers, and direct police intervention.

She was a sweet girl in those days, and I loved her. I never had any feelings of jealousy. How can one who is definitely a.s.sured of superiority to everybody be jealous of anybody?

She married a Russian, Alexis Chopitoff. He was a perfect artist in his own medium, which happened to be hair. It is to him that I owe what is my only beauty, and I am a.s.sured that it defies detection. At one time life's greatest prizes seemed to be within his reach. During the war his skill in rendering the _chevelure_ of noted pianists fit for military service attracted official attention, and if he had been made O.B.E. it would have come as no surprise to any of us. Unhappily his interest in the political affairs of his own country led him to annex at Waterloo a despatch-case which, pedantically speaking, did not belong to him. The case unfortunately happened to contain a diamond tiara, and this led to misunderstandings. Nothing could have exceeded the courage of dear Saccharine when she learned that at the end of his sentence he was to be deported.

"It will leave me," she said, with perfect calm and in words that have since become historical, "in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility."

But I knew how near she was to a nervous breakdown. Indeed, nervous breakdown was her successful defence when, a week later, she was arrested at Whiteridge's with a tin of sardines, two cakes of super-cream toilet-soap, and a bound copy of Keble's "Christian Year" in her m.u.f.f. The malice and animosity that Whiteridge's showed in the prosecution are but partly excused by the fact that dear Saccharine had pinched the m.u.f.f first.

Another sister, Chlorine, in later years became well known as a medium.

She communicated with the hereafter, or at the very least professed to do so, by telephonic wireless. It used to be rather weird to hear her ring up "Gehenna, 1 double 7, 6." I have not the least doubt that she would have convinced a famous physicist who, curiously enough, is weak on facts, or a writer of detective stories who, equally curiously, is weak on imagination. I am sorry to say that she would never give me the winner of the next Derby, nor do I remember that she ever used this special and exclusive information for her own benefit. But, like other mediums, she could always give a plausible reason for avoiding any test that was really a test; and now that she has doubled her fees owing to the increased cost of labour and materials, she ought to do very well, particularly after the friendly boost that I have just given her.

Then there was Methyll--this is the old Anglo-Saxon form of Ethel. She was a charming child and made a profound study of natural history. I remember her saying to me at a reception where the refreshments had been somewhat restricted: "One c.o.c.ktail doesn't make a swallow." Modern biology has, I believe, confirmed this observation. She spent much of her time at the Zoo, and it was thought that it would be an advantage if she could be permanently resident there. But although she was not unlike a flamingo in the face, and I had some interest with the man who supplies the fish for the sea-lions, no vacant cage could be found. An offer to let her share one with the ca.s.sowary--_missionara timbuctana_--was refused.

I must now speak of another sister, Caramel, though I do so with grief.

However, there is a skeleton in every fold--I mean to say, a black sheep in every cupboard. She was undeniably beautiful, and had a romantic postcard face. Her figure was perfect. Her intelligence was C 3. In a weak moment she accepted a thinking part in a revue at the "Frivolity,"

and her career ended, as might have been expected, in a shocking _mesalliance_. She married the Marquis of Beanstrite, and has more than once appeared on the back page of the "Daily Mail," but that is not everything. She never sees anything of me now, and it brings the tears to my eyes when I think what she is missing.

My brothers were all of them sportsmen, but they were seldom at home.

They seemed to feel that they were wanted elsewhere, and they generally were. You ask any policeman in the Kentish Town district, mentioning my name, and he will tell you.

There were seventy-three of us all together, of whom eighty-four survive, including myself. And yet dear papa sometimes seems a little irritable--I wonder why.

My mamma was quite different from my papa. They were not even of the same s.e.x. But that so often happens, don't you think?

My father had a curious fancy for naming all his sons after subsequent winners of the Derby. No doubt it will be said that this is not always practical; nor is it--the Derby is occasionally won by a gee-gee of the s.e.x which I have myself adopted, and in those cases the name is unsuitable for a boy. But if it could be generally done, it would absolutely preclude any betting on one of our cla.s.sic races; it would probably also preclude the race. After all, we do have to be moral in the intervals, and reclaim factory-girls in the dinner-hour. But I fear it will never happen--so few men have dear papa's wonderful foresight.

Spearmint, my eldest surviving brother, came much under the influence of Alexis Chopitoff, and entered the same profession. Simple and una.s.suming, no one would have supposed that in one year he had backed the winner in all the princ.i.p.al races. But such was veritably the case.

"There's nothing in it, Marge," he said to me one evening. "There's only one sure way to win--back every horse in the race with another man's money. I tell a customer the tale that I was shaving a well-known trainer that morning, and that the trainer had given me a certainty; all I ask is that the customer will put half-a-crown on for me. I repeat the process, changing the name of the certainty, until I have got all risks covered. I know it's old fashioned, but I like it. It demands nothing but patience, and it cannot possibly go wrong."

But it did go wrong. He was telling the tale of how the well-known trainer had given him the certainty to a new customer, whom Spearmint had never shaved before. By a disastrous coincidence it happened that the new customer actually was that well-known trainer. He seemed to think that Spearmint had taken a liberty with his name, and even to resent it.

Spearmint did not lose the sight of the left eye, as was at one time feared, but his looks have never been quite the same since his nose was broken.

My next brother, Orby, was born in 1870. He could do the most graceful and charming things. When his namesake won the Derby in 1907, he immediately acquired a complimentary Irish accent, and employed it in the narration of humorous stories. An accent acquired at the age of thirty-seven is perhaps liable to lack conviction, and I always thought that my brother was over-scrupulous in beginning every sentence with the word "Bedad." Like myself, he simply did not know what fear was, and in consequence told his Irish stories in his own Irish accent to a real Irishman. However, now that he has got his new teeth in you would never know that he had been hit. It was said of him by a great legal authority--I forget in which police-court--that he had the best manners and the least honesty of any taxi-driver on the Knightsbridge rank.

Another brother, Sunstar, acquired considerable reputation by his skill in legerdemain. If you lent him a watch or a coin, with one turn of his hand he would make it disappear; he could do the same thing when you had not lent it. He could make anything disappear that was not absolutely screwed to the floor, and at public-houses where he was known the pewter from which he drank was always chained to the bar. He had something of my own quixotic nature, and would probably have taken the rest if he had wanted it. One day at Ascot he made a stranger's watch disappear. When he came to examine his newly-acquired property he was disappointed to find that the watch was a four-and-sixpenny American Everbright--"Puts you wrong, Day and night." He was on the point of throwing it away when the kindly thought came to him that perhaps the stranger attached some sentimental value to that watch; indeed, there seemed to be no other possible reason for wearing it. Sunstar determined to replace the watch in the stranger's pocket. He did his best, but he was far more practised in removing than in replacing. The stranger--a hulking, cowardly brute--caught my brother with his hand in his pocket, and failed to grasp the altruism of his motives, and that is why poor Sunnie walks a little lame.

He is not with us at present. He had made quite a number of things disappear, and a censorious world is ever p.r.o.ne to judge by disappearances. It became expedient--and even necessary--for my brother to make himself disappear, and he did so.

The Second Extract, as they say on the film, will follow immediately.

SECOND EXTRACT

EBULLIENT YOUTH

I have been studying the beautiful pages of the autobiography of my Great Example--hereinafter to be called the G.E. It is wonderful to be admitted to the circle of the elect, week after week, at the low rate of twopence a time. Why, I've paid more to see the pictures.

Considering the price, one ought not to carp. The G.E. says in one extract that she has lost every female friend she ever had, with the exception of four. In a subsequent extract she names six women whose friendship has remained loving and true to her since girlhood. She speaks of a four-line stanza as a couplet. She imputes a "blasphemous tirade" to a great man of science who certainly never uttered one. She says that she had a conversation with Lord Salisbury about the fiscal controversy, in which he took no part, the year after his death. But why make a fuss about little things like this? If you write in bed at the rate of one thousand words an hour, accidents are sure to happen.