AMUSING FIRST NOVEL
… I myself paid Mr Fotheringay the very sincere tribute of laughing out loud several times over the absurd adventures of his hero, Leander Belmont … If Crazy Capers bears little or no relation to the experiences of actual life, one cannot but be grateful to its author for such a witty fantasy.
EX-UNDERGRADUATE’S DÉBUT AS HUMORIST
Paul Fotheringay’s first novel, Crazy Capers (Fodder & Shuttlecock, 7s. 6d.) is one of the most entertaining books which it has ever been my good fortune as a reviewer to read. It reminded me sometimes of Mr Wodehouse at his funniest, and sometimes of Mr Evelyn Waugh at his most cynical, and yet it had striking originality. I could scarcely put it down, and intend to re-read it at the earliest opportunity. Crazy Capers is the story of a penniless young aristocrat, Lord Leander Belmont, who on leaving Oxford with a double first is unable to find any career more suited to his abilities than that of a pawnbroker’s assistant … Lord Leander is an intensely funny character, and so is his fiancée, Clara. The last chapter, in which they attempt to commit suicide by drowning themselves in the Thames, but are unable, owing to the vigilance of the river police, to achieve anything more tragic than a mud bath, is in particular a masterpiece of humour. I laughed until I was literally driven from the room …
With great bitterness Paul remembered how he had written that last chapter, working through the night until he felt that he had arrived at that exact blend of tragedy and pathos for which he searched. As he wrote, the tears had poured down his cheeks. The frustration of two souls, battered beyond endurance by circumstances over which they had no control, unable even to make good their escape from a world which now held nothing for them, had seemed to him a noble, beautiful and touching theme. And nobody else had even remotely apprehended his meaning, not one person.
Putting the press cuttings back into his pocket he pulled out of it a letter which turned his thoughts towards an even more painful subject.
Paul Darling (it ran),
How sweet of you to send me a copy of Crazy Capers – I was perfectly thrilled at the dedication, it was indeed a lovely surprise. I hope it will be a wild success, it certainly deserves to be, personally I couldn’t have thought it funnier. I roared with laughter from beginning to end. I never knew you were capable of writing such a funny book. Must fly now, my sweet, as I’m going out with Eddie, so all my love and lots of kisses from
Marcella.
P.S. – See you sometime soon.
Paul sighed deeply. That the girl whom he so distractedly adored had thus mocked his book was a wound indeed, but not a death blow; he had never, if the truth be told, entertained a very high regard for her mind. It was her unkind and neglectful conduct towards his person that was causing him so much unhappiness.
Considering her youth (she was twenty-two), Marcella Bracket had all the worst characteristics of the lion hunter developed to an extraordinary degree. She belonged to that rare and objectionable species, the intellectual snob devoid of intellect. Poets and painters were to her as earls and marquesses are to the ordinary snob; the summit of her ambition was to belong to what she considered a ‘highbrow’ set of people, to receive praise and adulation from the famous. Unfortunately for her, however, whilst knowing through her parents several earls and marquesses, she had not as yet managed to scrape even the most formal acquaintanceship with any great man of letters, nor had the only artist of merit to whom she was ever introduced been at all insistent that he should paint her portrait. Therefore, when poor Paul fell in love with her, which he did for some unaccountable reason at first sight, she saw in him a promising bottom rung to that particular ladder of social success which it was her ambition to climb. She even allowed him to think that they were unofficially engaged in order that she could go about with him, meeting his friends, nearly all of whom were people she had long wished to know, and at the same time picking up from him certain clichés and ideas that might be regarded as a passport to that society of which she hoped to become a member. In time, of course, she intended to marry some rich and colourless man so that she could settle down in Chelsea – a hostess; meanwhile it pleased and flattered her to feel herself the object of hopeless passion in one who had already a certain reputation for brilliance amongst the younger people.
Paul, who although he suspected something of this, only partly apprehended the situation, and moreover thought himself very much in love, was constantly plunged into a state of gloom and depression by her treatment of him. That very day, thinking thus to buy her company for the afternoon, he had invited her to luncheon at the Ritz, a luxury which he could ill afford. He had arrived there, admittedly a few moments late, to find that she was accompanied by the mindless body of Archibald (‘Chikkie’) Remnant. They were drinking champagne cocktails. When Paul appeared she hardly threw him a word, but continued to gossip with this moron for at least twenty minutes, after which ‘Chikkie’, having thrown out several unheeded hints that he would like an invitation to lunch, strolled away leaving Paul to pay for his cocktails. The meal which ensued gave him very little satisfaction; Marcella proved to be in her
