Pull yourself together, Jack Munting!
Bungie, I’ve never told you how jealous I was because your books sold and mine didn’t. If I tell you so now, don’t remember it against me. Parson Perry says confession is a good thing. Perhaps he’s right. I confess it now—and now forget it, there’s a good girl. Perhaps even now it only means that my wretched book is howlingly bad. I always comforted myself with thinking that I must write better than you to be so unsaleable—but I’m filthily pleased and cock-a-hoop all the same.
Pull yourself together, Jack Munting! You are becoming hysterical. Your glands are functioning madly in the wrong places, and your Unconscious has come unstuck!
Anyhow, I’m going to have quite enough to depress me tomorrow. That crashing nuisance, Leader, has suddenly discovered that he knows the fellow who’s written the book of the season, and is coming along to “Look me up, old boy, and celebrate!”
There was a young student of Caius
Who passed his exams with a squaius,
Ere dissecting at St. Bartholomews
Inward St. Partholomews, such as St. Heartholomews
To discover the cure of disaius.
Oh, well, I suppose one of the penalties of success is the way it brings you in touch with your friends. I had an invitation to dine from the Sheridans last week. “Such a long time since we met, isn’t it?” I will see to it that it shall be longer still.
Well, let me know about the matrimonial outlook, won’t you? I have a great many important engagements, of course, but I daresay I might be able to fit this little matter in somewhere!
31
The Same to the Same
15a, Whittington Terrace
Darling Bungie,
Glory, alleluia! Then we will be married at Easter. Curse Uncle Edward’s scruples! I could make you just as good a husband in Lent—but, as you say, it’s a shame to upset the old boy. Now that the remote prospect has really come so (comparatively) near, I feel all wobbly and inadequate. It’s like bracing your muscles to pick up a heavy bag and finding there’s nothing in it. One thought it was years off—and here it is—and there it is, and that’s that.
Well!
Well, we are going to be married at Easter.
Well—it will be a good excuse for refusing silly invitations. No time. Frightfully sorry. Going to be married at Easter, you know. A lot to do. Ring. Best man. Bridesmaids’ presents and all that. Excuse me, old man, I’ve got to see my tailor. Cheer-frightfully-ho, don’t you know.
I couldn’t get rid of Leader that way, though. He was horribly hearty and stayed a very long time, and insisted on Lathom’s and my going down to the College to see over the labs, and “meet a few of the men,” who all hated me at sight, by the way, when they did see me. I thought the sooner we got it over the better, so we went this afternoon. Lathom is in one of his vagrom moods—doing no work, and catching at any excuse to waste time. I tried to get out of it, but no! I “absolutely must come, old man.” I take it the idea was to impress Leader’s friends with the idea that men of intellect are proud to know him. It had not occurred to me that best-selling had such idiotic accompaniments.
Leader was in his element, of course, showing off his half-baked knowledge, and exhibiting fragments of anatomy in bottles. I can see Leader one of these days as the principal witness at an inquest, frightfully slapdash and cocksure, professing that he can tell the time of the murder to within five minutes by taking half a glance at the corpse, and swearing somebody’s life away with cheerful confidence in his own infallibility. He was highly impressive in the dissecting-room, but at his best, I think, displaying his knowledge of poisons (which, by the way, they seem to keep handy on the open shelves for any passing visitor to help himself to). He was very great on synthetic drugs—all made on the premises out of God knows what, and imitating nature so abominably—abominably well, that is—that chemical analysis can’t tell them apart. Indeed, indeed, sirs (and apart from the wearisomeness of Leader), but this troubles me. Synthetic perfumes from coal-tar are bad enough, and synthetic dyes, and I can put up with synthetic camphor and synthetic poisons, but when it comes to synthetic gland-extracts like adrenalin and thyroxin, I begin to get worried. Synthetic vitamins next, I suppose, and synthetic beef and cabbages—and after that, synthetic babies. So far, however, they don’t seem to have been able to make synthetic life—the nearest they have got is stimulating frog-spawn into life with needles. But what of the years to come? If, as the biochemists say, life is only a very complicated chemical process, will the difference between life and death be first expressible in a formula and then prisonable in a bottle?
This is a jolly kind of letter to write to you, old girl, on this auspicious occasion, but this everlasting question of life and the making of life seems to haunt me—and it is, after all, not so remote from the problem of marriage. We can pass it on and re-continue it, but what is it? They say now that the universe is finite, and that there is only so much matter in it and no more. But does life
