"THIS ENGLAND"

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 54, 5 March 1927, Page 25

"THIS ENGLAND"

-PICTURES OF TO-DAY COMMONPLACE PEOPLE v ' vi.

(By Edgar Wallace.)

■^You lose an awful lot of fun in England if you only talk to the people you meet in the club. Their very affluence has stripped them of romance and the glamour of great pasts. I am a. teller of stories by profession, but I seldom take stories from real life because they are so improbable that literary critics'say: "Well .. .1 Eeally . . . . !" and a writer who makes a literary critic angry ought to be well slapped. ; All the real stories, the big ones, are not contained between covers. Adventures . . .? There's a stout and sturdy young joiner who will come to your house and cover your walls with oak panelling that looks really old —worm-holes and knot-holes, and bits of moulding breaking off through extreme age, and all that sort of ,thing. He rides a motor-bike and was nearly killed a year a;go somewhere in Kent, but he is all light now and is going to be married. Maybe he is married. A stout fellow, terribly tightly dressed', with a reddish, round face and good-looking. I got tired of talking about wormholes, so I ventured to express views about Stalin. He brightened. "I was with Deniken'B army," he said staggeringly. ''It was really awful. The Bolshies retreated on Moscow because they thought Deniken's crowd was led by British officers—they were Eusski's really, in British officers' uniform. My feet were frozen and I wa3 taken to the hospital, . and then the Bolshies began their advance. We could hear the guns in the hospital. A Russian nurse used to come and sit on my mattress and, drawing her fingers across her pretty neck, used to say: 'Presently Russians come—'they cut your t'roat!' Cheerful, eh? A pal, of mine got me out under fire. Laid me on a sledge and ran for it. What was my job? I don't know what I didn't do! Machine-gun instruetor-^-cvery thing!". Here was Denikin's army in I-iondon, N.W.I You would never know that unless you took the trouble to find out. 'A rather dour, middle-aged taxi driver brought me home one evening. In front of where lie pulled up was a big American car. He looked at it critically and wbndoved v it' the back axle was O.K. iv the new model. i , "Know it?" I asked. He nodded. ."Last time I drove one was over the Khyber Pass," lie said. "T!ity''i-e wonderful on hills." The chauffeur who was standing by the car had views. His driving was in Serbia. He was awarded a irold medal, but never got it.

Khyber Pass and Monnstir compared notes. They said horrible tilings about certain makes of cars. I sat on the running board and listened, I think .my neighbours thought I was the worse for drink. "

There are two nlcing reporters—you can meet them at any meeting. One of these took convoys to the edge of the Afghan country, and knows quite a lot about the playful ways of hill rivers. The second man had an easier job. All lie had to do was to teach young flying corps officers to jump out of balloons. He knows almost as much about parachutes as he does about Galopiu. blood. But these two are not' really eligible for my category of commonplace people Journalists are very uncommon people —especially racing journalists. My experience of life is that the best stories are those of the most ently) commonplace folk, and the worst are those of men whose lives you would imagine were packed with thrills I oncq .interviewed a hangman, and all that he said was: "Well, sitha it was like this. . . ."

He never really got interesting until ne started to talk about chickens and advanced this brand-new theory about biology: That hens lay eggs and produce all cockerels- if you put the nest under a green light. And that was a lie. Probably hens do that sort of thing for hangmen, but they don't do it lor humble reporters. You could not walk through Covent Garden Market any morning without rubbing shoulders with incredible adventure. It comes to your door, if you can sec.

-One night rather late there arrived at my flat a gentleman who talked with an accent—well as the good people of Walworth road speak. He was selling tickets for a concert on behalf of brok-en-down horse cabmen. His voico was loud and hearty. He was, he confessed with pride, of the people. And he was educated—at where do you think? I won't tell you the school but it has as proud a name as any in England; a great public school that has sent out splendid generals and statesmen. ' •

I didn't believe him till ie began rattling out :from memory long passages_of Virgil. My Latin is negligible,' but I, know enough to be staggered. . •• That's the kind, of muck I had to learn, he complained bitterly. By the way, he is pretty well known in South London, but I know he will not object to my telling the story—he oven invited me to "put it in a book." ;His father, a self-made and- uneducated man, -amassed a fortune—l think he owned buses. . When tho father died intestate the fortune was thrown into Chancery. An unimaginative master decided that our hero and his brother ■hould be educated. He only knew one school—the boys wero sent there. "I hated it," said my friend.. "Latin an Greek an' God knows what! As eqon as I came out and got hold of a bit of money I bought a pub in tho road!" "Would you say that was possible? It is not oaly possible, but it is a fact. A; thoroughly honest, decent fellow, is this public school boy. But he hated , the life —loathed his companions. Can't you see him sitting at prep., his mind hovering about "The Bed Cow" of his dreams? ' ■ There are some amazing people in liondon. Down Pimlico way a lady was pointed out to me. She lived in a shabby lodging, and, attired in carpet slippers and an old cap- pinned to her brassy hair, she was carrying a beer jug to a nearbj- public bouse. To get, she said pleasantly, her looming ration. I happen to know that she made his-tory—^-hanged the succession of a great reigning house of Europe. It seems absurd, but it is a fact. The story cannot be told, but it is common property in Press circles. .The truth is that in this country (and possibly in no other country) there are no commonplace people except to the superficial observer. If you can't see behind the eyes or get into the minds of folk and accept just what they present to you, features, figures, and manners, the world must be a dull place. And you miss a lot of drama. And some splendid pathos. ~ There is a man working for me —an Irishman. A big, good-looking Handy Andy, and a splendid car driver and mechanic. It was his ambition to ride at Brooklands on a racer, and at last his chance came. A well-known driver ■was taking him in a race as a mechanic. On the morning of the race: — "I'm sorry, F —:—, I've jus,t learnt that you are an Irishman." "Yes, sir." "I can't take you. My brother was