WITH PIPE ALIGHT

Southland Times, Issue 20014, 30 October 1926, Page 13

WITH PIPE ALIGHT

PAPEBHANGING II

(By “

“Criticus.”)

If I were asked to give any reason for Cain’s murder of his brother I would say that Abel burst in upon Cain’s well-earned rest after completed labours, with a lot of foolish questions. It would have been appropriate if Cain had used the jaw-bone of an ass instead of leaving that spectacular weapon to a later generation. Had we been living in the spacious pre-Ark days, the glorious anti-diluvian period wherein the animals could be induced to walk two by two, and wherein there was no Crimes Act and no by-laws, if we had lived in these days I am sure I would have been banished to the land of Nod on the east of my particular Eden, and inquiries would have been made for the whereabouts of Maurice. I can add that even in these restricted times Maurice would have been a sweltering corpse if there had been the jaw-bone of an ass handy, for I was reclining in a pleasant lassitude, basking in that comfort which comes with the accomplishment of great deeds and content to wander in the broad fields of imagination without thought of Time or Space, when Maurice erupted through the a youthful volcano in its first outburst of exuberance, and demanded: “Now tell me all about it.” People have been pulled back from the portals of Heaven to undertake the burdens of a further jaunt in life, with the attendant risks of missing the reward at the second attempt. I often wonder if these people who come back from the jaws of Death live to bless their rescue, and I wondered that as Maurice pulled me back from my own particular little temporary heaven. I knew what he wanted.

“Maurice, my dear fellow,” I said with a groan that I managed to disguise as a sigh, “Maurice it Is pleasant to gaze upon work well done; but it is not always pleasant to think in retrospect upon the doing of it. When the Fiend tempted me to paper a ceiling I did not know that my immortal soul, that my domestic hearth, and my digestion, to say nothing of my hair, would be imperilled. Have you ever attempted to climb a scaffolding twelve feet high, to balance yourself upon a board twelve inches wide while carrying a length of sodden paper one side covered with paste, eighteen feet long—the paper I mean not the paste ? Blondin and Cinquevalli combined would be daunted by such a task. And having achieved this, Maurice, have you ever attempted to place the end of this paper upon the edge of the wall in a perfectly straight line so that the full eighteen feet may be spread upon a ceiling without any deviation to the right or the left? If you have not attempted these things no words of mine can make you understand what it means. Not even if I tell you of the number of times, twenty at least, the paper is placed upon the ceiling and removed again, nor the number of times it serpent-like winds about your head and throat, like a woman who feels the affection of the man she loves slipping away. Some day, Maurice, some genius wnll think of putting on the market a paperhangers' paste which is palatable as well as adhesive. If you look at my hair, Maurice, you will notice that I have gone grey, you may also see that my locks are very much shorter than they used to be. The disentangling of pasted hair is an extremely painful operation, and it must end inevitably in the barber’s hand—a short cut to comfort.

"I believe in the days when men put forth their fullest effort much paperhanging could be done in three hours; for myself Maurice I can say that in that period I will guarantee to place one strip of paper upon a ceiling, but during that three hours 1 must be left alone. I court no assistance, no interrogations and no advice from my family. Maurice, there Is nothing so terrible, no test more exacting, than to preserve one’s dignity and patience while one’s better half offers oral assistance to her husband when he is surrounded by a python of pasted paper. I have come through that test and I hope that if it is ever my portion to have a chance for Heaven that these awful sufferings will be admitted to plead for me. The second strip is not half so bad. I understand now the pleasure a snake charmer gets from his second snake, if he is alive that long; but Maurice if you ever decide to follow in my footsteps and reach a second strip, make sure before you have completed the ninety minute task of putting it in position that you have cut off one of the selvage edges. I can assure you it is an extremely tantalising business to cut wet paper. The remaining part of the ceiling would come very much easier were it not for the pains that attack the neck and the muscles of the back. All the rheumatism, sciatica and lumbago that the world has ever groaned about is as nothing compared with the tortures accompanying the completion of a ceiling. If ever I build a house again it will be fitted with ceilings suspended on rise and fall chains, that it may be lowered, removed to the back yard and there covered with its paper before being hoisted back into position.”

By this time Maurice's wonderment was escaping through his open mouth before his teeth and tongue could give shape to words. At last he was able to say something. “But you did not abandon the task?” The interrogation was comforting for it carried with it the suggestion that such an act could not be associated with a man of my determination. “I did not abandon it, Maurice,” I said firmly. “From ceiling to walls was like an ascent from Purgatory to Heaven. After the tremendous struggle with the boa constrictors, the pasted pythons, handling mere seven foot worms was child’s play. I was able to work before an audience and even to converse rationally with the members of my family. My children no longer fled to the limits of my estate, there to stand, one moment trembling with fear, and the other calling upon what gods they knew to precipitate their sire into the bucket of paste. I have been informed, Maurice, that every amateur paperhanger at some time or another kicks the bucket. I shall lay it as a flattering unction to my soul that I did not do this thing, though only the bucket, myself and my Guardian Angel know how narrowly I averted it. “I had been Informed that the application of a narrow freize—or is it a border?— was an extremely delicate operation, one requiring very nice adjustment in order to keep it uniform height. The people, who say this, lie. If you take a measurement and apply this carefully to every inch of the way that is to be covered by this freize or border you cannot err by more than an inch in every ten feet. Some day Maurice I will show you the completed work. I think the colouring of the paper demands a half light for the best results.” “But how did you make the pattern match?” inquired the impressed Maurice. I was a little diffident about confessing. “If you have what is called an ‘all over’ design Maurice, there is very little matching to be done; I favour a paper of this kind.” This seemed to be the end of the narrative, but Maurice was not finished. “You remember,” he said, “that the last time I saw you, you talked learnedly about the economics of paperhanging, and now you have given me some information on its difficulties. I suppose if the paperhangers to-morrow demand an increase in wages or threaten to go out on strike, your vote will

go for more money being given them; this as a result of your own adventures?”

“How little you know of human nature Maurice,” I>said. “From this day I am implacable, unmovable, as an advocate to lower pay for the paperhangers so that it will be no longer possible for my wife to think she can save money by getting me to paper my own rooms. Now go away like a good fellow and let me rest again.”

The journals of Fanny Anne Burney, a great-niece of Fanny Burney, make a forthcoming volume which has interesting lights on England towards the middle of last century. Colonel R. W. Phipps was a great student of Napoleonic history, and when he died three years ago he left a mass of manuscript, of which the Oxford Press is going to publish a volume. Sir William Robertson Nicoll was for many years a leader of thought in the two worlds of religion and literature, and he had large followings in both. He was “Claudius Clear” and “A Man of Kent” in the British Weekly, and his letters also testified to his great knowledge and constant activities. No doubt the idea of anthologies of his religious writings, and of his literary criticism and character studies, has arisen with his friend, Sir Ernest Hodder Williams. Anyhow, such volumes are announced by Hodder and Stoughton, one under the title “The Seen and the Unseen,” the other as “People and Books.” When Tolstoy died he made his daughter Alexandra his literary executor. His wishes with regard to the posthumous publications of his manuscripts were therefore communicated to her, and she has endeavoured to act upon them. In doing so she gave some of his writings to a Russian friend who was the head of a publishing house in Moscow. This house was suppressed by the Soviet authority, and so it was not possible to publish a volume of stories and a play by Tolstoy which had been prepared. The volume was accordingly issued in Paris for the benefit of the Russian Society for the Diffusion of Tolstoy's Works, and it is now to appear in English through Dent.