Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 829
It would be possible to make quite a bulky volume of autobiography if one pursued the search through all of Mr. Leacock’s writings. There are passages in the literary essays that are frankly autobiographical, and doubtless many of his sketches are burlesque renderings of personal experiences. But we shall content ourselves with just one more glimpse of his life that he has given.
“When I was a student at the University of Toronto, thirty years ago, I lived, from start to finish, in seventeen different boarding houses. As far as I am aware these houses have not, or not yet, been marked with tablets. But they are still to be found in the vicinity of McCaul, D’Arcy, and St. Patrick streets. Anyone who doubts the truth of what I have to say may go and look at them.
“I was not alone in the nomadic life that I led. There were hundreds of us drifting about in this fashion from one melancholy habitation to another. We lived as a rule two or three in a house, sometimes alone. We dined in the basement. We always had beef, done up in some way after it was dead, and there were always soda biscuits on the table. They used to have a brand of soda biscuits in those days in the Toronto boarding houses that I have not seen since. They were better than dog biscuit, but with not so much snap. My contemporaries will remember them. A great many of the leading barristers and professional men of Toronto were fed on them.”
While these quotations are satisfying enough, they fail in several important particulars. They fail to tell that he was married in New York, in the “Little Church Around the Corner,” in August of 1900, to Beatrix, daughter or Lieut.-Col. Hamilton, of Toronto, and that he has one son, who was born on August 19, 1915, and named Stephen Lushinghton Leacock.
Above all they fail to tell us what he looks like, so that we may recognize him when we see him on the street. But this omission can be remedied by extracts from the writings of his contemporaries. An open letter to him in the Montreal Standard has this gem:
“I saw you in your native habitat, with your protective coloring all about you, and I have been able to pick you out ever since.
“It was a bright August afternoon, as I remember, and you were honoring Lake Couchiching with your presence on holiday. You were fully clad in a suit of dungarees, waders, a cow-bite hat, and whiskers of at least three days wilfulness. Waist-high in the water you pushed ahead of you a sort of young scow, pausing ever and anon to curse a short, black pipe with a hiccup in its stem. The scow was loaded with stones, with which you calculated to build an oven in a remote part of the island and pretend you were an Indian. Even at that early date your playful fancy was at work.”
An interviewer pictures him as follows:
“At the minute of four I was at the University club. An imposing official in an imposing uniform ushered me into a still more imposing room. It was a big room filled with a chilly, academic sort of atmosphere — the sort of room that made you feel very small; that made you wonder why you ever presumed to seek an interview There I sat for ten long minutes, wondering what Leacock would be like, what he would deign to tell me, what I should dare to ask him; whether he would be witty or just talk in academic phrases miles above my head.
“Just then the door was sort of blown open and the room was flooded with a bubbling exuberance, ‘lots of fun’ and all the things that go to dissipate an academic chilliness. The entrance of Stephen Leacock was responsible. The room immediately took on his very human personality. It became intensely friendly. In a minute or so I found myself talking to Professor Leacock as if he had been a childhood friend regained after long years. From the first minute he impressed me as being ‘understanding.’ He seemed to laugh more than talk, and his eyes absolutely danced with merriment. His conversation was every jot as witty as his books, and not for one instant did he even suggest the professor. Much more was he the big, happy school-boy, brimful of fun, very interested in all the things that go to make or mar the world of to-day.”
For this picture of him we are indebted to an employee of the Library of McGill University:
“When three o’clock came round it was no unusual thing to see him, a host of books and papers under his arm, make giant and hasty strides into the library to the delivery counter.
“With the coming of ‘Literary Lapses,’ Dr. Leacock appeared before me in an altogether different light. His familiar figure assumed a new meaning. His fine, grave face, that boy’s mop of hair which always looks as if it had just been washed the night before, and simply refused to be brushed, the deep, vibrating tones of his voice and his peculiar stride, had always appealed strongly to me.”
When Dr. Leacock was discovering England, English observers discovered him. One of them wrote his impressions as follows:
“Nobody, we must think, could be churlish with such a man. A ripple of laughter spreads round him wherever he moves; vexation vanishes, ill-tempered people begin to chuckle in spite of themselves, everybody crowds about him to be entertained. So it must happen; and it is not surprising if such a visitor as this has found many nice things to say of us. He has a way with him to soften the ruggedest, to rouse the most inert, and there is not the least credit in being jolly in his company. Let his impression of the English, therefore, be accounted to his own irresistibility, not to ours. Professor Leacock as an explorer, is at a certain disadvantage; he can never see people as they are without the charm and enlivenment of his society.
“What is peculiarly delightful about him, moreover, is that he never seems to be friendly and kindly out of mere politeness. Indeed he is a man of whom at first sight we might expect to feel shy; his quizzical glances have a dangerous look; and sometimes we suspect him of meaning more than he says. His compliments have now and then a tweak of sarcasm.”
Another English observer conveyed his impressions in this fashion:
“Leacock was smiling all the while. He was smiling just before 8.30, when he stood in the gangway of Eltham Parish Hall, looking out at and up at the great audience who had come to greet him. Whilst the chairman was introducing him to the audience, Mr. Leacock sat and smiled, and for nearly an hour Leacock smiled like a great human sunbeam.
“Well, if some one smiles at you and says nothing, you are constrained to smile back at him. It is a smile that invites a smile. Leacock must have found that out, and just as one tacks down an oil cloth to hold it to the floor, so has Stephen Leacock nailed down his world with that infectious, merry smile of his which takes one right to a merry heart and a merry brain. Punch once wrote of him:
“Anyhow, I’d be as proud as a peacock To have inscribed on my tomb: He followed the footsteps of Leacock In banishing gloom.’
“His laughter quietly rocks a not entirely giant frame, for Leacock is not a really big man. He just escapes being this. Perhaps to him the body just merely matters. About the shoulders he is built largely and strongly, these shoulders heaping up slightly behind into the student’s back. There is a not easily forgettable face of fairly large proportions. It is a live face, a kindly face. One writer has spoken of his shaggy locks; they are hardly this. A mat of closely growing hair lies all over the head, and it has made its way, almost creeper-like, far down on his broad forehead. There is no curl, no wave — just what one may call useful hair over a large, well-shaped head. It is a head that reminds one of that of John Masefield, the poet, but the faces of these two men are very different.
“Does Leacock’s body really matter? Not that we wish to convey the idea that he is mystic and ethereal. Body means appearance. Mr. Leacock wears clothes, in spite of the fact that he once wrote ‘To Nature and Back again.’ For dinner and lecture purposes he wears a form of dress which is quite careless and easy. It has no ‘fit’ in the tailor’s sense of the word, but just that looseness which it should have for the fireside talk he likes so well. Is there the supreme insouciance of some professors about him? There is and there is not. When one looks at the highly glossed, turned down (perhaps a touch of Bohemianism) collar, and neat black bow above the white shirt front, there is not; but allowing the eyes to travel downwards to his trousers, one has to admit they have a peculiar vagueness about the knees that can only be obtained by intensive scholarship.”
Since his first success as an author, Mr. Leacock’s life has passed quietly as a professor at McGill, and in his summer home at Orillia. According to popular belief, he built the house in which he lives in Orillia with his own hands. This popular belief will be verified or disproven before going to press, if the information can be dragged from him by correspondence.
Since the publication of “Literary Lapses” in book form, he has added a book a year to his rapidly growing library of humor. In 1921 he visited England on a lecturing tour, and officially discovered the country — recording his impressions in a book that may be regarded as part of his autobiography. As a matter of fact, the final biographer of Mr. Leacock will only find it necessary to select from his published works the material for an adequate record of his life. Many of his sketches record faithfully his dealings with educationists, club-men and the world in general. In “Fetching the Doctor” he gives us a glimpse of his boyhood.
Mr. Leacock’s writings have placed him so clearly before the public that there is little for a biographer to do beyond recording the usual facts of a quiet academic life. His history is written in his own books for the perusal of his host of admirers, who may be found wherever the English language is read.
MY FINANCIAL CAREER
WHEN I GO into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.
The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.
I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month, and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.
So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager.
I went up to a wicket marked “Accountant.” The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.
“Can I see the manager?” I said, and added solemnly, “alone.” I don’t know why I said “alone.”
“Certainly,” said the accountant, and fetched him.
The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.
“Are you the manager?” I said. God knows I didn’t doubt it.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can I see you,” I asked, “alone?” I didn’t want to say “alone” again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.
The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.
“Come in here,” he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.
“We are safe from interruption here,” he said; “sit down.”
We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.
“You are one of Pinkerton’s men, I presume,” he said.
He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.
“No, not from Pinkerton’s,” I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.
“To tell the truth,” I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, “I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank.”
The manager looked relieved, but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.
“A large account, I suppose,” he said.
“Fairly large,” I whispered. “I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly.”
The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.
“Mr. Montgomery,” he said unkindly loud, “this gentleman is opening an account. He will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning.”
I rose.
A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.
“Good morning,” I said, and stepped into the safe.
“Come out,” said the manager coldly, and showed me the other way.
I went up to the accountant’s wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a quick, convulsive movement, as if I were doing a conjuring trick.
My face was ghastly pale.
“Here,” I said, “deposit it.” The tone of the words seemed to mean, “Let us do this painful thing while the fit is on us.”
He took the money and gave it to another clerk.
He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in a book. I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam before my eyes.
“Is it deposited?” I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.
“It is,” said the accountant.
“Then I want to draw a cheque.”
My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use. Someone gave me a cheque book through a wicket and someone else began telling me how to write it out. The people in the bank had the impression that I was an invalid millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and thrust it in at the clerk. He looked at it.
“What! are you drawing it all out again?” he asked in surprise. Then I realized that I had written fifty-six instead of six. I was too far gone to reason now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing. All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me. Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.
“Yes, the whole thing.”
“You withdraw your money from the bank?”
“Every cent of it.”
“Are you not going to deposit any more?” said the clerk, astonished.
“Never.”
An idiot hope struck me that they might think something had insulted me while I was writing the cheque, and that I had changed my mind. I made a wretched attempt to look like a man with a fearfully quick temper.
The clerk prepared to pay the money.
“How will you have it?” he said.
“What?”
“How will you have it?”
“Oh” — I caught his meaning and answered without even trying to think— “in fifties.”
He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.
“And the six?” he asked dryly.
“In sixes,” I said.
He gave it me and I rushed out.
As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my trousers pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a sock.
— Literary Lapses.
BOARDING-HOUSE GEOMETRY
DEFINITIONS AND AXIOMS
All boarding-houses are the same boarding-house.
Boarders in the same boarding-house and on the same flat are equal to one another.
A single room is that which has no parts and no magnitude.
The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram — that is, an oblong, angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything.
A wrangle is the disinclination of two boarders to each other that meet together but are not in the same line.
All the other rooms being taken, a single room is said to be a double room.
POSTULATES AND PROPOSITIONS
A PIE MAY be produced any number of times.
The landlady can be reduced to her lowest terms by a series of propositions.
A bee-line may be made from any boarding-house to any other boarding-house.
The clothes of a boarding-house bed, though produced ever so far both ways, will not meet.
Any two meals at a boarding-house are together less than two square meals.
If from the opposite ends of a boarding-house a line be drawn passing through all the rooms in turn, then the stovepipe which warms the boarders will lie within that line.
On the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing.
If there be two boarders on the same flat, and the amount of side of the one be equal to the amount of side of the other, each to each, and the wrangle between one boarder and the landlady be equal to the wrangle between the landlady and the other, then shall the weekly bills of the two boarders be equal also, each to each.
For if not, let one bill be the greater.
Then the other bill is less than it might have been — which is absurd.
— Literary Lapses.
L’ENVOI
THE TRAIN TO MARIPOSA
IT LEAVES THE city every day about five o’clock in the evening, the train for Mariposa.
Strange that you did not know of it, though you come from the little town — or did, long years ago.
Odd that you never knew, in all these years, that the train was there every afternoon, puffing up steam in the city station, and that you might have boarded it any day and gone home. No, not “home” — of course you couldn’t call it “home” now. “Home” means that big red sandstone house of yours in the costlier part of the city. “Home” means, in a way, this Mausoleum Club where you sometimes talk with me of the times that you had as a boy in Mariposa.
But of course “home” would hardly be the word you would apply to the little town, unless perhaps, late at night, when you’d been sitting reading in a quiet corner somewhere such a book as the present one.
Naturally you don’t know of the Mariposa train now. Years ago, when you first came to the city as a boy with your way to make, you knew of it well enough — only too well. The price of a ticket counted in those days, and though you knew of the train you couldn’t take it; but sometimes from sheer homesickness you used to wander down to the station on a Friday afternoon after your work, and watch the Mariposa people getting on the train and wish that you could go.
