Mr. Mulliner Speaking quotes

People who enjoyed a merely superficial acquaintance with my nephew Archibald (said Mr. Mulliner) were accustomed to set him down as just an ordinary pinheaded young man.

It was only when they came to know him better that they discovered their mistake.

Then they realised that his pinheadedness, so far from being ordinary, was exceptional.

She came out of a shop opposite the club and stood on the pavement waiting for a taxi.

And, as he saw her standing there, love at first sight seemed to go all over Archibald Mulliner like nettlerash.

It was strange that this should have been so, for she was not at all the sort of girl with whom Archibald had fallen in love at first sight in the past.

The process of buying socks eased for awhile the turmoil that ran riot in Archibald's veins. But even socks with lavender clocks can only alleviate: they do not cure. Returning to his rooms, he found the anguish rather more overwhelming than ever.

For at last he had leisure to think: and thinking always hurt his head.

Algy's careless words had confirmed his worst suspicions. A girl with an aunt who knew all about Shakespeare and Bacon must of necessity live in a mental atmosphere into which a lame-brained bird like himself could scarcely hope to soar.

The process of buying socks eased for awhile the turmoil that ran riot in Archibald's veins.

But even socks with lavender clocks can only alleviate: they do not cure.

Returning to his rooms, he found the anguish rather more overwhelming than ever. For at last he had leisure to think: and thinking always hurt his head.

Plenty of that, yes, but what was money?

Of these he had the finest collection in London, but socks are not everything.

A fat lot of use that was.

No, a girl like Aurelia Cammarleigh would, he felt, demand from the man who aspired to her hand something in the nature of gifts, of accomplishments.

He would have to be a man who Did Things.

And what, Archibald asked himself, could he do? Absolutely nothing except give an imitation of a hen laying an egg.

No, a girl like Aurelia Cammarleigh would, he felt, demand from the man who aspired to her hand something in the nature of gifts, of accomplishments. He would have to be a man who Did Things.

And what, Archibald asked himself, could he do? Absolutely nothing except give an imitation of a hen laying an egg.

That he could do. At imitating a hen laying an egg he was admittedly a master. His fame in that one respect had spread all over the West End of London. "Others abide our question.

In short, to sum the thing up, my nephew Archibald, at his initial meeting with the only relative of the girl he loved, went like a sirocco.

A Mulliner is always a Mulliner. Apply the acid test, and he will meet it.

It was not long after this that he informed me that he had sown the good seed to such an extent that Aurelia's aunt had invited him to pay a long visit to her country house, Brawstead Towers, in Sussex.

It is the custom nowadays to disparage the educational methods of the English public-school and to maintain that they are not practical and of a kind to fit the growing boy for the problems of after-life.

But you do learn one thing at a public-school, and that is how to act when somebody starts snoring.

You jolly well grab a cake of soap and pop in and stuff it down the blighter's throat. And this Archibald proposed—God willing—to do. It was the work of a moment with him to dash to the washstand and arm himself.

"Just between us girls," said Aurelia's friend, "what do you think of that bird?"

To listen to a private conversation—especially a private conversation between two modern girls when you never know what may come next—is rightly considered an action incompatible with the claim to be a gentleman.

I regret to say, therefore, that Archibald, ignoring the fact that he belonged to a family whose code is as high as that of any in the land, instead of creeping away to his room edged at this point a step closer to the curtains …

"You bet it's tough.

A girl can't help her appearance.

I may look as if my ideal man was the hero of a Viennese operetta, but I don't feel that way.

Essentially a modest man, like all the Mulliners, he was compelled, nevertheless, to recognise that to-night he was surpassing himself.

Every artist knows when the authentic divine fire is within him, and an inner voice told Archibald Mulliner that he was at the top of his form and giving the performance of a lifetime.

Love thrilled through every "Brt-t't-t't" that he uttered, animated each flap of his arms.

We are all men of spirit: and when men of spirit, with opinions of their own, get together, disputes are bound to arise. Frequently, therefore, even in this peaceful haven, you will hear voices raised, tables banged, and tenor Permit-me-to-inform-you-sir's competing with baritone And-jolly-well-permit-me-to-inform-you's.

I have known fists to be shaken and on one occasion the word "fat-head" to be used.

Fortunately, Mr. Mulliner is always there, ready with the soothing magic of his personality to calm the storm before things have gone too far.

"Smoking is a subject on which I hold strong views. I look upon tobacco as life's outstanding boon, and it annoys me to hear these faddists abusing it. And how foolish their arguments are, how easily refuted.

They come to me and tell me that if they place two drops of nicotine on the tongue of a dog the animal instantly dies: and when I ask them if they have ever tried the childishly simple device of not placing nicotine on the dog's tongue, they have nothing to reply.

They are non-plussed. They go away mumbling something about never having thought of that."

"If you ask my opinion, gentlemen," he resumed, "I say it is not only foolish for a man to give up smoking—it is not safe. Such an action wakes the fiend that sleeps in all of us.

To give up smoking is to become a menace to the community.

I shall not readily forget what happened in the case of my nephew Ignatius. Mercifully, the thing had a happy ending, but...."

He was not only stricken to the core, but utterly bewildered. That a man—stretching the possibilities a little—might resemble George Rossiter was intelligible. He could also understand that a man—assuming that Nature had played a scurvy trick upon him—might conceivably be like Cyprian.

But how could anyone be like both of them and live?

He took pencil and paper and devoted himself to making a list in parallel columns of the qualities and characteristics of the brothers. When he had finished, he scanned it carefully. This is what he found he had written:

As those of you who have tried it are aware, the deadly effects of giving up smoking rarely make themselves felt immediately in their full virulence. The process is gradual.

In the first stage, indeed, the patient not only suffers no discomfort but goes about inflated by a sort of gaseous spiritual pride.

All through the morning of the following day, Ignatius, as he walked abroad, found himself regarding such fellow-members of the community as had pipes and cigarettes in their mouths with a pitying disdain.

Its symptoms were an inability to work and a dim feeling of oppression, as if he had just lost some dear friend.

Life seemed somehow to have been robbed of all motive.

He wandered about the studio, haunted by a sensation that he was leaving undone something that he ought to be doing.

Look at it this way, he felt.

The world is a sad, grey place, and we are put into it to promote as far as we can the happiness of others.

If we concentrate on our own selfish pleasures, what do we find? We find that they speedily pall. We weary of gnawing knuckles of ham. The ukulele loses its fascination.

"Is one really serious?" cried Cyprian, his eyes beginning to gleam. It was seldom that he received invitations of this kind.

He had, indeed, been thrown out of more studios for butting in and giving artists a hint or two about their pictures than any other art-critic in Chelsea.

"One is perfectly serious," Ignatius assured him. "One feels that an opinion from an expert will be invaluable."

"My stricken child!" cried Mrs. Rossiter. And, hastening from the room, she ran down the stairs in quest of the remains.

A boy's best friend is his mother.

In the studio she had left, Hermione was gazing at Ignatius, in her eyes a look he had never seen there before.

We may be dimly aware that out in the world there are hearts that ache and bleed: but we order another gin and ginger and forget about them.

Tragedy, to us, has come to mean merely the occasional flatness of a bottle of beer.

Nevertheless, this crust of selfish detachment can be cracked. And when Mr.

That the peace of such a one could ever be shattered, that anything could ever occur seriously to disturb the orderly routine of such a man's life, might seem incredible. And yet this happened.

How true it is that in this world we can never tell behind what corner Fate may not be lurking with the brass knuckles.

The day which was to prove so devastating to Cedric Mulliner's bachelor calm began, ironically, on a note of bright happiness.

The tie—quiet and admirable. The trousers—perfect. The gleaming black boots—just right. In the matter of dress, he was a man with a position to keep up.

Younger men looked to him for guidance. To-day, he felt, he would not fail them.

Finally, he was due at half-past one for luncheon at the house of Lord Knubble of Knopp in Grosvenor Square, and he knew that he could count on meeting there all that was best and fairest of England's aristocracy.

He removed his left boot and, creeping softly from his lair, seized one of the black boots and put it on. It was a nice fit, and for the first time something approaching contentment began to steal upon him.

A minute more, one little minute, and all would be well.

This heartening thought had just crossed his mind when with an abruptness which caused his heart to loosen one of his front teeth the silence was again broken—this time by something that sounded like the Grand Fleet putting in a bit of gunnery-practice off the …

A thoughtful-looking ginger-coloured cat, which had risen from the mat at his entrance and had been scrutinizing him with a pale eye, now moved forward and sniffed speculatively at his left ankle.

The proceedings seemed to the cat irregular but full of human interest.

It sat down and gave itself up to meditation.

Cedric, meanwhile, had done the same.

There is, if you come to think of it, little else that a man in his position can do but meditate.

And so for some considerable space of time Cedric Mulliner looked down upon the smiling garden and busied himself with his thoughts.

These, as may readily be imagined, were not of the most agreeable.

In circumstances such as those in which he had been placed, it is but rarely that the sunny and genial side of a man's mind comes uppermost.

He tends to be bitter, and it is inevitable that his rancour should be directed at those whom he considers responsible for his unpleasant situation.

She spoke in her usual calm, controlled voice. If she was surprised to see her employer and, seeing him, to behold nothing of him except his head, there was little to show it.

A private secretary learns at the outset of their association never to be astonished at anything her employer may do.

Yet Myrtle Watling was not altogether devoid of feminine curiosity.

It would be possible, of course, to find excuses for him. The thing had come upon him very suddenly, and even the stoutest are sometimes disconcerted by sudden peril. Then, again, his circumstances and upbringing had fitted him ill for such a crisis.

A man who has been pampered by Fortune from birth becomes highly civilized: and the more highly civilized we are, the less adroitly do we cope with bounders of the Braddock type who seem to belong to an earlier and rougher age.

Osbert Mulliner was simply unequal to the task of tackling cavemen.

His whole scheme of escape must be cancelled and another substituted. Osbert ordered two pots of black coffee, tied a wet handkerchief round his forehead, and plunged once more into thought.

It has been frequently said of the Mulliners that you may perplex but you cannot baffle them.

It was getting on for dinner-time before Osbert finally decided upon a plan of action: but this plan, he perceived as he examined it, was far superior to the first one.

"It is pretty generally recognised now that he is beyond the reach of human science.

The only thing to do seems to be to let him go on till he eventually runs down.

"

Tone likely to offend? What did the man mean about the tone being likely to offend? She had never heard such nonsense in her life. How could the tone possibly offend? It was unexceptionable.

The whole poem breathed that clean, wholesome, healthy spirit of Sport which has made England what it is.

And the thing was not only lyrically perfect, but educational as well. It told the young reader, anxious to shoot gnus but uncertain of the correct procedure, exactly what he wanted to know.

The sky was blue. The sun was shining.

All Nature seemed to call to her to come out and kill things.

She left the room and ran quickly down the stairs.

he said. "Shooting? I see. And have you never been taught, wretched child, that you should be kind to the animals that crave your compassion? Has no one ever told you that he prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small?

For shame, Wilfred, for shame!

"

Aubrey stood for a moment, pondering.

Her razor-like feminine intelligence had cut cleanly to the core of the matter.

After all, now that she put it like that, why not?

Charlotte descended from her tree. Her expression was petulant.

Girls nowadays are spoiled, and only too readily become peevish when baulked of their pleasures.

"I had no idea he was so nippy," she said.

I think the two young men in the chess-board knickerbockers were a little surprised when they looked up and perceived Mr. Mulliner brooding over their table like an affable Slave of the Lamp. Absorbed in their conversation, they had not noticed his approach.

It was their first visit to the Anglers' Rest, and their first meeting with the Sage of its bar-parlour: and they were not yet aware that to Mr. Mulliner any assemblage of his fellow-men over and above the number of one constitutes an audience.

"Good evening, gentlemen," said Mr. Mulliner. "You have been playing golf, I see."

"The story," repeated Mr. Mulliner, holding them with the effortless ease which makes this sort of thing such child's play to him, "of Agnes Flack, Sidney McMurdo, Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch."

It is an odd thing (said Mr. Mulliner) how often one finds that those who practise the Arts are quiet, timid little men, shy in company and unable to express themselves except through the medium of the pencil or the pen.

I have noticed it again and again. John Gooch was like that. So was Frederick Pilcher. Gooch was a writer and Pilcher was an artist, and they used to meet a good deal at Agnes Flack's house, where they were constant callers.

And then the hideous truth dawned on him. His subconscious self had totally misunderstood the purport of his recent remarks and had got the whole thing nicely muddled up.

Much has been written of the subconscious self, and all that has been written goes to show that of all the thick-headed, blundering chumps who take everything they hear literally, it is the worst.

Anybody of any intelligence would have realized that when John Gooch said, "You are going to play well," he was speaking to Frederick Pilcher; but his subconscious self had missed the point completely.

He had avoided his studio and loafed about the house. Married to Agnes Flack, his studio would see a lot more of him. He would spend all day in it—probably have a truckle bed put in and never leave it at all.

A sensible man, felt Frederick Pilcher, can always make a success of marriage if he goes about it in the right spirit.

John Gooch's eyes gleamed. Frederick Pilcher's jaw protruded. And neck and neck, fighting grimly for their sixes and sometimes even achieving fives, they came to the ninth green, halved the hole, and were all square at the turn.

But there was good stuff in John Gooch.

It is often in times of great peril that the artistic temperament shows up best.

Missing the ball altogether with his next three swings, he topped it with his fourth, topped it again with his fifth, and, playing the like, sent a low, skimming shot well over the green into the bunker beyond.

Well-bred and highly civilized, he knew how to wear the mask. The lofty forehead that shone above his rimless pince-nez was smooth and unruffled, and if he bared his teeth it was only in a polite smile.

Nevertheless, Roland Attwater was fed to the eyebrows.

In the first place, he hated these family dinners. In the second place, he had been longing all the evening for a chance to explain that muddy shirt, and everybody had treated it with a silent tact which was simply maddening.

"Good!" said Roland.

They were some rather special gents' half-hose from the Burlington Arcade, subtly passionate, and he was hoping much from them.

He wandered to the table, and became aware that on it lay a large cardboard box. "Hullo, what's this?"

The visitor, who walked springily into the room, was a girl of remarkable beauty.

She resembled a particularly good-looking schoolboy who had dressed up in his sister's clothes.

"Ah!" she said, cocking a bright eye at the suit-case. "I'm glad you're bustling about. We ought to be starting soon. I'm going to drive you down in the two-seater." She began a restless tour of the room. "Hullo!" she said, arriving at the box.

Miss Wickham did not appear to share the modern girl's distaste for her home. She plainly wanted to get there as quickly as possible.

It seemed to Roland that from the time they left High Barnet to the moment when with a grinding of brakes, they drew up at the door of Skeldings Hall the two-seater had only touched Hertfordshire at odd spots.

Yet, as they alighted, Roberta Wickham voiced a certain dissatisfaction with her work.

The close-up which he now received of this person did nothing to allay Roland's apprehension. The man was handsome, sickeningly handsome, with just that dark, dignified, clean-cut handsomeness which attracts impressionable girls. It was, indeed, his dignity that so oppressed Roland now.

There was that about Sir Claude Lynn's calm and supercilious eye that made a fellow feel that he belonged to entirely the wrong set in London and that his trousers were bagging at the knees.

"A most delightful man," whispered Lady Wickham, as Sir Claude moved away to open the door for Bobbie. "Between ourselves, the original of Captain Mauleverer, D.S.O., in my Blood Will Tell. Very old family, ever so much money. Plays polo splendidly. And tennis. And golf.

It was at this precise moment that Sir Claude Lynn, surfeited with cannons, put on his coat, replaced his cue in the rack, and came out of the billiard-room.

If there is one thing in this world that should be done quickly or not at all, it is the removal of one's personal snake from the bed of a comparative stranger.

Yet Roland, brooding over the snowy coverlet, hesitated. All his life he had had a horror of crawling and slippery things.

"But Mr. Attwater has no snake," argued Lady Wickham. "He is a well-known man-of-letters.

Well-known men-of-letters," she said, stating a pretty generally recognized fact, "do not take snakes with them when they go on visits.

"

"Those pyjamas," said Miss Wickham, firmly. "The moment I caught a glimpse of them, I said to myself, 'No wedding bells for me!' No!

I've seen too much of life to be optimistic about a man who wears mauve pyjamas.

" She plunged for a space into maiden meditation. When she spoke again, it was on another aspect of the affair. "I'm afraid mother is rather cross with you, Roland."

Mulliner), Dudley Finch made a singularly impressive picture. He was—sartorially—so absolutely right in every respect. From his brilliantined hair to his gleaming shoes, from his fawn-coloured spats to his Old Etonian tie, he left no loophole to the sternest critic.

You felt as you saw him that if this was the sort of chap who lunched at Claridge's, old man Claridge was in luck.

"

Roland turned. A girl was crossing the road; a slim, boyish-looking girl, with shingled hair of a glorious red.

She came tripping along with all the gay abandon of a woman who is forty minutes late for lunch and doesn't give a hoot.

"Yo-ho!" yowled young Mr. Finch. "Yo frightfully ho!"

It was a sagging and demoralized Dudley who crawled into the dining-room a quarter of an hour later.

In spite of what moralists say, a good conscience is not enough in itself to enable a man to bear himself jauntily in every crisis of life.

Dudley had had a good upbringing, and the fact that he was dining at a strange house in a bright check suit gave him a consciousness of sin which he strove vainly to overcome.

On the left sleeve of the man opposite him was a disgraceful wrinkle. The fellow next to the girl in pink might have a good heart, but the waistcoat which covered it did not fit by a mile.

And as for the tie of that other bloke down by Lady Wickham, it was not a tie at all in the deeper meaning of the word; it was just a deplorable occurrence.

Yet, situated as he was, his heart ached with envy of all these tramps.

At the time he had paid little attention to the remark, but now it began to be borne in upon him more and more strongly that this milk-train was going to be of great strategic importance in his life.

This ghastly house was just the sort of house that fellows did naturally go away from on milk-trains, and it behoved him to be prepared.

He rang the bell once more.

In spite of her stern disapproval of this scoundrel who wormed his way into people's houses in quest of loot, a slight diminution of austerity came to Lady Wickham as the result of this introduction of the literary note.

She was an indefatigable novelist, and it pleased her to place her works in the hands of even the vilest.

Ushering Dudley into the library, she switched on the light and made her way without hesitation to the third shelf from the top nearest the fireplace. Selecting one from a row of brightly covered volumes, she offered it to him.

It had tortured him then, and it would, he knew, torture him even more keenly now.

Nothing, he resolved, should induce him to go on reading. So he immediately went on.

But you can take it from me that every other fellow who comes in contact with Bobbie finds himself sooner or later up to the Adam's apple in some ghastly mess.

She lets them down with a dull, sickening thud.

Look at Roland Attwater. He went to stay at her place, and he had a snake with him...."

Wedged in among the crowd of pleasure-seekers, Ambrose, though physically uncomfortable, felt somehow a sort of spiritual refreshment.

There is nothing a young man in love finds more delightful than the doing of some knightly service for the loved one: and, though to describe as a knightly service the act of standing in a queue and buying tickets for a motion-picture entertainment may seem straining the facts a little, to one in Ambrose's condition a service is a service.

He would have preferred to be called upon to save Bobbie's life: but, this not being at the moment feasible, it was something to be jostling in a queue for her sake.

Then Hope began to steal shyly back. After all, it was in her cause that he had suffered this great blow. She would take that into account.

Furthermore, girls of Roberta Wickham's fine fibre do not love a man entirely for his hat. The trousers count, so do the spats.

It was in a spirit almost optimistic that he forced his way through the crowd to the spot where he had left the girl. And as he reached it the squeaky voice of Old Stinker smote his ear.

He sank back in his chair and endeavoured to avert his eyes from the grim proceedings. Æons passed, and he was aware that the golluping noises at his side had ceased.

All things end in time. Even the weariest river winds somewhere to the sea.

Wilfred and Old Stinker had stopped eating oysters.

Ambrose Wiffin paused at the cross-roads. In all his life he had never left a waiter untipped. He had not supposed it could be done.

He had looked upon the tipping of waiters as a natural process, impossible to evade, like breathing or leaving the bottom button of your waistcoat unfastened.

Ghosts of by-gone Wiffins—Wiffins who had scattered largesse to the multitude in the Middle Ages, Wiffins who in Regency days had flung landlords purses of gold—seemed to crowd at his elbow, imploring the last of their line not to disgrace the family name.

You may impair it with a series of injudicious lunches, but you can never wholly destroy the spirit that has made Englishmen what they are. When the hour strikes, the old bulldog strain will show itself. Shakespeare noticed the same thing.

His back against the wall, an Englishman, no matter how well he has lunched, will always sell his life dearly.

The glassy-eyed man, as he would have been the first to admit, had had just that couple over the eight which make all the difference, but he was a Briton.