"Incomparable ... a wonderful slapstick satire on hypocrisy." — New Statesman.
"One of the great comic novels of the twentieth century." — Anthony Burgess.
Meet our memoirist, Augustus Carp, a self-proclaimed "good man" who relishes every opportunity to condemn the weaknesses of others while excusing his own failings. In this spoof autobiography, the pompous narrator enthusiastically recounts his mundane achievements with unwitting hilarity, making frequent asides to bemoan the sins of lesser mortals. Much of the story's ironic humor derives from his delivery; the more seriously Carp takes himself, the more ridiculous he appears.
This riotous fable is supported by a cast of delightfully eccentric and grotesque characters: Abraham Stool, manufacturer of the famous Adult Gripe Water; schoolteacher Mr. Beerthorpe, inevitably known to his charges as "Beery"; the Rev. Eugene Cake, author of such improving fiction as Gnashers of Teeth; and other memorable personalities. A cult classic and comic gem, the book was originally published anonymously in 1924 and rediscovered decades later, when its author was revealed as a genteel (and discreet) London physician. This edition features the splendidly droll illustrations by Punch artist Marjorie Blood from the original publication.
"Incomparable ... a wonderful slapstick satire on hypocrisy." — New Statesman.
"One of the great comic novels of the twentieth century." — Anthony Burgess.
Meet our memoirist, Augustus Carp, a self-proclaimed "good man" who relishes every opportunity to condemn the weaknesses of others while excusing his own failings. In this spoof autobiography, the pompous narrator enthusiastically recounts his mundane achievements with unwitting hilarity, making frequent asides to bemoan the sins of lesser mortals. Much of the story's ironic humor derives from his delivery; the more seriously Carp takes himself, the more ridiculous he appears.
This riotous fable is supported by a cast of delightfully eccentric and grotesque characters: Abraham Stool, manufacturer of the famous Adult Gripe Water; schoolteacher Mr. Beerthorpe, inevitably known to his charges as "Beery"; the Rev. Eugene Cake, author of such improving fiction as Gnashers of Teeth; and other memorable personalities. A cult classic and comic gem, the book was originally published anonymously in 1924 and rediscovered decades later, when its author was revealed as a genteel (and discreet) London physician. This edition features the splendidly droll illustrations by Punch artist Marjorie Blood from the original publication.
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Overview
"Incomparable ... a wonderful slapstick satire on hypocrisy." — New Statesman.
"One of the great comic novels of the twentieth century." — Anthony Burgess.
Meet our memoirist, Augustus Carp, a self-proclaimed "good man" who relishes every opportunity to condemn the weaknesses of others while excusing his own failings. In this spoof autobiography, the pompous narrator enthusiastically recounts his mundane achievements with unwitting hilarity, making frequent asides to bemoan the sins of lesser mortals. Much of the story's ironic humor derives from his delivery; the more seriously Carp takes himself, the more ridiculous he appears.
This riotous fable is supported by a cast of delightfully eccentric and grotesque characters: Abraham Stool, manufacturer of the famous Adult Gripe Water; schoolteacher Mr. Beerthorpe, inevitably known to his charges as "Beery"; the Rev. Eugene Cake, author of such improving fiction as Gnashers of Teeth; and other memorable personalities. A cult classic and comic gem, the book was originally published anonymously in 1924 and rediscovered decades later, when its author was revealed as a genteel (and discreet) London physician. This edition features the splendidly droll illustrations by Punch artist Marjorie Blood from the original publication.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780486812878 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Dover Publications |
Publication date: | 03/17/2017 |
Pages: | 240 |
Sales rank: | 273,345 |
Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
"Robin," the book's illustrator, was Punch cartoonist Marjorie Blood. A year after illustrating the book, she joined Roehampton Convent, where generations of girls knew her as Mother Catherine.
Read an Excerpt
Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself
By Henry Howarth Bashford, Robin
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2017 Henry Howarth BashfordAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-81287-8
CHAPTER 1
No apology for writing this book. An imperative duty under present conditions. Description of my parents and their personal appearances. Description of Mon Repos, Angela Gardens. Long anxiety prior to my birth. Intense joy when at last this takes place. My father's decision as to my Xtian name. Early selection of my first godfather.
It is customary, I have noticed, in publishing an autobiography to preface it with some sort of apology. But there are times, and surely the present is one of them, when to do so is manifestly unnecessary. In an age when every standard of decent conduct has either been torn down or is threatened with destruction; when every newspaper is daily reporting scenes of violence, divorce, and arson; when quite young girls smoke cigarettes and even, I am assured, sometimes cigars; when mature women, the mothers of unhappy children, enter the sea in one-piece bathing-costumes; and when married men, the heads of households, prefer the flicker of the cinematograph to the Athanasian Creed – then it is obviously a task, not to be justifiably avoided, to place some higher example before the world.
For some time – I am now forty-seven – I had been feeling this with increasing urgency. And when not only my wife and her four sisters, but the vicar of my parish, the Reverend Simeon Whey, approached me with the same suggestion, I felt that delay would amount to sin. That sin, by many persons, is now lightly regarded, I am, of course, only too well aware. That its very existence is denied by others is a fact equally familiar to me. But I am not one of them. On every ground I am an unflinching opponent of sin. I have continually rebuked it in others. I have strictly refrained from it in myself. And for that reason alone I have deemed it incumbent upon me to issue this volume.
I propose in the first instance to deal with my earliest surroundings and the influence exerted upon me by my father, believing as I do that every man (and to a lesser extent every woman) is almost entirely the product of his or her personal endeavours. I cannot pretend, of course, to attach much importance to merely paternal influence. Nevertheless in the lives of each one of us it undoubtedly plays a certain part. And although my father had numerous faults, as I afterwards discovered and was able to point out to him, he yet brought to bear on me the full force of a frequently noble character.
That such was his duty I do not of course deny. But duty well done is rare enough to deserve a tribute. And in days such as these, when fatherhood is so lightly regarded, and is so frequently, indeed, accidental, too much attention can surely not be given to so opposite an instance.
At the time of my birth, then, and until his death, my father was a civic official in a responsible position, being a collector of outstanding accounts for the Consolidated Water Board. In addition, he was one of the most respected and trustworthy agents of the Durham and West Hartlepool Fire and Burglary Insurance Company, a sidesman of the Church of St James-the-Less in Camberwell, and the tenant of Mon Repos, Angela Gardens. This was one of some thirty-six admirably conceived houses of a similar and richly ornamented architecture, the front door of each being flanked and surmounted by diamond-shaped panes of blue and vermilion glass; and though it was true that this particular house had been named by the landlord in a foreign tongue, it must not be assumed that this nomenclature in any way met with my father's approval. On the contrary, he had not only protested, but such was his distrust of French morality that he had always insisted, both for himself and others, upon a strictly English pronunciation.
Somewhat under lower middle height, my father, even as a boy, had been inclined to corpulence, a characteristic, inherited by myself, that he succeeded in retaining to the end of his life. Nor did he ever lose – or not to any marked extent – either the abundant hair that grew upon his scalp, his glossy and luxurious moustache, or his extraordinarily powerful voice. This was a deep bass that in moments of emotion became suddenly converted into a high falsetto, and he never hesitated, in a cause that he deemed righteous, to employ it to its full capacity. Always highly coloured, and the fortunate possessor of an exceptionally large and well-modelled nose, my father's eyes were of a singularly pale, unwinking blue, while in his massive ears, with their boldly outstanding rims, resided the rare faculty of independent motion.
My mother, on the other hand, presented hardly a feature that could, in the strictest sense, have been called beautiful, although she was somewhat taller than my father, with eyes that were similar in their shade of blue. Like my father's, too, her nose was large, but it had been built on lines that were altogether weaker, and the slightly reddish down upon her upper lip might even by some people have been considered a disfigurement. She had inherited, however, together with five hundred pounds, an apparently gentle disposition, and was a scion or scioness of the Walworth Road branch of the great family of Robinson. Herself the eldest of the nine daughters of Mortimer Robinson, a well-known provision merchant, my father had claimed relationship for her, albeit unsuccessfully, with Peter Robinson of Oxford Street, while he used half humorously to assert her connection with the fictional character known as Robinson Crusoe. Clean in her habits, quiet about the house, and invariably obedient to his slightest wish, he had very seldom indeed, as he often told me, seriously regretted his choice of a wife.
With sufficient capital, therefore, not only to furnish his house, but to pay its first year's rent and establish an emergency fund, my father might well have been supposed by an ignorant observer to be free from every anxiety. Such was not the case, however, and he was obliged, almost immediately, to face one of the sternest ordeals of his married life. Ardently desiring increase, it was not for nine and a half months that Providence saw fit to answer his prayers, and as week succeeded week and the cradle still remained empty, only his unfaltering faith saved him from despair. But the hour came at last, and so vividly has my father described it to me that I have long since shared its triumphant joy.
Born at half-past three on a February morning, the world having been decked with a slight snow-fall, it was then that my mother's aunt, Mrs Emily Smith, opened the bedroom door and emerged on the landing. My father had gone outside to lean over the gate, and was still leaning there when she opened the door, but my mother's mother, with another of my mother's aunts, were standing with bowed heads at the foot of the stairs. Prone in the parlour, and stretched in uneasy attitudes, five of her eight sisters were snatching a troubled sleep, while two fellow-members of my mother's Mothers' Guild were upon their knees in the back kitchen. But for the fact, indeed, that two of my mother's sisters had not, at that time, had their tonsils removed, the whole house would have been wrapped in the profoundest stillness.
My mother's mother was the first to see Mrs Smith, though she only saw her, as it were, through a mist. Mrs Smith was the first to speak, in a voice tremulous with emotion.
'Where's Augustus?' she said. Augustus was my father's name.
'He's just gone outside,' said my mother's mother.
Something splashed heavily on the hall linoleum. It was a drop of moisture from Mrs Smith's forehead.
'Tell him,' she said, 'that he's the father of a son.'
My mother's mother gave a great cry. My father was beside her in a single leap. Always, as I have said, highly coloured, his face at this moment seemed literally on fire. The two fellow-members of my mother's Mothers' Guild, accompanied by my father's five sisters-in-law, rushed into the hall. Mrs Smith leaned over the banisters.
'A boy,' she said. 'It's a boy.'
'A boy?' said my father.
'Yes, a boy,' said Mrs Smith.
There was a moment's hush, and then Nature had its way. My father unashamedly burst into tears. My mother's mother kissed him on the neck just as the two fellow-members burst into a hymn; and a moment later, my mother's five sisters burst simultaneously into the doxology. Then my father recovered himself and held up his hand.
'I shall call him Augustus,' he said, 'after myself.'
'Or tin?' suggested my mother's mother. 'What about calling him tin, after the saint?'
'How do you mean – tin?' said my father.
'Augus-tin,' said Mrs Emily Smith.
But my father shook his head.
'No, it shall be tus,' he said. 'Tus is better than tin.'
Then his five sisters-in-law resumed the singing, from which the two fellow-members had been unable to desist, until my father, who had been rapidly thinking, once again held up his hand.
'And I shall give the vicar,' he said, 'the first opportunity of becoming Augustus's godfather.'
Then he took a deep breath, threw back his shoulders, tilted his chin, and closed his eyes; and with the full vigour of his immense voice, he, too, joined in the doxology.
CHAPTER 2Trials of my infancy. Varieties of indigestion. I suffer from a local erythema. Instance of my father's unselfishness. Difficulty in providing a second godfather. Unexpected solution of the problem. The ceremony of my baptism. A narrow escape. Was it culpable carelessness? My father transfers his worship to St James-the-Lesser-Still, Peckham Rye.
With the portion of my life that intervened between my birth and my baptism I do not propose, owing to exigencies of space, to deal in the fullest detail. But it may be of some comfort to weaker fellow-sufferers to be assured that, from the outset, the ill-health to which I have been a life-long martyr played its part in testing my character. Singularly well formed, of a sanguine complexion, and weighing not less than four and three-quarter pounds, Providence saw fit almost immediately to purge me without medicinal aid. Whether this was due, under Higher Supervision, as my father several times forcibly suggested to her, to some dietary excess or indiscretion on the part of my mother was never determined. But the fact remained that for several weeks I suffered from indigestion in two main directions.
Twice, indeed, on the grounds of health, the ceremony of my baptism had to be postponed; and for hours together, I have been told, I lay upon my back, with my knees drawn up and my fingers clenched, in an anguished endeavour to stifle the moans that I was too enfeebled wholly to suppress. Time after time, too, my mother's mother, the aunt that had stood with her at the bottom of the stairs, and various of my mother's sisters would recommend alternative forms of nourishment. But although, at my father's desire, each of these suggestions was given an immediate trial, it was not for two months, and until I had been subjected to a heartbreaking period of starvation, that an affliction abated to which I have since been liable at any moment of undue excitement.
Chastened within, however, as I had been, I was not to escape chastisement without. For no sooner had I begun, in some small measure, to assimilate the food provided for me than I became the victim of an unfortunate skin complaint known, as I am informed, as erythema. This was happily local, but it gave rise to a very profound irritation, and one that proved, as my father has often assured me, to be of a peculiarly obstinate character. Naturally diffident, owing to the site of the affection, to mention it even to the family doctor, my parents exhausted their every resource without procuring the least alleviation. Though for night after night they made it a matter of prayer, my sufferings were pitiful, I have been told, to the last extreme; and almost hourly, from supper-time to breakfast, the darkness was rent with my cries.
Unable at last, owing to his acute sensibilities, to witness my agony any longer, my father was obliged, with the deepest reluctance, to confine himself to a separate bedroom. But it was in this extremity that his almost Quixotic unselfishness shone, if possible, with an added lustre. From the time of his marriage to the day of my birth, and as soon thereafter as the doctor had permitted her to rise, my father had been in the habit of enabling my mother to provide him with an early cup of tea. And this he had done by waking her regularly a few minutes before six o'clock. In view of the fact, however, that he was now occupying a different bedroom, and that, owing to my indisposition, she was awake most of the night, he offered to excuse her should she chance to be asleep at that hour, from the performance of this wifely duty. Needless to say, it was not an offer that she could accept. Indeed, in his heart he had not expected her to do so. And I have even considered the incident, in latter days, as illustrative of a certain weakness in my father's character. But I have never been able to regard it without affection or to forbear mentioning it on appropriate occasions.
That in most respects, however, my father's temperament was an exceptionally unflinching one was amply corroborated by the circumstances attendant upon the choice of my second godfather. This gave rise, as my father has frequently told me, to the most prolonged and anxious discussions, and entailed an enormous amount of correspondence, some of which has been preserved among the family documents. For with his ruthless determination, inherited by myself, to discover and expose every kind of wrong-doing, with his lifelong habit of informing those in authority of any dereliction of duty in themselves and their subordinates, and with the passion for truth that compelled him on every occasion instantly to correct what he deemed the reverse, my father had necessarily but little leisure to cultivate the easy art of friendship. Amongst his acquaintances, indeed, there were but few that even remotely approximated to his standards; and he had found none that his conscience had permitted him to select for the purposes of personal friendship.
It was for this reason that, on the occasion of his marriage, he had dispensed with the services of a best man. And although the vicar had eventually agreed to act as one of my male sponsors, the appointment of a second began to assume the proportions of an almost insoluble problem. It being manifestly impossible to hope for a suitable candidate among such persons as occasionally called at the house, and my father's character having long ago isolated him from his more immediate masculine relatives, he resolved at last to appeal to the public sense of the higher officials of the Church of England.
Nor was the result ungratifying, as various letters still in my possession go to prove. Though unable, owing to so many similar and previously acquired obligations, to accede to my father's suggestion, all of them replied with the greatest courtesy. Thus the Dean of St Paul's wrote in person wishing me every success in life; the Bishop of London trusted that my father's aspirations as to my personal holiness would be realized; while the Archbishop of Canterbury commanded his secretary to express his gratification at the suggestion of an honour that only the exigencies of his position as Primate forbade him to accept. Needless to say, those in charge of the State, whom my father next approached, behaved very differently. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Home Secretary saw fit to reply at all, while the President of the Board of Trade merely expressed a formal regret. And yet in the end, as is so often the case, the solution proved quite a simple one. Turn but a stone, says a poet, and start a wing. And my father did not even need to turn a stone. Sick at heart, he was returning home one night when he suddenly caught sight of himself in a cheese-monger's window. It was as though Providence, he said, had touched him on the shoulder. Whereas he had been blind, he said, then he saw. For a moment the shock was almost too much for him. A member of the constabulary, indeed, actually asked him to move on. But the solution was there, staring him in the face. Involuntarily he raised his hat. He himself was the man.
With my aunt, Mrs Emily Smith, only too eager to be my godmother, everything now seemed to be propitious for the happy consummation of my baptism, and no more earnest or reverent gathering could have been found that day in any Metropolitan church. The vicar being godfather, the actual ceremony was, at my father's suggestion, performed by the senior curate, the junior curate, in deference to my father's position as sidesman, being on the vicar's right hand between him and my mother.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself by Henry Howarth Bashford, Robin. Copyright © 2017 Henry Howarth Bashford. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 No apology for writing this book 1
An imperative duty under present conditions
Description of my parents and their personal appearances
Description of Mon Repos, Angela Gardens
Long anxiety prior to my birth
Intense joy when at last this takes place
My father's decision as to my Xtian name
Early selection of my first godfather
Chapter 2 Trials of my infancy 7
Varieties of indigestion
I suffer from a local erythema
Instance of my father's unselfishness
Difficulty in providing a second godfather
Unexpected solution of the problem
The ceremony of my baptism
A narrow escape
Was it culpable carelessness? My father transfers his worship to St James-the-Lesser-Still, Peckham Rye
Chapter 3 My parents' studies in the upbringing of children 15
A successful instance of non-vaccination
Further example of my father's consideration for others
My mother's ill-health
My parents engage a charwoman
Her appearance and character
Physical characteristics of her son, Deplorable social result of the war Continued presumption of charwoman's son
I rebuff him
Affection for grey rabbit
Charwoman's son's cannon and the use made of it by him
Scenes of violence and intervention of my father
Intervention of charwoman
A lethargic vicar
Was he also immoral? My father transfers his worship to St fames-the-Least- of-All
Chapter 4 Further years of boyhood and additional crosses 25
Progress in study and music
I excel at the game of Nuts in May
I am to go to Hopkinson House School
But Providence again intervenes
I become a victim of the ring-worm
Devastating effect of an ointment
Mr Balfour Whey and his sons
A brutal County Court judge
But my father obtains damages
Chapter 5 First experiences at Hopkinson House School 39
It is amongst the masters that I hope to find spritual companionship
I do not do so
Apology of Mr Muglington
I am struck by a football
Subsequent apology of Mr Beerthorpe
Degraded habits of my fellow-scholars
A fearful discovery and its sequel
Amazing ineptitude of Mr Lorton
Concerted assault upon my person
I am rescued by my father, who procures a public apology
Chapter 6 Reasons for remaining at Hopkinson House School 51
I pass from boyhood to early young manhood
Expeditions both urban and rural in the company of my dear father
An excellent and little-known diversion
Youthful adventures by sea and land
But what is to be my career leaving school? Various alternatives prayerfully considered
A vision is vouchsafed to us by Providence
A commercial Xtian
My first razor
Chapter 7 A further vision is vouchsafed to us by Providence 61
Mr Chrysostom Lorton and the sources of his wealth
The debt owed to me by Mr Septimus Lorton
Interview with Mr and Mrs Septimus Lorton
Mr Septimus Lorton's disgraceful attitude
My father is compelled to be frank with him
What I discovered in Greenwich Park
Chapter 8 Second interview with Mr Septimus Lorton 75
But now the tables are turned
A pitiful exhibition
My father demands guarantees
He will write a letter to Mrs Chrysostom Lorton
My father's ordeal
When it was dark
Chapter 9 Effect upon my father of his disclosure 81
My Xtian confidence in journeying to Enfield
Paternoster Towers and its mistress
Unfortunate detachment of my posterior trouser-buttons
Triumphant success of my interview
A kindly parlourmaid and her male friend
I secure a position under Mr Chrysostom Lorton
Melancholy death of Silas Whey
Chapter 10 Precautionary measures on entering commercial life 95
I join the N.S.L and the S.P.S.D.T
A crying need in the conduct of prayer-meetings
I join the A.D.S.U
Personal appearance of Ezekiel Stool
Personal appearance of his five sisters
Predicament of Ezekiel Stool on the fifth of November
A timely instance of presence of mind
I am invited to a meal at the Stools' residence
A foreshadowing of sinister events
Chapter 11 Design for my grandfather's tomb 107
Death and interment of Mrs Emily Smith and the aunt that had stood with my mother's mother at the bottom of the stairs
Effect upon my fathers health
Alexander Carkeek and his sons
Arrival home from the Stools
First tidings of the new lectern
My father's interview with the vicar
Curious instance of transposition of consonants
My father rehearses his denunciation
Arrival of Simeon Whey
My father repeats his denunciation
Chapter 12 Breakfast finds us calm but grave 123
My mother is allowed to accompany us to church
My father's clothing and general demeanour
Remark of Simeon Whey on my father's hat
First impression of the new lectern
Unmistakable evidences ofguilt
The vicar's feeble apologia
A devilish device and its disastrous results
I race with Corkran for half-a-crown
My poor father is three times dropped
Chapter 13 Description of the injuries sustained by my father 135
A supremely difficult medical problem
Legal assistance of Mr Balfaur Whey
Infamous decisions and public comments
A quiet church and obliging clergy
Surprising character-growth of Ezekiel
A distasteful proposition generously put forward
Disgusting behaviour of a show-room manager
Chapter 14 Person and character of Mr Archibald Maidstone 145
Irreverent attitude towards the firm's publications
Would-be laxity of two constables
Their tardy performance of an obvious duty
Deplorable condition of my Sunday trousers
Their effect on Miss Botterill and Mr Chrysostom Lorton
The arrival and influence of the Reverend Eugene Cake
Mr Maidstone is dismissed and I succeed him
Complete discomfiture of his three elder children
Chapter 15 Happy years 157
A typical day
Simeon Whey is at last ordained
His first sermon at St Sepulchre's, Balham
Intensive campaign of the A.D.S.U
I meet Miss Moonbeam and call her Mary
Affecting appeal not to leave her in darkness
I promise not to do so
A face to lean on
Will I come again? Adventure on the stage of the Empresses Theatre
Chapter 16 Disappointing attitude of Ezekiel 173
Suggested nuptials of Miss Moonbeam
An occasion for tact and postponement
I am obliged to mite a letter
Ezekiel accompanies me to the Empresses Theatre
We are a little taken aback by the numbers to be rescued
An apparently delightful beverage
I address Miss Moonbeam's friends on the subject of temperance
Ezekiel addresses them on the evils of the drama
We arrange a meeting
Description of meeting
Chapter 17 Profound depression subsequent to port-poisoning 197
An iniquitous plot and its consequences
Insubordination of Miss Botterill
I retire from the firm of Mr Chrysostom Lorton
A crushing rejoinder and its repetition
Second journey to Enfield
Transformation of Mrs Chrysostom's boudoir
Unexpected repentance of Mrs Chrysostom
Unfortunate results of this for myself
Fruitless termination of interview
Chapter 18 Physical reaction following my interview with Mrs Chrysostom 211
Reception of a wreath from the Maidstones
Moving excerpt from Simeon's diary
I decide to marry one of Ezekiel's sisters
Interview with Ezekiel and his deplorable language
Tact is selected to become my bride
Tragic return to Mon Repos
I fall unconscious, parallel to my father
Chapter 19 Commencement of my life's afternoon 223
My father's eight sisters-in-law return to Wales
Astounding attitude of my mother
Physical effect thereof on myself I move to Stoke Newington
Further parochial activities
Simeon Whey obtains a living
I move to Hornsey and become a Churchwarden
Complete decline of Ezekiel Stool
Birth of my son
A happy augury