The last chapter dealt with practical jokes and lies with a purpose.  It is the intention to deal in this chapter with the deceptions and prevarications, the petty dishonesties and obsessive keeping up of appearances that are so much a part of this artificial society and without which its fabric would disintegrate.  Saki's characters are engaged in elaborate futilities in two senses: the life style itself with its meaningless affectations and lack of proper purpose, all form and no content; and in the ineffectual machinations of these people who are so easily routed by the Clovises, animals or simply a quirk of fate or their own inadequacies.

In The Unbearable Bassington, Francesca says to herself, "'What on earth would become of these dear good people if any one started a crusade [against] mediocrity?'" (p.583), a rhetorical question which sets the tone of the short stories to be examined in this chapter.¹  In the early "Reginald" sketches the pattern is clearly defined.  The targets are no match for Reginald's barbs and sallies.  As Saki expands his range in the second and subsequent collections² his attacks are more often oblique and demand the collusion of the reader for proper appreciation.  They take several forms: "diplomatic reticence" which often masks unpleasant thoughts or motives; invective which in tone resembles the outspoken and outrageous Reginald sketches though frequently more acerbic; art and artifice where the staginess of the characters and their obsession with appearances is penetrated by some shaft of wit, trick of fate, an animal upsetting the orderly pattern or often a combination of all these things to show up the false values.  Sometimes blackmail is used, sometimes absurdity, sometimes political allusion; everywhere there is deceit and lying which are so vital to the society which Saki is satirising.

Reginald

As Green³ says, "An inclination to affect indifference to everything important and a fascination for everything others thought of no consequence" are what form the basis for Saki's kind of humour, an idea expanded by Drake in "The Sauce for the Asparagus".⁴  There is evidence of this in the very first of the Reginald sketches where Reginald spends hours choosing which waistcoat to wear to the garden party at which he creates havoc among the stuffed shirts, the hypocrites and the social climbers before concluding - as if this is the only occasion for regret during the entire afternoon - "'I believe an apricot tie would have gone better with the lilac waistcoat'"(p.8).⁵

It is clear from the first that everything that Reginald says or does is for effect, often of "a stampede" (p.8).  His elaborate poses: "Reginald shut his eyes" (p.6), "Reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown"(p.6), "Reginald was possessed with a great peace, which was not wholly to be accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them" (p.6), all point to the kind of "imp of Inconsequence" to whom things did not happen "but happened around him" as Vivian Carter puts it.⁶  On his first appearance at a garden party, he offends a colonel by drawing attention to his age.  Reginald himself "in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to being more than twenty-two" (p.7)⁷, and this inverted observation sets the tone for the Reginald prototype.  He introduces the son of a Temperance devotee to a recipe for absinthe, and he outrages the Archdeacon's wife by discussing with her a risqué French Play which occasions a "peptonized reproach in the good lady's eyes" (p.8).

Reginald in his effete preoccupation with his own appearance draws attention to the obsession with superficialities of the society in which he moves.  In "Reginald on the Academy", he observes of the pictures: "'one can always look at them if one is bored with one's surroundings, or wants to avoid an imminent acquaintance'" (p.10).  The purpose of a visit to the Academy is not to look at the pictures but to be seen.⁸  Reginald digresses about the sort of people he meets at the Academy before discussing the pictures themselves, which "'are so refreshingly real and probable, they take one away from the unrealities of life'" (p.11).  This leads to ironic comment on the titles of the pictures and to the observation that "'another darling weakness of the Academy is that none of its luminaries must "arrive" in a hurry'" (p.12), adding with uncanny topicality that "'you can see them coming for years, like a Balkan trouble or a street improvement'" (p.12).

"Reginald at the Theatre" introduces the Duchess with her unquestioning middle-class attitudes, whose complacency he temporarily upsets with questions like, "'I wonder [...] if you have ever walked down the Embankment on a winter night?'"(p.14), an atypically serious remark, before resuming his mantle of flippancy.  As Chapman points out, it is "not the destitution to which Saki wished to draw attention (it merits only a glancing reference), so much as the limited vision of the Duchess".⁹

In "Reginald at the Carlton", he succeeds in shocking the Duchess by his outrageous inconsequentialities.  Sententiously she remarks, "'A scandal, my dear Reginald, is as much to be avoided at Monaco or any of those places as at Exeter, let us say'" (p.24), to which Reginald replies with truth, "'Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people'" (p.24).  He flits from topic to topic effortlessly, his flippancy punctuated by her wooden responses,¹⁰ as they gossip about acquaintances.  Reginald is deliberately facetious, she is unconsciously funny.  Women of this sort abound in Saki's writings and inevitably call to mind Ethel Munro's description of their Aunt Tom.¹¹  In her humourless way, the Duchess says of "the Whimples", for example, "'Their eldest son was such a disappointment to them; they wanted him to be a linguist, and spent no end of money on having him taught to speak - oh, dozens of languages! - and then he became a Trappist monk'" (p.25).  The effect of the pause after "speak" is a masterly touch from Saki subtly underlining the joke.

Reginald replies that "'there are different ways of taking disappointment'" (p.25), and cites the instance of a girl who, having nursed an uncle until he died, finds that he has left his money to - of all preposterous things - "'a swine-fever hospital [...] now she gives drawing-room recitations.  That's what I call being vindictive'" (p.25).  Ignoring this, the Duchess waxes philosophical.  "'Life is full of its disappointments [...] and I suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as illusions.  But that, my dear Reginald, becomes more difficult as one grows older'" (p.25).  This rare moment of insight from the Duchess is more than matched by Reginald: "'The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.  It's only the middle-aged who are really conscious of their limitations'" (p.25).  The cynical truth of this exchange reveals the serious purpose which underlies much of the frivolity of the Reginald sketches - one of Roberts' "apothegms of wise nonsense".¹²

In more characteristic vein Reginald pokes fun at what passes for theatrical entertainment in "Reginald's Drama".¹³  Striking a typical pose, "Reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one who had rather nice eyelashes and thinks it useless to conceal the fact" (p.28) and tells "the Other" that he intends to write a great drama which no one will understand with "'Wolves in the first act, by Jamrach'" (p.28).¹⁴ Stream of consciousness leads him to a digression about "'the case of the Mudge-Jervises'" (p.28), who "'belonged to the Guild of the Poor Dear Souls'"¹⁵ who "'hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman'" (p.29).  In celebration of this achievement the laundress is invited to an "'At Home' at Agatha Camelford's" (p.29) where she unfortunately encounters liqueur chocolates.  "'It was like finding a whelk-stall in a desert as she afterwards partially expressed herself'" (p.29), the remainder of what she said being left to the imagination.

When the inebriated laundress gives a performance as a dancing bear Agatha's character is neatly summed up as someone who "'doesn't approve of dancing, except at Buckingham Palace under proper supervision'" (p.29).  And when the washerwoman impersonates a parrot in a cage only "'Baroness Boobelstein who has attended sittings of the Austrian Reichsrath'"(p.29)¹⁶ "'had heard anything like it'" (p.29).  Brought back again to discussion of the play, Reginald explains that "'the wolves would be a sort of elusive undercurrent [...] that would never be satisfactorily explained'" (p.30), obviously not like the laundress who "'went in for realism rather than a Maeterlinckian treatment of the subject'" (p.29).  As a justification, Reginald adds, "'After all, life teems with things that have no earthly reason'" (p.30).

The gift for "partial expression" is to be found throughout Saki's work,¹⁷ but possibly in greatest concentration in the Reginald sketches where the emphasis is on dialogue rather than incident.  For instance, in "Reginald on Worries", discussing the colour of his aunt's hair he comments, "'She says her particular tint of bronze is a natural advantage, and there can be no two opinions as to the advantage'" (p.19).  In "Reginald's Choir Treat", Reginald himself is described: "None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair" (p.16) and it is tempting to wonder whether this was a "natural advantage" like his aunt's.

The Duchess figures again in "Reginald's Rubaiyat" which not only mocks the poets and poetry of the day but is also an excuse to range over several other topics which expose the hypocrisy of the Duchess and her like.  She accuses Reginald of bribery in giving grapes to an undecided voter and political propaganda to a sick woman instead of vice versa, since "it might have compromised the candidate she was supporting" (p.37).  As Reginald ironically points out, "he was expected to subscribe to church funds [...] football and cricket clubs and regattas" and so on "but bribery would not have been tolerated" (p.37).

In "Reginald on House-Parties" he laments the fact that "'one never really knows one's hosts and hostesses'" (p.20).  As a glimpse behind the scenes at a typical Edwardian house-party, it is to be hoped that this is an exaggeration, but many of the observations have a certain timeless ring of truth about them.  Again hypocrisy is under attack as when Reginald says, "'one gets to know [...] whether the story about the go-cart can be turned loose in the drawing-room, or must be told privately to each member of the party, for fear of shocking public opinion'" (p.20).

He is cruel on the subject of the house guests too, in particular "the girl, for instance, who reads Meredith, and appears at meals with unnatural punctuality in a frock that's made at home and repented at leisure" (p.21).  Reginald is complacently confident that he is exempt from the usual social strictures as being "nice-looking and sufficiently unusual to counterbalance" (p.21) such girls.  But Reginald's personal bête noire is the sort of person who "fires Exchange and Mart questions at you" (p.22) especially "when I was doing my best to understand half the things I was saying" (p.22).  In having a sense of humour as an antidote to his vanity Reginald keeps a sense of proportion about himself.

The dire consequences of telling the truth are described in "Reginald on Besetting Sins" where a bad habit which started in a small way grows insidiously in order to fill the vacuum of the Woman's empty life.  By the time she is "veracious even to months" (p.26) about her age, she has offended her elder sister and many others besides.

"For instance, she told Miriam Klopstock exactly how she looked at the Ilexes' ball" (p.26), the consequences of which may be imagined.  Miriam, after all, is described in "The Innocence of Reginald" as taking "'nines in voices'" (p.39), and belonging to the Macaws' Hockey Club from which she is banned "'because you could hear what she thought when her shins got mixed up in a scrimmage for half a mile on a still day'" (p.39).  Reginald further explains that the Macaws are so called because they wear a blue and yellow strip "'but I understand there was nothing yellow about Miriam's language'" (p.39), another fine example of "partial expression".

The Woman's friends believe that a family might have mitigated her compulsion to tell the truth since "children are given us to discourage our better emotions.  That is why the stage [...] can never be as artificial as life" (p.26), an observation which recalls Reginald's views on paintings at the Academy too.  Thus her progress towards self-destruction leads her to offend her dressmaker, whose "establishment was a meeting-ground for naked truths and overdressed fictions" (p.27), an instance of the "epigram and pinpoint flippancy" noted by Lambert.¹⁸  Having lost the "artless mendacity of past days" (p.27), she goes on to tell the cook a home truth about her drinking habits.  "The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went"(p.27), a joke which is possibly Saki's best known.

Reginald's last appearance in the very first story of the second collection ("Reginald in Russia") is chiefly memorable for the passage of stilted French which calls to mind the episode in the much later story, "The Boar-Pig".  Perhaps Reginald may be best summed up in his own words in "The Innocence of Reginald": "'I love people who do unexpected things'" (p.39).¹⁹  As the forerunner of all the mischief-making and irreverent pranksters he is perhaps the one who depends most on his verbal ability to rout the opposition.  He is certainly the most self-conscious and narcissistic which doubtless reinforces his love of "people who do unexpected things".  Nothing is sacred to him, he is ruthless in his exposure of the elaborate futilities of the society in which he conducts his own elaborately futile existence.  As he says to the upstart Lady Beauwhistle in "Reginald on Worries", "'If you want a lesson in elaborate artificiality, just watch the studied unconcern of a Persian cat entering a crowded salon'" (p.20).  Observing the proprieties is all important, social grace, decorum and politeness masking either hostility or the sort of vacuous relationship of the Egberts and Lady Annes of Saki's world.

"Diplomatic Reticence"

"The Reticence of Lady Anne" is the most extreme example of the kind of 'polite reticence' constantly under attack by Reginald, Clovis and the like.  Not only is the story a masterpiece of short-story technique, as demonstrated by Otto²⁰ and others, it is also a bitter attack on the kind of relationship which Saki satirises again and again, where the superficial conventions are observed but the underlying truths are very different.  In this story, appearances deceive Egbert to the bitter end.  He leaves the room unaware that Lady Anne's pose "was rather elaborately rigid" (p.46) because she has "been dead for two hours" (p.49).  He is aware only of his own personal sense of injury: "To get the worst of an argument with her was no new experience.  To get the worst of a monologue was a humiliating novelty" (p.48).

In "The Mouse", another inadequate male, appropriately called Theodoric Voler, is routed by a mouse and his own mouse-like disposition.  He has been brought up to be shielded from "the coarser realities of life" (p.94) and is thus unprepared to deal with the predicament in which he finds himself, without suffering extremes of embarrassment.

His ordeal occurs during a railway journey in a carriage which he is sharing with a young lady and which has no access to a corridor.  While this ensures him of "semi-privacy" (p.95) it does have the disadvantage that he cannot discreetly escape in order to divest himself of a mouse which is crawling up his trousers and "whose motto, indeed seemed to be Excelsior" (p.95).  For somebody who is so morbidly sensitive that he is discomposed by having to harness a pony with the help of the vicar's daughter "in an ill-lighted outhouse called a stable, and smelling very like one" (p.95) and who "had never been able to bring himself even to the mild exposure of open-work socks in the presence of the fair sex" (p.96), the dilemma in which he now finds himself is unimaginable.

At least the young lady "seemed inclined for slumber rather than scrutiny" (p.95) which emboldens Theodoric to "the most audacious undertaking of his life" (p.96).  Since "furtive stamps and shakes" (p.95) have failed, "nothing less drastic than partial disrobing would ease him of his tormentor" (p.96) and rescue him from the "horrible position of a Rowton House²¹ for vagrant mice" (p.96).  He screens himself from the young lady's view by draping his travelling rug across the carriage from one luggage rack to the other, and has just succeeded in getting rid of the mouse when to his horror the improvised curtain slips, "and almost simultaneously the awakened sleeper opened her eyes" (p.96).

Grabbing the rug and hauling it up to his chin, he is so discomfited by the "silent stare" (p.96) of the young lady that he gabbles, "'I think I have caught a chill'" (p.96).  There follows a dialogue in which the absurdity of Theodoric's position is intensified by his embarrassed reticence.  The answer to his tentative question whether his companion is afraid of mice is disconcertingly flippant, "'Not unless they came in quantities, like those that ate up Bishop Hatto'"²² (p.97), which does nothing to reassure him.  Finally he blurts out that he has had a mouse trapped in his clothes and that "'it was getting rid of it that brought me to - to this'" (p.97).  Understandably she is surprised and exclaims, "'Surely leaving off one small mouse wouldn't bring on a chill'" (p.97), another very Clovis-like remark.

Theodoric thinks that "evidently she had detected something of his predicament and was enjoying his confusion" (p.97).  He has added paranoia to his repertoire of obsessions.  As he nears the station he realises that "dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one paralyzing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage" (p.97) and his only hope is that his companion will fall asleep again.  But "the furtive glance which Theodoric stole at her from time to time disclosed only an unwinking wakefulness" (pp.97-8).

"Like a hunted beast" (p.98) Theodoric is forced to break cover and scramble into his clothes, aware all the time of "an icy silence in that corner towards which he dared not look" (p.98).  This silence when broken reveals the twist in the story: she has all the time been unaware of his predicament because she is blind.

As in other stories, the frequent reference to 'eyes' and the use of the word 'furtive' draw attention to the undercurrents and the underlying motives; but in this story they have an added significance, contrasting the physical blindness of the young woman with Theodoric's mental blindness, his reliance on superficial 'evidence'.  Voler in his morbid self-consciousness has missed all the signs.  He could even have asked her to avert her gaze and discovered the truth much earlier.  His suffering has been entirely unnecessary, and in leaping to the uncharitable conclusion that she has been enjoying his mortification he has punished himself.

The Pigeoncotes in "The Seven Cream Jugs"²³ are likewise the authors of their own misfortune.²⁴ In this amusing satire, which exposes greed, snobbery and hypocrisy, Wilfrid Pigeoncote, who as "a prospective nobody" (p.500) and with the reputation of a kleptomaniac was an undesirable guest, is made welcome by the Peter Pigeoncotes now that "'he has become heir to the baronetcy and to a lot of money'" (p.500).²⁵  They are anxious, however, to secure their valuables, a problem complicated for them by the occasion of their silver wedding and the presence of a lot of additional silverware on display at their house.

Convinced that Wilfrid has robbed them of a piece of silver, with "a swift and furtive rush" (p.502) they ransack his belongings and discover a silver cream jug, which they appropriate and restore to what they believe to be its rightful place.  To their consternation, however, Wilfrid informs them that a thief has stolen from his luggage a cream jug which he had intended as a present, and when Mrs Pigeoncote checks, there are now eight instead of seven cream jugs on display.

Not only have the Pigeoncotes misjudged Wilfrid's character, they have mistaken his identity too.²⁶  Instead of "Wilfrid the Snatcher" (p.500), it was "Wilfrid the Attaché, a very superior young man, who rarely came within their social horizon" (p.503).  They might have been warned of this since "the guest had none of the furtive, half-apologetic air that his cousins had rather expected to find" (p.501).

In rectifying this appalling blunder, Mrs Pigeoncote is willing to sacrifice the unwitting Peter's reputation by telling Wilfrid "with confidential coyness" (p.504) of "'Peter's little weakness'" (p.504).  Peter never learns of his wife's ruthless duplicity, and house-guests thereafter take their jewels with them wherever they go, even when they visit the bathroom.  As Saki obliquely observes, "diplomatic reticence does not necessarily extend to family affairs" (p.505), and Wilfrid has obviously told tales.

The greed and hypocrisy of the Brimley Bomefields in "The Way to the Dairy" is fittingly rewarded also.  In seeking to secure their aunt's entire fortune for themselves they devise an elaborate plan to show up a favoured rival, her nephew Roger, for the inveterate gambler he is, and thereby introduce their aunt to the delights of gambling.  Roger has been kind to his aunt when she was "unobtrusively poor" (p.174) and while initially she appears to fall in with the Brimley Bomefields' suggestions she very rapidly establishes a supremacy.  She is not prostrated as they are by sea-sickness during the channel crossing; as an erstwhile "paid companion" (p.175) her knowledge of colloquial French is vastly superior to theirs; and while the girls keep "a furtive watch" (p.176) on the door of the casino, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Roger, the aunt is enjoying herself in the first stage of her road to gambling ruin.

The consequences of gambling take an unexpected turn in "The Stake" too when Ronnie Attray sacrifices the services of his mother's cook for two days in lieu of a more conventional stake.  Even worse is "A Sacrifice to Necessity" in which Beryl's gambling for high stakes has the effect of social ruin unless a matrimonial bargain is struck with Ashcombe Gwent, the man to whom Beryl owes the money.  Mrs Pevenly, who "lived and kept up appearances" (L.p.304) on a very tight budget, understandably thinks that it is her daughter who is to be the "sacrifice to necessity" but she is disabused by the forthright Beryl who tells her baldly that "'it isn't me that he wants to marry.  'Flappers' don't appeal to him, he told me so [...] It's you that he's infatuated about'" (L.p.308); which suggests that she has already offered herself as a sacrifice to necessity and been turned down.  When the wedding takes place, the presents are "costly if not numerous and consisted chiefly of a cancelled I.O.U., the gift of the bridegroom to the bride's daughter" (L.p.309), which brings to mind the ironic wedding present in "The Brogue".

Gambling is driven underground in "A Matter of Sentiment", a story featuring among others Mrs Packletide,²⁷ Bertie van Tahn and Clovis.  At Lady Susan's house-party on the eve of the Derby, polite reticence is the order of the day since, apart from her exceptional kindness, Lady Susan's main characteristic is a professional disapproval of almost everything.  "Disapproval was to her what neuralgia and fancy needlework are to many other women" (p.204).  Thus when the house-guests debate which horse to back, "it could only be fitfully and furtively discussed" (p.204).  This leads by a process "of rather strangled and uneasy conversation" (p.204), of subterfuges and stratagems, by way of lies on the part of Mrs Packletide which encourage "the odious Bertie van Tahn" (p.205)²⁸ to murmur "audible prayers for Mrs Packletide's ultimate estrangement from the paths of falsehood" (p.205), to the moment at dinner when the butler imparts his cunningly acquired inside information to each of the guests.

There is a "furtive curiosity directed [...] towards Motkin's impassive countenance" (p.206) as he discreetly whispers the "cryptic words, 'Better not'" (p.206) which Mrs Packletide comically thinks refers to the sherry he is proffering at the time.  The shrewd Clovis "was already pencilling it on his cuff" (p.206),²⁹ while the less subtle "Colonel Drake, in his turn, was signalling to every one in hoarse whispers and dumb-show the fact that he had all along fancied 'B.N.'" (p.206).

The following afternoon finds the guests assembled in the hall, "waiting apparently for the appearance of tea" (p.206).  When the real reason for their presence - a telegram announcing the Derby winner - arrives, Clovis uncharacteristically blurts out, "'Sadowa won; an utter outsider'" (p.206), and, to everyone's astonishment, Lady Susan exclaims, "'How remarkable! It's the first time I've ever backed a horse; in fact I disapprove of horse-racing, but just for once in a way I put money on this horse, and it's gone and won'" (p.206).  The name had attracted her because it reminded her of all the happiest moments of her married life.  The elaborate futilities in this instance are twofold: the guests need not have kept their betting a secret from Lady Susan and, as it turns out, picking a horse at random as she has done would have been more effective.

Even more elaborate and equally fruitless are the attempts to back the winner in "A Bread and Butter Miss".  When Mrs de Claux asks one of her house guests, Lola Pevensey, with "perfunctory solicitude" (p.432) whether she has slept well, Lola's reply that she has dreamt the winner of the Derby occasions "a swift reaction of attentive interest" (p.433).  She describes in fragmentary detail this dream which she has had on two consecutive nights, adding that "'when I dream things two or three nights in succession, it always means something'" (p.433).  Unfortunately her dream is capable of more than one interpretation and her fellow guests pin their hopes on her dreaming again that night and with greater attention to detail.  To complicate matters, Lola says that she is unlikely to sleep at all that night since she suffers every fifth night from insomnia "'and it's due tonight'" (p.434).

All manner of remedies are suggested, including one from their hostess proposing the use of "oakleaves, soaked in warm water and put under the bed" (p.434).³⁰  In being "'a martyr to insomnia for years'" (p.434) Lola cannot hope for sympathy from Odo who objects, "'Now we are being martyrs to it'" (p.434).  She comes down to breakfast after a wakeful night and is induced to have a nap since "'it would be so good for you - and [the real reason] you might dream something'" (p.435).  Despite the most elaborate precautions against possible disturbance, however, she is unable to fall asleep, and they divide their bets between the two horses suggested by Lola's dream.  In the event neither horse wins.

The vain and exhaustive preparations of an over-anxious hostess to secure the right social mix for her house-party are again overthrown by the unexpected in "The Oversight".³¹  On previous occasions Lady Prowche's guests have fallen out over such diverse subjects as the "Suffragette question" (p.514), "Christian Science" (p.515) and "Lloyd George" (p.514) amongst others ; and expressed themselves in "language that would not have been tolerated in the Austrian Reichsrath" (p.515).  This time, however, "'The only stone that I have left unturned'" (p.516), as she confides to Lena Luddleford, is whether or not two of her guests are anti-vivisectionist.  With Lena's help she solves this problem only to discover that she has overlooked another: "'One of them was Pro-Greek and the other Pro-Bulgar'" (517).³²

As in "The Oversight" the tribulations of hosting a house-party are explored in "A Housing Problem" in which 'polite reticence' and invective are again at war.  Bobbie Chermbacon, in calling the Marchioness "'to her face, a moth-eaten old hen'" (L.p.299), is understandably persona-non-grata with his hostess Mrs Duff-Chubleigh.  But as she confides to Mrs Pallitson, Bobbie has been showing signs of interest in her daughter Margaret and she has every wish to encourage his suit, since Bobbie is rich in his own right and has expectations as well.

Mrs Pallitson comes to the rescue with a suggestion that she invite Bobbie and Margaret to be her house guests, which earns her a rapturous gratitude.  "'After this we must call each other by our Christian names" (L.p.301), says Mrs Duff-Chubleigh.  But the unfortunate Mrs Pallitson is called Celeste and she says, "'When a woman weighs as much as I do -'" (L.p.301).  She gets no further: "'I am sure you don't, 'exclaimed her hostess, in defiant disregard of logic" (L.p.301), betraying an eagerness to ingratiate herself.  Such then is the kind of insincere social exchange which so brilliantly highlights the superficiality of such friendships.  The warmth is short-lived, lasting only as long as Mrs Pallitson is willing to continue the arrangement to the liking of Mrs Duff-Chubleigh.  Bobbie now gives offence to a house guest of Mrs Pallitson by telling a Bishop his opinion of Christian missions.  As Mrs Pallitson revealingly says, "'I've often said the same thing myself, but never to a Bishop'" (L.p.302), the Bishop in question being "'a bachelor uncle, with private means'" (L.p.302).  In refusing to entertain Bobbie any longer Mrs Pallitson is condemned by Mrs Duff-Chubleigh: "'those heavy blond women are always a mass of selfishness'" (L.p.303).³³  The Clovis-like Bobbie unexpectedly ends up by marrying the Marchioness, thus the elaborate machinations of both women come to nothing.

Art and Artifice

The elaborate poses and posturings of Saki's characters, their exaggerated types and extravagant expressions have an innate theatricality about them which invites the reader to stand apart from them as an audience might and observe their antics in the knowledge that they are acting a part.  Some stories are stagey, none more so than "The East Wing", subtitled "A Tragedy in the Manner of the Discursive Dramatists".³⁴  This is possibly the most extravagant statement of all Saki's futilities.

The house party with its typical social mix of bumbling Major Boventry, the precious Lucien Wattleskeat, the wordy Canon Clore and a breathless hostess, Mrs Gramplain, is beset by a fire in the middle of the night in the east wing of the house.  Begged by their hostess to save "'my poor darling Eva - Eva of the golden hair'" (M.p.41) Lucien demurs on the grounds that he has never even met her.  "'You see, my life is not only wonderful and beautiful to myself, but if my life goes, nothing else really matters - to me'" (M.p.41), he explains.  It is only on discovering that Eva is not a flesh and blood daughter, but Mrs Gramplain's painting of the daughter that she wished that she had had and which she has faithfully updated with the passing years, that Lucien exclaims, "'it is the most beautiful thing I ever heard'" (M.p.43).³⁵  He is willing to forfeit his life to rescue her, since "'death in this case is more beautiful'" (M.p.43) a sentiment endorsed by the Major.  As the two men disappear into the blaze, Mrs Gramplain recollects that she "'sent Eva to Exeter to be cleaned.  Those two men have lost their lives for nothing'" (M.p.44), and adds "'the tragic irony of it all!'" (M.p.44).

Curiously, while Saki obviously would like to have been a successful playwright - as attested by his early one-act plays and his collaboration with Maude³⁶ on A Watched Pot - he never seemed to strike the right note.  Despite this, ironically, as Emlyn Williams intimates in his introduction to Saki's short stories,³⁷ many of these stories have been very successfully adapted for the stage.

Included in "The Chronicles of Clovis", however, is a short story in the form of a playlet, the only one in such a form in the complete collection.³⁸  "The Baker's Dozen", a satirical sketch set on board a ship, has the slightest of plots and depends for its effect on the ambiguity of the dialogue.  Major Dumbarton on meeting Mrs Emily Carewe affects a romantic manner, while she is down-to-earth.  "'Emily! After all these years! This is fate!'" (p.90).  She replies, '"Nothing of the sort; it's only me'" (p.90).  Discarding any pretence that this is a chance meeting, she openly admits that she has deliberately engineered it and steamrollers the Major along the chosen path.

When the Major protests, "'Look here, Emily, it's not fair to go at that rate [...] It's my place to propose to you; all you've got to do is to say 'Yes'" (p.91), she replies, matter-of-factly, "'Well, I've practically said it already, so we needn't dawdle over that part'" (p.91).  The whole discussion has the air of a business transaction and when they come to the matter of children from their previous marriages they discover that between them they have thirteen, the baker's dozen of the title.  The Major says preposterously, "'If we could only bring them down to twelve.  Thirteen is so horribly unlucky'" (p.91) and there ensues an absurd and very amusing discussion as to how this might be achieved.

Emily suggests "'that one of them might turn out depraved and vicious, and then you could disown him'" (p.92) to which the Major replies in all sincerity, "'You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school'" (p.92).  She counters with the possibility of inherited depravity, pinning her hopes on an aunt of the Major's "'who was never spoken of'" (p.92), until he points out that, "'In mid-Victorian days they labelled all sorts of things as unspeakable that we should speak about quite tolerantly.  I daresay this particular aunt had only married a Unitarian, or rode to hounds on both sides of her horse'" (p.92), which is an illuminating illustration of Victorian prudery in all its absurdity.  It is also noteworthy that it is the henpecked Major who is expected to sacrifice a child although his contribution to the unfortunate total is five to Emily's eight, and that he tacitly accepts the responsibility.

With the arrival on the scene of Mrs Paley-Paget, who is clearly very snobbish and the soul of propriety, the Major and Emily sound her out with a view to her adopting a child in order to help them out of their difficulty.  The Major talks of her "'childless hearth [...] no little pattering feet'" (p.93) to which the offended Mrs Paley-Paget replies, "'I've got my little girl [...] her feet can patter as well as other children's'" (p.93).  In typically humourless fashion she responds loftily to the Major's oblique point that there is "'only one pair of feet'" (p.93) with the observation, "'Certainly.  My child isn't a centipede'" (p.93).  The exchange continues with Mrs Paley-Paget misunderstanding the Major's earnest and bumbling attempts at delicacy until she leaves in outraged indignation.

The problem resolves itself naturally, after all, when the Major discovers from a recount that he has in fact only four children, Albert-Victor having been counted twice.  This theme of not knowing "to a child or two how many they've got" ("Esmé", p.105), is a familiar one, and the dialogue revealing hypocrisy, stupidity and the vapid preoccupations of the characters is a common one in the Saki canon.  The weapon Saki has chosen in this instance is witty dialogue spiced with invective and absurdity.

This same mixture is true of "Wratislav", a story similar to the early "Reginald" sketches in relying on dialogue and having a very meagre storyline.  Baroness Sophie is a foolish woman who is no match for the cruel invective of the Gräfin.  Poor Sophie in musing, "'I don't know why I shouldn't talk cleverly [...] my mother was considered a brilliant conversationalist'" (p.152), is put down uncompromisingly by the Gräfin's retort that "'These things have a way of skipping one generation'" (p.152), and when the Gräfin suggests her son Wratislav "the black sheep of a rather greyish family" (p.153) as a suitable husband for Sophie's daughter Elsa, Sophie's objection that Elsa would be most unhappy with Wratislav is overruled with the brutal observation that "'a little misery [...] would go so well with the way she does her hair'" (p.153).

Elsa in the event unexpectedly runs away with the chauffeur, which causes Sophie such consternation that she forgets herself sufficiently to reveal her origins: "'Such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done'" (p.154), the word order idiosyncratically Germanic as in "The Wolves of Cernogratz".³⁹  The Gräfin deliberately misunderstands her to Sophie's fury and the story ends on a weak pun,⁴⁰ the whole episode being more like a scene from a play than a short story.

From staginess Saki moves to the music hall stage in "Cousin Teresa",⁴¹ a satire on false values and pseudo-intellectuals.  Basset Harrowcluff might with justification expect to feature in the Honours' List for his services to Empire, but it is his idiotic half-brother Lucas who wins that distinction for an inane Music Hall hit with a catchy refrain and a complicated stage direction.  As Cobley⁴² observes, a "favourite target of Saki's arrows is the popular fad of the day or the craze of the moment which is generally silly and often vulgar".  In "Canossa" too Saki alludes to "the popular song of the moment [...] a tune they had all heard hundreds of times" (p.461).  Basset despises Lucas for the "elaborate futilities" (p.307) of his life.  Lucas is described as "over-well nourished" (p.307) (like Van Cheele, Waldo Plubley and others), whose "hair and forehead furnished a recessional note in a personality that was in all other respects obtrusive and assertive" (p.307).  In sharing with Jews certain facial characteristics Clovis feels "it was undoubtedly a case of protective mimicry (p.307); clearly most of Lucas's friends are Jewish.⁴³

The irony of the story is that while Lucas is always saying that his latest idea is "'simply It'" (p.307), the Cousin Teresa couplet catches on in a big way.  "Restaurant proprietors were obliged to provide the members of their orchestras with painted wooden dogs on wheels, in order that the much-demanded and always conceded melody should be rendered with the necessary spectacular effects" (p.309).  Lucas is invited to do a lecture tour and the pseudo-intelligentsia utters fatuous pronouncements such as, "'One welcomes an intelligible production like "Cousin Teresa", that has a genuine message for one.  One can't understand the message all at once, of course'" (p.310).  The final twist is delivered when Harrowcluff's name appears on the Honours' List, after all; but it is not the deserving Basset but Lucas, for his services to Literature.

As in "Cousin Teresa", the false values of those who admire "The Chaplet" in the story of that name are mocked.  This hit tune of the day, when played ad nauseam in a high-class restaurant, causes the chef to go mad.  The "Jordan Valley" (p.144) as always is well represented and the inadequacies of the nouveau riche exposed.  "The wine lists had been consulted [...] with the blank embarrassment of a schoolboy suddenly called on to locate a Minor Prophet in the tangled hinterland of the Old Testament" (p.145),⁴⁴ as Saki maliciously observes, adding absurdly and in a manner that recalls Waldo Plubley's teapot in "A Touch of Realism",⁴⁵ "by insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter Max" (p.145), the host can impress his guests - a type still recognisable today.

The chef, Aristide Saucourt, who, "if he had an equal in his profession he had never acknowledged the fact" (p.145), has laboured long and hard to produce the masterpiece which merits lengthy and rhapsodic description and the grand title of 'Canetons à la mode d'Amblève'.  To see this work of art congealing on the plate or being eaten in an absent-minded manner while the diners applaud yet another rendition of 'The Chaplet' is more than this 'genius' can bear and he takes a fearful revenge.  "Whether the leader of the orchestra died from drowning by soup, or from the shock to his professional vanity, or was scalded to death" (p.147) the doctors cannot decide.  What is obvious, however, is where the reader's sympathies are directed.  The orchestra leader is an ineffectual vain upstart, like Lucas Harrowcluff, while the chef has at least the excuse of virtuosity even if the elaborate preparations are worthy of a greater cause.

As an example of "elaborate futility" "The Byzantine Omelette" is without equal.  Several groups are targeted in this story of strikes, of Fabian socialism, snobbery, hypocrisy and the feeble ineptitudes of members of a society who are so dependent on their servants that they cannot do their own hair, dress for dinner without help or, crowning absurdity, extricate themselves from a portable Turkish bath.  Sophie Chattel-Monkheim, a Fabian socialist with a convenient amount of wealth, is the worst sort of snob.  She purports to disapprove of class distinctions but is nevertheless delighted to be entertaining the Duke of Syria to dinner and in having her maid, Richardson, contrive a hairstyle grand enough for the occasion.

Her mood of self-satisfaction is shattered by the news that the servants have gone on strike because Gaspare, "'the emergency chef! The omelette specialist!'" (p.316) was a strike breaker on some previous occasion and the servants are striking in protest unless Gaspare is dismissed.  This is unthinkable to Sophie since she has engaged him specially as "'the only man in England who understands how to make a Byzantine omelette'" and "'the Duke loves Byzantine omelettes.  It was the one thing we talked about coming from the station'" (p.316), a clear indication of the sort of person the Duke is and by implication Sophie also.

To add to the crisis Richardson is obliged to 'down tools' as a member of the union.  Sophie is effectively hoist by her own petard in having "'refused to employ any but union servants'" (p.317), the irony being that Richardson is "'a good Conservative, and I've no patience with this Socialist foolery, asking your pardon'" (p.317).  If Sophie's inability to do her own hair is inconvenient, Catherine Malsom's predicament in being only half-dressed is far worse and that of her husband more embarrassing still.  He is trapped in "'that ridiculous new-fangled Turkish bath that he insists on taking with him everywhere'" (p.317); and every time he "'pulls the lever marked "release" he only releases hot steam'" (p.318).  Since the steam is either "'bearable'" or "'scarcely bearable'" (p.318), Catherine feels that "'by this time I'm probably a widow'" (p.318).

Despite her extreme reluctance Sophie is forced to sack Gaspare, and the servants duly return to their various tasks.  "Except that Henry Malsom was of the ripe raspberry tint that one sometimes sees at private theatricals representing the human complexion, there was little outward sign [...] of the crisis that had just been encountered and surmounted" (p.318).  Sophie is distracted, however, by recent events and as ever the eyes tell the truth, "straying with increasing frequency" (p.318)⁴⁶ towards the door through which the butler will come to announce dinner.  This contrasts sharply with the opening scene in which she is sitting complacently before her mirror, "tranquilly" (p.315) reviewing the prospects of social triumph.  But her trials are far from over for dinner is cancelled.  The kitchen staff who belong to a separate union have come out in support of the sacked chef; and Sophie has a severe nervous breakdown as a consequence.  She has learned to her cost that it is impossible to make a Byzantine omelette without breaking eggs.

The kind of amateur theatricals alluded to in "The Byzantine Omelette" are demonstrated in "The Peace Offering", a play intended to patch up a political quarrel.  Clovis devises "'something on the lines of Greek tragedy'" (p.179) but to be performed "'in the Sumurun manner'" (p.180),⁴⁷ which he explains entails "'weird music, and exotic skippings and flying leaps, and lots of drapery and undrapery.  Particularly undrapery'" (p.180).  The plot gets more and more elaborate, as the Baroness tries to upstage Clovis while he "introduced some effective bit of business for the charioteer (and he introduced a great many)" (p.182).

When she appropriates a speech that Clovis has written for himself "there was a dangerous glitter in his eye that might have given the Baroness warning" (p.183).  His revenge takes the form of coaching the obtuse Emily Dushford in the role of Cassandra to make an attack on local politicians in the presence of "'the County'" which is "'socially divided'" (p.179).  Lady Thistledale and her set are scandalized, which ironically has the effect of uniting the opposing factions in their condemnation of "the Baroness's outrageously bad taste and tactlessness" (p.184).  Emily's "severely plantigrade walk" (p.182) may be seen to symbolise all the platitudinous, unimaginative women incapable of flights of fancy, just as Emily is incapable of "flying leaps into futurity" (p.182) in her role as a flat-footed Cassandra.

There are unforeseen consequences in "The Background" too, a satire on false values and the sort of art critics who talk of "'certain pictures as "growing on one," as though they were a sort of fungus'" (p.121).  This remark of Clovis's reminds his journalist friend of the story of Henri Deplis, a commercial traveller from Luxembourg, who squanders a modest legacy on "some seemingly harmless extravagances" (p.122).  The chief of these is having his back tattooed with "The Fall of Icarus" by Signor Pincini while in Italy which gives rise to unexpected problems when he is declared a work of art, forbidden to return to his own country, and cannot even bathe for fear of damaging the masterpiece.

When "a certain German art expert [...] declared it to be a spurious Pincini" (p.123) he becomes the centre of an international controversy, and, being of "a constitutionally retiring disposition" (p.123) he is driven to throw in his lot with Italian anarchists.  "Four times at least he was escorted to the frontier as a dangerous and undesirable foreigner, but he was always brought back as The Fall of Icarus" (p.124) as Saki sardonically observes.  Thus the tattoo has assumed the foreground in terms of value and importance and Henri Deplis is a "human background" (p.124), his rights as a person of no significance.  It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that in having acid thrown over him during an anarchist uprising "his assailant was severely reprimanded for assaulting a fellow-anarchist" but he "received seven years' imprisonment for defacing a national art treasure" (p.124).

"On Approval" though less violent is yet a bitter attack on the "would-be-Bohemian" (p.385).  Gebhard Knopfschrank, a struggling artist from Pomerania, frequents the Nuremberg restaurant where he displays his work for sale.  He has no takers and becomes progressively poorer although several people are afraid he might be an undiscovered genius, considering his paintings "'may be immensely clever [...] something epoch-making in the realm of art'" (p.387).  Typical of these is "Sylvia Strubble, who spoke rather as one who knew every individual member of the Russian imperial family" (p.386) in which she resembles the "elaborately British" (p.87) Dobrinton in "Cross Currents".⁴⁸

In being "elusive" (p.385) Gebhard does not materially help them to decide whether he is an undiscovered genius or not.  But his work is unusual in depicting London scenes in which animals have taken over from people, and having titles like: "'Wolves and wapiti fighting on the steps of the Athenaeum Club'" (p.389), which encourage the speculation that Saki implies that Town life is a jungle.  One day Gebhard appears in the restaurant and orders a celebratory meal, whereupon everybody buys up his work assuming that he has made a substantial sale which in their eyes immediately promotes him to the ranks of the famous.  The irony is that a rich American travelling in Pomerania has run down some pigs on Gebhard's father's farm and is paying him handsome compensation.  Again, all the agonising on the part of the would-be-Bohemians has turned out to be in vain.  They have been deceived by the appearance of success.

"Hush Money"

While the "elusive" Gebhard keeps the "would-be-Bohemians" guessing there is clearly far more to the serious-minded Septimus in "The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope" too.  As editor of "Cathedral Monthly" (p.207) and an expert on religious matters, being overheard saying "'I love you, Florrie'" (p.208) is extremely surprising to all who know him.  By coincidence Mrs Troyle, Clovis's aunt, has a maid called Florinda and the conclusion to be drawn is obvious.  The circumstantial evidence builds up against Septimus in the form of a piece of paper on which he has written, "'I love you, Florrie [...] Meet me in the garden by the yew'" (p.209).  There is a yew tree in the garden which gives Clovis cause to remark, "'At any rate he appears to be truthful'" (p.210).

This seeming scandal fuels further speculation about how he can afford foreign holidays and smart clothes on his meagre salary as editor of a religious periodical.  Clovis's preposterous suggestion that "'perhaps he sells spurious transepts to American enthusiasts'" (p.210) meets with the humourless response from Mrs Riversedge, "'such a thing would be impossible'" (p.210) which is reminiscent of similar remarks made by for instance, Eleanor's mother in "The Jesting of Arlington Stringham".  Mrs Troyle and Mrs Riversedge are agreed that at all costs he is not to be permitted to court Florrie, but are unsure how to put a stop to it.  Clovis's flippant suggestion that "'You might put a barbed wire entanglement round the yew tree as a precautionary measure'" (p.210) shows that he is obviously enjoying the disproportionate fuss they are making and recalls the manner in which Reginald baits the Duchess in "Reginald at the Carlton" and other such sketches.

Alone together after lunch, Septimus "seemed restless and preoccupied" and Clovis "quietly observant" (p.211).  When Septimus asks Clovis "'What is a lorry?'" (p.211), Clovis has his opening, immediately realising that Septimus is looking for a word to rhyme with "Florrie".  Clovis intimates this to Septimus who becomes more uneasy, saying "'I believe you know more'" (p.211) to which Clovis responds with an enigmatic laugh.  When asked how much he does know, he merely says, "'The yew tree in the garden'" (p.211), and Septimus believing that his secret is out, confides to Clovis that "'I get quite a decent lot of money out of it'" (p.211).  This ambiguous statement astounds Clovis, "but he was better skilled in repressing surprise" (p.211).  He is even more shocked when Septimus confides that apart from Florrie, "'there are a lot of others'" (p.212).  At this revelation, "Clovis's cigarette went out" (p.212) until he realises that it is verses to which Septimus is referring not conquests.  Like the youth in "Dusk", Clovis has difficulty in suppressing his mirth.

Septimus is now so relieved at having confessed that he becomes expansive, volunteering that he is the author of several well-known 'hits' (as in "Cousin Teresa"), but that his reputation as an expert on "'memorial brasses'" (p.213) would be compromised if he were found to "'be the author of that miserable sentimental twaddle'" (p.213) which he now actively hates writing.  Clovis comes to his rescue with a typical solution, suggesting that he "'merely reverse the sentiment and keep to the inane phraseology of the thing'" (p.213), adding that he will expect a share in the royalties "'and throw in my silence as to your guilty secret'" (p.213).  Thus his diplomatic reticence which has the effect of eliciting a confession from Septimus takes on the added dimension of blackmail.

But Clovis is not finished yet.  He tells his aunt and his hostess that when he spoke to Septimus, "'he was quite frank and straightforward with me when he saw that I knew his secret'" (p.214).  That much is true, but then Clovis improves the moment by pretending that he has talked him out of his honourable if "unsuitable" (p.214) intentions to Florinda because she "'was the only person in the world who understood my aunt's hair'" (p.214) and that perhaps (and this is reminiscent of "Reginald on Christmas Presents") "'a really nice scarf-pin (to be chosen by myself)'" (p.214) would be an acceptable token of gratitude.

There is a price to be paid for silence in "The Treasure Ship" too.  The Machiavellian machinations of the avaricious Lulu, Duchess of Dulverton,⁴⁹ in recruiting Vasco Honiton to help in the recovery of a wreck of the Spanish Armada are doomed to disappointment.  She feels entitled to any treasure the wreck may contain since "one of her ancestors on her mother's side was descended from Medina Sidonia" (p.263).⁵⁰  Vasco is "blessed with a small income and a large circle of relatives, and lived impartially and precariously on both" (p.263) which ought to have been warning enough to Lulu.  In diving off the coast of Ireland as a kind of rehearsal for the real thing, Vasco comes across what proves to be a treasure ship of a different kind, a motor-boat fittingly called the "Sub-Rosa" which contains incriminating evidence against the Duchess and her friends.  Like Louisa Mebbin in "Mrs Packletide's Tiger" he is able to buy a villa with his 'hush-money', which he ironically calls "the Villa Sub-Rosa" (p.245).

If the Duchess uncovers an unwelcome secret and pays the price, Sir Lulworth Quayne in "The Blind Spot" succeeds in preserving one.  He is anxious to head off the righteous Egbert⁵¹ when he wants to discuss a letter from the recently deceased great-aunt Adelaide concerning the death of her brother and the alleged involvement of Sir Lulworth's cook.  The blind spot refers to Sir Lulworth's turning a blind eye to and destroying evidence of the obvious guilt of the cook because he may be "'a common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook'" (p.297).  Such a preposterous set of values is justifiable in the views of Sir Lulworth, Clovis and their like as an antidote to the stifling priggishness of the Egberts of the world.

Devious behaviour is also in evidence in "The Yarkand Manner".  In this story based on a true incident,⁵² the Daily Intelligencer is being edited and published "'from a roof in Yarkand'" (p.312) which Sir Lulworth takes to be an extension of "the sudden impulse to trek and migrate that breaks out now and again, for no apparent reason" (p.310).  Much of the flavour of the routine articles remains unchanged but for those on foreign affairs, which are often "blunt, forcible, outspoken" (p.313) and lacking in "diplomatic ambiguity" (p.313); so disconcerting in fact that a government deputation insists on seeing the editor.  The only member of staff in evidence, however, is the office boy who eventually hands over a ransom demand for the entire editorial staff which he had received several months earlier and which he "had quietly suppressed" (p.314), using "the large accumulation of special articles that was held in reserve for emergencies" (p.314) to keep the paper going.  "The articles on foreign affairs were entirely his own composition" (p.314) as Saki sardonically remarks.  To avoid the embarrassment of acknowledging that the office boy has competently run the entire operation in their absence, "the whole thing had to be kept as quiet as possible" (p.314), and the office boy, far from being sacked, "'is still in journalism'" (p.315).

The ransom demanded on the disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh is kept quiet too.  Her departure "was not regarded by the family entirely as a bereavement" (p.406), which is a fine example of "polite reticence" if the description of Crispina is taken into account.  She "was born to legislate, codify, administrate, censor, license, ban, execute and sit in judgement generally" (p.406).  It is not surprising, therefore, that her family blossoms in her unexpected and prolonged absence, and that opportunistically her sons decide "that their mother might be wandering somewhere abroad, and searched for her assiduously, chiefly, it must be admitted, in a class of Montmartre resort where it was extremely improbable that she would be found" (p.407), an interesting illustration of "elaborate futility" with a purpose.

It seems that her husband has had knowledge of her whereabouts for some time and has been "paying the ransom, or hush money" (p.408) to secure the pleasure of her continued absence for several years.  She has been "a purely mythical prisoner" (p.409), turning up of her own accord after a prolonged attack of amnesia.  Fortunately in the interim she has lost much of her power over her now adult offspring but her husband is in some difficulty trying to explain away the disappearance of so substantial a sum of money.

"The Mappin Stamp"

Occasionally Saki allows himself to be less oblique in his attacks.  Drake in "Ironic Stories"⁵³ and Loganbill⁵⁴ among others agree with Cheikin⁵⁵ that "The Mappined Life" is "a statement of Saki's intentions".  Certainly it is more straightforward, the inverted values are stated explicitly and the niece's observation that "'a moonlight hen-stealing raid with the merry-eyed curate'" (p.482) would be more fun, seems to point to at least one reason for the kind of escapade so beloved of Saki's juvenile delinquents.  In the discussion between the niece and her aunt, Mrs Gurtleberry, about the "Mappin Terraces"⁵⁶ (p.479), "'lack of initiative'" (p.480) is the recurrent weakness exposed and the predictability of the uncle's behaviour is the last straw for the aunt, who in having things drawn to her attention by her implacable niece has to face the underlying truths behind the carefully preserved facade, that hers is a meaningless existence, filled with "'self-deception'" (p.480), "'conventional make-believe'" (p.482) and "'little everyday acts of pretended importance'" (p.481).  Like Reginald, the niece is on the side of those "who do unexpected things" (p.39).⁵⁷

Less muted is the despair expressed by Mrs Gramplain in "The East Wing", when she laments, "'it will all begin over again now, the old life, the old unsatisfying weariness, the old monotony; nothing will be changed'" (M.p.45).  The loss of two lives and the reduction to ashes of the east wing pale into insignificance for her beside the tragedy of her futile existence only temporarily relieved by the excitement of the fire.

Saki allows himself a more direct approach in "'Down Pens'" too while still maintaining the light touch, the excursion into fantasy and the wit that distinguish all his stories.  He returns here to a theme first mooted in "Reginald on Christmas Presents" and one still true today - the empty hypocrisy of much present giving.  In writing a succession of insincere 'thank-you' letters for unwanted and unappreciated gifts, Janetta has "'come to the end of my capacity for expressing servile amiability'" (p.363).  After fruitless discussion and the "forlorn silence of those who are bereft of hope and have almost ceased to care" (p.365), Egbert has a sudden inspiration, revealed by "the light of battle [...] in his eyes" (p.365).  He is going to write to every newspaper proposing a kind of amnesty over the Festive Season, whereby only important correspondence should be dealt with.  The problem of presents would be solved by some sort of ticket to acknowledge receipt.  "'All you would have to do would be to sign and date the counterfoil, add a conventional hieroglyphic indicating heartfelt thanks and gratified surprise'" (pp.365-6), which Egbert maintains is no "'more perfunctory than the present system'" (p.366).  His only cause for regret under this regime would be the loss of the refreshingly candid letters from their blunt Aunt Susan.

"The Feast of Nemesis" goes one step further, actively proposing as an antidote to the meaningless "monotony" (p.319) of celebrating anniversaries that there should be an opportunity "'for demonstrating your feelings towards people whom you simply loathe'" (pp.319-20).  Clovis proposes to his aunt that a day should be set aside for settling old scores.  "'Of course the thing would have to be done furtively and politely'" (p.320), continues Clovis and suggests digging for truffles on a neighbour's tennis court, or inviting the greedy Agnes Blaik⁵⁸ to a picnic and sending the food off in a different direction, having taken the precaution of having oneself eaten a satisfactory meal before setting out.  His aunt, Mrs Thackenbury, obviously warming to the theme, asks what could be done about "'that odious young man, Waldo Plubley'" (p.321).  What Clovis has in mind for him is setting fire to a wasp's nest under a hammock in which he is reposing.  And to his aunt's objection that the wasps might sting him to death, the irrepressible Clovis callously replies, "'Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death'" (p.322).⁵⁹

Those "'little everyday acts of pretended importance'" (p.481) alluded to in "The Mappined Life" might equally apply to the lifestyle of "Judkin of the Parcels".⁶⁰ It is tempting to speculate whether the disappointed Basset Harrowcluff in "Cousin Teresa" might not share a fate similar to that of Judkin.  This story is a curious blend of nostalgia and irony, pathos and humour.  The figure of Judkin in his "indefinite tweed suit" (p.61) which "would eventually go on to the gardener's boy, and would perhaps fit him" (p.62), is also an object both of respect and pity.  The whimsicality of "the dear gods, who know the end before the beginning, were perhaps growing a gardener's boy somewhere to fit the garments" (p.62) redeems parts of this passage from mawkishness.

The mare on its first encounter with him "stared and obviously thought of a curtsy" (p.61), seeing in him the "man of action" he used to be.  Saki follows this with a topical joke: "there is no telling what she will pass and what she won't.  We call her Redford" (p.61).⁶¹ But on the second encounter the mare "looked straight in front of her" (p.61), having assessed Judkin as merely "a man of activities".⁶² There follows a passage which recreates the kind of life that Judkin in his prime had known, a passage described by Lambert as an "embarrassing outburst".⁶³ Judkin's home life is imagined in starkly contrasting terms, reduced as he is, to "muddy lanes and cheap villas and the marked-down ills of life, to watch pear trees growing" (p.62), an activity which rivals the excitement of rising "early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night" (p.17) as portrayed by Reginald in "Reginald's Choir Treat".

Judkin's wife is described as perhaps having "had a figure once" (p.62), this partial expression leaving no doubt about her present appearance.  Perhaps she still has "a heart of gold - of nine-carat gold" (p.62), Saki adds disparagingly, "but assuredly a soul of tape" (p.62).  The kind of conversations which Judkin and his wife might have would resemble the exchanges of the uncle and aunt in "The Mappined Life".  For instance, he "will explain how it had fared with him in his dealings" (p.62), the "largeness and lateness [of a vegetable marrow] would be a theme of conversation at luncheon" (p.63).  The look of "tedious cheerfulness that might pass for happiness" (p.63) which Judkin habitually wears is a cause of mystification to the narrator.  His putative interest in gardening and poultry-keeping and other such trivialities after such an enthralling life is beyond his comprehension.  Here is the indisputable evidence of those "dreadful little everyday acts of pretended importance that give the Mappin stamp⁶⁴ to our life" (p.481) encapsulated in the forlorn little sentence which ends this piece: "The basket to be returned" (p.63).

Perhaps the villa occupied by the Momebys in "The Quest" is similar to that of Judkin.  In much the same way as in, for instance, "The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope", by his preposterous and unhelpful suggestions, Clovis highlights the superficiality and ineptitude of the Momebys, refusing to take seriously the disappearance of the baby, Erik.  As Drake points out he is more interested in what sauce is to be served with the asparagus.⁶⁵

When their neighbour, Rose-Marie Gilpet, assures them that "'it's only lack of faith on your part that prevents him from being restored to you safe and well'" (p.149), as a Christian Scientist she is fair game for Clovis.  When not one but two babies are discovered, he tells her, "'Obviously [...] it's a duplicate Erik that your powers of faith called into being'" (p.151), the bland irony of which calls the "She-Wolf" to mind.  As in "Esmé", "The Baker's Dozen" and other stories, the indifference of parents to their children is mocked, in this instance in the inability of the Momebys to recognise their baby.  Events have proved that Clovis was justified in discounting the seriousness of the incident as an unnecessary fuss.

By contrast, in "Louise", the mislaying of her niece does not prevent her aunt, Jane Thropplestance, from "making a hearty tea" (p.400).  Possibly because she is "chiefly remarkable for being the most absent-minded woman in Middlesex" (p.398) she has come to terms with her shortcomings.  She is also aware of her niece's.  Louise has "no initiative" (p.399), she has "no conversation" (p.339) and appears to have very little personality or intelligence.  As it turns out she has been at home all afternoon reading "'The Faerie Queene'" (p.401), to a maid who has neuralgia, in order to send her to sleep.⁶⁶  In trying to remember where she has left Louise, Jane attempts to retrace her movements of the afternoon, from matching silk, to calling at the Carrywoods, to looking at a church and visiting Ada Spelvexit,⁶⁷ all indicative of the meaningless life that she leads.⁶⁸

James Cushat-Prinkley's⁶⁹ life in "Tea" is equally futile.  He is one of Saki's typical creations, a weak, amiable, complacent man, dominated by "his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends" (p.402), all of whom are engaged in marrying him off.  Any "lack of initiative" (p.402) on his part is more than compensated for by these female relations who "far from being inarticulate" (p.402) on the subject settle on "Joan Sebastable as the most suitable young woman" (p.402) of his acquaintance.

The womenfolk have so far organised the courtship satisfactorily, "but the actual proposal would have to be an individual effort" (p.402), which is why James is bound for Joan's house feeling "moderately complacent" (p.403) as he contemplates the honeymoon in Minorca.  Into this mood intrudes the discordant note of a clock striking half-past four, the traditional time for tea and with it all the stifling affectations of "silver kettles and cream jugs and delicate porcelain teacups" (p.403) and "voices tinkling pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous little questions" (p.403).  He knows that this will happen not only from experience but because he "had read of such things in scores of novels" (p.403), a taste he shares with Alethia Debchance in "Forewarned".

James has an unexpected and unvoiced preference for a very different scene in which the main ingredients are divans, silken curtains, Nubian slaves and blessed silence or "looking unutterable thoughts" (p.403).  Wisely he has remained reticent about this vision in the presence of his mother but his aversion to the ritual of tea as he knows it drives him to seek a brief respite by visiting his distant cousin Rhoda Ellam, who in making hats for a living "appeared to find life amusing and to have a fairly good time in spite of her straitened circumstances" (p.404).  She is having a "'picnic meal'" (p.404) in which he is invited to join, without having to undergo all the unnecessary ritual preliminaries which are anathema to him.  Not only does she "cut the bread-and-butter with a masterly skill" and produce "red pepper and sliced lemon where so many women would merely have produced reasons and regrets for not having any" (p.404) (as in "The Sex That Doesn't Shop"), but she talks entertainingly too, as the expression "'we live in a series of rushes - like the infant Moses'" (p.405) serves to illustrate.

So enchanted is James by this Bohemian lifestyle which promises to chime so satisfactorily with his own unarticulated longings, that he impulsively proposes marriage to Rhoda instead of Joan.  Initially his family are disconcerted "to have to deflect their enthusiasm at a moment's notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellam" (p.405) but they concede that James's "tastes had some claim to be considered" (p.405).  This one crucial instance of James's initiative is not to have the happy consequences he expects, however, as the last scene at tea reveals.  He has been deceived by appearances into thinking that Rhoda was a truly independent woman, the exception to the rule, when it was merely necessity and not inclination which dictated the Bohemian lifestyle which so captivated him.

Another elaborately futile existence is portrayed in "The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat", which Lambert perceptively describes as "an unexpectedly subtle study of the social and sexual frustrations of a young woman of the prosperous middle class".⁷⁰  Jocantha complacently surveys her appearance, her husband and her lifestyle and concludes, "'I don't suppose a more thoroughly contented personality is to be found in all Chelsea'" (p.381), adding as an afterthought, "'except perhaps Attab'" (p.381), the cat who "'lies there, purring and dreaming, shifting his limbs now and then in an ecstasy of cushioned comfort'" (p.381).  This is how he spends his sensual days and at night "'he goes out into the garden with a red glint in his eyes⁷¹ and slays a drowsy sparrow'" (p.381).

It is this element which causes a tiny seed of dissatisfaction in Jocantha's assessment of her lot.  As her husband, Gregory, bids Jocantha "a playfully affectionate good-bye" (p.382) when she would perhaps have preferred a more passionate one, she reminds him archly that "dinner's a wee bit earlier tonight" (p.382).  She continues her reverie "with placid introspective eyes" (p.382) but already she has adjusted her feeling of complacency to admit "if she had not everything she wanted in this world, at least she was very well pleased with what she had got" (p.382), which leads to the contemplation of her material possessions.⁷²

"From being in a mood of simmering satisfaction [...] she passed to the phase of being generously commiserating" (p.382), and sets out for an afternoon's "desultory shopping" (p.382) with the aim of doing something "on the spur of the moment" (p.382), a contrived spontaneity which might add a little zest to the drab lives of the working girls who belong to that "class that have neither the happy go lucky freedom of the poor" (p.382) as Saki ironically puts it, nor the "leisured freedom of the rich" (p.382).  She casts herself in the romantic role of "Fairy Godmother" (p.383), buys a ticket for a controversial play and goes to a teashop to look for a likely recipient of her largesse.

A girl "with tired, listless eyes and a general air of uncomplaining forlornness" (p.383) attracts her notice.  "Obviously she supplied excellent material for Jocantha's first experiment in haphazard benefaction" (p.383).  In trying to catch the girl's attention, however, she is disconcerted to see that "the girl's face lit up with sudden pleasure, her eyes sparkled, a flush came into her cheeks, and she looked almost pretty" (p.383), and this is not in Jocantha's script.  Nor is the reason for this transformation: a young man, "very much better looking than Gregory" (pp.383-84).  Jocantha's attention immediately switches to the boy, though she deludes herself that her interest is that of a benefactress seeking to improve his humdrum life.  She has decided to give the theatre ticket to him, but her fantasy has already carried her beyond that.  "If he was a nice boy and improved on acquaintance he could be given more theatre tickets and perhaps asked to come one Sunday to tea in Chelsea.  Jocantha made up her mind that he would improve on acquaintance" (p.384).  The fact that "he was exactly the type that Jocantha admired [...] of course was accident" (p.384).  Saki piles irony upon irony.

The girl leaves and Jocantha sets about attracting the young man's notice but so immersed is he in his book that she succeeds only in making a fool of herself.  On her return home, her mood is markedly different from when she set out.  She is thoroughly discontented.  Her house appears to her "dull and over-furnished.  She had a resentful conviction that Gregory would be uninteresting at dinner and that the play would be stupid after dinner" (p.385); her petulance is evident.  Attab by contrast is the epitome of "purring complacency" (p.385) but then as Saki succinctly ends the story, "he had killed his sparrow" (p.385).⁷³  What has started out as an exercise in condescension has had the unwelcome effect of opening Jocantha's eyes to the less than satisfactory superficial nature of her lifestyle.

If Jocantha leads a rarefied existence, it is as nothing to that of Alethia Debchance in "Forewarned".  Described by May as "brought up in fiction, [she] encountered life",⁷⁴ Alethia is the female equivalent of Theodoric Voler who, having led an equally sheltered life, occupies a railway carriage en route to her first "social adventure" (p.441).  In living in a secluded hamlet, amongst elderly neighbours, the only newspapers she has read "were devoted exclusively either to religion or poultry, and the world of politics was to her an unheeded unexplored region" (p.441), a point which proves crucial at a later stage in the story.

All her ideas have been gleaned from novels of the sort written by Augustus Mellowkent in "Mark" and this is abundantly illustrated throughout.  Her aunt has died leaving her well off financially but alone in the world apart from some distant cousins in Ceylon "a locality about which she knew little, beyond the assurance contained in the missionary hymn that the human element there was vile" (pp.441-42),⁷⁵ and other cousins in the Midlands.  Over the past few years the latter "had expressed a polite wish that she should pay them a visit" (p.442) and their note of condolence on her aunt's death "had included a vague hope" (p.442) that Alethia would visit them.

She knows nothing about them except that the two daughters have left home to be married, old Mrs Bludward is a semi-invalid and the son, Robert, is hoping to be an M.P.  "Her imagination, founded on her extensive knowledge of the people one met in novels, had to supply the gaps" (p.442).  The stereotypes which she describes are amusing.  Either the old lady will be "ultra amiable [...] bearing her feeble health with uncomplaining fortitude, and having a kind word for the gardener's boy" (p.462) [a type obviously and perhaps only to be met with in the pages of fiction] "or else she would be cold and peevish, with eyes that pierced you like a gimlet" (p.442).  As it turns out, "Mrs Bludward proved to be of the type that Alethia had suspected, thin-lipped, cold-eyed and obviously devoted to her worthless son" (p.445), which confirms her worst fears.

Robert is more difficult to predict.  He might be like a "Hugo, who was strong, good and beautiful, a rare type" (p.442), or like "Sir Jasper, who was utterly vile and absolutely unscrupulous" (p.442).  "Nevil who was not really bad at heart, but had a weak mouth" (p.442) is the most likely.  The nature of the novels she has read is made clear from this and in her expectations of meeting "undesirable adventuresses" or "reckless admiration-seeking women" (p.442).  While excited at the prospect Alethia is filled with such trepidation that she wishes that "she could have taken the vicar with her" (p.443).

She is far from reassured on overhearing the conversation of two farmers who enter her compartment and describe Robert as an "out-an'-out rotter" (p.443) who "was hissed down at Shoalford yesterday" (p.443).  To Alethia this is a "dramatically biblical" (p.445) disgrace which immediately calls to mind two more of the sensational romances which represent her entire experience of life.  As she observes to herself in tones of breathless horror, "in placid Saxon-blooded England people did not demonstrate their feelings lightly and without some strong compelling cause" (p.444).  Then she reads a newspaper article which describes Robert as "an unscrupulous, unprincipled character [...] responsible for most of the misery, disease, poverty, and ignorance with which the country was afflicted" (p.444).  She recognises him as the Sir Jasper type with "the dark beetling brows, the quick, furtive glance, the sneering, unsavoury smile that always characterized the Sir Jaspers of this world" (p.444).  Robert, in fact, to her considerable surprise "was fair with a snub nose, merry eye, and rather a schoolboy manner" (p.444), but Alethia's convictions are not to be shaken so easily by appearances.  In fact, shortly after meeting him she "thought she heard a furtive hiss" (p.445).  Again the words "furtive" and "eyes" draw attention to deceptive appearances and lack of judgement.

In pinning her hopes on Robert's rival, Sir John Chobham, she is to be further disillusioned, however, since he is described by a rival newspaper in identically derogatory terms as those berating Robert.  On reading this, "the colour ebbed away from her face, a look of frightened despair crept into her eyes" (p.446); nothing she has read has prepared her for a world in which there are only villains and no heroes.  Having spent the night barricaded into her room to such effect "that the maid had great difficulty in breaking in with the early tea in the morning" (p.445), Alethia decides that desperate measures are called for and pretends that she has had a telegram calling her home.  As she confesses to herself, "It was dreadful to have to concoct lies, but it would be more dreadful to have to spend another night under that roof" (p.446).  Safely back in the world of novels Alethia congratulates herself on having survived her experience of "the world outside Webblehinton, the world where the great dramas of sin and villainy are played unceasingly" (pp.446-47).

Literal-mindedness of a different sort occurs in "The Jesting of Arlington Stringham" in which Eleanor's mother has no imagination and very little intelligence.  The empty lives, humdrum routines and lack of purpose are revealed in the dialogue between mother and daughter which results from the unaccustomed joke that Arlington has made in the House of Commons.  "'In all the years we've been married neither of us has made jokes, and I don't like it now'" (p.133), confides Eleanor to her mother in a manner which recalls J.P. Huddle in "The Unrest-Cure".⁷⁶  Eleanor adds, "'I'm afraid it's the beginning of the rift in the lute,'" (p.133), which prompts her mother to inquire, "'What lute?'" The answer that it is a quotation⁷⁷ "was an excellent method, in Eleanor's eyes, for withdrawing it from discussion" (p.133).

Two days later Arlington makes a remark to his wife which evokes the condemnation, "'That's very modern, and I daresay very clever'" (p.133) which is reminiscent of the humourless Mrs Quabarl.⁷⁸  She adds in the ensuing silence which further nettles her, "'You had better tell it to Lady Isobel'" (p.134) who, clearly a very advanced and independent person, "was seen everywhere with a fawn-coloured collie at a time when every one else kept nothing but Pekinese" (p.134) and who obviously poses a threat to Eleanor's peace of mind.⁷⁹  As she feels more alienated from her husband she tells her mother, "'The rift is widening to an abyss'" (p.134), which causes her mother "after long reflection" (p.134) to remark, "'I should not tell that to anyone'" (p.134), adding in explanation, "'you can't have an abyss in a lute.  There isn't room'" (p.134).

The trivialities which occupy Eleanor and her like are illustrated in the next paragraph when the wrong library book is brought to her.  Instead of the latest sensational novel, "the book which every one denied having read" (p.134), she is confronted by a book of nature writings.  "When one had been prepared to plunge with disapproving mind into a regrettable chronicle of ill-spent lives it was intensely irritating to read 'the dainty yellow-hammers are now with us, and flaunt their jaundiced livery from every bush and hillock'" (p.134),⁸⁰ a parody which reveals Eleanor's hypocrisy.  She is plainly as literal-minded as her mother in observing to herself, "the thing was so obviously untrue; either there must be hardly any bushes or hillocks in those parts or the country must be fearfully overstocked with yellow-hammers" (p.134), an observation worthy of Reginald's Duchess.

Significantly Eleanor also feels, "The thing scarcely seemed worth telling such a lie about" (p.134), which amply illustrates the part that truth plays in her life.  The boy who has brought the wrong book, "she would have liked to have whipped [...] long and often.  It was perhaps the yearning of a woman who had no children of her own" (p.134), Saki cynically and perhaps feelingly observes.

At dinner that night, a meal attended by Clovis and "the odious Bertie van Tahn" (p.135),⁸¹ Arlington says, "'X [...] has the soul of a meringue'" (p.135), to which Eleanor's mother predictably objects, "'Meringues haven't got souls'" (p.135).  Clovis briefly redeems the conversation from banality by the addition of one or two fanciful remarks and Eleanor feels temporarily closer to Arlington again when he criticises the curry which she feels to be more characteristic of him.

But shortly after, Arlington makes another joke in the House which prompts the reiterated comment from Eleanor that "'it's very modern and I suppose very clever'" (p.136)⁸² to which her friend Gertrude Ilpton replies disconcertingly, "'Of course it's clever [...] all Lady Isobel's sayings are clever, and luckily they bear repeating'" (p.136).  When Eleanor dies "from an overdose of chloral" (p.136) there is much "unobtrusive speculation.  Clovis, who perhaps exaggerated the importance of curry in the home, hinted at domestic sorrow" (p.136).  This ironic conclusion shows much the same perception as revealed by Clovis in "The Brogue".

Judging by appearances has equally tragic consequences in the case of "The Lost Sanjak".  The scene is a prison cell where the condemned man is recounting to the Prison Chaplain the bizarre events which have led to his death sentence.  In being condemned to death "'in expiation of the murder of myself, which murder never took place, and of which, in any case, I am necessarily innocent'" (p.54) he claims he has been "'a victim to a lack of specialization'" (p.49),⁸³ a theme which Saki returns to in different guises throughout the stories.

The convict's personality has been at fault all along.  He acts impulsively and randomly so that the series of accidents are largely of his own making, in which respect he resembles Martin Stoner in "The Hounds of Fate".  Having fallen in love for no particular reason with the doctor's wife and been rebuffed, he feels that he must make himself scarce, since that seems to be the acceptable form "'in novels and plays I knew'" (p.50), though he has no idea how to go about it.  He happens on the corpse of a Salvation Army officer who seems to have been the victim of a road accident, and decides to change clothes with him as a favourable "'opportunity for losing my identity and passing out of the life of the doctor's wife for ever'" (p.50) with the minimum of fuss.

But the troubles he brings upon himself by his impulsive action are far worse, for the following day he reads in a newspaper "'the announcement of my own murder at the hands of some person unknown'" (p.51).  Ironically "'the deed was ascribed to a wandering Salvationist [...] who had been seen lurking in the roadway near the scene of the crime'" (p.51).  The conclusion to which he jumps amply illustrates to what extent he is the victim of his own folly.  "'What I had mistaken for a motor accident was evidently a case of savage assault and murder'" (p.51).  The full implications of this remark highlight Saki's subtlety in compressing so many different factors into one short sentence: the absurdly false logic, the facile judging according to circumstantial evidence, the irredeemable weakness of character thus revealed.

The man has two problems now - to establish his own identity, but without involving the doctor's wife, and to get rid of his incriminating disguise.  It becomes plain from "stares, nudgings, whisperings and even loud-spoken remarks of 'that's 'im'" (p.51) and people "furtively watching" (p.51) him that he has been identified as the wanted Salvationist, the reason for his continued freedom being linked with blood-hound trials in which he is the quarry.  Even the dogs in this story are incompetent, since if he had not idiotically stooped to pat one on the head he is "'not sure that they would have taken any notice of me'" (p.52).

When he is brought to justice events further conspire against him.  An aunt of the dead Salvationist readily identifies him as her depraved nephew, and to make matters worse, in trying "to demonstrate that my learning was on altogether another plane" (p.53) from the "veneer of cheap modern education" (p.53) of the Salvationist he fails test after test.  As a self-professed expert on the Balkan Crisis, but without the advantage of a hasty brushing up of the subject, everything hinges finally on his knowing the whereabouts of Novibazar,⁸⁴ the lost Sanjak of the title, and he gets it wrong.

What adds to the irony of this story is the uneasiness experienced throughout by the chaplain who clearly suffers from a "lack of specialization" (p.49) too.  His first action after the man has been hanged is to look up the "Times Atlas" (p.54) since after all, "'a thing like that [...] might happen to any one'" (p.54).  The absurdity of this story with its false logic, the elaborate futility of action and outcome, the inverted sense of values, all invite the reader to examine appearances more closely.

"The Veiled Vote"

A handful of stories use the device of 'reductio ad absurdum' to ridicule women's suffrage too.  Among them, "A Young Turkish Catastrophe" which makes much use of punning word play to humorous effect, is also a satire on the politics of expediency.  The same minister who said, "'Women have no souls and no intelligence; why on earth should they have votes?'" (p.60)⁸⁵ capitulates when he is told, "'It would be to the liking of the Young Turkish Party'" (p.60).  At the closely contested election it is therefore a fitting irony that the candidate for the Young Turkish party should be ousted by the "Veiled Vote" (p.61), an unforeseen part of the secret ballot.  His rival, Ali the Blest, has several hundred wives and mistresses, whose alternative to voting for him is to be drowned in the Bosporus.

In similar vein is "Hermann the Irascible - A Story of the Great Weep", where the solution to women's suffrage is to oblige women to vote at every election no matter how trivial, with financial penalties for failure to do so.  Hermann "was one of the unexpected things that happen in politics, and he happened with great thoroughness" (p.125) which accounts for his revolutionary "Compulsory Female Franchise" (p.125).  This proves so inconvenient that "the most fanatical Suffragettes began to wonder what they had found so attractive in the prospect of putting ballot-papers into a box" (p.125).  Ironically "The No-Votes-for-Women League" (p.126) formed in desperation by millions of women as frantic for disenfranchisement as they were to acquire the vote adopt equally violent measures but to no avail; until they "hit upon an expedient which it was strange that no one had thought of before.  The Great Weep was organised" (p.126).  This farcical ploy, wherein thousands of women take it in turns to weep openly and publicly, prevails and the king agrees to pass a bill depriving women of the vote.  Hermann who was not for nothing "also nicknamed the Wise" (p.127) has engineered the outcome, as the last sentence reveals.  This solution to the suffragette menace is humane compared to the Emperor's in "The Gala Programme", where Placidus Superbus orders the "menagerie dens" (p.551) to be opened and the wild animals loosed on the women.

"The Threat" is another satire on women's suffrage this time in the form of a conversation between Sir Lulworth Quayne and his nephew.  Clovis-like, Sir Lulworth celebrates by the use of colourful anecdotes "one of the most dramatic reforms" (p.462) of recent times.  In describing a Suffragette atrocity in which thousands of parrots are loosed on a Royal procession, the "additional language" (p.462) which the parrots acquire during their recapture and which unfits "them for further service in the Suffragette cause" (p.462) is, of course, left to the imagination.  The next atrocity is the destruction of several hundred pictures on the first day of the exhibition at the Royal Academy, but this is counter-productive since "the drastic weeding out of a few hundred canvases was regarded as a positive improvement" (p.463).

Whatever the women try seems doomed to failure and it is left to the ingenuity of a man to come up with a truly effective stratagem.  That the man is "Waldo Orpington [...] a frivolous little fool who chirrups at drawing-room concerts and can recognise bits from different composers without referring to the programme" (p.463)⁸⁶ is, by extension, an indication of the opinion that Sir Lulworth has of Suffragettes.  At a whist drive Lena Dubarri, the prime mover of this new plan, reveals to the Prime Minister that they have been collecting money to build replicas of the "Victoria Memorial" (p.465) to be erected at strategic sites.  So appalled is the Prime Minister at this prospect that the Suffragettes have the satisfaction of stampeding him into "panic legislation" (p.465).  Unfortunately for them, however, it does not take the form of conferring votes on women but, as revealed in the last sentence, "an act which made it a penal offence to erect commemorative statuary anywhere within three miles of a public highway" (p.465).  True to form the elaborate plans are of no avail.

"Not a Biyelka"

So all-pervasive are the animals that stalk Saki's pages⁸⁷ that it would be wrong not to look at a few stories in this chapter on "elaborate futilities" where it is an animal that ruffles the calm.  In "The Bag"⁸⁸ Vladimir as a foreigner is bewildered by all the fuss when he is suspected by Norah of having shot a fox by mistake; and his lack of comprehension draws attention to the essentially idiotic nature of the obsessions of Mrs Hoopington and Major Pallaby and the rest.

Unnerved by Norah's panic reaction, Vladimir botches his attempt to conceal the incriminating game-bag and it is left dangling like a sword of Damocles from an antler fixed to the wall above the tea table, which accounts for his "scared, miserable eyes" (p.78) and Norah not daring to raise "her eyes above the level of the tea table" (p.78).  When the dog shatters the silence by barking at the game-bag, "a simultaneous idea flashed on himself [the Major] and Mrs Hoopington [...] and with one accusing voice they screamed, "'You've shot the fox!'" (p.79).  In leaping to the same conclusions as Norah, the Major's fury is likened to "a destroying angel" (p.79) and an "imprisoned cyclone" (p.80) while Mrs Hoopington's "shrill monotone" (p.80) when the Major leaves is like "a rather tame thunderstorm" (p.80) after a "Wagner opera" (p.80), as she sees her marriage prospects evaporate.  In the last scene (reminiscent of the burial of the kitten in "The Penance"), comes the surprise ending when "in the dusk of a November evening the Russian boy [...] gave hasty but decent burial to a large polecat under the lilac tree at Hoopington" (p.80).  Even a dead animal has the power of total disruption in a Saki story.

In a great number of stories animals act in such a way as to discomfit humans, sometimes like Tobermory, for instance, as superior to them, sometimes as an extension of human agency as for example, in "The Boar-Pig"; but in the case of "The Bull", "The Stalled Ox", "The Brogue" and "The Mouse" amongst others, they act in a perfectly natural way, but are just as potent a force in upsetting the superficial order of things.

Just as Basset Harrowcluff in "Cousin Teresa" despises his half-brother Lucas, so Tom Yorkfield, the stolid, earnest farmer in "The Bull", has little time for his effete, artistic half-brother, Laurence.  In showing his indifference to Tom's pride and joy, the bull 'Clover Fairy', despite Tom's attempt to appreciate Laurence's artistic efforts, and in the added insult of having one of his bland paintings of a Hereford bull bought for three times the price Tom could hope to get for his real animal, "the patronizing, self-satisfied Laurence" (p.489) drives him beyond endurance.  Unable to articulate his outrage and goaded by "the united force of truth and slander" (p.490), Tom grabs hold of Laurence who slips and goes "scudding and squawking across the enclosure" (p.490) to the irritation of the bull, who completes Laurence's indignity by tossing him over his shoulder.  Thus the values are restored, Tom being superior to Laurence in his ability to admit the truth to himself and in a generosity of nature which Laurence lacks.

Another cattle painter features in "The Stalled Ox" where the polite reticence of Theophil Eshley is no match for his vituperative neighbour Adela Pingsford.  Eshley, the sort of painter disparaged by Reginald in "Reginald on the Academy", paints infinite variations on a theme of "'Noontide Peace', a study of two dun cows under a walnut tree" (p.345), and it is to him that Adela turns for help when an ox gets into her garden.  When Eshley "blankly and rather fatuously" (p.345) (like an Octavian Ruttle perhaps) asks what kind of ox it is and how it got there, Adela releases a stream of invective.  She is further incensed by his ineffectual attempts to incite the animal to move, observing cuttingly, "If any hens should ever stray into my garden [...] I should certainly send for you to frighten them out.  You 'shoo' beautifully" (p.346);⁸⁹ and is driven to use "language that sent the artist instinctively [...] nearer to the ox" (p.347).

Unfortunately his best attempts only succeed in driving the beast into her morning-room, where it proceeds to demolish the flower arrangements.  Eshley, however, "fancied that the beginnings of a hunted look had come into its eyes" (p.347) and he feels that discretion is called for.  Adela is beside herself with rage by now and suggests scathingly, "'Perhaps you'd like to do a nice sketch of that ox making itself at home in my morning-room'" (p.347); which is just what Eshley does.  He paints a picture entitled, "'Ox in a Morning-room, Late Autumn'" (p.348), (similar to the pictures of Gebhard in "On Approval") which makes his reputation, the invasion of the ox being the necessary catalyst to bring out Eshley's manly qualities, just as the assuming of the persona of "Mark" makes a man of Mellowkent.

An equally formidable woman dominates "The Elk",⁹⁰ this time in the person of the rich and redoubtable Teresa Thropplestance,⁹¹ whose "manner suggested a blend between a Mistress of the Robes and a Master of Fox-hounds" (p.358).  Her sole "heir-designate" (p.358) is Bertie "who was quite ready to marry any one who was favourably recommended to his notice, but he was not going to waste his time in falling in love with anyone who would come under his grandmother's veto" (pp.358-59).  The story then revolves round the match-making bids of daughters and mothers and the intractability of Teresa.

Mrs Yonelet, the latest in a long series of maternal aspirants, thinks that she has the prize within her grasp when the 'tame' elk in the park near the Thropplestance mansion where she is spending Christmas attacks her daughter Dora.  She dashes into the drawing-room "eyes blazing with excitement" (p.360) and announces, "'Bertie has saved Dora from the elk!'" (p.360) "'Fate has consecrated them for one another'" (p.361).  Teresa, however, is unimpressed, informing her that Dora's is merely one of a long series of such episodes.  She puts Mrs Yonelet even more firmly in her place by telling her that in any case by these reckonings the gardener's boy ought to have the right of first refusal, and that destroying the elk would be out of the question since as she pointed out to the mother of the gardener's boy, "'she had eleven children and I had only one elk'" (p.361).⁹²

Later the vicar's wife, speaking "with the quiet authority of one who has intuitive knowledge" (p.362), predicts that it is a German governess who will marry Bertie.  "'Next to Teresa she's about the most assertive and combative personality in the neighbourhood'" (p.362) which will guarantee Teresa's approval of her as a fitting successor at the Hall.  Unexpectedly it is Dora Yonelet who carries off Bertie when the elk kills the governess and is itself destroyed, a double blow which Teresa does not long survive.  This "irony of its fate" (p.362) accomplishes what no amount of plotting has been able to do.

Matchmaking is the theme of "The Brogue" too.  The Brogue in question is a horse, originally named Berserker⁹³ but renamed "in recognition of the fact that, once acquired it was extremely difficult to get rid of" (p.250).  This unpredictable animal is owned by the widowed Mrs Mullet, her son Toby, and her clutch of daughters.  Finally succeeding in selling the horse to her unwitting neighbour Mr Penricarde, however, unexpectedly finds her distraught.  It appears that Mr Penricarde is interested in her daughter Jessie, and as she "partially" expresses herself to Clovis, "'I've got a houseful of daughters [...] and I've been trying - well, not to get them off my hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn't be amiss among the lot of them'" (p.252).  She enlists Clovis's help in solving the problem of the Brogue which she is afraid will kill her prospective son-in-law or, at the very least, put him off marrying her daughter, which is her prime concern.

Jessie, a brisk young woman, announces to her mother the following day, after a round of golf with Penricarde, "'It's all right about the proposal [...] he came out with it at the sixth hole.  I said I must have time to think it over.  I accepted him at the seventh'" (p.252).  When her mother admonishes her for her lack of "'maidenly reserve and hesitation'" (p.253) - it seems she should have waited till the ninth hole - Jessie replies, "'The seventh is a very long hole'" (p.253).  Everything is cut and dried with her in a way reminiscent of Emily in "The Baker's Dozen", down to the honeymoon in Corsica and the choice of her mother's wedding outfit.  But she is anxious about her fiancé's ability to control the Brogue.  His experience of riding so far has been limited to an animal "'accustomed to carrying octogenarians and people undergoing rest cures'" (p.253).  She adds absurdly, "'I shall be a widow before I'm married, and I do so want to see what Corsica's like; it looks so silly on the map'" (p.253), which is a fair indication of her sense of priorities.

After several wild suggestions about how to deal with the situation, including a pretended "Suffragette outrage" (p.252),⁹⁴ Clovis devises a plan which seems foolproof, but even he cannot control the weather and Mr Penricarde rides the Brogue for the first time.  He is bruised and shaken but "good-naturedly ascribed the accident to his own inexperience with horses and country roads" (p.254).  The wedding goes ahead as planned with nothing more said about the Brogue, and this polite reticence on the part of all concerned is only mildly questioned at the end by Clovis.  Included in the list of wedding presents is "'The Brogue', bridegroom's gift to bride" (p.254) which Toby thinks proves that Penricarde suspects nothing.  But Clovis has another more sinister interpretation.  It could after all indicate "'that he has a very pleasing wit'" (p.254).

Thus from the irreverent nonsense of Reginald, the diplomatic reticence of the ultra-refined hypocrites, the posturings of the pseudo-intellectuals, the outspoken and outrageous Clovis and his like, reticence gives way to invective, animals upset plans and absurdity fractures social poise.  It is the "pretended importance" (p.481) and "the powers of self-deception" (p.480) that are the crimes constantly under attack in the parade of foibles in these stories.  The Reginalds, Sir Lulworths, Veras, and Clovises all conspire to pierce such armour and in his attack on "conventional make-believe" (p.482) it is the conventional element which Saki considers to be pernicious.

Notes

1. Elizabeth Drew, Atlantic Monthly, p.98, quotes this passage, singling out "Lucas Basset" in "Cousin Teresa", for special mention, but mistakenly attributes the remark to Comus Bassington.  She means Lucas Harrowcluff, of course.
2. "Reginald in Russia" (1910), "The Chronicles of Clovis" (1911), "Beasts and Superbeasts" (1914), "The Toys of Peace" (1923), and "The Square Egg" (1924).  The dates refer to the first publication of the collections and not to the individual stories within them.
3. Benny Green, "Paper-Thin", Spectator, 245 (November 22, 1980), p.24.
4. The Saturday Book, 20, 61-73.
5. William E. Chapman, 'Aspects of Literary Dandyism from 1881: Wilde, Beerbohm and Saki' (Unpublished B.Litt. dissertation, Oxford, 1978), p.43, states, "Clovis and Reginald are exquisite young men [...] Life they regard as something to be lived consciously and with style".
6. Review in Bystander, October 18, 1911, p.134, entitled "'Saki' Stories: The Chronicles of Clovis" and signed "V.C."  Vivian Carter was editor of the Bystander at that time.
7. Chapman, op. cit., p.135, believes this lie of Reginald's may contain "an echo of Wilde's lie, about his age, when on oath, at his first trial".
8. It is interesting to note that in the much later story, "The Mappined Life", the niece in drawing a parallel with the animals says that we have "'this difference in our disfavour, that the animals are there to be looked at, while nobody wants to look at us'" (p.480).
9. Op.cit., p.132.
10. Fogle in "Saki and Wodehouse" says, "The Duchess has pretensions, and is therefore hopelessly handicapped" (p.84).
11. "Biography" in The Square Egg, p.7: "Without any sense of humour whatever, she was the funniest story-teller I've ever met.  She was a colossal humbug, and never knew it".
12. "Saki", New Statesman, p.416.
13. Clovis's drama in "The Peace Offering" has marked similarities, pp.179-84.
14. Charles Jamrach, described in Ritvo's The Animal Estate as "the most extensive dealer in wild animals in Victorian Britain" (p.225), managed "the largest and most renowned wild animal shop in Victorian London [...] from 1840 until his death in 1891" (p.244).
15. Compare this with "The League of the Poor Brave Things" in "The Woman who Never Should" by Saki in Westminster Gazette, July, 22, 1902, pp.1-2.
16. The language of the "Austrian Reichsrath" is cited in "The Oversight" also, p.515, a comic reference to its multi-lingual composition.
17. In "The Oversight", for instance, Lloyd George is described by Mrs Walters as "an Antelope" and when pressed, "'Well, not an antelope exactly, but something with horns and hoofs and tail'" (p.514).
18. J.W. Lambert, "Introduction", The Bodley Head Saki (London: Bodley Head, 1963), p.39.
19. As Cheikin also notes, "Saki; Practical Jokes as a Clue to Comedy", p.121.
20. 'Development of Method and Meaning...', pp.77-81.
21. A refuge established for the destitute by Lord Montague Rowton (1838-1903), a Victorian philanthropist.  Mention is also made in "Bertie's Christmas Eve" of "a Rowton House for the vagrant rats of the neighbourhood" (p.439).
22. According to Brewer, a tenth-century archbishop of Mainz noted for his oppression of the poor, and reputed in time of famine to have assembled them in a barn and burned them to death.  An army of mice attacked and devoured him.  Southey wrote a ballad about him.
23. Subtitled "A Light-Fingered Trifle" in Bystander, December 6, 1911, pp.523-24, 526.  The most famous kleptomaniac of the day was allegedly none other than Queen Mary.
24. This theme of autogenic punishment occurs in such stories as "The Lumber-Room", where the aunt is on "self-imposed sentry-duty for the greater part of the afternoon" (p.373).
25. An example of double standards as in "The Way to the Dairy".
26. The silly name, "Pigeoncote", is clever for two reasons: it calls to mind the word "dovecote" but without any of the associations of the word "dove", while the word "pigeon" is slang for a dupe.
27. This same Mrs Packletide appears also in "Mrs Packletide's Tiger" and "The Recessional".  The spasmodic reappearance of the same characters throughout the stories has the effect of establishing a kind of mythology, or at least the sense of their belonging to some sort of club of which the reader is also a privileged member.
28. He is described thus also in "The Jesting of Arlington Stringham", p.135.
29. Just as he did the address of J.P. Huddle in "The Unrest-Cure".
30. A remedy repeated with a minor variation in The Watched Pot, p.922.  The significance of the oak has already been discussed in Chapter Two.
31. Unlike the wise Reggie Bruttle who took ingenious precautions against such an eventuality in "Excepting Mrs Pentherby".
32. A reference to the Balkan War.
33. Clearly this is a favourite expression of Saki's at that time, appearing also in "The Almanack" in Morning Post, June 17, 1913: "As your mother says, you are a mass of selfishness" (L.p.296).  "A Housing Problem" appeared in Bystander, July 9, 1913, pp.60, 62.
34. Not included in The Complete Saki but contained in Methuen's Annual, 1914, pp.39-45.  See Appendix B.
35. An echo of the girl's opinion of the bachelor's story about the wolf in "The Story-Teller": "'it is the most beautiful story that I ever heard'" (p.351).
36. Charles Maude, with whom Saki collaborated according to a note by Ethel Munro which prefaces The Watched Pot, pp.865-66.  This version, a revision of the original, was completed in 1914.
37. Emlyn Williams, "Preface", Saki: Short Stories (London: Dent,1978), pp.11-13.
38. His two one-act plays, "The Death-Trap" (pp.845-50) and "Karl-Ludwig's Window" (pp.853-861), melodramas which date from his early days as war correspondent, feature together with The Watched Pot after his two novels, The Unbearable Bassington and When William Came.
39. "Not for much money would I have such death-music" (p.414).
40. "'Conscience makes cowboys of us all'" (p.154), a joke repeated in The Watched Pot, p.896.
41. It is probably no coincidence that George Moore had written a novel entitled Sister Teresa which was published in 1909.
42. W.D. Cobley, "The Tales of Saki", p.227.
43. The rather discordant anti-Semitic references are in Saki's time no more significant or objectionable than his anti-American or anti-nouveau riche comments which to him are all part of the same equation, and which need give no more offence than the anti-Suffragette remarks should to today's feminists.
44. A.A. Milne quotes this as an example of felicitous expression in his "Introduction", The Chronicles of Clovis (London: John Lane, 1931), p.xii, saying, "'Locate' is the pleasant word here".
45. "Bertie van Tahn was responsible for the legend that its spout had to be kept facing north during the process of infusion" (p.304).
46. Like Eleanor Saxelby in "The Stake", "whose eyes had been straying restlessly towards the mantlepiece" (p.335).
47. Sumurun, a popular musical play of the time ("The Peace Offering" appeared in Bystander, June 7, 1911), is mentioned twice in Bystander, October 18, 1911: pp.123 (a page of cartoons) and 135 (a review); and again on May 14, 1913, p.336, with an accompanying photograph of an actress in a stagey pose: "Everybody is glad to see Sumurun back at the Coliseum".  But the review continues: "we have progressed much since its first appearance two or three years ago.  Indeed, the whole of the Russian ballet movement has intervened, and, to tell the truth, Bakst has rather spoiled us for Reinhardt".
48. Who "spoke of several duchesses as if he knew them - in his more inspired moments almost as if they knew him" (p.87).
49. Lulu is mentioned also in The Watched Pot by the imperious Hortensia Bavvel as "not a person whose behaviour or opinions will be taken as a pattern at Briony as long as I am mistress here" (p.914).
50. An allusion to the man responsible for fitting out the Spanish Armada.
51. Egbert and his uncle, Sir Lulworth, also appear in "Laura", at another funeral.
52. The June 5th, 1912 edition of Bystander was a special Paris number "Written, Illustrated and Produced During a Visit to Paris by the Editor and Staff", p.479.
53. Texas Studies in Language and Literature, p.388: "In "The Mappined Life" it is the polite fictions of civilization" that are under attack.
54. 'Saki: A Literary and Critical Study', p.77.
55. "Saki: Practical Jokes", p.123, as applied to his use of practical jokes.
56. In Regent's Park (London) Zoo, designed by the architect J.J. Joass (1868-1952), friend of J. Newton Mappin (of Mappin and Webb, Jewellers) who unfortunately died before the official opening in 1913.  The terraces were specially designed not only to give the illusion of freedom and 'the wild' but arranged in such a way that the viewing masses were unaware of each other.
57. Katrakis, 'The Satiric Art...', p.92, says, "The story takes the form of a discussion between Mrs James Gurtleberry and her niece Vera.  Munro obviously uses Vera as a mouthpiece for airing his philosophies".  Unfortunately Vera's name is not mentioned in this story.
58. Who appears also in "The Strategist".
59. This is the view of René in The Watched Pot when he talks of Sparrowby, p.930.
60. Appearing originally as "The Man of the Parcels" in Westminster Gazette, Oct.29, 1902, p.3.  Katrakis in her chapter entitled "Chronological Development of the Short Stories", p.61, says, "another theme of importance in Munro's later work [...] is his contempt for routine and mundane living", unfortunately adding that "this idea is expanded in a number of Munro's later stories, such as 'Judkin of the Parcels' from 'The Chronicles of Clovis'", presumably taking the date of the collection (1911) as the date of the individual stories.
61. An ex-bank manager turned Lord Chamberlain whose job it was to censor plays and who had the reputation of being very arbitrary.
62. Just as in "Cousin Teresa", Basset's is "the contempt of the man of action for the man of activities" (p.307).
63. "Introduction", The Bodley Head Saki, p.60.
64. The "Mappin stamp" is almost certainly a punning reference to a jeweller's hallmark such as may be found on silverware.  The word, "hallmark" has an ironic significance in "The Seven Cream Jugs" also: "his hosts [...] wore an uneasy manner that might have been the hallmark of conscious depravity" (p.501).
65. Drake, "The Sauce for the Asparagus", p.63.  It is noteworthy too that in "The Mappined Life", the niece considers it a justification for hanging a cook that "'she sent up the wrong kind of sauce with the asparagus'" (p.481).
66. In "A Bread and Butter Miss" it is the Encyclopaedia Britannica which is recommended for that purpose (p.435).
67. Who appears in The Unbearable Bassington, too, as "'one of the Cheshire Spelvexits'" (p.611) while a Mrs Spelvexit is part of the Duchess's set in "Reginald at the Carlton", p.24.
68. Similar to this is "The Sex that Doesn't Shop" where the empty frivolity of female lives is amply illustrated.
69. The name "Cushat-Prinkley", meaning a preening woodpigeon, conjures up the image of a self-important popinjay.
70. "Introduction", p.41.
71. Like Groby Lington's monkey in "The Remoulding of Groby Lington", p.226 and the pig in "The Boar-Pig", p.247.
72. Reminiscent of Francesca Bassington in her drawing room in The Unbearable Bassington (pp.570-71).
73. he sparrow is a symbol of female sexuality in Catullus and in 16th century English poetry.
74. J. Lewis May, John Lane and the Nineties (London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1936), p.193, quotes "Sir John Squire in an article contributed to Land and Water, in February, 1919".
75. Bishop Reginald Heber:
                    What though the spicy breezes
                    Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
                    Though every prospect pleases
                    And only man is vile...
76. "We don't feel we need a change of thrush at our time of life" (p.128).
77.                 "It is the little rift within the lute,
                    That by and by will make the music mute,
                    And ever widening slowly silence all."
    Tennyson, The Idylls of the King, "Merlin and Vivien", l.388.  Tennyson: A Selected Edition.  Edited by Christopher Ricks, (London: Longman, 1989), p.818.
78. In "The Schartz-Metterklume Method": "You may be very clever and modern, Miss Hope" (p.287).
79. The fashion in dogs has obviously changed again since the days of "Reginald in Russia" when the Princess asks Reginald, "'In England is it more chic to have a bull-dog than a fox-terrier?" (p.43), or in "Reginald on Tariffs" where Mrs Van Challaby wants "a Yorkshire terrier of the size and shade that's being worn now" (p.32).
80. This boredom with the wonders of nature is shared the Rev. Wilfrid Gaspilton in "For the Duration of the War" (pp.533-34).
81. The same adjective is used of him in "A Matter of Sentiment" (p.205).
82. Compare this with "She may not be brilliant or particularly modern" in "The Woman Who Never Should", Westminster Gazette, July 22, 1902, p.2.
83. According to Bernard E. Dold, Edwardian Fall-Out: The Ironic School (Messina: Peloritana Editrice, 1972), p.16, "The Lost Sanjak" "probably was inspired by a sensational case of the period when a pretender to a fortune failed to prove his knowledge of certain school subjects".
84. Mentioned also in "The Cupboard of the Yesterdays": "The Sanjak of Novi Bazar" (p.531).
85. Canon Clore in "The East Wing" takes a different stance: "I am in favour of women having the vote myself, even if, as some theologians assert, they have no souls" (M.p.40).
86. Like one of the "merely musical" in "The Chaplet" (p.144).
87. The role of animals in Saki's own life has a significant bearing on the frequency with which they appear throughout the stories, particularly the incident which led to his own mother's death.  Having survived three pregnancies in Burma, she was sent home for the sake of her well-being to have her fourth child in England, but died after being charged by a cow in a Devon country lane.  The intolerable irony of this appears to have influenced Saki's view of the animal kingdom, and the retributive role of the animal throughout his writings may be interpreted as a kind of exorcism of this tragic accident.
88. "The Bag" (like "The Mouse") has a punning significance, in this case referring also to the Major whom Mrs Hoopington is hoping to 'bag' in marriage; and possibly Norah's hopes of the "mixed bag", Vladimir too.
89. In this he resembles the Stossens in "The Boar-Pig" who cry, "Shoo! Hish! Hish! Shoo!" (p.247).
90. This appeared in Bystander Annual, 1913, (published November 17), pp.35-36, under the title: "The Elk: A Christmastide Tragedy!".
91. Possibly some relation of Jane Thropplestance in "Louise"?
92. She has this in common with Mrs Toop in "Gabriel-Ernest" who had "eleven other children" (p.69).
93. According to Brewer, in Scandinavian folklore Berserk always fought ferociously and without armour.  Presumably Berserker is even more formidable.
94. An excuse devised also by the "emergency brain" of Elinor in "The Occasional Garden" (p.508).

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