Memoirs of a Nobody
Walker, Helen
MEMOIRS OF A NOBODY By HELEN WALKER IT IS very pleasant to be a nobody. To begin with, there...
...There is the mind of genIus and the commonplace mind...
...There they hang," he said, sympathetically, "having a nice, dry time...
...Yes, it is pleasant to be a nobody...
...Meeting him for the first time after he had delivered a lecture on English literature, I sought in my mind a proper way in which to express my appreciadon of it...
...Immediately I was happy, for even as I have a Dream Book like Napoleon, so have I a pct cat like Ouspensky...
...MEMOIRS OF A NOBODY By HELEN WALKER IT IS very pleasant to be a nobody...
...On the other hand, the nobodies, secure in their obseurity, draw satisfaction from observing that they, the uiifamed, share certain human qualities in common with the mighty ones of earth...
...on the appearance of whiskers...
...When theyhavebeen in the latterstate,ihave revelled In ~W lfl3oI~sl nicmnoirs, finding more of absorbing inzeraej I blush to tate, in the discovery of their human qualities, than in their lashes of genius...
...The Iccturcs were preparatory to morc advanced study at the Institute Gurdjicff at Forztainebleau, and thither, as everyone knows, Katherine Mansfield followed the teaching, only to meet her death there a few months later—the result of a prolonged illness...
...Then suddenly into his library where we were working, walked a great gray cat...
...Afterwards, on the seat under the long, low leaded window of his study, I gazed out into the most enchanting of rose gardens, intoxicating with its color and fragrance—a garden such as one sees only in England...
...When I was placed next to our delightful septuagenarian host —England's lord of commerce—at the table, I frankly told him I was perturbed...
...The delicate—Bcaver I" And my startled gaze rose to see a whiskered sightseer peering at something opposite us...
...For centuries the nobodies have struggled manfully to keep the lighted cigarette away from the open gasoline tank—to temper, by their presence, meetings between the Bernard Shaws and the Emersons, the Cooks and the Perrys, the Fiona Macleods and the Theodore Dreisers...
...What an opportunity for a nobody...
...Why...
...The world will not be disappointed if one remains commonplace and unsensatonal...
...For whence the spell-bound audiences, the acclaiming crowd, the huzzahing populace—but for the nobodies...
...In the course of the work in London arose the need of an Englishspeaking person to help Mr...
...Ouspensky (or something that sounded exactly like that—he told me it was Russian for Pussy), and papers and pencils and books fluttered and fell, regardless, from his lap, as he delightcdly stroked the soft, gray back rubbing against him...
...It had been dug up in the Priory pounds...
...They really read Who's Who and the Social Register...
...Someone asked him whether it was true that-a certain variety of oysters "grew on trees...
...I don't like old houses," said his charming, quaint little Victorian sister, Miss Johnston, who also lives in the Priory, and who read our palms in the afternoon...
...It was then I discovered, that alike to the great and the obscure, whiskers are humorous...
...Shc seemcd to be looking past us at things unseen by us...
...However, the sympathy of the great for a pretty hat, immediately made the nobody beam, and we became friends...
...John Ayscough, who, away from the backs of his books, is Morisignor Bickerstaff c-Drew, a venerable retired chaplain of the British army, has white hair that falls over a face illumined by the spiritual and the intellectual...
...I glow over the accounts of George Washington's butchers' and grocers' bills, while the winter at Valley Forge leaves me cold...
...Travelers of that year remember that in England the children (and more grown-ups than will admit) played Beaver...
...They leaven society, and form a sort of perpetual fire extinguisher to the incipient volcanic eruptions which threaten, where a fraction too many of the great are gathered together...
...The literary giant, though austere, had a smile in his eye...
...The great take comfort in them—soft, silent buffers against which their theories may bounce with abandon, unchallenged, uninjured...
...Sir Harry explained that there are oysters, which when the tide is high, fasten to the lower branches of trees—submerged for the time in water...
...To begin with, there is the obvious advantage that nothing is expected of one...
...There was, in the group, a suitable leavening of nobodies...
...Into its dim, glorious vastness we entered one summer day, and proceeded up the nave, examining the carved tombs of crusaders and nobility that stretch on either side—under some of which lie ancestors of the Monsignor...
...If they scampered off before the camera was adjusted we would stand eagcrly, patiently, waiting Yaska's rcturn—psychology neglected and forgotten...
...Ouspensky in his translations of certain things from the Russian...
...Both react in a measure similarly to the gentle influences of affection, humor, and food—a pleasant observation that I have delighted in...
...This friendship was later irrevocably cemented...
...he asked...
...When the tide recedes, it leaves them clinging to the branches...
...Not long afterwards, a very great, very famous literary giant was invited to dinner in the house where I was visiting...
...Not if you take the first drink," quoth he...
...For the progress of civilization, the great must be encouraged to thrive and flourish, and if it weren't for the obscure, they would have a sony time of it...
...They kL'dlc the same spark in each...
...This," said thc vcricrable author-ecclesiastic, pausing before one of the tombs, "is perhaps the most perfect piece of carving in the Cathedral...
...One evening I went to a dinner party at The Hill, the estate of Viscount Leverhuhrie, who began his brilliant career as untitled William Lever...
...Monsignor Bickerstaffe-Drew undertook to show me Salisbury Cathedral, near which his charming Queen Ann residence lies...
...For the uninitiated, the technique of the game consists in being the first one to shout irreverently "Beaver...
...They arc the given of banquets, the tenderers of floral tributes, the subscribers to memorials...
...but pussy cats, and hats with silver tassels, and whiskers, arid whiskcy—recognize no distinction...
...But before I had found it, I heard him exclaim, seriously: "I say—-What a smart hat you've got on I" It dangled a long silver tassel, and while I was proud of it, I had never dared hope that it would excite the admiration of such an eminent ecclesiastic...
...Red whiskers are the mark of a Royal Beaver...
...I was suffering from a heavy cold, and when whiskey was brought after dinner, my hostess insisted that I partake, to cure my cold...
...Behind me, imbedded in the wall, stretched the long gave-stone of a crusader, with its simple cross hen down its length...
...They are the constituents, and the acceptors of theories...
...Vaska I" cried Mr...
...Thereafter II had the privilege on certain days of working alone with him...
...Edward Penfleld, the eminent illustrator, from whom colors have actually taken their names (you may either be an artist or a daughter of a President to have a color named for you—no one else is eligible) once observed of the shade of my new fall costume: "That will be the doggy color for autumn...
...I have a Dream Bock, but have never been to Italy...
...Sir Harry Johnston, author of delightful novels and serious scientific books on the fauna and flora of Africa, was host one sunny day at a small luncheon at his thirteenth century Priory home at Arundel in England...
...The great have always fascinated me, alive or dead...
...As for the living great, whenever chance has thrown me in their presence, I have reconciled the incongruity of the situation by remembering the maxim about the cat and the king, and have forthwith fallen to observing the very thrilling demonstration of their humanness...
...Napoleon poring over his Dream Book is far more thrilling to me than Napoleon directing the Italian campaign...
...From the window, I would see Vaska poised graccfully on a fence, holding convene with anothcr of his kind...
...Of the literary great, it included Katherine Mansfield, A. R. Orage, Algernon Blackwood, and other well known writers...
...We had heard before our visit, rumors of a "haunt" at the Priory—but Sir Harry only laughed when an ancient tapestry, stirred by we knew not what, fluttered on thc wall...
...Sir Harry took me over the lovely, winding passages of the house, showed me the exquisite ceiling of what had been the old chapel, and die little stone 20 THE COMMONWEAL November 12, 1924 holy water fount that the workmen had uncovered under layers and layers of walls...
...Therefore I said, cycing the full bottle: "Do you think therc is cnough here for both of us...
...Then there is the realization that, as a nobody, one is filling a real need in the motion of the world...
...Due to them, mammoth intellectual casualties have been averted...
...The first dine, I was somewhat awed at his intellectual grandeur...
...One of England's distinguished writers...
...More than ever was I convinced of his eminence...
...I come from America—a land shorn of titles—and though I've been told a letter addressed to you should read 'The Right Honorable the Viscount Leverhulme' (how do the English ever find envelopes wide enough?] frankly, I really don't know what to call you.,, "Call me Wall," promptly said the Right Honorable, the Viscount Leverhuline...
...Frequently when we were struggling far the proper English ~quin1ent to some Russian term of mysticism or psychology, Quspensky, glancing out of the window into thc Kensington street, would jump up, papers flying like snow flakes, to dash for his camera...
...It was during the same summer that P. D. Ouspensky, thc Russian psychologist and mystic, author of Tertium Organum, was lecturing twice a week in London to a limited group...
Vol. 1 • November 1924 • No. 1
