Excerpt From "Fear of Billowing Silks": an Autobiography of Sir Wenlock James.
(Elephant & Castle, Lismahagow, 1967)
Thursday February 23rd
I arose soon after dawn, washed, dressed, and, at 8 o'clock sharp, partook of a light breakfast, of grapefruit sugar-dusted, black tea (Ceylon, with a sliver of old lemon), one slice of fresh bread well-toasted and spread with Cornish buerre and lemon marmalade from Mrs Pintock's larder. Then, after half-an-hour with The Westington Morning Advertiser and a cigarette (Turkish: Hakan-Szucr brand), I put on my Halliberd sports jacket, took up my Haston cane, and sallied forth into the liquid sunlight of the wan morning. I was bound for Bellinford & Sons, Tailors, for today was the day when my Italian spats were due to arrive.
I'd countenance no other spat but an Italian, in those heady, nay, those halcyon, days of my glory-youthings. There was something about the offwhite gleam of a pair of De Linghuini, the crisp feel of some Bello Fridgia, the marvellously solid yet supple comfort of the immortal Giorgio Maltacello! Something that eluded description, that escaped vulgar categorical. An imperceptible essence, as old Tanqueray, my father's butler, used to say, before the evening he went up in smoke.
Ah! Tanqueray! "Brow like the prow of the Great Eastern", my Uncle Marmaduke would mutter to me whenever the discreet butler entered the drawing-room, cleaving the aristocratic ambience like the stately iron-ship, to announce something or other. I shall never forget the evening he glided in, bearing the tray of Armagnacs. He suddenly stopped, near the fire. His face became an expressionless mask, ran deathly pale. Oddly, his eyes started, and stared at the ceiling. He threw the tray into the air - the glasses glittered silvery shafts, the released Armagnac hung in golden gobbets - and old Tanqueray was lost to us for ever, in a cloud of stinking damp smoke and blue soot. All that remained of our butler were his white gloves.
This was clearly a case for Blether of the Yard. I wasted no time in telephoning Amperbury Police Station. Unfortunately, Sergeant Blaskett was dead-drunk in the Swineherd's Arms (the Swineherd's wife had gone to stay with her sick mother in Muckford-on-Tettle), Constable Yerd had been called out to the Widow Feeble's, for her ginger Tom, Tom, had been menaced by the village idiot, Silas Gurnard, and was now wedged behind her arras, rigid with terror; and as for Inspector Crumple, that august exponent of the science of deduction was taking down Hettie Frimple's particulars in the interview room.
So there was nothing for it. A trip to Bristol was the only way out for our little band of anxious gnomes. I was into Farnsworth-Spandle's Morgan and away down the drive within half an hour, with Cissie by my side, and a selection of Danderplough's ewe-cheeses in the back seat (Troy Farnsworth-Spandle had an eye for the ladies and a taste for fine Wessex fromage). Oh, and we had a couple of bottles of Father's '14 Sauternes in the back too. Genius always comes at a price, and the other chap's paying, as "Bounder" Bounderby used to remark in the snug bar of The Dangling Prussian.
It was cold in the Morgan. Cissie shivered, and snuggled up to me as I drove. A fox loped across the Blimpton Road. It was a quarter after midnight and the rain was bouncing off the rutted track. A badger trotted alongside us for a couple of miles the far side of Tulsworth, before leaving us with a smile as we approached Elms Trough.
Over Hartmoor the rain stopped. Above us the smouldering welkin was oily and smoky. Great cloud-rags seperated to reveal a horn of moon, burning translucent as finest porcelain, the sky around it lit pale inky blue.
Hugh Buffering-Lutwidge writes: And so it rambles on. What a miss is the untrammelled lunacy of the aristocracy in these rationalised times when the Kingdom is ruled by faceless accountants and petty bureaucrats! Give me the hey-day of Sir Wenlock James! With a glass of gleaming Sauternes '14, and a sliver of Danderplough's ewe-cheese, I'd be in Seventh Heaven! "And the other chap's paying." Indeed, Bounderby, old goose, indeed!
