DOI article:
Egerton, George: The captain's book
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0112
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The Captain’s Book
stone to whatever might offer ; and when the Piccadilly Budget
treated all the clubs to a merry half-hour by its piquant details of
the early life of the latest created military baronet, or told how the
great porter brewer’s grandfather burnt the malt by accident and
so laid the foundation to his fortune, or gave a most piquant
version of an old scandal with modern touches as applicable to the
newest woman writer, brother journalists were green with envy.
Readers in the running said : “ That’s Dick O’Grady’s par.,” and
wondered where the deuce the fellow picked up his facts. And
Dick smiled at acquaintances with the winning smile that too was
an inheritance from the Captain, and stopped his hansom to greet
a club gossip useful to push him into the set he wished to enter,
told him a rattling good story of the latest “star’s” mother, whom
he happened to know was a canteen woman in the Curragh in
1856, and was promised a card in return for Lady C.’s crush ;
sometimes, too, he found a modernised version of the Captain’s
chivalrous manner to women of almost miraculous effect in con-
ciliating the esoteric petticoat influence of some leading daily ;
and, conscious of his debt, he would order a new dress suit and send
the old boy half a sovereign with a letter bemoaning the shortness
of “ oof,” and asking three questions no one else in London could
answer him. His Sunday afternoon with the Captain was always
profitably spent ; he gleaned stores of workable anecdotes, and if
the stories he deftly drew out gained in malice as they lost in genial
humanity, and the rennet of his cynicism turned sour the milk of
human kindness that ran through the Captain’s worst tale—well,
he was the better latter-day journalist for that. Nowise deceived,
the old man would pocket the stray shillings, and wash the taste
of the interview down with a glass of his favourite Jamieson,
swearing he would make that cub, with the mind of a journalising
huckster, cry small when he published his book.
As
The Captain’s Book
stone to whatever might offer ; and when the Piccadilly Budget
treated all the clubs to a merry half-hour by its piquant details of
the early life of the latest created military baronet, or told how the
great porter brewer’s grandfather burnt the malt by accident and
so laid the foundation to his fortune, or gave a most piquant
version of an old scandal with modern touches as applicable to the
newest woman writer, brother journalists were green with envy.
Readers in the running said : “ That’s Dick O’Grady’s par.,” and
wondered where the deuce the fellow picked up his facts. And
Dick smiled at acquaintances with the winning smile that too was
an inheritance from the Captain, and stopped his hansom to greet
a club gossip useful to push him into the set he wished to enter,
told him a rattling good story of the latest “star’s” mother, whom
he happened to know was a canteen woman in the Curragh in
1856, and was promised a card in return for Lady C.’s crush ;
sometimes, too, he found a modernised version of the Captain’s
chivalrous manner to women of almost miraculous effect in con-
ciliating the esoteric petticoat influence of some leading daily ;
and, conscious of his debt, he would order a new dress suit and send
the old boy half a sovereign with a letter bemoaning the shortness
of “ oof,” and asking three questions no one else in London could
answer him. His Sunday afternoon with the Captain was always
profitably spent ; he gleaned stores of workable anecdotes, and if
the stories he deftly drew out gained in malice as they lost in genial
humanity, and the rennet of his cynicism turned sour the milk of
human kindness that ran through the Captain’s worst tale—well,
he was the better latter-day journalist for that. Nowise deceived,
the old man would pocket the stray shillings, and wash the taste
of the interview down with a glass of his favourite Jamieson,
swearing he would make that cub, with the mind of a journalising
huckster, cry small when he published his book.
As