Free The Gentleman In the Parlour by W. Somerset Maugham

exactly as though they had read it from cover to cover. It was bought in the great provincial towns where the virtuous young are gathered together at high tea to improve their minds. Mr Hugh Walpole wrote a preface to the American edition. The booksellers placed it in piles in their shop windows with a photograph of the author on one side and a card with long extracts from the more importantreviews on the other. In short the vogue of the book was so great that its pubisher said that if it did not stop selling soon he would have to read it himself. Mr Blenkinsop became a celebrity. He was asked to its annual dinner by the Lyceum Club.
    Now it happened that just about the time when Mr Blenkinsop’s book reached this dizzy height of success, the Prime Minister’s secretary presented the Prime Minister with the list of birthday honours. This high dignitary of the Crown looked at it with misgiving.
    â€˜A pretty mangy lot,’ he said. ‘The public will raise a stink about this.’
    The secretary was a democrat.
    â€˜Who cares?’ he said. ‘Let the public go and boil itself.’
    â€˜Couldn’t we do something for arts and letters?’ suggested the Prime Minister.
    The secretary remarked that almost all the RA’s were knights already and those that were kicked up the devil of a row if any others were knighted.
    â€˜The more the merrier, I should have thought,’ said the Prime Minister flippantly.
    â€˜Not at all,’ answered the secretary. ‘The more titled RA’s there are the less is their financial value.’
    â€˜I see,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘But are there no authors in England?’
    â€˜I will inquire,’ replied the secretary, who had been at Balliol.
    He asked at the National Liberal Club and was told that there were Sir Hall Caine and Sir James Barrie. But honours had already been heaped upon them so freely that there seemed nothing more to offer them than the Garter and it was evident that the Lord Mayor of London would be very much put out if they were offered that. The Prime Minister, was, however, insistent and his secretary was in a quandary. But one day when he was being shaved his barber asked him if he had read Blenkinsop’s book.
    â€˜I’m not much of a reader meself,’ he said, ‘but our Miss Burroughs, she done your nails last time you was here, she says it’s simply divine.’
    The Prime Minister’s secretary was a man who made it his business to be abreast of the current movements in art and literature, and he was well aware that Blenkinsop’s book was a sound piece of work. In honouring him the State would honour itself and the public might swallow without a wry face the baronetcies and peerages that rewarded services of a less obvious character. But he could afford to take no risks and so sent for the manicurist.
    â€˜Have you read it?’ he asked her point blank.
    â€˜No, sir, I haven’t exactly what you might call read it, but all the gentlemen who talk about it when I’m doing their nails say it’s absolutely priceless.’
    The result of this conversation was that the secretary placed Blenkinsop’s name before the Prime Minister and told him of his book.
    â€˜What do you think about it yourself?’ asked the great man.
    â€˜I haven’t read it, I don’t read books,’ replied the secretary frigidly, ‘but there’s nothing about it that I don’t know.’
    Blenkinsop was offered a KCVO.
    â€˜We may just as well do the thing well if we’re going to do it at all,’ said the Prime Minister.
    But Blenkinsop, true to his character, begged to be allowed to refuse the distinction. Here was a pretty kettle of fish! The Prime Minister’s secretary was at his wits’ end. But the Prime Minister was a man of determination. When he had once made up his mind to do a thing he would allow no obstacle to stand in his way. He