File:Of all things (1922) (14778582211).jpg

Identifier: ofallthings00benc (find matches)
Title: Of all things
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Benchley, Robert, 1889-1945
Subjects:
Publisher: London : John Lane, The Bodley Head
Contributing Library: University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Digitizing Sponsor: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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■ Snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts as Cooney and Le Blanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team. It might be seized at any moment by an EnglishDuke or a Lady Agatha and strangled to death.Even the butlers in the late eighties were wits, andserved epigrams with cucumber sandwiches; anda person entering one of these drawing-rooms andtalking in connected sentences—easily understood 152 OF ALL THINGS! by everybody—each with one subject, predicateand meaning, would have been looked upon as ahigh class moron. One might as well have goneto a dinner at Lady Coventrys without onescollar, as without ones kit of trained paradoxes.A late Autumn afternoon in one of these semi-
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The butlers served epigrams with the cucumber sandwiches. Oscar Wilde plays, for instance, would run some-thing like this : Scene—The Octagon Room in Lord RaymondEavestons Manor House in Stropshire. Lady Eaveston and Sir Thomas Waffletonare discovered, arranging red flowers in a vase. Sir T. : I detest red flowers ; they are so yellow. THE ORTHODOX PARADOX 153 Lady E. : What a cynic you are, Sir Thomas.I really must not listen to you or I shall hear some-thing that you say. Sir T. : Not at all, my dear Lady Eaveston. Idetest people who listen closely ; they are so inatten-tive. Lady E. : Pray do not be analytical, my dear SirThomas. Wlien people are extremely analyticalwith me I am sure that they are superficial, and, tome, nothing is more abominable than superficiality,unless perhaps it is an intolerable degree of thorough-ness. (Enter Meadows, the Butler) Meadows (announcing) : Sir Mortimer Longleyand Mrs. Wrennington—a most remarkable couple—I may say in announcing them—in

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