• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

n=r. o CO . Or (Ctyauti^ng THE GREEN OVERCOAT. The Green Overcoat By HILAIRE BELLOC With Illustration* by G. K. CHESTERTON NEW YORK ., Me BRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1913 First published in 1919. Seconi impression, August, 19IX. Third impression, November, 19IS. fourth impression, January, 1913. ' ?-s^'' > % 1 m^ W S)cMcatc& to MAURICE BARING. \ DEDICATION. MY DEAR MAURICE, You wrote something called The Green Elephant, and I have written something called The Green Overcoat. It is on this account that I dedicate to you my work The Green Overcoat, although (and I take this opportunity of reproaching you for the same) you did not dedicate to me your work The Green Elephant. An overcoat and an elephant have much in common, and also, alas ! much in which they differ. An elephant can be taken off, and so the can an overcoat ; but, on other hand, an overcoat can be put on, and an elephant can not. I understand that your elephant was not a real overcoat elephant ; similarly my is not a real overcoat, but only an overcoat in a book. An overcoat is the largest kind of garment, and an elephant is the largest kind of beast, unless we admit the whale, which is Vll DEDICATION. larger than the elephant, just as a dressing- is than an overcoat but this gown larger ; would lead me far ! Then, again, the elephant does not eat meat, or bite ; nor does an over- coat. He is most serviceable to man so is ; an overcoat. There are, however, rogue elephants which are worse than useless, and give less profit to their owner than if he had no elephant at all. The same is true of overcoats, notably of those which have got torn in the lining of the left armpit, so that the citizen on shoving his left arm therein gets it into a sort of cul-de-sac, which is French for blind-alley. The elephant is expensive, so is the over- coat. The elephant is of a grave and settled expression, so is an overcoat. An overcoat hanging by itself upon a peg is a grave and sensible object, which in the words of the " philosopher neither laughs nor is the cause of laughter/' So is an elephant encaged. Again, man in conjunction with the elephant is ennobled by tha* conjunction, whether he ride upon its back or upon its neck or walk by its side, as does the keeper at the Zoo. The same is true of overcoats, which, whether we have them upon our backs or carry them over our arms, add something to our viii DEDICATION. appearance. I could suggest many oilier points in common were this part of my work it in lucrative, and, as were, the business ; but it is not, and I must end. I might remind you that elephants probably grow old (though no man has lived to see it), that overcoats do that are of divers certainly ; elephants sex, and this is true also of the overcoat. On the other hand, an overcoat has no feet and it has two tails or none, whereas the elephant has four feet and but one tail, and that a very little one. I must wind up by telling you why I have " " " written of an overcoat and not a great- " " coat/' Greatcoat is the more vernacular ; " " overcoat I think the more imperial. But " " that was not my reason. I wrote overcoat because it was a word similar in scansion and almost equivalent in stress-scheme (wow!) to " the word elephant." Of course, if I had considered length of syllable and vowel-value it would have been another matter, for " " elephant consists in three shorts, "over- coat" in a long, short and long. The first is a what-you-may-call-'um, and the second a thingumbob. But I did not consider vowel sounds, and I was indifferent to longs and shorts. My ix DEDICATION. endeavour was to copy you, and to have a title which would get people mixed up, so that the great hordes of cultivated men and women desiring to see your play should talk by mistake of The Green Overcoat. And then their aunts, or perhaps a prig- " visitor, would say : Oh, no, that is the " book ! In this way the book would be boomed. That was my game. If people had done this sort of thing before it haven't. would not work now ; but they Now, Maurice, I end this preface, for I cannot think of anything more to write. H. BELLOC. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. A 13 IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT TAKES JOURNEY CHAPTER II. : WITH THE IN WHICH A PHILOSOPHER WRESTLES 2 PROBLEM OF IDENTITY ..... 9 CHAPTER III. APPEARS AS A IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT 6 POINT OF RELIGION BY NOT BEING THERE . 4 CHAPTER IV. TRAINING IN WHICH IT IS SEEN THAT UNIVERSITY FITS ONE FOR A BUSINESS CAREER 7 CHAPTER V. DISCOVER THE IN WHICH SOLITUDE is UNABLE TO CHARMS WHICH SAGES HAVE SEEN IN HER FACE 84 CHAPTER VI. TO TASTE IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON BEGINS THE SWEETS OF FAME ... I4 CHAPTER VII. TASTING IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON GOES ON * * I3 ^ THEM ...... , CHAPTER VIII. SWEETS IN WHICH PROFESSOR HIGGINSON GETS THOSE BY THE WAGON-LOAD, AND ALSO HEARS HOW MEN ARE MADE J 58 I ....... CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT BEGINS TO ASSERT ITSELF ........ I75 xi CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. IN WHICH A DESCENDANT OF THE CRUSADERS REFUSES TO HARBOUR STOLEN GOODS . 1 86 CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH A POLE is LESS SCRUPULOUS . 204 CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH THE READERKIN WILL, IF HE HAS AN OUNCE OF BRAINS, BEGIN TO CATCH THE INEVITABLE DENOUMONG OF THE IMBROGLIO . 215 CHAPTER XIII. IN WHICH THE SUBLIMINAL CONSCIOUSNESS GIVES " ITSELF AWAY . >'*' .... 243 CHAPTER XIV. IN WHICH, INCREDIBLE AS IT MAY SEEM, A NON-POLE HAS THE BETTER OF A POLE .... 264 CHAPTER XV. IN WHICH THREE YOUNG MEN EAT, AND NOT ONLY " r -< v EAT, BUT DRINK V f+ v 4 t . * 274 CHAPTER XVI. " IN WHICH CROSS-EXAMINATION IS CONDUCTED EN ECHELON," AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS I CAN'T HELP YOU .... 287 CHAPTER XV... IN WHICH A PROFESSOR PROFESSES NOTHING, A LECTURE is NOT DELIVERED, AND YET SOMETHING ' HAPPENS ,, . '. , . 298 CHAPTER XVLI. IN WHICH THE GREEN OVERCOAT TRIUMPHS AND COMES HOME . yr* ,.* r ,.- . 321 Xll The Green Overcoat. CHAPTER I. In which the Green Overcoat takes a Journey. PROFESSOR HIGGINSON to give him his true name was a psychologist, celebrated through- out Europe, and recently attached to the modern and increasingly important University called the Guelph University, in the large manufacturing town of Ormeston. His stipend was 800 a year. He was a tall, thin man, exceedingly shy and nervous, with weary, print-worn eyes, which nearly always looked a little pained, and were generally turned uneasily towards the ground. He did not dress carefully. He was not young. He had a trick of keeping both- hands in his trouser pockets. He stooped somewhat at the shoulders, and wore a long, grey beard. He was a bachelor, 13 THE GREEN OVERCOAT. naturally affectionate by disposition, but capable of savagery when provoked by terror. His feet were exceedingly large, and his min< was nearly always occupied by the subject which he professed. in This excellent man, his ill-fitting evening suit, had just said good-bye after an agonised party, upon Monday, the 2nd of May, at the house of Sir John Perkin, a local merchant of ample but ill-merited fortune. It was as yet but midnight, the rooms were full, and he hoped to slip out early and almost unobserved. Professor Higginson sidled aimlessly into the study that was doing duty as a cloakroom, sidled out again on remembering that he had not left his things there, and next turned to gaze almost as aimlessly at a series of pegs on which he hoped to find a familiar slouch hat, rather greasy, and an equally familiar grey Inverness which was like his skin to him. The slouch hat was there. The Inverness was gone. Was it ? gone The Professor of Psychology was a learned his man, and sense of reality was not always exact. Had he come in that Inverness after all? r . The more he thought about it the less certain he was. THE GREEN OVERCOAT. He remembered that the May night, though very cold, Lad been fine as he came. He had no precise memory of taking off that Inverness or of hanging it up. He walked slowly, ruminating upon the great problem, towards hall he the door of the ; inwardly congratu- lated himself that there was no servant present, and that he could go through the dreadful ordeal of leaving the house without suffering the scrutiny of a human being. No carriage had yet drawn up. He opened the door, and was appalled to be met by a violent gust and a bitter, cold, driving rain. Now the Professor of Psychology was, like the domestic cat, of simple tastes, but he hated rain even more than does that animal. It bitterly disagreed with him, and worse still, the oddity of walking through the streets in evening clothes through a raging downpour, with a large expanse of white shirt all drenched, was more than his nerves could bear. He was turning round irresolutely to seek once again for that Inverness, which he was now more confident than ever was not there, when the Devil, who has great power in these affairs, presented to his eyes, cast negligently over a chair, a GREEN OVERCOAT of singular magnificence.

Load more

  344

Copy Link