JOHN BROWN'S BODY

THOMAS BURKE

Revenge (said Ho Ling, shaking a few chrysanthemum buds into his tea) affords an interesting study, and I am surprised that nobody has yet given us a book exploring this human passion. It is fully as interesting as the passion of love, upon whose technique thoughtful and other writers have lavished so manv thousand volumes; and it offers so many sidelights on the human character that in these days of industrious book-making it is reallv surprising that it has been overlooked. The writer could penetrate the soul of the passion itself, and examine its many inter-locking cells and chambers, and could then go on to study the thousand and one modes of its expression. Fascinating, this; for ever since the world began it has been a dominant passion in human relationships, and the desire for its gratification has revealed unusual felicity of invention.

From that very earliest revenge of an unknown avenger, whose act has passed into a proverbial warning against cutting off the nose to spite the face, down to that which is recalled to me by a paragraph in this evening's paper, human wit has shown itself unfailing in developing and extending the technique of revenge, both in form and style. We have the revenge plain and the revenge coloured. The revenge impulsive and the revenge meditative. The revenge crude and the revenge fastidious. The revenge heroic and the revenge cowardly. The revenge brutal and the revenge witty. We have the revenge of compelling the enemy to die and the revenge of refusing to let him die. We have the revenge of imprisoning the enemy and the revenge of setting him at liberty. We have the revenge of dying in circumstances which will put the enemy under great suspicion, and the revenge of continuing to live after impending death has been announced. We have the revenge of frustrating desire, and the revenge of assisting its fulfilment. We have the revenge of those who cut their throats upon the enemy's doorstep, and of those who set up house opposite the enemy, in superior style. We have the revenge of working social and financial ruin upon the enemy, and the revenge of elevating him to prominent positions for which he is inadequate. We have the revenge of publishing and the revenge of suppressing. We have the revenge of saying poisonous things and the revenge of saying subtly agreeable things. We have the revenge of doing what the enemy fears we will do, and the revenge of doing something else. And we have the revenge, sometimes the most acid of all, of turning the other cheek.

It was the paragraph in this evening's paper, announcing the death in a lunatic asylum of John Brown that moved me to make this comment.

You remember John Brown, who had that large business—at least a very large building housed it—on the other side of the river? . . . Well, perhaps I could hardly expect you to. You are still young, and I suppose it is natural that you should hold indifference, even a weary contempt, towards men who own large businesses. When poets reach the age of fifty . . .

This John Brown, then, controlled a business, of what nature I forget, which had been controlled by his father. It was one of those businesses—there are few of them today—which are conducted with dignity and genuine courtesy, not because dignity and courtesy have been found to pay but because the partners know no other way of conducting business. It was a personal business, and John Brown and his partner shared the same room, and John Brown maintained both business and social contact with bis clients. His clients never saw a manager or a secretary; they saw John Brown. And John Brown never saw other people's managers or secretaries; he saw the principals. He met his clients daily at his club, and he dined at their houses, and they dined at his, and, so far as John Brown was concerned, the business was going very well and maintaining both the prosperity and the ideals which had been the aim of his father.

But John Brown had a young partner. You know nothing of business, but if you did you would know that a young partner in an old-established business is something like a blue-bottle 11 v in tin; reading-room of a wellconducted club. And so John Brown found it. The young partner was lull of what he called ideas, but to John Brown these ideas bore as much relation to serious business as the philosophical writings of the young Mr. Tood bear to philosophy. He refused to listen to them, and when the young partner, whose name was Harold Skimpole, insisted that something must be done to bring the firm within a mile of the tail-end of the procession, and that his ideas would do it, he reminded him that he (John Brown) was the senior partner. Whereupon tin young man took note of the remonstrance and reminded himself that he, Harold Skimpole, was the bright and thrusting and intensely junior partner; and went elsewhere for encouragement and comfort.

He went to a friend of his—Mrs. Brown.

In accordance with the traditions of the firm the junior partner had dined frequently at the house of the senior partner, and had spent many week-ends at their riverside cottage. It had taken no more than the first four visits to show Mrs. Brown how much she and the young Harold Skimpole had in common, and on the fifth visit she perceived that they had almost everything in common, short of the structure of their bodies. It was to Mrs. Brown, therefore, that Harold Skimpole turned for comfort under his repeated rebuffs and for encouragement in his schemes for furthering the prosperity and prestige of the old firm.

Now one of the great troubles of the western world—greater far than the trouble of surplus population, or the decay of agriculture—is that it has so few women and so many females, such as bitches, vixens, hens, cows, and so on. It was, unhappily, to one of these that John Brown was married, and it is due to this fact that the ancient and honourable firm of John Brown no longer exists, and that John Brown died in the lunatic asylum to which his female had consigned him.

It happened in this way. Mrs. Brown and Mr. Skimpole wanted more money than they had. They always had wanted more money than they had, but since their meeting with each other they had a definite purpose in wanting it. They wanted to he happy together, and they could not. be properly and modernly happy without money, and they could not get money unless the business produced increased profits. So long as old John Brown showed no sign of dying, and flatly refused to retire, it was not likely to do this; accordingly, they began to cast about for means of making it do it, and at last Mrs. Brown evolved a scheme under which the control of the business passed into the hands of Mr. Skimpole.

Consideration of their case (and of others like them) makes it clear to me why the institution of marriage, against which the English are constantly making objurgation, remains still so popular in this country. It is so much less costly, and so much less nerve-wracking, than the other kind of relationship.

Well, as I say, Mrs. Brown evolved a scheme whereby the firm should be speeded-up, and the large profits then passing it by and entering the accounts of other firms, should be attracted to their firm. Mr. John Brown unconsciously gave her some assistance in her scheme. He had just then been working long hours at his office—longer than was good for him. The business was sound enough, and it brought him what be considered a more than sufficient income for two people of their rank with no children. lie had no fears for it, but he was none the less worried by the constant urgings of his junior partner that the thing would collapse unless more—1 think he called it Zip—were put into it, and by the constant demands of his wife for more money and new cars. Although he was convinced of the soundness of the concern, these constant whisperings of imminent failure began to have their effect upon a man of his age, and soon he began to show signs of it. He became absent-minded. He said the same thing three times. He failed to remember his appointments. When he was asked one question he replied to another.

In short, he jumped into Mrs. Brown's hands.

She sent for a mental specialist, and told him about her husband. The mental specialist came to dinner—as the father of a school-days friend of Mrs. Brown—and observed Mr. Brown through the course of an evening. He paid two more visits. On the third visit he brought with him a friend, who also observed Mr. Brown. Two days later they went through that process which you call "certifying'', and the completely sane Mr. Brown was taken away from his home and away from his business, and carried to a large country house.

® And now Mrs. Brown was free to enjoy Mr. Skimpole's company, and Mr. Skimpole was free to enjoy the reconstruction of the old firm. All the ideas which had been bubbling within him were now released. He modernised the tone and accent of the firm, and he modernised its clothes. He re-decorated the offices, and bought modern letter-paper, and employed modern artists for its catalogue, and ultra-modern printing for its circulars. lie advertised in papers which Mr. John Brown would have shuddered to touch. He gave elaborate luncheons to "useful" people in smart restaurants, and he so moved the staff with his own thrust and drive that if they had not all been too old to hope to find positions elsewhere they would have resigned on the first day.

But Mr. Skimpole overstepped himself. His ideas were undoubtedly bright ideas, but bright ideas only flourish in their right soil, and the business of John Brown was not the soil for these ideas. New wine lives best in new bottles. He was a young man who followed the modern gospel of looking ahead, forgetting that one of the dangers of looking ahead is that one is so apt to trip over the pebbles immediately beneath one's feet. His thrust and drive lost the firm the business of its old clients, and did not win any new business. The old clients were disgusted with his vulgar display, and other people seemed to remain ignorant of it and to continue to associate the name of John Brown with out-of date methods. Within a year the firm of John Brown actually was in those difficulties which Mr. Skimpole had foretold for it.

Meanwhile, Mr. John Brown rested quietly in the garden and sitting-rooms of the country house, saying nothing and doing nothing. After the first week he had made no more protestations of his sanity. He had accepted the situation, and had devoted most of bis time to the study of the works of J. II. Fabre, which he had always wanted to read, and had never had time to read.

He made no appeals for his liberty, gave very little trouble, and seemed wholly uninterested in what was happening in the outer world. He wrote no letters and received none. The only signs of any disorder that he ever revealed were a sudden brusqueness and a gleaming eye, symptoms which only appeared when any of the doctors attempted to discuss his disorder with him. He made no objection to their observing him, hut he bluntly refused to answer questions or to talk to them at all. Only once did he have a visitor. This was when an old business acquaintance came down to see him, and, noting with surprise and pleasure his easy demeanour and rational conversation, thought it wise to tell him what was happening to the firm. IIis good business brain might see how to save it. But the news evoked from John Brown not the smallest flicker of interest; indeed, he changed the subject, and left the friend convinced that if business did not interest him, his disorder was too deep-seated to allow of any cure.

But at the end of the year the outer world, and business, compelled his attention. Mrs. Brown and Harold Skimpole began to realise that they were in a situation wholly disagreeable to them. It seemed to be certain that without John Brown the business would go utterly down, and they would be faced with poverty. It has been known, I believe— at least there are a few cases here and there in proof—that married people have been able to face and to endure poverty; but my records show no cases of illicit or adulterous lovers facing, let alone enduring, poverty. To face poverty was to face the end of their affair. As they had not yet, by the normal course of time, reached that stage, they realized that something immediate must be done if they were to disarm the threat of poverty. The more they thought about it, the more clear it became—distasteful as the idea was to them —that they could be rescued only by John Brown. John Brown was not so alert in business as Harold Skimpole, but he did not make mistakes. John Brown might yet be able to save the old firm; he had pulled it through other crises before; therefore they must turn again to John Brown for his sound advice and his shrewd activity. Unfortunately, the business needed not only the direction of John Brown's mind, but—such was the obtuseness of the firm's clients—the presence of John Brown's body. Without himself in the office his advice would be like the directions on a packet of medicine without the medicine. This would mean that their raptures which had lately been free must once again become furtive. But there was no help for it, and at last they set about the business of getting back John Brown's mind and John Brown's body. They got his mind. They never got his body.

They arranged that the mental specialist who had first examined him should visit the country house and again examine him. The mental specialist did so, and reported that he was mentally and physically sound. The doctors of the country house agreed with the mental specialist. Whereupon it was arranged that Mrs. Brown should, on a certain day, remove her husband from the country house and take him home. Her husband, when told of this decision, quietly fell in with it, and expressed a desire to see his wife again and a deep satisfaction in being able to see her as a normal creature. He thanked the doctors and the attendants for the cure of his disorder that they had effected by their sympathy and their understanding of the needs of his case— namely, that lie should he left alone —and added that although he had known himself to have been suffering from delusions he could not recall any incident of his life as their patient which gave him cause for complaint.

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Finally the head doctor entered the room and, with an affable arrangement of his face, indicated that nothing need now delay the departure of Mr. Brown. There was just a small formality. If Mr. Brown would just sign the hook, which an attendant was bringing.

The attendant brought the hook and said "Here, this line." Mr. Brown said "Yes, I know," and signed. The attendant picked up a piece of blotting paper to blot the signature; then he held the blotting-paper in mid-air, and made a discreet signal to the doctor. The doctor looked over the attendant's shoulder. He made a slight movement of the head to the attendant, and the attendant touched Mr. Brown on the shoulder. Mr. Brown turned. The attendant took his arm, and the two of them went quietly out.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Brown," the doctor said, "hut 1 fear it will he a long time before Mr. Brown can return to you or to his business. A long time."

Mrs. Brown, who had been puzzled by the departure of her husband, and now saw the crashing of her hopes, said feebly "Why? Why?"

The doctor raised a finger. She went to him. He indicated the book. John Brown had endorsed his discharge in his usual firm handwriting, but the signature read—Napoleon Bonaparte.