Did I confess a distaste for
Christmas, I should incur your enmity. But if I find it, as I protest
I do, rather agreeable than otherwise, why should I spoil my pleasure
by stringing vain words about it? Swift and the broomstick--yes. But
that essay was done at the behest of a clever woman, and to annoy the
admirers of Robert Boyle. Besides, it was hardly--or do you think it
was?--worth the trouble of doing it. There was no trouble involved?
Possibly. But I am not the Dean. And anyhow the fact that he never did
anything of the kind again may be taken to imply that he would not be
bothered. So would not I, if I had a deanery.
That is an hypothesis I am tempted to pursue. I should like to fill
my allotted space before reaching the tiresome theme I have set
myself ... A deanery, the cawing of rooks, their effect on the nervous
system, Trollope's delineations of deans, the advantages of the
Mid-Victorian novel ... But your discursive essayist is a nuisance.
Best come to the point. The bore is in finding a point to come to.
Besides, the chances are that any such point will have long ago been
worn blunt by a score of more active seekers. Alas!
Since I wrote the foregoing words, I have been out for a long walk,
in search of inspiration, through the streets of what is called the
West End.
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