This all started when I needed some sort of quotation suggesting that, lacking all else, civilization needed but two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. Searching my highly fallible memory, I vaguely recalled something that Scott Walter had written to me about a passage in A.N. Wilson’s book on Hilaire Belloc. According to my memory, this was the perfect quotation. I had in fact read the Wilson book, and I recalled the passage as reading, “In his last days, Belloc read nothing but the Bible, Shakespeare, and his own works.” Naturally, nothing could have been more perfect for my purposes.
I next recounted this incident to Denise Bartlett, who, it turned out, admired my memory but quietly hinted that there was something wrong with it. She was rather sure that this was not an accurate quotation, except about Belloc’s reading his own works.
So I finally resorted to the facts. The passage reads in Wilson as follows:
Mr. Belloc himself . . . shuffled about between the study and the kitchen, and the chapel, and his bedroom. His reading now consisted entirely of The Diary of a Nobody, his own works, and the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, which he would read with the satisfied intentiveness of an old priest pouring over his breviary.
About this time I thought, well, perhaps civilization might just also be saved if instead of reading the Bible, Shakespeare, and Belloc’s own works, we still read Wodehouse. But what was this Diary of a Nobody? How could it save civilization?
I had never heard of it. I went over the Reference Desk of the Lauinger Library on our campus. I looked through the card catalogue, or perhaps the computer contraption that is now there to help you search for what should exist. I believe I had finally found, in one of the early editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, under “Diary,” a reference to this book and the name of the authors. They turned out to be two English brothers, George and Weedon Grossmith, who in the 1890s had originally published this book as a serial in Punch.
George Grossmith had evidently something to do with Gilbert and Sullivan. Indeed, he turned out to be one of the original pillars of D’Oyly Carte. George Grossmith was Jack Point in Yeoman of the Guard and the First Lord in H.M.S. Pinafore. Things were looking up. But our library did not have this book. I thought of trying an Inter-Library Loan, but by chance one of the reference librarians found that the book was still in print by Penguin.
I hustled down to Olsson’s Books and Records on 11 Wisconsin Avenue. This was sometime last summer. They did not have the book either but ordered it for me. Weeks passed, then months. I went down every so often to inquire if it had arrived yet, as I was really curious to see the book. Finally, a very nice salesman told me, sadly looking at his computer, that the book was not available.
About two months ago, however, Scott Walter told me that he was on some sort of English book list and noticed that The Diary of a Nobody was available. He asked me if I wanted it. I did. So for Easter Sunday I received an extremely handsome edition of The Diary of a Nobody, published in London in 1969 by the Folio Society, with an Introduction signed merely “J.H.” and drawings by John Lawrence. I believe Weedon Grossmith did the original drawings.
Belloc is said to have thought this book (originally published in 1892) “one of the half-dozen immortal achievements of our time.” This “J.H.” more quietly says of it that it is “a minor masterpiece of unmalicious humour.”
In the “Book World” of the Washington Post for April 2, 1989, moreover, again spotted by Scott Walter, there was a series on “Recommended Reading” which contained a brief notice by James M. Causey on, of all books, The Diary of a Nobody. Mr. Causey wrote: “Whenever you feel your life is mundane, when you think you hear twittering behind your back at the office or when you are treated rudely by a store clerk half your age, bring your problem to Mr. Charles Pooter [hero of the Diary]. He has never let me down yet.” The “twittering” settled it.
Several years ago I wrote a pamphlet for the Catholic Truth Society of London entitled Journey through Lent. The section on Holy Week was called “The Unsuccessful Man.” I had forgotten about this until Scott reminded me of it and its source, which is, of course, from Belloc’s poem “The Unsuccessful Man,” which concluded:
Prince, may I venture (since it’s only you)
To speak discreetly of the Crucifixion?
He was extremely unsuccessful too . . .
Now that I think of Belloc’s love for this Diary of a Nobody, it seems that he saw in its protagonist a kind of Christ figure, of the fallible and failing man who somehow was the object of redemption. And it seems clear why Wodehouse would find himself in this same category. When Belloc read these books with the attention a priest should give to his breviary, perhaps he was engaged in a prayer for all those “nobodies” of which the world is mostly composed, including himself, his own works.
When I first recall hearing of this passage in Wilson, when Scott told me of it, and Denise recalled it better than I, I was merely bemused and delighted. But now I wonder if this amusement and delight did not portend that close connection of delight and sadness that Belloc understood so well, that is the very heart of the Incarnational world in which we live.
I will not recount the contents of The Diary of a Nobody. It is about the life of a man whose worldly affairs never quite go right, even though his is quite a good and normal life. The distance between his self- respect or dignity and how the world sees him is almost infinite. Life cures him of his illusions and therefore makes him the more poignant and in fact more decent.
On April 29, for example, Charles Pooter, a successful third-level businessman, has been having trouble with his son, Lupin. Lupin has at the time no decent job, is living at home, and has other, to his father, odd ideas. Pooter’s wife Carrie is quite lovely but maternally has often to side with the son. A couple of friends, Gowing and Cummings, come over as is their wont. Pooter to liven things up decides to tell them about his extraordinary dream. He had a dream of blocks of ice on fire, and it “was so supernatural that I woke up in a cold perspiration.” Pooter was quite moved by his dream.
To this major event in his father’s life, Lupin answered: “What rot!” Gowing added that “there was nothing so uninteresting as other people’s dreams.” Pooter appealed to Cummings, but he too had to admit that Pooter’s “dream in particular was especially nonsensical.” Pooter replied, “It seemed so real to me.” To this, Gowing retorted, “Yes, to you, perhaps, but not to us.” And the diary added, “Whereupon they all roared.” The reader cannot help but feel sorry for poor old Pooter, even though his dream was indeed boring.
During all of this, Carrie, Mrs. Pooter, was quiet, only to add finally to her husband’s dismay:Â “He tells me his stupid dreams every morning nearly.” Exasperated, Pooter responded, “Very well, dear, I promise you I will never tell you or anybody else another dream of mine the longest day I live.” At this good news, Lupin yelled, “‘Hear! hear!’ and helped himself to another glass of beer.”
The subject was then dropped, and finally the Nobody’s great dream and its recounting were forgotten when “Cummings read a most interesting article on the superiority of the bicycle to the horse.”
The Bible, Shakespeare, Wodehouse, Belloc’s own works, and The Diary of a Nobody—these are all full of the princes and the nobodies for whom The Unsuccessful Man lived and died.