BELLOC-FIRST AND LAST
Title: First and Last
Author: H. Belloc
Edition: 10
Language: English
Personally I should call it "Getting It up," but I have always seen it
in print called "weighing anchor"--and if it is in print one must bow to
it. It does weigh.
There are many ways of doing it. The best, like all good things, has
gone for ever, and this best way was for a thing called a capstan to
have sticking out from it, movable, and fitted into its upper rim, other
things called capstan--bars. These, men would push singing a song, while
on the top of the capstan sat a man playing the fiddle, or the flute, or
some other instrument of music. You and I have seen it in pictures. Our
sons will say that they wish they had seen it in pictures. Our sons'
sons will say it is all a lie and was never in anything but the
pictures, and they will explain it by some myth or other.
Another way is to take two turns of a rope round a donkey-engine, paying
in and coiling while the engine clanks. And another way on smaller boats
is a sort of jack arrangement by which you give little jerks to a
ratchet and wheel, and at last It looses Its hold. Sometimes (in this
last way) It will not loose Its hold at all.
Then there is a way of which I proudly boast that it is the only way I
know, which is to go forward and haul at the line until It comes--or
does not come. If It does not come, you will not be so cowardly or so
mean as to miss your tide for such a trifle. You will cut the line and
tie a float on and pray Heaven that into whatever place you run, that
place will have moorings ready and free.
When a man weighs anchor in a little ship or a large one he does a jolly
thing! He cuts himself off and he starts for freedom and for the chance
of things. He pulls the jib a-weather, he leans to her slowly pulling
round, he sees the wind getting into the mainsail, and he feels that she
feels the helm. He has her on a slant of the wind, and he makes out
between the harbour piers. I am supposing, for the sake of good luck,
that it is not blowing bang down the harbour mouth, nor, for the matter
of that, bang out of it. I am supposing, for the sake of good luck to
this venture, that in weighing anchor you have the wind so that you can
sail with it full and by, or freer still, right past the walls until you
are well into the tide outside. You may tell me that you are so rich and
your boat is so big that there have been times when you have anchored in
the very open, and that all this does not apply to you. Why, then, your
thoughts do not apply to me nor to the little boat I have in mind.
In the weighing of anchor and the taking of adventure and of the sea
there is an exact parallel to anything that any man can do in the
beginning of any human thing, from his momentous setting out upon his
life in early manhood to the least decision of his present passing day.
It is a very proper emblem of a beginning. It may lead him to that kind
of muddle and set-back which attaches only to beginnings, or it may get
him fairly into the weather, and yet he may find, a little way outside,
that he has to run for it, or to beat back to harbour. Or, more
generously, it may lead him to a long and steady cruise in which he
shall find profit and make distant rivers and continue to increase his
log by one good landfall after another. But the whole point of weighing
anchor is that he has chosen his weather and his tide, and that he is
setting out. The thing is done.
You will very commonly observe that, in land affairs, if good fortune
follows a venture it is due to the marvellous excellence of its
conductor, but if ill fortune, then to evil chance alone. Now, it is not
so with the sea.
The sea drives truth into a man like salt. A coward cannot long pretend
to be brave at sea, nor a fool to be wise, nor a prig to be a good
companion, and any venture connected with the sea is full of venture and
can pretend to be nothing more. Nevertheless there is a certain pride in
keeping a course through different weathers, in making the best of a
tide, in using cats' paws in a dull race, and, generally, in knowing how
to handle the thing you steer and to judge the water and the wind. Just
because men have to tell the truth once they get into tide water, what
little is due to themselves in their success thereon they are proud of
and acknowledge.
If your sailing venture goes well, sailing reader, take a just pride in
it; there will be the less need for me to write, some few years hence,
upon the art of picking up moorings, though I confess I would rather
have written on that so far as the fun of writing was concerned. For
picking up moorings is a far more tricky and amusing business than
Getting It up. It differs with every conceivable circumstance of wind,
and tide, and harbour, and rig, and freeboard, and light; and then there
are so many stories to tell about it! As--how once a poor man picked up
a rich man's moorings at Cowes and was visited by an aluminium boat, all
splendid in the morning sun. Or again--how a stranger who had made
Orford Haven (that very difficult place) on the very top of an
equinoctial springtide, picked up a racing mark-buoy, taking it to be
moorings, and dragged it with him all the way to Aldborough, and that
right before the town of Orford, so making himself hateful to the Orford
people.
But I digress....
There was in the regiment with which I served a man called Frocot,
famous with his comrades because he had seen The Dead, for this
experience, though common among the Scotch, is rare among the French, a
sister nation. This man Frocot could neither write nor read, and was
also the strongest man I ever knew. He was quite short and exceedingly
broad, and he could break a penny with his hands, but this gift of
strength, though young men value it so much, was thought little of
compared with his perception of unseen things, for though the men, who
were peasants, professed to laugh at it, and him, in their hearts they
profoundly believed. It had been made clear to us that he could see and
hear The Dead one night in January during a snowstorm, when he came in
and woke me in barrack-room because he had heard the Loose Spur. Our
spurs were not buckled on like the officers'; they were fixed into the
heel of the boot, and if a nail loosened upon either side the spur
dragged with an unmistakable noise. There was a sergeant who (for some
reason) had one so loosened on the last night he had ever gone the
rounds before his death, for in the morning as he came off guard he
killed himself, and the story went about among the drivers that
sometimes on stable guard in the thick of the night, when you watched
all alone by the lantern (with your three comrades asleep in the straw
of an empty stall), your blood would stop and your skin tauten at the
sound of a loose spur dragging on the far side of the stable, in the
dark. But though many had heard the story, and though some had pretended
to find proof for it, I never knew a man to feel and know it except this
man Frocot on that night. I remember him at the foot of my bed with his
lantern waking me from the rooted sleep of bodily fatigue, standing
there in his dark blue driver's coat and staring with terrible eyes. He
had undoubtedly heard and seen, but whether of himself from within,
imagining, or, as I rather believe, from without and influenced, it is
impossible to say. He was rough and poor, and he came from the Forest of
Ardennes.
The reason I remember him and write of him at this season is not,
however, this particular and dreadful visitation of his, but a folly or
a vision that befell him at this time of the year, now seventeen years
ago; for he had Christmas leave and was on his way from garrison to his
native place, and he was walking the last miles of the wood. It was the
night before Christmas. It was clear, and there was no wind, but the sky
was overcast with level clouds and the evening was very dark. He started
unfed since the first meal of the day; it was dark three hours before he
was up into the high wood. He met no one during all these miles, and his
body and his mind were lonely; he hoped to press on and be at his
father's door before two in the morning or perhaps at one. The night was
so still that he heard no noise in the high wood, not even the rustling
of a leaf or a twig crackling, and no animal ran in the undergrowth. The
moss of the ride was silent under his heavy tread, but now and then the
steel of his side-arm clicked against a metal button of the great cloak
he wore. This sharp sound made him so conscious of himself that he
seemed to fill that forest with his own presence and to be all that was,
there or elsewhere. He was in a mood of unreal and not holy things. The
mood, remaining, changed its aspect, and now he was so far from alone
that all the trunks around him and the glimmers of sky between bare
boughs held each a spirit of its own, and with the powerful imagination
of the unlearned he could have spoken and held communion with the trees;
but it would have an evil communion, for he felt this mood of his take
on a further phase as he went deeper and deeper still into these
forests. He felt about him uneasily the sense of doom. He was in that
exaltation of fancy or dream when faint appeals are half heard far off,
but not by our human ears, and when whatever attempts to pierce the
armour of our mortality appeals to us by wailing and by despairing
sighs. It seemed to him that most unhappy things passed near him in the
air, and that the wood about him was full of sobbing. Then, again, he
felt his own mind within him begin to be occupied by doubtful troubles
worse than these terrors, an anxious straining for ill news, for bitter
and dreadful news, mixed with a confused certitude that such news had
come indeed, disturbed and haunted him; and all the while about him in
that stillness the rushing of unhappy spirits went like a secret storm.
He was clouded with the mingled emotions of apprehension and of fatal
mourning; he attempted to remember the expectations that had failed him,
friends untrue, and the names of parents dead; but he was now the victim
of this strange night and unable (whether from hunger or fatigue, or
from that unique power of his to discern things beyond the world) to
remember his life or his definite aims at all, or even his own name. He
was mixed with the whole universe about him, and was suffering some loss
so grievous that very soon the gait of his march and his whole being
were informed by a large and final despair.
It was in this great and universal mood (granted to him as a seer,
though he was a common man) that he saw down the ride, but somewhat to
one side of it in the heart of the high wood, a great light shining from
a barn or shed that stood there in the undergrowth, and to this light,
though his way naturally led him to it, he felt also impelled by an
influence as strong as or stronger than the despair that had filled his
soul and all the woods around. He went on therefore quickly, straining
with his eyes, and when he came into the light that shone out from this
he saw a more brilliant light within, and men of his own kind adoring;
but the vision was confused, like light on light or like vapours moving
over bright metals in a cauldron, and as he gazed his mind became still
and the dread left him altogether. He said it was like shutting a
gentleman's great oaken door against a driving storm.
This is the story he told me weeks after as we rode together in the
battery, for he hid it in his heart till the spring. As I say, I
believed him.
He was an unlearned man and a strong; he never worshipped. He was of
that plain stuff and clay on which has worked since all recorded time
the power of the Spirit.
He said that when he left (as he did rapidly leave) that light, peace
also left him, but that the haunting terror did not return. He found the
clearing and his father's hut; fatigue and the common world indeed
returned, but with them a permanent memory of things experienced.
Every word I have written of him is true.
If antiquity be the test of nobility, as many affirm and none deny
(saving, indeed, that family which takes for its motto "Sola Virtus
Nobilitas," which may mean that virtue is the only nobility, but which
may also mean, mark you, that nobility is the only virtue--and anyhow
denies that nobility is tested by the lapse of time), if, I say,
antiquity be the only test of nobility, then cheese is a very noble
thing.
But wait a moment: there was a digression in that first paragraph which
to the purist might seem of a complicated kind.
Were I writing algebra (I wish I were) I could have analysed my thoughts
by the use of square brackets, round brackets, twiddly brackets, and the
rest, all properly set out in order so that a Common Fool could follow
them.
But no such luck! I may not write of algebra here; for there is a rule
current in all newspapers that no man may write upon any matter save
upon those in which he is more learned than all his human fellows that
drag themselves so slowly daily forward to the grave.
So I had to put the thing in the very common form of a digression, and
very nearly to forget that great subject of cheese which I had put at
the very head and title of this.
Which reminds me: had I followed the rule set down by a London
journalist the other day (and of the proprietor of his paper I will say
nothing--though I might have put down the remark to his proprietor) I
would have hesitated to write that first paragraph. I would have
hesitated, did I say? Griffins' tails! Nay--Hippogriffs and other things
of the night! I would not have dared to write it at all! For this
journalist made a law and promulgated it, and the law was this: that no
man should write that English which could not be understood if all the
punctuation were left out. Punctuation, I take it, includes brackets,
which the Lord of Printers knows are a very modern part of punctuation
indeed.
Now let the horripilised reader look up again at the first paragraph (it
will do him no harm), and think how it would look all written out in
fair uncials like the beautiful Gospels of St. Chad, which anyone may
see for nothing in the cathedral of Lichfield, an English town famous
for eight or nine different things: as Garrick, Doctor Johnson, and its
two opposite inns. Come, read that first paragraph over now and see what
you could make of it if it were written out in uncials--that is, not
only without punctuation, but without any division between the words.
Wow! As the philosopher said when he was asked to give a plain answer
"Yes" or "No."
And now to cheese. I have had quite enough of digressions and of
follies. They are the happy youth of an article. They are the springtime
of it. They are its riot. I am approaching the middle age of this
article. Let us be solid upon the matter of cheese.
I have premised its antiquity, which is of two sorts, as is that of a
nobleman. First, the antiquity of its lineage; secondly, the antiquity
of its self. For we all know that when we meet a nobleman we revere his
nobility very much if he be himself old, and that this quality of age in
him seems to marry itself in some mysterious way with the antiquity of
his line.
The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record. What did the
faun in the beginning of time when a god surprised him or a mortal had
the misfortune to come across him in the woods? It is well known that
the faun offered either of them cheese. So he knew how to make it.
There are certain bestial men, hangers-on of the Germans, who would
contend that this would prove cheese to be acquired by the Aryan race
(or what not) from the Dolichocephalics (or what not), and there are
certain horrors who descend to imitate these barbarians--though
themselves born in these glorious islands, which are so steep upon their
western side. But I will not detain you upon these lest I should fall
head foremost into another digression and forget that my article,
already in its middle age, is now approaching grey hairs.
At any rate, cheese is very old. It is beyond written language. Whether
it is older than butter has been exhaustively discussed by several
learned men, to whom I do not send you because the road towards them
leads elsewhere. It is the universal opinion of all most accustomed to
weigh evidence (and in these I very properly include not only such
political hacks as are already upon the bench but sweepingly every
single lawyer in Parliament, since any one of them may tomorrow be a
judge) that milk is older than cheese, and that man had the use of milk
before he cunningly devised the trick of squeezing it in a press and by
sacrificing something of its sweetness endowed it with a sort of
immortality.
The story of all this has perished. Do not believe any man who professes
to give it you. If he tells you some legend of a god who taught the
Wheat-eating Race, the Ploughers, and the Lords to make cheese, tell him
such tales are true symbols, but symbols only. If he tells you that
cheese was an evolution and a development, oh! then!--bring up your
guns! Open on the fellow and sweep his intolerable lack of intelligence
from the earth. Ask him if he discovers reality to be a function of
time, and Being to hide in clockwork. Keep him on the hop with ironical
comments upon how it may be that environment can act upon Will, while
Will can do nothing with environment--whose proper name is mud. Pester
the provincial. Run him off the field.
But about cheese. Its noble antiquity breeds in it a noble diffusion.
This happy Christendom of ours (which is just now suffering from an
indigestion and needs a doctor--but having also a complication of
insomnia cannot recollect his name) has been multifarious
incredibly--but in nothing more than in cheese!
One cheese differs from another, and the difference is in sweeps, and in
landscapes, and in provinces, and in countrysides, and in climates, and
in principalities, and in realms, and in the nature of things. Cheese
does most gloriously reflect the multitudinous effect of earthly things,
which could not be multitudinous did they not proceed from one mind.
Consider the cheese of Rocquefort: how hard it is in its little box.
Consider the cheese of Camembert, which is hard also, and also lives in
a little box, but must not be eaten until it is soft and yellow.
Consider the cheese of Stilton, which is not made there, and of Cheddar,
which is. Then there is your Parmesan, which idiots buy rancid in
bottles, but which the wise grate daily for their use: you think it is
hard from its birth? You are mistaken. It is the world that hardens the
Parmesan. In its youth the Parmesan is very soft and easy, and is
voraciously devoured.
Then there is your cheese of Wensleydale, which is made in Wensleydale,
and your little Swiss cheese, which is soft and creamy and eaten with
sugar, and there is your Cheshire cheese and your little Cornish cheese,
whose name escapes me, and your huge round cheese out of the Midlands,
as big as a fort whose name I never heard. There is your toasted or
Welsh cheese, and your cheese of Pont-l'evêque, and your white cheese of
Brie, which is a chalky sort of cheese. And there is your cheese of
Neufchatel, and there is your Gorgonzola cheese, which is mottled all
over like some marbles, or like that Mediterranean soap which is made of
wood-ash and of olive oil. There is your Gloucester cheese called the
Double Gloucester, and I have read in a book of Dunlop cheese, which is
made in Ayrshire: they could tell you more about it in Kilmarnock. Then
Suffolk makes a cheese, but does not give it any name; and talking of
that reminds me how going to Le Quesnoy to pass the people there the
time of day, and to see what was left of that famous but forgotten
fortress, a young man there showed me a cheese, which he told me also
had no name, but which was native to the town, and in the valley of Ste.
Engrace, where is that great wood which shuts off all the world, they
make their cheese of ewe's milk and sell it in Tardets, which is their
only livelihood. They make a cheese in Port-Salut which is a very subtle
cheese, and there is a cheese of Limburg, and I know not how many
others, or rather I know them, but you have had enough: for a little
cheese goes a long way. No man is a glutton on cheese.
What other cheese has great holes in it like Gruyere, or what other is
as round as a cannon-ball like that cheese called Dutch? which reminds
me:--
Talking of Dutch cheese. Do you not notice how the intimate mind of
Europe is reflected in cheese? For in the centre of Europe, and where
Europe is most active, I mean in Britain and in Gaul and in Northern
Italy, and in the valley of the Rhine--nay, to some extent in Spain (in
her Pyrenean valleys at least)--there flourishes a vast burgeoning of
cheese, infinite in variety, one in goodness. But as Europe fades away
under the African wound which Spain suffered or the Eastern barbarism of
the Elbe, what happens to cheese? It becomes very flat and similar. You
can quote six cheeses perhaps which the public power of Christendom has
founded outside the limits of its ancient Empire--but not more than six.
I will quote you 253 between the Ebro and the Grampians, between
Brindisi and the Irish Channel.
I do not write vainly. It is a profound thing.
The heir of the merchant Mahmoud had not disappointed that great
financier while he still lived, and when he died he had the satisfaction
of seeing the young man, now twenty-five years of age, successfully
conducting his numerous affairs, and increasing (fabulous as this may
seem) the millions with which his uncle entrusted him.
Shortly after Mahmoud's death the prosperity of the firm had already
given rise to a new proverb, and men said: "Do you think I am
Mahmoud's-Nephew?" when they were asked to lend money or in some other
way to jeopardize a few coppers in the service of God or their
neighbour.
It was also a current expression, "He's rich as Mahmoud's-Nephew," when
comrades would jest against some young fellow who was flusher than
usual, and could afford a quart or even a gallon of wine for the
company; while again the discontented and the oppressed would mutter
between their teeth: "Heaven will take vengeance at last upon these
Mahmoud's-Nephews!" In a word, "Mahmoud's-Nephew" came to mean
throughout the whole Caliphate and wherever the True Believers spread
their empire, an exceedingly wealthy man. But Mahmoud himself having
been dead ten years and his heir the fortunate head of the establishment
being now well over thirty years of age, there happened a very
inexplicable and outrageous accident: he died--and after his death no
instructions were discovered as to what should be done with this
enormous capital, no will could be found, and it happened moreover to be
a moment of great financial delicacy when the manager of each department
in the business needed all the credit he could get.
In such a quandary the Chief Organizer and confidential friend, Ahmed,
upon whom the business already largely depended, and who was so
circumstanced that he could draw almost at will upon the balances,
imagined a most intelligent way of escaping from the difficulties that
would arise when the death of the principal was known.
He caused a quantity of hay, of straw, of dust and of other worthless
materials to be stuffed into a figure of canvas; this he wrapped round
with the usual clothes that Mahmoud's-Nephew had worn in the office, he
shrouded the face with the hood which his chief had commonly worn during
life, and having so dressed the lay figure and secretly buried the real
body, he admitted upon the morning after the death those who first had
business with his master.
He met them at the door with smiles and bows, saying: "You know,
gentlemen, that like most really successful men, my chief is as silent
as his decisions are rapid; he will listen to what you have to say, and
it will be a plain yes or no at the end of it."
These gentlemen came with a proposal to sell to the firm for the sum of
one million dinars a barren rock in the Indian Sea, which was not even
theirs, and on which indeed not one of them had ever set eyes. Their
claim to advance so original a proposal was that to their certain
knowledge two thousand of the wealthiest citizens of their town were
willing to buy the rock again at a profit from whoever should be its
possessor during the next few weeks in the fond hope of selling it once
again to provincials, clerics, widows, orphans, and in general the
uninstructed and the credulous--among whom had been industriously spread
the report that the rock in question consisted of one solid and flawless
diamond.
These gentlemen sitting round the table before the shrouded figure laid
down their proposals, whereupon the manager briefly summed up what they
had said, and having done so, replied: "Gentlemen, his lordship is a man
of few words; but you will have your answer in a moment if you will be
good enough to rise, as he is at this moment expecting a deputation from
the Holy Men who are entreating him to provide the cost of a mosque in
one of the suburbs."
The proposers of the bargain rose, greatly awed and pleased by the
silence and dignity of the financier who apparently remained for a
moment discussing their proposals without gesture and in a tone too low
for them to hear, while his manager bent over to listen.
"It is ever so," said one of them, "you may ever know the greatest men
by their silence."
"You are right," said another, "he is not one to be easily deceived."
The manager in a moment or two rejoined them at the door. "Gentlemen,"
he said, smiling, "my chief has heard your arguments and has expressed
his assent to your conditions."
They went out, delighted at the success of their mission, and
congratulated Ahmed upon the financier's genius.
"He does not," said the manager, laughing in hearty agreement, "bestow
himself as a present upon all and sundry. Nor is he often caught
indulging in short bouts of sleep, nor are flies diabolically left to
repose undisturbed upon his features--but you must excuse me, I hear the
Holy Men," and indeed from the inner room came a noise of speechifying
in that doleful sing-song which is associated in Bagdad with the
practice of religion.
The gentlemen who had thus had the luck to interview Mahmoud's-Nephew
with such success in the matter of the Diamond Island, soon spread about
the news, and confirmed their fellow-citizens in the certitude that a
great financier is neither talkative nor vivacious. "Still waters run
deep," they said, and all those to whom they said it nodded in a wise
acquiescence. Nor had the Manager the least difficulty in receiving one
set of customers after another and in negotiating within three weeks an
infinite amount of business, all of which confirmed those who had the
pleasure of an audience with the stuffed dummy that great fortunes were
made and retained by reticence and a contempt for convivial weakness.
At last the ingenious man of affairs, to whom the whole combination was
due, was not a little disturbed to receive from the Caliph a note
couched in the following terms:
"The Commander of the Faithful and the Servant of the Merciful whose
name be exalted, to the Nephew of Mahmoud:
"My Lord:--
"It has been the custom since the days of my grandfather (May his soul
see God!) for the more wealthy of the Faithful to be called to my
councils, and upon my summoning them thither it has not been unusual for
them to present sums varying in magnitude but always proportionate to
their total fortunes. My court will receive signal honour if you will
present yourself after the morning prayer of the day after to-morrow. My
treasurer will receive from you with gratitude and remembrance upon the
previous day and not later than noon, the sum of one million dinars."
Here, indeed, was a perplexity. The payment of the money was an easy
matter and was duly accomplished; but how should the lay figure which
did duty in such domestic scenes as the negotiation of loans, the
bullying of debtors, the purchase of options, and the cheating of the
innocent and the embarrassed, take his place in the Caliph's council and
remain undiscovered? For great as was the reputation of Mahmoud's-Nephew
for discretion and for golden silence, such as are proper to the
accumulation of great wealth, there would seem a necessity in any
political assembly to open the mouth from time to time, if only for the
giving of a vote.
But Ahmed, who had by this time accumulated into his own hands the
millions formerly his master's, finally solved the problem. Judicious
presents to the servants of the palace and the public criers made his
way the easier, and on the summoning of the council Mahmoud's-Nephew,
whose troublesome affection of the throat was now publicly discussed,
was permitted to bring into the council-room his private secretary and
manager.
Moreover at the council, as at his private office, the continued
taciturnity of the millionaire could not but impress the politicians as
it had already impressed the financial world.
"He does not waste his breath in tub-thumping," said one, looking
reverently at the sealed figure.
"No," another would reply, "they may ridicule our old-fashioned, honest,
quiet Mohammedan country gentlemen, but for common sense I will back
them against all the brilliant paradoxical young fellows of our day."
"They say he is very kind at heart and lovable," a third would then add,
upon which a fourth would bear his testimony thus:
"Yes, and though he says nothing about it, his charitable gifts are
enormous."
By the second meeting of the council the lay figure had achieved a
reputation of so high a sort that the Caliph himself insisted upon
making him a domestic adviser, one of the three who perpetually
associated with the Commander of the Faithful and directed his
policy. For the universal esteem in which the new councillor was held
had affected that Prince very deeply.
Here there arose a crux from which there could be no escape, as one of
the three chief councillors, Mahmoud's-Nephew, must speak at last and
deliver judgments!
The Manager, first considering the whole business, and next adding up
his private gains, which he had carefully laid out in estates of which
the firm and its employés knew nothing, decided that he could afford to
retire. What might happen to the general business after his withdrawal
would not be his concern.
He first gave out, therefore, that the millionaire was taken exceedingly
ill, and that his life was despaired of: later, within a few hours, that
he was dead.
So far from attempting to allay the panic which ensued, Ahmed frankly
admitted the worst.
With cries of despair and a confident appeal to the justice of Heaven
against such intrigues, the honest fellow permitted the whole of the
vast business to be wound up in favour of newcomers, who had not
forgotten to reward him, and soothing as best he could the ruined crowds
of small investors who thronged round him for help and advice, he
retired under an assumed name to his highly profitable estates, which
were situated in the most distant provinces of the known world.
As for Mahmoud's-Nephew, three theories arose about him which are still
disputed to this day:
The first was that his magnificent brain with its equitable judgment and
its power of strict secrecy, had designed plans too far advanced for his
time, and that his bankruptcy was due to excess of wisdom.
The second theory would have it that by "going into politics" (as the
phrase runs in Bagdad) he had dissipated his energies, neglected his
business, and that the inevitable consequences had followed.
The third theory was far more reasonable. Mahmoud's-Nephew, according to
this, had towards the end of his life lost judgment; his garrulous
indecision within the last few days before his death was notorious: in
the Caliph's council, as those who should best know were sure, one could
hardly get a word in edgewise for his bombastic self-assurance; while in
matters of business, to conduct a bargain with him was more like
attending a public meeting than the prosecution of negotiations with a
respectable banker.
In a word, it was generally agreed that Mahmoud's-Nephew's success had
been bound up with his splendid silence, his fall, bankruptcy, and
death, with a lesion of the brain which had disturbed this miracle of
self-control.
BELLOC-FIRST AND LAST