The general effect is one of Fielding or Sterne telling the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with their own embellishments, to the boys at the club.
If all that is necessary to produce a work of art is to take a drummer’s story and tell it in dusty English, we might try our luck with the modern smoking-car yarn about the traveling-man who came to the country hotel late at night, and see how far we can get with it in the manner of James Branch Cabell imitating Fielding imitating someone else.
It is a tale which they narrate in Nouveau Rochelle, saying: In the old days there came one night a traveling man to an inn, and the night was late, and he was sore beset, what with rag-tag-and-bob-tail. Eftsoons he made known his wants to the churl behind the desk, who was named Gogyrvan. And thus he spake:
“Any rooms?”
“Indeed, sir, no,” was Gogyrvan’s glose.
“Now but this is an deplorable thing, God wot,” says the traveling man. “Fie, brother, but you think awry. Come, don smart your thinking-cap and answer me again. An’ you have forgot my query; it was: ‘Any rooms, bo?'”
Whereat the churl behind the desk gat him down from his stool and closed one eye in a wink.
“There is one room,” he says, and places his forefinger along the side of his nose, in the manner of a man who places his forefinger along the side of his nose.
But at this point I am stopped short by the warning passage through the room of a cold, damp current of air as from the grave, and I know that it is one of Mr. Sumner’s vice deputies flitting by on his rounds in defense of the public morals. So I can go no further, for public morals must be defended even at the cost of public morality (a statement which means nothing but which sounds rather well, I think. I shall try to work it in again some time).
But perhaps enough has been said to show that it is perfectly easy to write something that will sound classic if you can only remember enough old words. When Mr. Cabell has learned the language, he ought to write a good book in modern English. There are lots of people who read it and they speak very highly of it as a means of expression.
