"Then We Shall Be Able To Talk To Each Other Day And Night!"
Here's more from the Jeremy Lewis essay I quoted yesterday:
Ask the average reader for a thumbnail sketch of A. J. Raffles, the amateur cracksman, and the chances are that he or she will instantly conjure up an urbane, athletic, somewhat dandified figure in top hat and tails, with a mocking smile playing about his lips as he glides smoothly through the night to deprive some heavy-bosomed duchess of her tiara or a coarse-grained diamond merchant of his stock-in-trade. In the background barefoot newspaper boys broadcast in impenetrable Cockney accents news of the Jameson Raid or the trial of Oscar Wilde or the full details of Raffles's latest triumph in the Test at Old Trafford: for Raffles is very much a man of the 1890s, patriotically celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee by sending Her Majesty (by registered post, he hastens to tell us) a priceless gold cup he has recently filched from the British Museum, and making amends for a life of crime by volunteering for service in the Boer War. (He dyes his hair an unpleasing shade of ginger before enlisting in case he is recognised by old acquaintances from Berkeley Square or the MCC.)
In the early days, before his double life as man-about-town and nocturnal burglar has been exposed by the tiresomely intelligent Inspector Mackenzie, Raffles has a set of bachelor rooms in the Albany, nostalgically described by his stooge and chronicler, Bunny Manders, as 'that dear den of disorder and good taste, with the carved bookcase, the dresser and chests of still older oak, and the Wattses and Rossettis hung anyhow on the walls'. (Like many another famous fictitious criminal, Raffles is something of an aesthete, extending his appreciation of good form to fellow practitioners like Charlie Peace, the celebrated nineteenth-century burglar, whom he waggishly describes as 'the greatest of the pre-Raffleites'.) Raffles's rooms have the stuffy, antique magic one associates with the crustier Oxford colleges or mid-Victorian vicarages, so it comes as something of a surprise when, after a good deal of nagging from Bunny, he agrees to have a telephone installed. An anxious, garrulous soul, Bunny greets the news with the kind of enthusiasm that chills the blood of the curmudgeonly telephone-hater ('"Good!" I cried. "Then we shall be able to talk to each other day and night!"').
No doubt making a telephone call in the 1890s was an elaborate affair, involving much winding of handles and lengthy discussions with talkative lady operators, so with any luck Raffles was less disturbed by the importunate Bunny than one might have feared. All the same, it's good to report that before long the newly installed telephone comes into its own, pealing forth at one o'clock in the morning and rousing the unfortunate Bunny from a quiet snooze in full evening dress ('I flounced out of bed more asleep than awake'). Raffles's voice is dimly discerned at the end of the line: he is trapped in Half Moon Street, where he has broken into a house rented by the outsize American pugilist, Barney Maguire, and before succumbing to the effects of a drugged decanter of whisky he begs Bunny to hasten to the scene. Despite some dithering of the kind associated with the less-than-brilliant second-in-command ('Oh, Raffles, what kind of a trap is it? What shall I do? What shall I bring?'), Bunny pauses only to re-knot his white bow tie, and help is on its way. Barney Maguire is ferocity incarnate, and is much given to blood-curdling threats of the direst kind ('I'll punch his face into a jam pudding! ...He'll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight and blister him!'); luckily for Bunny, he has earlier spent a highly convivial evening, and is brimming over with Dutch courage--'any sheep,' he modestly admits, 'would be resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison at his club'--and before the evening's adventures are out we find the 'sporting rabbit' shaking his fist 'in the paralytic face of the most brutal bruiser of his time'. (Bunny rises to still more heroic heights when confronted by Lord Ernest Belville, the apostle of Rational Drink, and Raffles's rival as a gentleman burglar. 'I did my best to glower and show my teeth,' he tells us, conjuring up as he does so an unflattering likeness to Gnasher, Dennis the Menace's well-loved dog in Beano magazine.)
That Bunny should hurry to Raffles's rescue is only right and proper, since the prompt and efficient way in which Raffles had saved him from an ignominious fate in the opening story laid the foundations of their unusual, exciting and wonderfully entertaining partnership in crime. Mortified beyond speech at having paid his gambling debts with a series of blank cheques, a distraught Bunny stumbles into the Albany, threatening to blow out his brains with the pistol in his pocket unless Raffles can extend a helping hand. Years before, Bunny had been Raffles's admiring fag at school and, as a 'literary little cuss' and the editor of the school mag, had obligingly done his homework for him. Now, 'for the sake of the school--the sake of old times', he appeals to Raffles as a last resort. The imperturbable Raffles, who happens to be short of a penny himself and has retained a soft spot for his flustered junior, lays a kindly hand on his shoulder, offers him a finger or two of whisky and, after a good deal of pacing up and down and puffing at the inevitable Sullivans, suggests that they join forces in a life of crime. Although they haven't been in touch since their schooldays, Bunny is as overawed as ever by 'the most masterful man whom I have ever known', transfixed by 'the clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous as a star, shining into my brain--sifting the very secrets of my heart'. Raffles in turn remembers Bunny as a 'plucky little devil at school' who had once done him 'rather a good turn'. Grateful and effusive as ever, Bunny writes out the criminal's equivalent of a blank cheque--'Name your crime and I'm your man'--and one of the most celebrated and unconventional partnerships in crime is unforgettably under way.
Ask the average reader for a thumbnail sketch of A. J. Raffles, the amateur cracksman, and the chances are that he or she will instantly conjure up an urbane, athletic, somewhat dandified figure in top hat and tails, with a mocking smile playing about his lips as he glides smoothly through the night to deprive some heavy-bosomed duchess of her tiara or a coarse-grained diamond merchant of his stock-in-trade. In the background barefoot newspaper boys broadcast in impenetrable Cockney accents news of the Jameson Raid or the trial of Oscar Wilde or the full details of Raffles's latest triumph in the Test at Old Trafford: for Raffles is very much a man of the 1890s, patriotically celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee by sending Her Majesty (by registered post, he hastens to tell us) a priceless gold cup he has recently filched from the British Museum, and making amends for a life of crime by volunteering for service in the Boer War. (He dyes his hair an unpleasing shade of ginger before enlisting in case he is recognised by old acquaintances from Berkeley Square or the MCC.)
In the early days, before his double life as man-about-town and nocturnal burglar has been exposed by the tiresomely intelligent Inspector Mackenzie, Raffles has a set of bachelor rooms in the Albany, nostalgically described by his stooge and chronicler, Bunny Manders, as 'that dear den of disorder and good taste, with the carved bookcase, the dresser and chests of still older oak, and the Wattses and Rossettis hung anyhow on the walls'. (Like many another famous fictitious criminal, Raffles is something of an aesthete, extending his appreciation of good form to fellow practitioners like Charlie Peace, the celebrated nineteenth-century burglar, whom he waggishly describes as 'the greatest of the pre-Raffleites'.) Raffles's rooms have the stuffy, antique magic one associates with the crustier Oxford colleges or mid-Victorian vicarages, so it comes as something of a surprise when, after a good deal of nagging from Bunny, he agrees to have a telephone installed. An anxious, garrulous soul, Bunny greets the news with the kind of enthusiasm that chills the blood of the curmudgeonly telephone-hater ('"Good!" I cried. "Then we shall be able to talk to each other day and night!"').
No doubt making a telephone call in the 1890s was an elaborate affair, involving much winding of handles and lengthy discussions with talkative lady operators, so with any luck Raffles was less disturbed by the importunate Bunny than one might have feared. All the same, it's good to report that before long the newly installed telephone comes into its own, pealing forth at one o'clock in the morning and rousing the unfortunate Bunny from a quiet snooze in full evening dress ('I flounced out of bed more asleep than awake'). Raffles's voice is dimly discerned at the end of the line: he is trapped in Half Moon Street, where he has broken into a house rented by the outsize American pugilist, Barney Maguire, and before succumbing to the effects of a drugged decanter of whisky he begs Bunny to hasten to the scene. Despite some dithering of the kind associated with the less-than-brilliant second-in-command ('Oh, Raffles, what kind of a trap is it? What shall I do? What shall I bring?'), Bunny pauses only to re-knot his white bow tie, and help is on its way. Barney Maguire is ferocity incarnate, and is much given to blood-curdling threats of the direst kind ('I'll punch his face into a jam pudding! ...He'll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight and blister him!'); luckily for Bunny, he has earlier spent a highly convivial evening, and is brimming over with Dutch courage--'any sheep,' he modestly admits, 'would be resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison at his club'--and before the evening's adventures are out we find the 'sporting rabbit' shaking his fist 'in the paralytic face of the most brutal bruiser of his time'. (Bunny rises to still more heroic heights when confronted by Lord Ernest Belville, the apostle of Rational Drink, and Raffles's rival as a gentleman burglar. 'I did my best to glower and show my teeth,' he tells us, conjuring up as he does so an unflattering likeness to Gnasher, Dennis the Menace's well-loved dog in Beano magazine.)
That Bunny should hurry to Raffles's rescue is only right and proper, since the prompt and efficient way in which Raffles had saved him from an ignominious fate in the opening story laid the foundations of their unusual, exciting and wonderfully entertaining partnership in crime. Mortified beyond speech at having paid his gambling debts with a series of blank cheques, a distraught Bunny stumbles into the Albany, threatening to blow out his brains with the pistol in his pocket unless Raffles can extend a helping hand. Years before, Bunny had been Raffles's admiring fag at school and, as a 'literary little cuss' and the editor of the school mag, had obligingly done his homework for him. Now, 'for the sake of the school--the sake of old times', he appeals to Raffles as a last resort. The imperturbable Raffles, who happens to be short of a penny himself and has retained a soft spot for his flustered junior, lays a kindly hand on his shoulder, offers him a finger or two of whisky and, after a good deal of pacing up and down and puffing at the inevitable Sullivans, suggests that they join forces in a life of crime. Although they haven't been in touch since their schooldays, Bunny is as overawed as ever by 'the most masterful man whom I have ever known', transfixed by 'the clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous as a star, shining into my brain--sifting the very secrets of my heart'. Raffles in turn remembers Bunny as a 'plucky little devil at school' who had once done him 'rather a good turn'. Grateful and effusive as ever, Bunny writes out the criminal's equivalent of a blank cheque--'Name your crime and I'm your man'--and one of the most celebrated and unconventional partnerships in crime is unforgettably under way.