The Project Gutenberg EBook of James Pethel, by Max Beerbohm

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Title: James Pethel

Author: Max Beerbohm

Posting Date: July 23, 2008 [EBook #759]
Release Date: December, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAMES PETHEL ***

Produced by Judith Boss.

James Pethel

By

MAX BEERBOHM

I was shocked this morning when I saw in my newspaper a paragraph
announcing his sudden death. I do not say that the shock was very
disagreeable. One reads a newspaper for the sake of news. Had I never
met James Pethel, belike I should never have heard of him: and my
knowledge of his death, coincident with my knowledge that he had
existed, would have meant nothing at all to me. If you learn suddenly
that one of your friends is dead, you are wholly distressed. If the
death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have recently seen, you
are disconcerted, pricked is your sense of mortality; but you do find
great solace in telling other people that you met "the poor fellow"
only the other day, and that he was "so full of life and spirits," and
that you remember he said--whatever you may remember of his sayings.
If the death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have not seen for
years, you are touched so lightly as to find solace enough in even such
faded reminiscence as is yours to offer. Seven years have passed since
the day when last I saw James Pethel, and that day was the morrow of my
first meeting with him.

I had formed the habit of spending August in Dieppe. The place was
then less overrun by trippers than it is now. Some pleasant English
people shared it with some pleasant French people. We used rather to
resent the race-week--the third week of the month--as an intrusion on
our privacy. We sneered as we read in the Paris edition of "The New
York Herald" the names of the intruders, though by some of these we
were secretly impressed. We disliked the nightly crush in the
baccarat-room of the casino, and the croupiers' obvious excitement at
the high play. I made a point of avoiding that room during that week,
for the special reason that the sight of serious, habitual gamblers h