Robertson Davies - The Manticore

"I thought I'd come round instead of writing, because we are near neighbours," he said, and handed me a cheap visiting card on which was printed -

ADRIAN PLEDGER-BROWN

CORPUS CHRISTI

So this was the curiously qualified Oxonian!

"Sit down," I said. "You erect genealogies?"

"Oh, indeed," he breathed. "That is to say, I know precisely how it is done. That is to say, I have examined many scores of pedigrees which have already been erected, and I am sure I could do it myself if I were to be entrusted with such a task. It involves research, you see, of a kind I understand quite well and could undertake with a very fair likelihood of success. I know, you see, where to look, and that is everything. Almost everything."

He smiled such a girlish smile and his eyes swam so unassumingly behind the comic specs that I was tempted to be easy with him. But that was not the Pargetter way. Beware of a witness who appeals to you, he said. Repress any personal response, and if it seems to be gaining the upper hand, go to the other extreme and be severe with the witness. If Ogilvie had remembered that in Cripps-Armstrong vs . Clatterbos & Dudley in 1884 he would have won the case, but he let Clatterbos's difficulty with English arouse his compassion; it's a famous instance. So I sprang upon Pledger-Brown, and rent him.

"Am I right in deducing that you have never erected a genealogy independently before?"

"That would be – well, to put it baldly – yes, you might say that."

"Never mind what I might say or might not say. I asked a plain question, and I want a plain answer. Is this your first job?"

"My first professional engagement? Working as an independent investigator? If you wish to put it that way, I suppose the answer must be that it is."

"Aha! You are in a word, a greenhorn."

"Oh, dear, no. I mean, I have studied the subject, and the method, extensively."

"But you have never done a job of this kind before, for a fee. Yes or no?"

"To be completely frank, yes; or rather, no."

"But your advertisement said 'curiously qualified'. Tell me, Mr. (business of consulting card) – ah, Pledger-Brown, in precisely what direction does your curious qualification lie?"

"I am the godson of Garter."

"Godson of -?"

"Garter."

"I do not understand."

"Quite possibly not. But that is why you need me, you see. I mean, people who want genealogies erected and pedigrees searched don't usually know these things. Americans in particular. I mean that my godfather is the Garter King of Arms."

"What's that?"

"He is the principal officer of the College of Heralds. I hope that one day, with luck, I may be a member of the College myself. But I must make a beginning somewhere, you see."

"Somewhere? What do you imply by somewhere? You regard me as a starting-point, is that it? I would be rough material for your prentice-hand; is that what you mean?"

"Oh, dear me, no. But I must do some independent work before I can hope to get an official appointment, mustn't I?"

"How should I know what you must do? What I want to know is whether there is any chance that you can undertake the job I want done and do it properly."

"Well, Mr. Staunton, I don't think anybody will do it for you if you go on like this."

"Like this? Like this? I don't understand you. What fault have you to find with the way I have been going on, as you express it?"

Pledger-Brown was all mildness, and his smile was like a Victorian picture of a village maiden.

"Well, I mean playing Serjeant Buzfuz and treating me really quite rudely when I've only come in answer to your letter. You're a law student, of course. I've looked you up, you see. And your father is a prominent Canadian industrialist. I suppose you want some ancestors. Well, perhaps I can find some for you. And I want the work, but not badly enough to be bullied about it. I mean, I am a beginner at genealogy, but I've studied it: you're a beginner at the law, but you've studied it. So why are you being so horrid when we are on an even footing?"

So I stopped being horrid, and in quite a short time he had accepted a glass of sherry and was calling me Staunton and I was calling him Pledger-Brown, and we were discussing what might be done.

He was in his third year at Corpus, which I could almost have hit with a stone from my windows, because I was in Canterbury Quad at the rear of Christ Church. He was mad for genealogy and couldn't wait to get at it, so he had advertised while he was still an undergraduate, and his anxiety for strict confidence was because his college would have been unsympathetic if they thought he was conducting any sort of business within their walls. He was obviously poor, but he had an air of breeding, and there was a strain of toughness in him that lay well below his wispy, maidenly ways. I took to him because he was as keen about his profession as I was about mine, and for anything I knew his diffidence may have been the professional manner of his kind. Soon he was cross-examining me.

"This Dr. Henry Staunton who has no known place of birth is a very common figure in genealogical work for people from the New World. But we can usually find the origin of such people, if we sift the parish records, wills, records of Chancery and Exchequer, and Manor Court Rolls. That takes a long time and runs into money. So we start with the obvious, hoping for a lucky hit. Of course, as your father thinks, he may be a Staunton of Longbridge in Warwickshire, but there are also Stauntons of Nottingham, Leicester, Lincolnshire, and Somerset, all of a quality that would please your father. But sometimes we can take a short cut. Was your grandfather an educated man?"

"He was a doctor. I wouldn't call him a man of wide cultivation."

"Good. That's often a help. I mean, such people often retain some individuality under the professional veneer. Perhaps he said some things that stuck in your mind? Used unusual words that might be county dialect words? Do you recall anything like that?"

I pondered. "Once he told my sister, Caroline, she had a tongue sharp enough to shave an urchin. I've repeated it to her often."

"Oh, that's quite helpful. He did use some dialect words then. But urchin as a word for the common hedgehog is very widespread in country districts. Can you think of anything more unusual?"

I was beginning to respect Pledger-Brown. I had always thought an urchin was a boy you didn't like, and could never figure out why Grandfather would want to shave one. I thought further.

"I do just remember that he called some of his old patients who stuck with him, and were valetudinarians, 'my old wallowcrops'. Is that of any use? Could he have made the word up?"

"Few simple people make up words. 'Wallowcrop'; I'll make a note of that and see what I can discover. Meanwhile keep thinking about him, will you? And I'll come again when I have a better idea what to do."

Think about Grandfather Staunton, powerful but dim in my past. A man, it seemed to me now, with a mind like a morgue in which a variety of defunct ideas lay on slabs, kept cold to defer decay. A man who knew nothing about health, but could identify a number of diseases. A man whose medical knowledge belonged to a time when people talked about The System and had spasms and believed in the efficacy of strong, clean smells, such as oil of peppermint, as charms against infection. A man who never doubted that spankings were good for children, and once soundly walloped both Caroline and me because we had put Eno's Fruit Salts in the bottom of Granny's chamber-pot, hoping she would have a fantod when it foamed. A furious teetotaller, malignantly contemptuous of what he called "booze-artists" and never fully reconciled to my father when he discovered that Father drank wines and spirits but had contumaciously failed thereby to become a booze-artist. A man whom I could only recall as gloomy, heavy, and dull, but pleased with his wealth and unaffectedly scornful of those who had not the wit or craft to equal it; preachers were excepted as being a class apart, and sacred, but needing frequent guidance from practical men in the conduct of their churches. In short, a nasty old village moneybags.