The World of Grandpa Benchley

Some Thinking Out Loud in the Manner of H. G. Wells's William Clissold

ROBERT C. BENCHLEY

§1.

I AM eighty-nine years old, and I think I would like to write a book. I don't know —maybe I wouldn't.

§2.

Eighty-nine this year, ninety next year, eighty-eight last year. That makes three years accounted for. Three into fourteen goes four times and two to carry. The Assyrians were probably the first people to evolve mathematics.

I sometimes get to thinking about mathematics.

The average Englishman at the age of eighty -nine is dead—has been dead for several years. The average depth of the Caspian Sea is 3,000 feet. The average rainfall in Canada is 1.03 inches. During the Inter-Glacial Period it was 9.01 inches. Think of that—9.01 inches!

§3.

All this has made me stop and think, think about the world I live in. I sometimes wonder what it is all about—this world I mean. I am not so sure about the next world. Sometimes I think there is one and sometimes I think there isn't. I'll be darned if I can make it out.

I am not so sure about my wanting to.write a book, either. But something has got to be done about this world—something explanatory,

I mean. Here I am, eighty-nine years old— just think of that—and I haven't explained about the world to anyone yet—that is, not to anyone in this room.

§4.

IT is a beautiful day. The sun, that luminous body 93,000,000 miles from the earth, without which we should never be able to dry hides or bake biscuits, is shining through the trees outside my window, much as it used to shine through the trees outside the cave of Neolithic Man, ten thousand years before Christ. In fact, Neolithic Man sometimes built himself houses on piles driven in the water, but this was not until almost five thousand years before Christ.

Sometimes I get to thinking about Neolithic Man. Sometimes I get to thinking about Cro-Magnon Man. Sometimes it just seems as if I should go crazy thinking about things. There are so many things! And I am only eighty-nine, only eighty-nine.

§5.

I remember when I was a very small boy my mother used to forbid me to go out when it was raining. My mother was a very quiet woman, who never spoke unless it was to figure out how long it would take to reach the nearest star by train.

"Nipper," she would say to me on such days as the rain would prevent my going out, "nipper, I guess you don't know that thousands of years before modern civilization there was a period known as the Pluvial or Lacustrine Age, the rain or pond period."

I remember my crying myself to sleep the first night after she told me about the Pluvial

or Lacustrine Age. It seemed so long ago—and nothing to bedone about it.

§6.

One night my father came home with a queer light in his eyes. He said nothing during dinner, except to note, as he passed me the salt, that salt is an essential to all grain-consuming and herbivorous animals but that on a meat-diet man can do without it. "There have been bitter tribal wars," he said, "between the tribes of the Soudan for possession of the salt deposits between Fezzan and Murzuk."

"Arthur," said my mother, quietly, "remember the boys are present."

"It is time they knew," was his reply.

At last my mother, sensing that something was troubling him, said:

"Arthur, are you holding something back from me?"

He laid down his knife and fork and looked at her.

"I have just heard," he said, "that the molecule is no longer the indivisible unit that it was supposed to be."

My mother bit her lip.

"You tell me this," she said "after all these years!"

"I have just learned it myself," replied my father. "The National Molecule Society found it out themselves only last month. The new unit is to be called the 'atom'."

"A fine time to tell me!" said my mother, her eyes blazing. "You have known it for a month."

"I wasn't sure until just now," said my father. "I didn't want to worry you."

My mother took my brother and me by the hand. "Come, boys," she said, "we are going away."

Two days later the three of us left for the Continent. We never saw mv father again.

§7.

THIS set me to thinking about atoms. I don't think that I have it straight even now. And then, just as I was getting accustomed to the idea that molecules could be divided into atoms, along comes somebody a few years ago and says that you can divide atoms into electrons. And, although I was about seventy-five at the time, I went out into the park and had a good cry.

I mean, what is an old fellow going to do? No sooner does he get something all thought out than something happens to make him begin all over again. I get awfully sore sometimes.

§8.

Then there is this question of putting studs in a dress-shirt. Here is the problem as I sec it:

If you put the studs in before you put the shirt on, you muss your hair putting it on over your head. If you wait until you have the shirt on before putting in the studs, you have to put one hand up under the front of the shirt and punch them through with the other. This musses the shirt bosom nine times out of ten. Eight times out of ten, perhaps.

All right. Suppose you put the studs in first and muss your hair. Then you have to brush it again. That is not so hard to do, except that if you put tonic on your hair before you brush it, as I do, you are quite likely to spatter drops down the bosom. And there you are, with a good big blister right where it shows—and it's eight o'clock already.

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Now here it a problem. I have spent hours trying to figure some way of getting around it and am nowhere near the solution. I think I will go to

the Riviera where it is quiet and just think and think and think.

§9

I am sitting at my window in the Villa a Vendre at Cagnes. If it were not for the Maritime Alps I could see Constantinople. How do you suppose the Alps got there, anyway? Some giant cataclysm of nature, I suppose. I guess it is too late to do anything about it now.

Irma is down in the garden gathering snails for dinner. Irma is cross at me because this morning when she suggested running up to Paris for the shooting, I told her that the ancient name for Paris was Lutitia.

I get to thinking about women sometimes. From eight in the evening on. They are funny. Female characteristics differ so from male characteristics.

§10.

Next Wednesday I am going back to thinking about God. I didn't anywhere near finish thinking about God the last time. The man came for the trunks and I had to go with him to the station.

It is quite a problem. I don't think there is any doubt about there being some Motive Power which governs the World. But I can't seem to get much beyond that. Maybe I'll begin again on that Monday. Monday is a good day to begin thinking. Your laundry is just back and everything is sort of pristine and new. I hope that, by beginning Monday, I can get everything cleaned up by Friday, for Friday I am going over to Monte Carlo.

§11.

It is six years now since I began writing this book. I am almost ninetyseven. According to the statistics of the Royal Statistical Society I can't expect much longer in which to think things over.

The big thing that is worrying me now is about putting sugar on my oatmeal. I find that if I put the sugar on first and then the cream, the sugar all disappears and I like to see it, nice and white, there on the cereal. But if I put the cream on first and then the sugar, it doesn't taste so good. I asked .Irma about this the other day and she told me to shut up and go back to bed.

§12.

After thinking the whole thing over, I have come to the conclusion that I don't want to write a book at all. When a man is ninety-seven it is high time he was doing something else with his time besides writing books. I guess I'll go out and roll down hill.