The Embarrassed Eliminators

The Embarrassed Eliminators by E.V. Lucas

"The Embarrassed Eliminators" by E.V. Lucas presents a group of friends engaged in an evening conversation about which single essay from Charles Lamb's collected Essays of Elia they would preserve if all the others were to be destroyed forever. The discussion is prompted by one of the company posing the hypothetical question, and a man identified only as H. immediately rushes in with an answer, nominating "Mrs. Battle" before quickly wavering and adding "The Dissertation on Roast Pig" as an alternative. The questioner points out that the rules allow only one choice, not two, and turns to James, who nominates "The Old Actors" on the grounds that it stands alone in literature, uniting knowledge of the world and stage, love of humanity, humour, style, and imaginative understanding in a way no imitator has matched. He says Lamb's literary descendants have managed pale versions of most of his methods, but here they are left miles behind. L. then challenges James by reminding him that a single-essay rule would mean losing James Elia in "My Relations" and Cousin Bridget in "Mackery End in Hertfordshire" forever, a thought that causes James to groan and compare the intellectual vertigo of contemplating utter elimination to the terror of lying awake as a schoolboy trying to comprehend eternity and complete negation. Their host adds further pressure on James by asking whether he has forgotten "Old China." W., who openly dislikes actors and the theatre, concedes the perfection of the portraits of Dicky Suett, Bannister, and Bensley's Malvolio in "The Old Actors," going so far as to call that essay the justification of footlights and greasepaint and noting that even Hazlitt comes nowhere near it. Nevertheless W. announces that if forced to choose he would keep "Captain Jackson," calling the Captain an old friend he could no longer do without. H., reminded by this, seizes the volume from their host's hands and reads aloud the famous passage about Elliston, who at dinner in the Temple, after eating generously of a haddock as well as roast mutton, responded to his host's apology for a plain meal by declaring he too never ate but one thing at dinner, pausing before adding that he did not count fish. The company laughs doubly, both at the passage itself and covertly at H., whom the narrator observes to possess the same Ellistonian capriciousness, impulsiveness, forgetfulness, and grandiosity. Their host, reclaiming the book, says that if he had a vote it would go to "Mackery End in Hertfordshire," which he values as a sentimentalist for its portrait of Bridget Elia and for showing Lamb walking rapturously in his own county, remarking on Hertfordshire as that fine corn country. James immediately challenges this by asking how the host proposes to let "Dream Children" go, and the host sighs in acknowledgement that he could not. At this point K., who has been silent until now, reads two passages aloud without naming their essays. The first is Lamb's declaration of love for this green earth, the face of town and country, rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets, his reluctance to be carried smoothly with the tide toward eternity. The second is Lamb's confession that he loves a Fool as naturally as if he were kin to one, recalling how as a child he had more sympathy for the man who built his house on sand and the five thoughtless virgins than for the prudent characters of the parables. K. asks sternly who would be willing to lose either passage, and the group falls silent with sighs. K. then proposes an amendment: instead of one essay, each person should be permitted a collection of passages amounting in total length to the longest essay, which he takes to be "The Old Actors." This would allow the group to preserve the page on Bensley's Malvolio, the description of Bridget Elia, parts of "Mrs. Battle" and "Captain Jackson," the passages he has just read, and above all the Fallacies on rising with the lark and retiring with the lamb. The original questioner dismisses this as a compromise that removes all the fun, saying the sweeping impossibility of the original question was its merit and that James is the only one with genuine courage to make a firm choice. The host then claims to have chosen instantly after all, naming "Old China," but James protests that he had named "Mackery End," and K. observes that this contradiction proves the point. The host reads a poem by the writer he identifies as the Autocrat, an American who he says came nearer to Lamb in humour and in what he calls the tact of humanity than perhaps any other writer. The poem presents a man who asks an angel to restore his youth but finds he cannot give up his wife, then cannot give up his children, until the angel lays down her pen in amusement at a man who wants simultaneously to be a boy again and remain a husband and father. The host closes the book and observes that the group is in exactly the same predicament, wishing to eliminate most of Elia while keeping all of Elia too. W. agrees, adding that they want all the essays and value them more as they grow older and the essays grow truer and better, noting that Lamb often wrote in his employer's time to earn extra guineas for a new magazine and in doing so shed radiance on almost every aspect of life, so that no one can rise from reading Elia without being deepened and enriched, and no one can ever say, either immediately or after a year's reflection, which single essay they would keep at the cost of all the rest. B., who has been silent throughout, speaks last and is credited with saying the final thing. He argues that singling out any one essay as the best is as mistaken as trying to name the best flower in a garden when the best thing in a garden is the combined scent of all the flowers together. The best of Lamb, he concludes, is not any single essay but the fragrance of all of them, and those gentle paths have been trodden by much good company. He adds, as a quiet afterthought, that the best essay of all might be called the scent of Elia's garden, with its title being Charles and Mary Lamb.

By E.V. Lucas · First published 1911 · Genre: Literary Criticism, Essay, Dialogue · 3,229 words

First lines

We were talking about Lamb.

Some one suddenly asked: "Supposing that by some incredible chance all / the Essays except one were to be demolished, which one would you keep?"

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humor · comedy · fiction · satire · embarrassment · social awkwardness · British literature · early 20th century · witty · lighthearted · character-driven · situational comedy

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The Embarrassed Eliminators is listed on Textopian as a short story by E.V. Lucas, dated 1911 CE.

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