Humble Heroisms by Mr Barbecue-Smith

Found on Pinterest: Garsington Manor was the model for Crome 

Title: Humble Heroisms 

Author: Mr Barbecue-Smith 

Publisher: not known 

Source book: Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley 

Prolific author Mr Barbecue-Smith comes to stay at Crome for the first time. He offers strange advice to nervous young writer Denis Stone who has had a slim (untitled) volume of poetry published, and is delighted to see a copy on a table in the morning-room. Denis has begun a novel which I suspect is destined never to be finished. I stopped reading Crome Yellow at Chapter VIII so I will never find out [the 1920s social satire was just too annoying].

Mr Barbecue-Smith’s first book, about the Conduct of Life, was Humble Heroisms. He features in the Sunday papers. He may be the author of What a Young Girl Ought to Know, but has definitely written Pipe-Lines to the Infinite. Sadly Denis has to admit he hasn’t read that.

Priscilla Wimbush is reading a book by Barbecue-Smith. She reads from it, slowly, dramatically: “What are thousand pound fur coats, what are quarter million incomes? What are Thrones and Sceptres? They are nothing. Vanity, fluff, dandelion seed in the wind, thin vapours of fever. The things that matter in the heart. Seen things are sweet, but those unseen are a thousand times more significant. It is the unseen that counts in Life.” 

And there’s a passage about the Lotus Pool. “A Friend of mine had a Lotus Pool in his garden. It lies in a little dell embowered with roses and eglantine, among which the nightingale pours forth its amorous descant all summer long. Within the pool the Lotuses blossom, and the birds of the air come to drink and bathe in its crystal waters…”. What exactly is a Lotus Pool? 

I’m not sure Mr Barbecue-Smith’s writing is for me.

I’m not sure Aldous Huxley’s writing is either.

Thanks to Garsington Opera