Tremendous Trifles | Page 9

Extraordinary Cabman
From time to time I have introduced into this newspaper column the
narration of incidents that have really occurred. I do not mean to
insinuate that in this respect it stands alone among newspaper columns.
I mean only that I have found that my meaning was better expressed by
some practical parable out of daily life than by any other method;
therefore I propose to narrate the incident of the extraordinary cabman,
which occurred to me only three days ago, and which, slight as it
apparently is, aroused in me a moment of genuine emotion bordering
upon despair.
On the day that I met the strange cabman I had been lunching in a little
restaurant in Soho in company with three or four of my best friends.
My best friends are all either bottomless sceptics or quite
uncontrollable believers, so our discussion at luncheon turned upon the
most ultimate and terrible ideas. And the whole argument worked out
ultimately to this: that the question is whether a man can be certain of
anything at all. I think he can be certain, for if (as I said to my friend,
furiously brandishing an empty bottle) it is impossible intellectually to
entertain certainty, what is this certainty which it is impossible to
entertain? If I have never experienced such a thing as certainty I cannot
even say that a thing is not certain. Similarly, if I have never
experienced such a thing as green I cannot even say that my nose is not
green. It may be as green as possible for all I know, if I have really no
experience of greenness. So we shouted at each other and shook the
room; because metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing.
And the difference between us was very deep, because it was a
difference as to the object of the whole thing called broad-mindedness
or the opening of the intellect. For my friend said that he opened his
intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's
sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as
I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was
doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look
uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever
and ever.
. . . . .
Now when this argument was over, or at least when it was cut short (for
it will never be over), I went away with one of my companions, who in

the confusion and comparative insanity of a General Election had
somehow become a member of Parliament, and I drove with him in a
cab from the corner of Leicester-square to the members' entrance of the
House of Commons, where the police received me with a quite unusual
tolerance. Whether they thought that he was my keeper or that I was his
keeper is a discussion between us which still continues.
It is necessary in this narrative to preserve the utmost exactitude of
detail. After leaving my friend at the House I took the cab on a few
hundred yards to an office in Victoria-street which I had to visit. I then
got out and offered him more than his fare. He looked at it, but not with
the surly doubt and general disposition to try it on which is not
unknown among normal cabmen. But this was no normal, perhaps, no
human, cabman. He looked at it with a dull and infantile astonishment,
clearly quite genuine. "Do you know, sir," he said, "you've only given
me 1s.8d?" I remarked, with some surprise, that I did know it. "Now
you know, sir," said he in a kindly, appealing, reasonable way, "you
know that ain't the fare from Euston." "Euston," I repeated vaguely, for
the phrase at that moment sounded to me like China or Arabia. "What
on earth has Euston got to do with it?" "You hailed me just outside
Euston Station," began the man with astonishing precision, "and then
you said----" "What in the name of Tartarus are you talking about?" I
said with Christian forbearance; "I took you at the south-west corner of
Leicester-square." "Leicester-square," he exclaimed, loosening a kind
of cataract of scorn, "why we ain't been near Leicester-square to-day.
You hailed me outside Euston Station, and you said----" "Are you mad,
or am I?" I asked with scientific calm.
I looked at the man. No ordinary dishonest cabman would think of
creating so solid and colossal and creative a lie. And this man was not a
dishonest cabman. If ever a human face was heavy and simple and
humble, and with great big blue eyes protruding like a frog's, if ever (in
short) a