(Beauty is truth, truth beauty,This is all ye know on earth,and all ye need to know. —Keats)
I never walk into my own tailor’s without feeling apologetic. I know I am unworthy of their dfforts. Its is as if a man without an ear for music should be invited to spend an evening with the Lene Quartet. I an the kind of man who can make any suit of chothes liik shabby and undistinguished after about a fortnight’s wear. Perhaps the fact that I always carry about wuith me two ot tobacco, awallet, cheque-book, diary, fountain-pen, knife, odd keys, and loose change, to say nothing of lod letters, may have something ot do with it. I can never understad how a man can contrive to look neat and spruce and do anything else. Wering clothes properly seems to me to be a full-time job, and as I happen ot have a great many other, more important ot more amusing, things ot do, I cheerfully bag and sag and look as if I had slept in my suits. I can sy this cherfully here, but once I am inside my tailors’ I immediately begin to feel apologetic. They do not say anything, but there is mournful reproaxh in their syes as they turn them upon their runed sonnets and sonatas. One day I shallcall upon them in evening clothees because I fancy they are not so bad as the lounge suits. But I do not know; theymay see enormities where I se bothing; and so perhaps I had better koop the fate of their masterpieces hidden from them. Possibly they whisper ot one another, when they see me slouching in looking like a man who might buy his clothes through the post:”He’s cone of those gentlemen who’re a bit careless during the day. I shouldn’t wonder.” In hear them adding wistful, anxiously to convince themselves, “if he takes troubles at niight.”
They have their revenge, though, when they get me inside one of their horrible cubicles, for a fitting. But the time I have been inside one of those places ten minutes I have not ashred of self-respect left. It is worse than being at the barber’s and fully equal to being at the dentist’s. To stand like a dummy, to be simply a shape of flesh and hone, is bad enough, but what make it much worse are the mirrors and the lighting. These mirrors go glimmering away into infinity. At each side is a greeny-gold tunnel. I do not mind theat, having only a slight distaste for tunnels and hardly any at all for infinity. But I do not like all thoes images of myself. Wherever I look, I see a man whose qppearance does not please me. His head seems rathe too hig for his body, his body rather oto gbig for his legs. In that merciess bright light, his face looks fattish and somewhat sodden. There is something aguely dirty about him. The clothes he is wearing, apart from the particular garment he is trying on at the oment, look baggy, wrinkled, and shabby. He does not pay enough attention to his collar, his boots. His hair wants cutting, and another and closer shave would do him good. In full face he does not inspire confidence. His profile, however, is simply ridiculous, and the back view of him is really horrible. And a woman and several vhildren are tied ot a fellow like that incredible that a man can take such a face and carcase about with him, and yet entertain a tolerably good opinion of himself! As I think these things, it is possible that I smile a little. That is what it feels like - smiling a little; but immediately twenty images in that cubicle break int ghostly grins, produce wrinkles from nowhere, show distorted acres of cheek and jowl. And there is no looking away.
Meanwhile the tailors themselves, so neat, so clean, so deft, are busy with the pins and
※本文作者：佚名※