Here is a complete version of Ashley Sterne's "Sufficient Unto the Day" from Punch, Volume 183, 1932. A previous posting of this story was constructed from Google snippets and was marred by ellipses.
Sufficient Unto the Day
By
Ashley Sterne
"A penny for your
thoughts," cried Julia, entering the study, where I was standing in an
attitude of profound meditation looking at the wall over the mantelpiece.
"This one's a tuppenny
one," I said; "I couldn't possibly let it go for a penny."
"It must be something
stupendous," Julia commented.
"You look exactly like Mr. Gordon Selfridge on the eve of Bargain
Day. I'll buy it."
"I was thinking it was time I
had my photograph taken again."
"That's only a ha'penny think,"
was Julia's mordant retort. "And
what's made you think it, anyway?"
"In these restless days,"
I explained, "when public opinion is constantly shifting, any moment may
find me a best-seller."
"Oh, really?" said Julia
with her eyebrows.
"Look at this," I went
on, turning to my writing-table and picking up an exiguous printed slip. "See what no less an authority than The
Times Literary Supplement has to say about me."
It was a cutting sent me gratis by
an enterprising press-cutting agency anxious to secure my patronage. It ran:—
"The Unforgiving Minute. By Ronald J. H. Smith 8.5 x 5. 403 pp.
Jackett and Boost. 7s. 6d."
"That doesn't seem exactly to
praise you to the skies," Julia remarked.
"No," I agreed;
"but, on the other hand, it doesn't damn me to the depths. What it suggests is that the work is a sort of
peak in Darien — a wild surmise, so to say. Tomorrow, or by Saturday at latest, I may be
famous. My photograph will then be
eagerly clamoured for by the Press and — what have I to offer them?"
"I always like best that one
of you lying naked on a bear-skin trying to swallow your foot," said
Julia. "Next to that, the one in
which you look like an overfed Raphael cherub in a surplice."
"Excellent as those are,"
I observed, "they are not quite up-to-date. If I'm destined to be featured as the Man of
the Moment it would be grossly unfair to the public to depict myself as a
stripling of the generation before last. Yes, I'll telephone the Stokes Studio and make
an appointment for a man to come along at once."
"You mean for you to go along
to a man?" said Julia.
"Oh, no, not at all.
That would be very demode. Nowadays authors are invariably photographed
in their own studies, sitting at a desk grasping a fountain-pen — name of brand
on application — and surrounded by the paraphernalia of their craft. I recall a notable one of Bernard Shaw at work
upon a pile of postcards.
"If I were you, I should wait
until I actually was a best-seller."
"See here," I cried,
pointing to the wall over the mantelpiece. "That elegant little panel motto was what
was contemplating when you breezed in. 'DO
IT NOW' is what it declaims. It was that
which inspired me to have a long-overdue new photograph taken at once. If I dally till the moment I'm acclaimed a
Priestley or a Golding it may be inconvenient to be photographed specially. I may have a gum boil or the mumps. It's no good my hanging up all these uplift
mottoes round the study if I'm not going to live up to them. Eric would disown me as an uncle on the spot."
"Your excuse seems
insufficient, "said Julia with a shrug as she moved to the door. "I'm going to make a pudding."
My nephew Eric, aetat 11, I may explain, cultivates a
taste for pokerwork. Otherwise he's
quite a nice child. At Christmas and on
my birthdays he usually gives me a little rough-wood panel pyrographed with
some slogan cribbed from a similar device which you may see displayed in any
"art" stationer's window. I
conscientiously hang them upon my study walls, though I cannot altogether admit
that they satisfy my asthetic cravings. Quite apart from that, Eric's handiwork would
be far better suited to my needs if I were a stockbroker, say, and ran an
office. "Do it now" seems to
be just the kind of motto for a stockbroker hesitating whether the moment is ripe
to go out and play dominoes. However...
The Stokes Studio man arrived the
following morning while Julia was out. I
was relieved at this. She would have
wanted to pose me; so would Stokes's man; I too should have had a word to say. As it was, self and photographer easily
compromised upon a posture — me at my desk, pen in hand poised over page, left
forefinger against left cheek, introspective expression upon face, as of
Flaubert seeking the mot juste — just the very thing for a best seller. The whole performance was over and done with
in ten minutes. Proofs were promised me
in two days' time.
This morning they came to hand. I slipped them unopened into my pocket at the
breakfast-table and took them afterwards into the study for private scrutiny. I concealed them hastily beneath a newspaper
when Julia entered with a list of telephonic shopping to negotiate. This finished —
"That photograph business —
what are you going to do about it?" she suddenly demanded.
I coughed to account for the guilty
blush I felt sure was about to suffuse my face.
"On second thought," I
said slowly, "I have decided to follow your advice. I am going to wait. Somehow I feel it would be — er — unlucky to
be wilfully photographed for best-seller purposes before I attain that
distinction. Now I come to think of it,
Defoe was never photographed before the public clamour for Robinson Crusoe."
"I'm delighted to hear
it," said Julia emphatically. "But why you always require to indulge in
second thoughts before taking my advice I can't imagine. Next time remember, 'Do it now.'"
Julia went to make another pudding
while I took a farewell glance at the proofs before writing to the Stokes folk
to instruct them to proceed no further with the photographs. The pose, the likeness, the expression was all
that the most exacting sitter could demand. It was one of Eric's pyrographic panels that
wrecked the whole mise-en-scene.
Considering the purpose for which
the photograph was designed, there was something uncomfortably ominous about
the motto which figured in the picture above my head —
"DON'T WORRY — IT MAY NEVER HAPPEN."
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