When I was young I was extremely handsome. I have documentary evidence to prove as much. There is in existence a photograph of a young gentleman standing with his back to a raging seascape, one hand resting lightly on a volume of Shakespeare, which in turn is supported by a rustic table. The young gentleman has wide innocent eyes, a rosebud mouth and long golden curls (the sort poor dear old Romney used to do so nicely). For the rest he is tastefully upholstered in a short-panted velvet suit, a lace collar and white silk socks. "Little Lord Fauntleroy," you murmur to yourself. No, Sir (or Madam), it is ME—or was me, rather. When I was young no girl thought herself properly married unless I was present at the ceremony, got up like a prize rabbit and tethered to the far end of her train. Nowadays I am not so handsome. True, you can urge a horse past me without blindfolding it and all that, but nobody ever mistakes me for Maxine Elliott.
Personally I was quite willing to be represented at the National Portrait Gallery by a coloured copy of the presentment described above, but my home authorities thought otherwise, and when last I was in England on leave—shortly after the Battle of Agincourt—they shooed me off to Valpré. "Go to Valpré," they said; "he is so artistic." So to Valpré I went, and was admitted by a handmaid who waved a white hand vaguely towards a selection of doors, murmuring, "Wait there, please." I opened the nearest door at a venture and entered.
In the waiting-room three other handmaids were at work on photographs. One was painting dimples on a lady's cheek; one filling in gaps in a Second-Lieutenant's moustache; one straightening the salient of a stockbroker's waistcoat. Presently the first handmaid reappeared and somewhat curtly (I was waiting in the wrong room, it seemed) informed me that the Master was ready. So I went upstairs to the operating theatre. After an impressive interval a curtain was thrust aside and the Master entered. He was not in the least like the artist of my first photograph, who had chirruped and done tricks with an indiarubber monkey to make me prick my ears and appear sagacious. This man had the mane of a poodle, a plush smoking-jacket with rococo trimmings, satin cravat, rings and bangles like the lads in La Bohème, and I knew myself to be in the presence of True Art, and bowed my head.
At the sight of me he winced visibly; didn't seem to like my looks at all. However he pulled himself together and advanced to reconnoitre. He pushed me into a chair, manipulated some screws at the back, and I found my head fast in a steel clamp. I pleaded for gas or cocaine, but he took no notice and prowled off to the far end of the theatre to observe if distance would lend any enchantment. Apparently it would not. The more he saw of me the less he seemed to admire the view.
Suddenly the fire of inspiration lit his eye and he came for me. I struggled with the clamp, but it clave like a bull-terrier to a mutton chop. In a moment he had me by the head and started to mould it nearer to his heart's desire with plump powerful hands. He crammed half my lower jaw into my breast pocket, pinned my ears back so tightly that they wouldn't wag for weeks, pressed my nose down with his thumb as though it were the button of an electric bell and generally kneaded my features from the early Hibernian to the late Gr?co-Roman. Then, before they could rebound to their normal positions, he had sprung back, jerked the lanyard and fired the camera.
Some weeks later the finished photographs arrived. The handmaids had done their bit, and the result was a pleasing portraiture, an objet d'art, an ornament to anybody's family album. The man Valpré was an artist all right.
A few days ago the Skipper whistled me into the orderly room. His table was littered with parade states, horse-registers and slips of cardboard, all intermingled. The Skipper himself appeared to be undergoing some heavy mental disturbance. His forehead was furrowed, his toupet rumpled, and he sucked his fountain-pen, unconsciously imbibing much dark nourishment.
"Identification car............