From the shelves of the Paco library

One thing the Kindle has allowed me to do is to expand my library at no cost, since so much of what I read is in the public domain. I recently finished reading another freebie: The Mirror of Kong Ho, by Ernest Bramah.

Readers with long memories will recall that, a while back, I posted a review of one of the books in Bramah’s series of yarns featuring the Chinese storyteller, Kai Lung (the review is located here). Kong Ho is a variation on the oriental theme, featuring the adventures of the son of a Chinese merchant who has traveled to 1920s England to learn something of the ways of these island-bound barbarians, but who is continually baffled in his understanding by the difficulties presented by an unfamiliar language, incomprehensible technology and a completely alien culture. The book, composed of a series of letters to his “venerable sire”, hilariously traces Kong Ho’s uncertain progress as he attempts to school himself in the day-to-day rituals of English life, as well as the overarching themes of religion, literature and sport.

Here, he attempts to describe rugby to his father:

There is a favorite and well-attended display wherein two opposing bands, each clad in robes of distinctive colour, stand in extended lines of mutual defiance, and at a signal impetuously engage. The design of each is by force or guile to draw their opponents into an unfavorable position before an arch of upright posts, and then surging irresistibly forward, to carry them beyond the limit and hurl them to the ground.

Unfortunately, our hero does not succeed in grasping the essentials of another sport to the same extent, having made a fatal mistake in a too literal interpretation of the name of the game.

This trial of sportiveness, it became clear, -less of a massacre than most of their amusements – is really a rivalry of leapings and dexterity of the feet: a conflict of game crickets or grass-hoppers, in the wide-angled obscurity of their language, or, as we would more appropriately call it doubtless, a festive competition in the similitude of high-spirited locusts.

This huge misunderstanding concerning the game of cricket causes him considerable personal embarrassment, since he has been invited to participate in a match by his host, Sir Philip – or, rather, it would have caused him embarrassment, had he possessed even a glimmering of the true quality of his performance.

If a fuller proof of what an unostentatious self-effacement hesitates to enlarge upon were required, it might be found in the barbarian printed leaf, for the next day this person saw a public record of the strife, in which his own name was followed by a numerical emblem signifying that he had not stumbled or proved incompetent in any one particular. Sir Philip, I beheld with pained surprise, had obtusely suffered himself to be caught out in the committal of fifty-nine set offenses.

Kong Ho’s other experiences include getting lost in the underground, accidentally starting a riot by kow-towing outside a “temple” (in reality, a pub), thwarting two con-men, and tragically misconstruing the meaning of one of the pretty female occupants of his boarding house when she remarks, wistfully, that she’d “like to have a dog”. Throughout all these perils, Kong Ho conducts himself with admirable dignity and the most exquisite politeness.

A highly entertaining read, this person (as Kong Ho might say) humbly submits it for your consideration, in a benevolent spirit of no reluctance.