Delphi complete works of.., p.1
Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 1
The Complete Works of
THORNE SMITH
(1892-1934)
Contents
The Novels
Topper (1926)
Dream’s End (1927)
The Stray Lamb (1929)
Did She Fall? (1930)
The Night Life of the Gods (1931)
Turnabout (1931)
Topper Takes a Trip (1932)
The Bishop’s Jaegers (1932)
Rain in the Doorway (1933)
Skin and Bones (1933)
The Glorious Pool (1934)
The Shorter Fiction
Biltmore Oswald (1918)
Out O’ Luck (1919)
Birthday Present (1934)
Yonder’s Henry! (1934)
The Children’s Book
Lazy Bear Lane (1931)
The Poetry
Haunts and Bypaths (1919)
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The Complete Works of
THORNE SMITH
By Delphi Classics, 2023
COPYRIGHT
Complete Works of Thorne Smith
First published in the United Kingdom in 2023 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2023.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
ISBN: 978 1 80170 097 9
Delphi Classics
is an imprint of
Delphi Publishing Ltd
Hastings, East Sussex
United Kingdom
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The Novels
Annapolis, Maryland, 1896 — Thorne Smith was born in Annapolis in 1892.
Annapolis today
Topper (1926)
A master of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction, James Thorne Smith, Jr. was born in Annapolis, the son of a Navy commodore. He attended Dartmouth College, before enduring several hungry years in Greenwich Village, working part time as an advertising agent. Then, Smith achieved meteoric success with the publication of his first novel, Topper, in February 1926. A UK version under the title of ‘The Jovial Ghosts’ appeared in January 1933.
Cosmo Topper is a quiet, simple, middle-aged soul, somewhat henpecked by his wife and has never lived dangerously. George and Marion Kerby, on the other hand, are the “fastest young couple in town”, who have crashed their car into a tree and killed themselves. Topper buys their car, which has been reconditioned, but his wife is ashamed by the purchase of a second-hand car, so he is left to drive it himself. As he passes the tree where the car’s previous owners were killed he hears voices…and discovers the dead couple are spirits that can materialise at will and are determined to carry on the way they lived their lives.
Critics loved the book, with one calling it, “a gorgeous account of things that couldn’t happen except in the mind of an author whose aim in life is to bring tears of laughter to a sober world. Here is a book that should be kept on the shelves of a library of humor until time dies a natural death.” Another reviewer simply called it, “the funniest book I have read for months”. Others though, were not so fulsome with their praise, with one saying, “There is some poignancy in the bravado of its desperately earthly young ghosts, some rather keen cutting power in the youthful irony of its author’s style, but it is a very long way from being a book of which Mr. Thorne Smith might be proud. As fantasy it is far too solid; as entertainment it grows monotonous because of the repetition of its drinking parties; as indiscretion it is quite lame…and yet there is cleverness and there is thoughtfulness in the book. The author will do better things if he will half try.”
The novel was adapted into a 1937 film of the same name, which starred Cary Grant, Constance Bennett and Roland Young as Cosmo Topper. A couple of sequels were released in 1938 and 1941, both of which starred Roland Young as Topper. In the 1950’s a TV series based on the character ran for seventy-eight episodes and starred Leo G Carroll as Topper. The character was revived in 1973 for a 30-minute pilot for a possible TV series; it starred Roddy McDowell as Topper and Stefanie Powers as Marian Kerby. Another attempt at a TV pilot was released in 1979 in the form of a TV movie starring Kate Jackson and Jack Warden, but again, it didn’t produce a resulting series. ‘The Adventures of Topper’, a short-lived radio series ran for three months in 1945, featuring Roland Young as Cosmo Topper.
The first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
The 1937 film adaptation
Roland Young as Topper, 1937
TO CELIA
— to say the least —
CHAPTER I
NO CHANGE
FOR SOME MINUTES now Scollops had been gazing searchingly at Mr. Topper. And Mr. Topper was troubled. Not definitely troubled, but vaguely so, which to some persons is the most troublesome form of trouble. Mr. Topper was one of such persons. In fact he was highly representative of the type. So free from trouble had Topper’s days been that gradually he had come to regard with suspicion all creatures not likewise unencumbered. An earthquake, an eruption or tidal wave would mildly move Cosmo Topper, arouse him to the extent of a dollar donation which would later be deducted from his income tax; whereas a newspaper story dealing with bankruptcy, crimes of violence or moral looseness would cause him speedily to avert his eyes to less disturbing topics. Mr. Topper could excuse nature and the Republican Party, but not man. He was an institutional sort of animal, but not morbid. Not apparently. So completely and successfully had he inhibited himself that he veritably believed he was the freest person in the world. But Mr. Topper could not be troubled. His mental process ran safely, smoothly, and on the dot along well signaled tracks; and his physical activities, such as they were, obeyed without question an inelastic schedule of suburban domesticity. He resented being troubled. At least he thought he did. That was Mr. Topper’s trouble, but at present he failed to realize it.
He experienced now something of the same resentment that came to him upon being delayed in the tunnel on his way home from the city. Things were going on round him in the tunnel, dreadful things, perhaps, but he did not know what they were. He sat in a blaze of light in the midst of clanking darkness. Surrounded by familiar things he felt stuffy and uncomfortable. Even his newspaper lost its wonted stability. Yes, it was a decidedly objectionable feeling that Mr. Topper had to-night as he gave himself to the solicitous embrace of his arm chair and followed with a dull gaze the rug’s interminable border design — a Doric motif, clean-cut and geometrically accurate. Once this design had appealed to his abiding sense of order. To-night he hardly saw it, although without his knowledge it was wearying his eyes, and had been doing so for several months.
In Scollops’ eyes there was an expression difficult to fathom. Mr. Topper held the opinion that the expression was uncomfortably insinuating, making him in some sly way an accessory before the fact. But hang it all, what was the meaning of Scollops’ look? The cat had been fed. He had seen to that himself as he had seen to it ever since he had adventurously brought her home from Wilson’s, the grocer’s, one evening four years ago. Four years. As long as that in this house; and once it had seemed so new. Now it was an old house, an uninteresting house. Perhaps he was old, too, and equally uninteresting. Mr. Topper felt that he was, and for the first time in his life permitted himself to wonder about such things.
His intellectual debauch was rudely shattered by Scollops. The cat yawned and tentatively thrust her nails into her benefactor’s thigh. It was rather a plump thigh. Long years of well-regulated commuting had despoiled it of its youthful charm. It was a tight thigh and a fleshy one, yet it still reacted to pain. To such an extent, in fact, that Mr. Topper’s sensation of trouble instantly gave way to one of mild reproach as he dropped Scollops softly thudding to the floor.
“She yawned,” he remarked by way of explanation. “Yawned and scratched.”
“I know it,” apologized Mrs. Topper, mistaking his words for a direct accusation. “I’ve been doing it all evening. It must have been the veal.”
Topper watched his wife remove her sewing-glasses and place them in their case. With an absorbed gaze he followed her movements as she folded her sewing and wrapped it in a piece of linen, which she then deposited in a basket. At this point his expression became almost desperate, then hopeless. No, there was going to be no change in the nightly routine — glasses, case, linen, basket. If she would only reverse the procedure, or for once forget her glasses, that would be something. Meantime Mrs. Topper, unconscious of tragedy, rose from her chair, came round to where her husband was sitting, and brushed his forehead with her lips. Then, referring once more in a pained voice to the haunting qualities of veal, she left the room.
Mr. Topper listened to her firm step upon the stairs. A certain squeaking of boards apprised him of the fact that she had achieved the landing. For a moment he thought idly about veal in relation to his wife. Then he did an unusual thing. Instead of knocking out his pipe and locking in the cat whose vagrant nature had caused him some rather trying experiences in the past, he gently retrieved that animal from the floor and fell to studying an old atlas which he had plucked from an obscure shelf.
“It made me sleepless, too,” murmured Mrs. Topper an hour later as her husband settled down beside her.
And that night Mr. Topper dreamed of eating curried veal in Calcutta. He was surrounded by many maidens all of whom partook amply of veal, and none of whom complained. It was delicious. He gorged himself.
CHAPTER II
SCOLLOPS LOOKS INSCRUTABLE
NOT UNTIL THE following afternoon, which was Saturday and therefore free, was Mr. Topper able to localize his trouble. The discovery came to him as a shock which gathered intensity as the days passed. It marked an epoch in his life. Even Mrs. Topper, who steadfastly refused to recognize changes taking place around her, detected something new and therefore annoying in her husband. But she reassured herself by believing that all stomachs have their off seasons, and became almost pallidly cheerful when she considered the fact that her stomach’s off season was always on — it prevailed the year around. To Mrs. Topper it was an endless source of comfort to be able to trace all mystifying cases of conduct, even her own, to such a tangible and well-established institution as a stomach.
It was Scollops again. . . . Scollops draped on her master’s knee with a Saturday afternoon mist swimming in her eyes. . . . Scollops, the inexplicable, narrowing infinity between two orange-colored slits.
This it was that gave Mr. Topper the shock. For the first time in their four years of companionable association Topper realized that the cat saw nothing, that is, nothing immediate. Although her yellow, searching gaze included him, it passed far beyond him down distant vistas from which he was excluded. Caressing and condoning on their way, Scollops’ eyes seemed to be roving through the ages, dwelling on appalling mysteries with the reminiscent indulgence of a satiated goddess.
Looking into Scollops’ eyes, Mr. Topper discovered that there were things he did not know, colors of life beyond his comprehension, impulses alien to his reason. With his wife’s eyes it was different. He knew their every shade and meaning. Nothing in them lay unrevealed. He was familiar with the direct gaze denoting finance, the confidential gaze denoting scandal, the patient gaze denoting servants, the motherly gaze denoting superiority and the martyred gaze denoting dyspepsia.
Suddenly Mr. Topper realized what was troubling him. It was eyes. Old familiar eyes. He felt that he knew them all. He knew the eyes at the office, from the president’s to the elevator boy’s. It was surprising, he thought, how desperately well he knew eyes. Mr. Topper saw eyes. Mr. Topper understood them. And he had an uncomfortable feeling that they understood him.
Now, however, he was alive to the fact that Scollops’ eyes escaped all classification. This both pleased and shocked him. He realized that in spite of four years of close companionship he had not the slightest idea of Scollops’ private opinion of him, or of anything else, for that matter. To what was going on behind her eyes Topper had no clue.
Mr. Topper found himself thinking that it would be a relief to have someone look at him in the manner of Scollops. Preferably a woman. Not that Mr. Topper was loose, or romantic, or both. He had never loitered to pluck forbidden flowers beside the marital path, but had mechanically kept to his schedule with Mrs. Topper at one end and the office at the other.
Once in his youth he had nerved himself to lurch in reckless pursuit of a shop girl in a skating rink, but the meeting with her had been so sudden and demolishing that when he arose from the dust of the floor he departed with a far sharper pain in his spine than in his heart. After that he confined his amorous pursuits to the nice girls of his own set. He never called on them alone, but always with a jolly company of youths, which gave him a sense of security. Later he had met Mrs. Topper, who had already achieved individuality through smoldering dyspepsia, and he had decorously followed her through a summer of neat suburban Sundays, after which he had made the arrangement permanent in the presence of an orderly gathering of neat suburban property owners. And that ended that side of Mr. Topper.
Now, however, he was getting along. Nearly forty and acquiring flesh. Ten years married. He neither had to stretch to reach the electric light nor stoop to walk under the bulb. His face was unremarkable save for his eyes, which were extremely blue and youthful, as if the fire in them had been banked for the sake of conservation. His features would have been delicate had his appetite not been so good or his habits less sedentary. Had their union been blessed with issue, one of the children, probably Cosmo, Junior, would have been a sandy blond like his father, for Mr. Topper’s hair was of an indifferent shade. But there were no little Toppers. Scollops was undisturbed.
He rose, stretched and walked to the window. Scollops merely stretched and resumed her repose, with the austere resignation characteristic of cats when bent on slumber or theft.
“Guess I’ll go for a walk,” said Topper. “I’m in need of a bit of a change.”
“There’ll be a roast for dinner,” replied Mrs. Topper. “Lamb,” she added as he left the room. “You like lamb.”
Mr. Topper winced as he collected his hat and stick. Why should he be thus openly reminded that he liked lamb? Couldn’t a person creep up on a roast and surprise it some time? As a matter of fact he was not particularly lustful for lamb, or at least he would strive hereafter to dissemble his emotions.
But all he said was “Good!” The exclamation point stuck in his throat.
CHAPTER III
MR. TOPPER PURSUES THE SUN
THE STREET DOWN which Mr. Topper strolled was a nice street. No one needed to feel ashamed of it. No one did. And the people who lived on this street had nice homes; nice, neat homes with well-groomed lawns, well-shingled roofs and well-stocked larders. The style of architecture showed a sincere desire to impress the eye favorably. The effort had been based more on hope than on inspiration. The houses could have been — and frequently were — termed “homey,” “quaint,” and “comfortable,” but after these terms had been exhausted little remained to be said save, perhaps, “sweet.”
Mr. Topper and his neighbors were quietly proud of this street, and had borne their assessments as a tolerant father bears the extras of an extravagant son at college. One could bring one’s friends from the city to this street and let it speak for itself, which one seldom did. Sewerage, real estate and the cost of building were subjects far too fascinating to be left to the imagination. So the visitors from the city heard all about these things, and were not amused.
