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Introduction

<1> Edwardian humorist Saki (born Hector Hugh Munro in Burma in 1870) has been described by appreciative critics as "a performing lynx" (Pritchett 19) or a "jungle boy in the drawing room" (Lambert 212). These descriptions draw on several elements of Saki's works and his position in Edwardian society. Often when one reads Saki's short stories today one can be delighted simply by his powers of invention. However, behind every humorous situation there was an attack on some element of Victorian or Edwardian life and society. For example, the twitting of a colonial colonel has behind it a comment on the pomposity of the average colonial colonel. A work such as Beasts and Super-Beasts was considered at the time of its publication "a handbook of the gentle art of dealing faithfully with social nuisances - bores, cadgers, 'thrusters,' and 'climbers'" ("Beasts" 61). In his satire Saki was savage, like the wild animal or wild boy depicted; and as a jungle boy or lynx, he was operating in contradiction to the sedate society around him. But he was "performing" in the "drawing room" of the society he was criticising; he was an established member of an established class, even though he criticised it.

<2> This position, half out, half in, is mirrored in Saki's texts. Reviewers of Saki's books often accused his characters of "immorality", especially Clovis, Vera, Reginald, and other of his reappearing, "havoc-wreaker" characters, who dress correctly for dinner but disrupt the meal itself ("Successor" 2; "Beasts" 61). Saki's most frequently appearing havoc-wreakers are somewhat self absorbed; they are bent on satisfying themselves, bothering others for their own or a friend's pleasure and engaging in actions that lead them towards life.

<3> To the society of the period, these pranksters show a lack of "self-control" and "respectability" which puts them outside of it. They are human flies buzzing through all the ritual celebrations of Edwardian life. They are of a younger generation, and like their author they are sensitive to the sense of rebellion suggested by Saki's own position as "jungle boy". They are known by the names "Nut" and "Flapper", terms that, for the adults of the time, connote danger, as can be seen in stories such as "A Touch of Realism" or "The Dreamer". However, the "danger" that they present is nothing other than this longing to escape from the cocoon of Victorian mores: "In all these confrontations, the pattern was the same: the New behaved brashly, insolently or violently, and the Old responded with an arthritic resistance" (Hynes 8). This change is perceived as a danger, and the freedom in the young generation's behaviour is seen as an expression of immorality.

<4> This opposition of young to old and "libertine" to "hidebound" is at the heart of comedy, a term used here in the general sense of recognition of and improvisation within the contingency of human life, this implies a denial of the order that society takes to be natural (Langer 333; Torrance viii). The liberation that results from this recognition "has immediate moral and tonal implications. It means, for one thing, that comedy is particularly able to value and glorify such qualities as vitality, bold resourcefulness, and pleasure - things that in a world of more stringent causality become loaded with danger" (Herbert 405). "Danger" for the older generation of "stringent causality" consisted precisely in this contingency which it refused to recognise and which the young were menacingly bringing to the fore. These concepts place Saki and his characters very clearly in their context.

<5> Like any good satirist, Saki found many different sources for his satire. Urban London, Saki's environment while writing most of his stories, naturally comes into the narrative regularly. Sometimes landmarks serve simply as a setting for the action. In other instances, however, the landmark serves to form the commentary that Saki is making about his chosen butt for the moment. In extreme cases, there is actual destruction of that landmark, which brings a further level to the commentary. This study explores these different approaches in Sakian narrative.

<6> In this context Saki's position in relation to urban living should be elucidated. Saki was an urbanite by adoption; he was raised in Devonshire (Langguth 8). His delight in the natural world was frequently expressed in bird-nesting and in the keeping of animals, and often appears in his narratives. However, his Grand Tour with his father, his residence in London to prepare his history of Russia and his stays in St Petersburg and Paris as foreign correspondent to The Morning Post habituated him to city life. Nonetheless, Saki saw the urban world at least a little from the outside, as he saw most of society life; this outside position is necessary for successful satire (McLuhan 113). However, it is equally necessary to have some semi-place within this urban culture (Highet 190). It is important to be a lynx rather than a bred kitten, but equally so to accept to perform. This Devonshire Londoner carried this double force in him throughout his career.

Settings

<7> One can never say that London constitutes a "mere" setting for Saki's stories. There is often some connection between the choice of setting and the action. The Turkish or swimming bath presents an excellent example. It is in a Turkish bath that Clovis writes his Durbar Recessional (as an act of one-upmanship against Loona Bimberton) because, says his friend Bertie Van Tahn, he is trying to recreate an Indian atmosphere in "the local temperature" ("Recessional" 234). According to Clovis himself, it is obvious that Bertie Heasant is in low spirits at the swimming bath because "it's especially noticeable from the fact that you're wearing very little else" ("Shock" 218). These are details, but in short stories details carry much weight. By marking the characters as frequenters of baths, these settings place them in an age group and a social category.

<8> Parks and gardens receive narrative attention as a place where friends cross paths. Sometimes a park will serve as the simple initiator of satiric action. For example, Clovis and the Baroness ensconce themselves in Hyde Park and begin to gossip about the passers-by, which brings Clovis to recount the story of the Brimley Bomefield sisters in "The Way to the Dairy". And Bertie's sadness in the swimming bath is instilled in him in Kensington Gardens during a discussion with his sweetheart. Sometimes strangers, or strange ideas, meet up as well. This happens to James in "Tea"; on his way through the Park he hears church bells warning him that he will arrive at tea time at the home of the woman he is about to propose marriage to. As he detests the tinkling porcelain and tinkling voices of teatime, he decides to drop in first on his cousin Rhoda, who is having an impromptu tea in her workshop, and ends up proposing to her.

<9> Morton Crosby's presence in the Park is conducive to creating ideas rather than changing them. In "The Romancers", he receives the attentions of a fraud who sits down on Crosby's bench with the intention of telling him a tall tale about his present indigent state and inspiring his pity so as to beg from him. Rather than listening to the man's tale he spins one of his own, building upon an initial claim of Afghan birth to create an entire mesh of imagined customs in which he leaves his beggar speechless. The Park can be propitious to explorers of contingency; the openness of the space matches the vastness of Crosby's imagination.

<10> The change of ideas that Norman Gortsby undergoes could well be about himself, although the dénouement of "Dusk" leaves this in suspense. Sitting in the Park in a state of gloomy disillusionment, Gortsby is accosted by a young stranger who claims to need money for a place to sleep, as he has lost his hotel by going out to buy soap. This young man evokes another London landmark, the Embankment, as his possible destination if no help is forthcoming. Gortsby claims not to be fooled by the story of the soap, then finds a cake of soap on the ground and lends money to the young man, only to discover that the soap had been lost by someone else who has come back to search for it. If he had felt less gloomy by spotting a seeming fraud, the discovery of circumstance having made him the dupe of the fraud would increase his disillusionment.

<11> Again, the dénouement does not indicate Gortsby's reaction; the discovery itself closes the narrative. This is in keeping with good narration and good short stories; a good narration allows the reader his reactions, creating for him a role in the reading which makes the text an active part of him. A good short story always operates with a minimum of given information so as to create its effect in a compact narrative space and time.

<12> Norman has a weak spot; his confidence in his powers of observation. His smugness makes him an oral-sadistic in the comic character typology that Susan Purdie has developed from Freudian concepts; this type represents displaced confidence or inordinate ambition (102-3). Norman's weakness is paralleled by the weakness of the dusk light, a condition that is heightened by the Park; an outdoor setting, even an urban one, brings out lessening light better than an indoor one. This adds to the atmosphere of the Park as a place for unforeseen encounters to prepare Norman's defeat when his confidence is shown to be misplaced. Norman's smugness is annihilated in the discovery that his mistaken observations have cost him a sovereign. The narrative prepares Gortsby's fall in the expository passage which establishes the aura of intrigue emanating from Gortsby's reaction to the arrival of dusk. This combines with his thoughts of defeat to create in him a cynical wish to deride others, to give himself more status by lowering that of others. This cynicism, as a mark of his type, already implies his coming discomfiture. The casting of this entire scene in the Park accomplishes two things; to allow the unusual encounters that can only occur in the open air, and to expose Gortsby to the open spaces of the Park and of his fatuity. This story illustrates clearly the use of a park as a place of intersecting people, moods and inspirations that serves Saki's purposes in several ways.

London as Comment

<13> The preceding discussion concerns narratives in which London has a secondary role. The texts which follow contain instances in which London is at the basis of the commentary. In "Reginald at the Theatre" Reginald's criticism of the Duchess's platitudes about establishing colonies to improve the lot of those colonised is oblique: "I wonder . . . if you have ever walked down the Embankment on a winter night?" (22). The Embankment is evoked as a place of disagreeable encounters, of poverty in the very center of a prosperous capital. Clovis evokes the obstinacy of his mother's guest by explaining that "she'd as soon think of owning slum property in Whitechapel" as admit she was wrong in a dispute ("The Hen" 41). The undesirability of that part of London is evoked as an exact equivalent of Jane's lack of desire to resolve a conflict.

<14> A more regular use of London as commentary occurs in "Cross Currents". Bayswater resident Vanessa expresses her yearning for social status in terms of the Park; an address near it would give her status via the flimsy support of letter paper. When her husband dies, she feels she can at last marry her distant and honorable lover Alaric and have the coveted address which his money could provide; unfortunately, Alaric prefers to continue his wanderings in Central Asia. Vanessa first agrees to accompany him, but her onset of boredom -- her inability to function outside of an urban environment -- leads her first to attach herself to Dobrinton and his worldly conversation about duchesses and wine lists, and then to run away with him. The ensuing scandal leads to divorce and to Vanessa's only means of acquiring her wished-for false status, which through Sakian irony is also her only means of sustenance, a job in a West End club's kitchen. The different London addresses mentioned in the text both mock Vanessa's yearning and ironically fulfill it.

<15> It is ambition and covetousness which bring down Vanessa, "the worship of Mammon, the worship of rank, the worship of notoriety", which are quite common to her oral sadistic type (Lilly 65). Her wish for status is ruined in real terms when she and Dobrinton are taken hostage by Kurds, and Alaric follows them and is captured in turn. As Vanessa had indicated to the embassy after the first capture that she was with her husband, the situation becomes confused and the embassy wishes to know how many husbands she has. Thus, paradoxically, through her thirst for class and elegance, Vanessa gives herself a bad reputation. Vanessa's isolation at the end of the narrative symbolises that she has no place, not only in her society, but in any discursive exchange. She only maintains the illusion of respectability with the club's address.

<16> The urban scenes of "Ministers of Grace" form a contrast to the unconventional approach to religion exhibited by the Duke of Scaw. It is in St. James's Park that he begins to manifest his beliefs by replacing the current politicians with angel substitutes who engage in the opposite behaviour of that of their originals. The first victims of this plot are crossing the park to attend to government business. Replacement succeeds in the first attempts shown in the Park, on Quinston and Kedzon, and in Parliament, on Ap Dave and Sizzle (clearly identified in the original publication of the story in the Bystander on 30 November 1910 as Churchill, Curzon, Lloyd George and Hugh Cecil); their irascibility and pride is replaced by affability. Parliament (the particular scene of Lloyd George's frequent insults) and the park become the scenes of unbelievable amiability on the part of these men, showing the enormous effects of this incredible change.

<17> Parliament also becomes the scene for the revelation of the great drawback of the Duke's plan. His replacement of politicians by angels, based on a complete reversal of each politician's behaviour, could only be beneficial in the politicians mentioned. On the other hand, in others, normally calm, bluffing or equivocal, like Halfan Halfour (Balfour) or Thistlebery (Rosebery), the result is an inhabitual force of character which does more harm than the erstwhile force of the other, calmed politicians. Halfour roars his support for the Navy programme in Parliament and disrupts all government business; Thistlebery attacks Edinburgh castle for the same cause and threatens civil war, and General Baden-Baden mobilises the Boy Scouts in reply.

<18> Saki returns to St. James's Park, the place of launching of the campaign, for its resolution. The Duke has transferred the real politicians into animals; he had the bad judgment to put the combative Kedzon in the body of a swan, already an irate animal. He also had the hubris to leave the swan in the lake in St. James's Park, no doubt in order to pass by and gloat from time to time. Instead of gloating, he is drowned by the swan, and with the death of the instigator the havoc instigated is cancelled. This place of crossing for the politicians thus becomes the place of their "rebellion against the angels" and of their restitution to government as usual.

<19> Bethnal Green serves briefly to provide commentary in "Adrian". As it is an undesirable part of London, Adrian, more prosaically christened John Henry, hides this origin from the higher-class people whose acquaintance he cultivates in order to be treated to meals and holidays. One friend, Lucas, who regularly takes him to the Ritz, nearly ruins Adrian's efforts when he almost mentions his place of origin to his Aunt Susan; Lucas quickly truncates it to Beth, which to Susan takes on an aura of Asia Minor. By this transformative power of naming Adrian attains a new status in the eyes of this aunt. As eager as her nephew to give new experiences to young people, but less discerning of character than Lucas, Susan takes Adrian to Europe, then must change hotels as frequently as Adrian's repeated havoc-wreaking pranks necessitate it. Adrian's first prolonged and intense exposure to higher-class habits and behaviour, denied him in Bethnal Green, evidently brings out the most intense irony and mischievousness in him. Susan finally asks Lucas: "In Heaven's name, where is Beth?" (110). The importance of place which moved Adrian to seek the company of society now moves Society to seek to place Adrian and to part with him.

<20> The difficulties of keeping a town garden are suggested in "The Occasional Garden". Elinor suffers doubly, from her inability to make the garden flourish, and from Gwenda's incessant boasting about her own. Saki, ever ready to trump boastfulness, provides the solution with the Occasional-Oasis Supply Association, which installs an instant garden just in time for Gwenda's visit. Her unexpected second visit once the OOSA has removed its belongings affords Saki a second comment on London activities; Elinor blames the "damage" on the Suffragettes.

<21> For many of the time, official art represented a form of edification, a moral lesson (Andrews 11); as this "morality" constitutes for Saki a form of Bergsonian raideur, he does not accept such a lesson (Bergson 391). "The Threat" contains an example of Saki's use of art and architecture to clothe criticism. In it the Suffragettes concoct a diabolical plot: they are going to construct exact, life-size replicas of the monument to Victoria unveiled before Buckingham Palace in 1912. This plot is treated as a veritable menace, holding London hostage and risking the devastation of the landscape, of aesthetics and of everyone's nerves unless the women get the vote. It is apparently a master plan, as evidenced by Asquith's reaction on learning of the Suffragettes' intentions:

you can't be serious. It is a beautiful and imposing work of art -- at any rate, one is getting accustomed to it, and even if one doesn't happen to admire it one can always look the other way. Imagine the effect on people with tired, harassed nerves who saw it three times on the way to Brighton and three times again on the way back. . . . What have your countrymen done to deserve such a thing? (153).

<22> The Suffragettes' announcement makes another change in Asquith. This prevaricating, hesitant politician passes rapidly through the two houses of Parliament an act effective immediately making it against the law to construct monuments at less than a distance of three miles from a road. In Saki's world, the horror expressed for this statue can make a minister act. Saki improves the Liberal government through the evidently unedifying spectacle of the reproduction of the monument (Whistler 2).

<23> Through this image Saki also offers an interesting comment on the woman question. The Suffragettes envisage the reproduction of an object, thus imitating biological procreation and artistic creation. In addition, it is the reproduction of the late queen, the "mother" of their country. These women are therefore trying either to reverse the reproductive cycle -- returning to the womb through the queen and mother -- or to reverse roles, giving birth to their mother. Whatever the attempt is, the result is an object in stone, lifeless, sterile, static. The mix of sculpture and biological birth does not produce a Galatea, but a still life/birth. By implication, the result of their effort to acquire the right to vote is also sterile and hollow. The stone of the London monument begets the stone of Suffragette results; from a stone one gets no blood.

<24> Purdie's victim typology, mentioned in this study, functions not only in the framework of acts of communication, but also in that of the situation and the entourage of each victim type. Some characters are thus victims more by their essence than by their acts. This is expressed the most clearly in "The Mappined Life", which contains the most marked and direct use of London urban features in order to comment on the staidness of English life and the "malady of sameness" assailing it (Meredith 2). In it the conventional life of the Gurtleberries is compared to that of zoo animals. The title refers to the Mappin Terraces, recently created in the London Zoo in place of cages to give the animals a habitat that resembled their natural one. A niece uses them to explain to Mrs. Gurtleberry the human capacity for self-deception in order to create the fiction that one's surroundings are agreeable and that one is free. She indicates that initiative is cruelly lacking in society, and she proves to her aunt that this particular family particularly lacks it. This niece shows that no awareness of life's contingency, and therefore no courage or resource inspired by contingency, exists in their little world.

<25> The interlocutrix sees displayed before her the smallness, routine, and immobility of her oral-receptive life of expectation to always be fed and cared for in exchange for respect for the restrictive norms of her generation (Purdie 101). The little "reality" that the niece finds in their existence makes her aunt break down and cry. Like that of the Mappin Terraces, this is a reality of routine and habit, clothed in an illusion of liberty and movement. Mrs. Gurtleberry's tears show that she is incapable of changing the life that has been so nudely placed before her eyes, as in fact does her general passivity throughout her niece's dissection of that life, interrupted only rarely by feeble protestations.

<26> For all that, it is the niece who shows most clearly the passive position of the oral-receptive. The narrative structure implies a discourse that the niece has worked out mentally before beginning this conversation, with all the principal arguments already in place. The niece clearly recognises her own passivity and has done so for some time, but finds no means of rising above it. She is even more the defenceless victim for showing inklings of havoc-wreaker spirit; she talks about the effects that the wrong choice of sauce for the asparagus or a hen-stealing raid would make, ideas that are in true havoc-wreaker vein, such as can be seen in "The Quest" and "Laura". This would-be prankster cannot go farther than to imagine these pranks. All the while she is imprisoning her aunt in her discourse, the niece is herself trapped in the situation which prompts that discourse. This is a rare situation; in Saki, victims of circumstances do not usually realise that their victimisation comes from their own will to limit their lives. They react with surprise or bitterness when faced with this realisation, if they come to it at all. "The Mappined Life" thus contains two forms of victim, one quite unusual, as well as Saki's most concrete statement of the worst of urban life through what is essentially a purely urban symbol, a zoo.

<27> Two final examples of the use of London as commentary are notable because the danger of contingency is expressed in their most extreme form: London is destroyed, literally or figuratively. In "The Mappined Life", through the evocation of a London landmark Saki destroys a complacent person's peace of mind. In the following stories, through the destruction of a London landmark, Saki demolishes political or social complacency more generally.

<28> "Canossa" counts Prime Minister Asquith and McKenna of the Home Office among its characters. Asquith has before him a situation that is crucial to the continuing control of the government by the Liberals: right at the moment of a by-election, the government has to try a bomber, Demosthenes Platterbaff, who is very popular with the voters, who will reject the Liberal candidate if the bomber is judged guilty. The jury cannot find him innocent, as the bomber has fully confessed his crime, that of blowing up the Albert Hall. Asquith is represented here as wishing to satisfy the voters at all costs and even ready to pardon the criminal, but not wishing to seem to capitulate to this kind of pressure. His conversations with his advisors show these conflicting wishes:

A headlong pardon, on the eve of a by-election, with threats of a heavy voting defection if it were withheld or even delayed, would not necessarily be a surrender, but it would look like one.
"The poll opens at eight tomorrow morning," said the Chief Organizer; "we must have him out by 7 A. M."
"Seven-thirty," amended the Prime Minister; "we must avoid any appearance of precipitancy." (143)

<29> "On Approval" is another short story using London architecture to comment on society. In this story an Eastern European artist, Knopshrank, is living in London in an attempt to become famous. The subjects of his paintings are already quite unusual:

His pictures always represented some well-known street or public place in London, fallen into decay and denuded of its human population, on the place of which there roamed a wild fauna, which, from its wealth of exotic species, must have originally escaped from Zoological Gardens and travelling beasts shows. 'Giraffes drinking at the fountain pools, Trafalgar Square,' was one of the most notable and characteristic of his studies, while even more sensational was the gruesome picture of 'Vultures attacking dying camel in Upper Berkeley Street.' There were also photographs of the large canvas on which he had been engaged for some months, and which he was now endeavouring to sell to some enterprising dealer or adventurous amateur. The subject was 'Hyaenas asleep in Euston Station,' a composition that left nothing to be desired in the way of suggesting unfathomed depths of desolation (306).

<30> Saki situates himself on the outside in this way, and extends the privilege to his characters. Diegetically, Knopshrank is already outside the norm through his nationality. Still, he expresses, as do all those placed outside -- Reginald, Clovis, Vera, Demosthenes Platterbaff, etc. -- his refusal or his incapacity to be drawn into the cocoon, to espouse the constructed identity of the staid English. Already outside, Knopschrank immediately represents his adopted culture from another point of view (similar to Elsa Triolet's "Zulu before the Vendôme column" (109)). From this outside position all Sakian comic heroes avoid breathing in the dust of the ruin that they perceive.

Conclusion

<31> Saki makes London another world in "On Approval". Thus is represented the play on worlds that can be important to humour:

while competing psychological explanations of why and how humour works would explain the various types . . . the only consistent feature common to all of the types is incongruity, inappropriateness. In each of the nascent humour situations, that is to say, there is a given world or universe of discourse in which a certain order obtains. Upon this given world another 'possible world' is superimposed, a world in which quite a different order obtains. The superimposition or juxtaposition of incongruous worlds constitutes potentially actualizable humour situation [sic], which in turn, subject to contextual restraints, may evoke a comic experience, which in turn may provoke comic pleasure. (O'Neill 32-33)

Works Cited

Andrews, Malcolm. "Narrative versus Tableau: Literature and Painting in early Victorian England." Home Sweet Home 11-13.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail M. Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U Texas P, 1981.

"Beasts and Super-Beasts." Rev. of Beasts and Super-Beasts. By Saki. Spectator 11 July 1914: 60-61.

Bergson, Henri. Le rire: essai sur la signification du comique. Œuvres. Paris: P U F, 1970. 381-485.

Birden, Lorene Mae. "'One's bitterest friends': dynamique de caractère et humour chez Saki." Diss. U Nice. 1996.

Herbert, Christopher. "Comedy: The World of Pleasure." Genre 17.4 (1984): 401-16.

Highet, Gilbert. The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1962.

Home Sweet Home or Bleak House: Art et littérature à l'époque victorienne. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985.

Hynes, Samuel. The Edwardian Turn of Mind. London: Oxford U P, 1968.

Lambert, J. W. "Jungle Boy in the Drawing Room: J. W. Lambert on Saki." Listener 15.1406 (9 Feb 1956): 211-12.

Langer, Susanne K. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953.

Langguth, A. J. Saki : A Life of Hector Hugh Munro. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Lilly, William Samuel. Four English Humorists of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Norwood, 1978.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet-New American Library, 1964.

Meredith, George. The Egotist: A Comedy in Narrative. London: Kegan Paul, 1880.

O'Neill, Patrick. "On Playing with Worlds: The Sense of Humor and the Sense of Literature." Acta Litteraria Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29.1-2 (1987): 31-38.

Pritchett, V. S. "The Performing Lynx." New Statesman 5 Jan 1957: 18-19.

Purdie, Susan. Comedy: The Mastery of Discourse. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.

"Reginald's Successor." Rev. of The Chronicles of Clovis. By Saki. Morning Post 23 Oct 1911: 2.

Saki [Hector Hugh Munro]. The Collected Works of Saki. London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1926.

From this edition was quoted: "Adrian." Chronicles of Clovis 103-10. "Canossa." Toys of Peace 141-48. "Cross Currents." Reginald in Russia 180-91. "The Dreamer." Beasts and Super-Beasts 175-82. "Dusk." Beasts and Super-Beasts 125-32. "The Hen." Beasts and Super-Beasts 40-49. "Laura." Beasts and Super-Beasts 13-21. "The Mappined Life." Toys of Peace 185-92. "Ministers of Grace." Chronicles of Clovis 266-85. "The Occasional Garden." Toys of Peace 237-43. "On Approval." Beasts and Super-Beasts 303-12. "The Quest." Chronicles of Clovis 119-28. "The Recessional." Chronicles of Clovis 233-41. "Reginald at the Theater." Reginald 19-23. "The Romancers." Beasts and Super-Beasts 90-96. "Shock Tactics." Toys of Peace 217-226. "Tea." Toys of Peace 21-28. "The Threat." Toys of Peace 149-56. "A Touch of Realism." Beasts and Super-Beasts 133-42. "The Way to the Dairy." Chronicles of Clovis 176-88.

---. "Ministers of Grace. A Seasonal Political Fantasie: By 'Saki'." Bystander 28.365 (30 Nov 1910): 432-34.

Torrance, Robert M. The Comic Hero. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1978.

Triolet, Elsa. La Mise en mots. Genève: Skira, 1969.

Whistler, James Abbott. Ten O'Clock. 1885. http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/html/ tenocloc.htm.