The Sunday Gentleman by Irving Wallace

Author:Irving Wallace [Wallace, Irving]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

The Agony Column

Until that day in 1933, when he picked up his copy of The Times of London and as usual began to read the classified advertisements in the Personal column, Mr. Peter Fleming, a slender, dreamy young Englishman, had lived a relatively dull and sedentary existence.

Fleming’s background consisted of Oxford, a stint with BBC, and a brief job in Wall Street in New York. Now, as literary editor of the London Spectator, he was immune from all dangers but that of writer’s cramp. He sometimes played squash, but his favorite indoor sport consisted of musing over the Personal column of The Times. Here, in the small type of the world’s first and most famous Personal column, which for a century and a half had been nicknamed the “agony column,” Peter Fleming found his escape.

“What strange kind of a creature can it be whose wolfhound—now lost in Battersea Park—answers to the name of Effie?” he would reflect, as he read. “Why is Bingo heartbroken? And what possible use can Box A have for a horned toad?”

On that particular day in 1933, when Fleming, as was his habit, read through the mysterious and romantic classified advertisements, he stumbled suddenly upon one that made him sit up. It announced:

Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June, to explore rivers Central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Fawcett; abundance game, big and small; exceptional fishing; ROOM TWO MORE GUNS; highest references expected and given. Write Box X, The Times, E.C.4.

For the first time, Fleming did not idly speculate or let his fancy play over an advertisement. Instead, he answered it. As a result, within a few months, he was transported into the middle of the primitive Matto Grosso jungles of Central Brazil. There, led by an American whom Fleming chose to call Major Pingle, he found himself wading through piranhas, brushing off stinging insects, dodging wild animals, hiding from hostile natives, and constantly searching for traces of the renowned Colonel Fawcett, who had disappeared in 1925 while in quest of the fabulous City of Gold.

After completing this excursion, Peter Fleming wrote a humorous best seller called Brazilian Adventure. Besides the fame and wealth that he soon acquired, he also became an explorer in Tartary and a traveler in Russia, China, Japan. He even married Celia Johnson, who would later attain cinema stardom in the film Brief Encounter.

Anonymity, daydreaming, the dull sedentary life were far behind—all because of a brief ad in the agony column of the London Times.

Of course, this unusual case history is not meant to suggest that the agony column, in steady doses, is a sure cure-all for monotony. But certainly, on the basis of past performances, the agony column of The Times, like all Personal columns modeled after it, remains one of the last modem outposts of hidden romance and adventure in a weary realistic existence made unhappy with the atom bomb, inflation, and Communism.

Few readers of the agony column ever actually succumb to its classified invitations. Peter Fleming was one of these few, the rare exception.

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