The OED has a word, ‘Pooterish’: it means someone “self-important and mundane or narrow-minded”. The word owes its origin to Mr. Charles Pooter, immortalised by the Grossmith siblings, George and Weedon, who had collaborated to bring the archetypal middle-class English gentleman into life on the pages of Punch magazine back in 1892. While George did the writing, Weedon did the illustrations. The Punch , was, of course, identified with its cartoons, which were mostly satirical takes on socio-political issues of the day. The Diary has been reprinted in India as part of Ruskin Bond’s selection.
The likes of Charles Pooter, with his sparse frame covered in the regulation black coat, bearded, pinched face, and the unmistakably brolly, wouldn’t quite be found on the streets of London today. But he would be familiar to us Indians, thanks to our colonial past.
Mr. Pooter, a head clerk who worships his office, endlessly tries to ‘improve’ his homestead in suburban London, by, say, mounting plaster-of-Paris stags’ heads on the wall; the thought of monetary speculation sends a moral shudder down his spine; he shoots off letters listing his grievances to every newspaper (any resemblance to The Hindu ’s “concerned reader” is accidental); he defers to his wife in a way only a sweet little homebody would.
The median man has his nemesis in his young son, Lupin, the upwardly mobile go-getter who does not care a hoot about his job, speculates with gay abandon and marries a cigarette-smoking older woman.
The illustrations are delightful: again, for reasons of history, they resemble those by our own Victorian-era illustrators like Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury. The one I liked the best is of Master Percy Edgar Smith James. Master Percy, dressed as a girl, in a pinafore — remember seeing such a photograph in old family albums? — leans against the armrest of a sofa, staring insolently.
He is a spoilt rich brat who kicks and screams and breaks things. Mrs. Pooter finds him cute. Mr. Pooter begs to differ, but only in his dairy: “I may be wrong, but I do not think I have seen a much uglier child myself. That is my opinion.”
