The Green Overcoat

This rollicking novel captures the minor moral dilemma of thin, shy, nervous, Professor Higginson, psychologist, as he comes under the eye of the enemy of his soul through an encounter with a green overcoat. The quixotic adventure that follows will bring the childlike reader laughter like rainfall. This is Belloc at his Chestertonian best!

By : Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953)

00 - Dedication 01 - In which the Green Overcoat takes a Journey 02 - In which a Philosopher wrestles with a Problem of Identity 03 - In which the Green Overcoat appears as a point of religion by not being there 04 - In which it is seen that University training fits one for a business career 05 - In which Solitude is unable to discover the charms which Sages have seen in her face 06 - In which Professor Higginson Begins to Taste the Sweets of Fame 07 - In which Professor Higginson goes on tasting them 08 - In which Professor Higginson gets those sweets by the wagon -load, and also hears how Men are Made 09 - In which the Green Overcoat begins to assert itself 10 - In which a Descendant of the Crusaders refuses to harbour stolen goods 11 - In which a Pole is less scrupulous 12 - In which the Readerkin will, if he has an ounce of brains, begin to catch the inevitable Denoumong of the Imbroglio 13 - In which the Subliminal Consciousness gives itself away 14 - In which, incredible as it may seem, a non-Pole has the better of a Pole 15 - In which three young men eat, and not only eat, but drink 16 - In which cross-examination is conducted "en echelon," and if you don't know what that means I can't help you 17 - In which a Professor professes nothing, a Lecture is not delivered, and yet something happens 18 - In which the Green Overcoat triumphs and comes home

My dear Maurice,

You wrote something called The Green Elephant, and I have written something called The Green Overcoat.

It is on this account that I dedicate to you my work The Green Overcoat, although (and I take this opportunity of reproaching you for the same) you did not dedicate to me your work The Green Elephant.

An overcoat and an elephant have much in common, and also, alas! much in which they differ. An elephant can be taken off, and so can an overcoat; but, on the other hand, an overcoat can be put on, and an elephant can not. I understand that your elephant was not a real elephant; similarly my overcoat is not a real overcoat, but only an overcoat in a book. An overcoat is the largest kind of garment, and an elephant is the largest kind of beast, unless we admit the whale, which is larger than the elephant, just as a dressing-gown is larger than an overcoat; but this would lead me far! Then, again, the elephant does not eat meat, or bite; nor does an overcoat. He is most serviceable to man; so is an overcoat. There are, however, rogue elephants which are worse than useless, and give less profit to their owner than if he had no elephant at all. The same is true of overcoats, notably of those which have got torn in the lining of the left armpit, so that the citizen on shoving his left arm therein gets it into a sort of cul-de-sac, which is French for blind-alley.

The elephant is expensive, so is the overcoat. The elephant is of a grave and settled expression, so is an overcoat. An overcoat hanging by itself upon a peg is a grave and sensible object, which in the words of the philosopher "neither laughs nor is the cause of laughter." So is an elephant encaged.

Again, man in conjunction with the elephant is ennobled by that conjunction, whether he ride upon its back or upon its neck or walk by its side, as does the keeper at the Zoo. The same is true of overcoats, which, whether we have them upon our backs or carry them over our arms, add something to our appearance. I could suggest many other points in common were this part of my work lucrative, and, as it were, in the business; but it is not, and I must end. I might remind you that elephants probably grow old (though no man has lived to see it), that overcoats certainly do; that elephants are of divers sex, and this is true also of the overcoat. On the other hand, an overcoat has no feet and it has two tails or none, whereas the elephant has four feet and but one tail, and that a very little one.

I must wind up by telling you why I have written of an "overcoat" and not a "greatcoat." "Greatcoat" is the more vernacular; "overcoat" I think the more imperial. But that was not my reason. I wrote "overcoat" because it was a word similar in scansion and almost equivalent in stress-scheme (wow!) to the word "elephant." Of course, if I had considered length of syllable and vowel-value it would have been another matter, for "elephant" consists in three shorts, "overcoat" in a long, short and long. The first is a what-you-may-call-'um, and the second a thingumbob.

But I did not consider vowel sounds, and I was indifferent to longs and shorts. My endeavour was to copy you, and to have a title which would get people mixed up, so that the great hordes of cultivated men and women desiring to see your play should talk by mistake of The Green Overcoat.

And then their aunts, or perhaps a prig-visitor, would say: "Oh, no, that is the book!" In this way the book would be boomed. That was my game.

If people had done this sort of thing before it would not work now; but they haven't.

Now, Maurice, I end this preface, for I cannot think of anything more to write.

H. BELLOC.