Mr. Jacobs: A Tale of the Drummer, the Reporter, and the Prestidigitateur — A Closer Reading

Parody Through Prolixity

The opening sentence of Mr. Jacobs is a deliberate exercise in stylistic excess. It strings together qualifiers—'hereditary, or, at least, a traditional, if not customary, or, perhaps, conservative, not to say legendary, or, more correctly speaking, historic'—before trailing off into a footnote that omits 'a score of pages.' This mimics the elaborate prose of Crawford's Mr. Isaacs, but Bates pushes it to the point of absurdity. The word 'tiffin' (a light meal) recurs as a running gag, appearing in contexts ranging from 'excessive tiffin' to 'a peg of tiffin.' The narrator's observations are often undercut by bathos: a water-drinker is 'a phenomenon,' but the comparison is to lunch-counter patrons 'vying... to ascertain by trial who could swallow the most free lunch.' Bates uses the catalog subject of parody not as a mere label but as a structural principle, embedding the target's mannerisms into every paragraph.

The Unreliable Narrator and His World

The narrator, a reporter, presents himself as a detached observer, yet he is drawn into Jacobs's orbit with little resistance. He addresses Jacobs 'in Gaelic' and receives a reply in 'two words of modern Hebrew,' a detail that signals the story's disregard for realism. Characters like 'Lamb Ral' and 'Number One' appear and disappear via 'a red light, with plaintive music from the orchestra.' The narrator's own role is ambiguous: he claims to 'write the thing up,' but the story he tells is full of gaps and contradictions. At one point, a character remarks that Miss Eastinhoe 'wouldn't be a fourth wife; besides, she was so shadowy a personage that nobody cared anything about her.' This metafictional jab underscores the artificiality of the plot. The excerpts offer no consistent setting or chronology; instead, they present a series of vignettes held together by the narrator's voice and the recurring motif of tiffin.

The Prestidigitateur as Anti-Hero

Mr. Jacobs is introduced as a man with jeweled eyes that 'blazed with the splendor of a god-like nature,' but his actions are those of a con artist. He gives the narrator a diamond with the caveat, 'do not ask its price or try it with a file until I am gone.' His 'fortune' turns out to consist of 'three discarded wives,' which he bequeaths to Miss Eastinhoe's brother, who then serves them 'for tiffin.' Jacobs's final decision to 'go and be a nun' is delivered with deadpan seriousness, undercut by Lamb Ral's query, 'You won't come and be a nun yourself, Mr. Briggs?' The prestidigitateur's powers—astral projection, glass emeralds, and the ability to snap arms 'like a pipe-stem'—are never explained or justified. Instead, they serve as plot devices that allow Bates to satirize the exoticism and mysticism of Crawford's original. The character remains a cipher, a collection of tricks rather than a person.

Readers approaching Mr. Jacobs should expect a work that is less a coherent narrative than a series of comic set-pieces. The humor depends on familiarity with Mr. Isaacs, but the parody is broad enough to be enjoyed on its own terms. Pay attention to the footnotes and asides, which often contain the sharpest commentary. The story's brevity—around 6,000 words—makes it a quick read, but its density of allusion and wordplay rewards rereading.

I recall enjoying Mr. Jacobs for the way its absurdities never quite mock the warmth beneath the satire, much like the gentle mischief I find in Mr. Punch at Home: The Comic Side of Domestic Life — Themes and Context. Both books share that knowing chuckle—not cruel, just tenderly amused by our own follies. They sit quietly together on my shelf, old friends familiar with life's little wrinkles.