The Diary of a Nobody

A City clerk lowers himself into a bath he has lately painted with red enamel, and the water turns to blood. His first thought is that he has ruptured an artery and will be found looking like Marat in Madame Tussaud's. His second is to ring a bell that does not exist; his third is the paint. He climbs out scarlet from head to foot and resolves to tell his wife nothing. This is Charles Pooter of The Laurels, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, who records his own puns then records how well they went, who is patronised at the Lord Mayor's ball by his own ironmonger, and who sets it all down in the same steady hand, because to him it matters. The joke is on him for thirty pages. Then something turns, and you notice you have stopped laughing at the man and started defending him, and shortly after that, how much of him is in you: the small slight nursed for a week, the dignity no one else could see. Few books have loved their fool so completely.