Ministers of Grace
“Ministers of Grace” is an unusual story by Saki in that it is very nearly a straight-up science fiction tale about a Duke who decides to replace members of his political cabinet with angels. Except that these “angels” bear a remarkably closer affiliation to what would today be recognized as a clone rather than any sort of heavenly creature. The adjustment is, needless to say, difficult, a reality put into what is on the other hand very much a traditional example of Saki’s power of figurative language. The angelic clone that to all outward appearances looks just like the recently ousted cabinet member Quinston puts the transition thusly:
"I've got to run about behind the wheels of popularity, like a spotted dog behind a carriage, getting all the dust and trying to look as if I was an important part of the machine.”
The Cobweb
Near the end of “The Cobweb” the narrator succinctly encapsulates in efficiently composed metaphor the woman who has inexorably coalesced in the reader’s mind—most readers, anyway—into a figure who has come to seem exactly like the author’s swift parting shot:
“in the centre of which the old woman looked like a withered stalk standing amid a riotous growth of gaily-hued flowers”
Rarely have so few words been so precisely strung together to create such a perfect realized portrait of a woman. Old Martha truly does seem to be like nothing more than a shriveled vegetable out of place and out of time.
The Way to the Dairy
At the opposite end of the spectrum is Saki’s gift for occasionally turning to metaphorical language not so much to provide a perfect summation of character so much as to offer his readers a particularly entertaining sentence to read. Try working this one out from "The Way to the Dairy" and see if you can figure out what it is supposed to mean. Hint: context is of absolutely no help.
“her nieces were hovering forlornly in the background, like chickens that have been hatched out by a duck and are despairingly watching their parent disporting herself in a dangerous and uncongenial element.”
Reginald on Besetting Sins
The opening in this entry of a series of stories by Saki which were ridiculously popular at the time he was writing them, but are almost entirely overlooked by casual readers today shows off the author’s ability to draw humor from creating a collision of words that don’t normally go together but often wind up producing an audible chuckle when Saki forces the collision:
“There was once (said Reginald) a woman who told the truth. Not all at once, of course, but the habit grew upon her gradually, like lichen on an apparently healthy tree.”
Wratislav
In this unusually titled story, a mother—and a Baroness to boot--quickly rises to defend her daughter against charges of not exactly being the sharpest knife in the drawer. As an example of her daughter’s keen wit she quotes her an observation the young lady had made recently about the Triple Alliance: the longstanding mutual defense agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy:
“Something about it being like a paper umbrella, that was all right as long as you didn't take it out in the rain.”
If Elsa’s display of wit seems less than humorous to you, you are not alone. When her easily impressed mother goes on to suggest that “It's not everyone who could say that” the immediate reply from the person who had challenged her daughter’s cleverness in the first place displays a far keener intellect than Baroness and daughter combined with her own retort: "Everyone has said it; at least every one that I know. But then I know very few people."
