The Danger of the Small Mess

Perhaps the most anthologized piece of Hugh Isidore’s prolific short fiction output from the final three decades of the 19th century would be “The Tumbling Bowls of Mr. Pendalton,” published in 1878.

The story opens with Mr. Pendalton’s inheritance of a collection of ornate bowls:

“There arrived on his doorstep a box, one whose contents Mr. Pendalton knew even before the galloping carriage traffic produced from within a rattle of clay against clay. His beloved aunt had, during her twilight years, grown obsessive in her pursuit to convey the entirety of her meager monetary fortune into ceramics.”

This passage’s mention of his street’s dense traffic foreshadows both the story’s central event as well as its tragic conclusion. Mr. Pendalton sets the bowls up on a shelf, wanting to honor his aunt’s memory. But the shelves are shallow. The bowls sit on them uneasily.

Later, Mr. Pendalton spills a small amount of ash from his ash bucket on the floor near the shelf. As he leans down to sweep them up, another passing carriage rattles a bowl free. It falls, knocking Mr. Pendalton harshly upon the head, resulting in severe disorientation:

“The pain had edged out all knowledge of Mr. Pendalton’s situation. He could recall his own name and understood himself to be home, but nary a scrap of knowledge remained regarding the date or time.”

And so, likely concussed, Mr. Pendalton wanders outside, into the street, where he’s trampled by another passing carriage.

Much of Isidore’s fiction follows this exact formula: a man makes a small mess, leading somehow to his untimely demise.

In “The Chipped Urn of Mr. Branson,” the titular character doesn’t realize his grandfather’s urn is damaged at the base and thus sits unevenly. It spills some ash, which Mr. Branson sweeps up, only to slip on his grandfather’s glass eye (which had also been within the urn) and fall out a third-floor window. In another, “The Loose Nail of Mr. Trenton,” the titular character rushes to sweep up a small pile of spilled tea leaves, only to step on a nail in the process. Seeking help, he rushes limping out into a blizzard, trips, and is covered in snow, succumbing eventually to hypothermia. A late work, considered by many critics to be among his laziest, “The Poorly Constructed House of Mr. Fields,” shows the titular character retrieving a broom to sweep up some dust, not realizing that the broom itself provided pivotal support for his cottage, thus collapsing it on top of him.

As is the case with so many great purveyors of literature, behind the fiction hides Hugh Isidore’s own very real concerns. In a letter to his sister in 1901, he wrote:

“The floor of my home is like the Alps in miniature, dotted with small piles of clutter. But I fear that my removal of just one might be the last thing I ever do upon this Earth.”

Whether this fear inspired Isidore’s work initially, or if his work inspired this fear in him–the danger of detritus becoming a truth for Isidore through sheer repetition–has been debated at length by literary scholars for nearly a century. We do not seek entry into this argument today. Rather, we hope to highlight how an artist’s time dictates their work.

For example, consider this: would it be possible that, had he been working in our present era, Hugh Isidore might never have happened upon what became his chief contribution to literature, the attempt to tidy up after oneself resulting in the loss of life?

After all, he would have had access to devices such as this, a compact vacuum with simple one-button operation and a number of accessories, allowing someone like Mr. Pendalton (or Mr. Branson or Mr. Fields) to clean up their messes quickly and easily, thus potentially preventing their gruesome ends. In this case, Isidore might have been able to focus on his secondary passion: stories about cats solving crimes, which he published under the name of Isabel Hubidore in magazines such as Tabby Quarterly and The Whiskered Review.

Or maybe the updating of the tools would have done little to dispel his phobia of minuscule piles of filth. Perhaps all of his characters would continue to depart the world violently, and the only difference would be that the bowl was dislodged by a passing semi-truck as the protagonist fiddled with a handheld vacuum.

Either way, what’s important is that this has been copy for a vacuum.