"Robert F. Young - Peeping Tommy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

creditors where Balzac was hiding, for instance. Or the time when he intercepted the one and only letter
that Dante wrote to Beatrice (I guess we have Tommy to thank for The Divine Comedy). And then
there was the time he burned Carlyle's first draft of The French Revolution after John Stuart Mill
finished reading it. It was the only copy poor Carlyle had, and he had to do the whole thing over again
from memory. Mill blamed his housemaid, and so does history; but we at the Yore know better.
Probably the most fiendish joke Tommy ever played, though, was the one he played on King
Solomon. On the eve of the Queen of Sheba's arrival in Jerusalem, Tommy got a job in the royal kitchen,
and everyday for the duration of the Queen's visit he slipped six grams of anti-aphrodisiac powder into
the king's daily cup of goat's milk. I imagine it would come as some thing of a shock to Biblical scholars
to know that the Song of Songs is nothing more than a wish-fulfillment reverie.
But Tommy's activities in the past weren't limited to playing jokes. Not only was he a practical joker,
he was also a Peeping Tom.


The one is a natural outgrowth of the other, you see. You can be present at the denouement of
most jokes, but not all of them. Some of them you have to view from the outside, so to speak.
You've probably guessed the truth by now, but I'll unveil it anyway: Tommy Taylor was the "tailor"
who peepedтАФand got blinded for it. But the incident didn't happen quite the way the legend would have
you believe. Legends are about as historically accurate as old Biblical movies.
Tommy never dreamed the Coventry caper would backfire on him. The analogy between his
surname and the occupation of the legendary victim failed to register on his mind, you see, and he took it
for granted that he and the famous tailor were two different people. So, figuring that he was immune from
harm, he costumed himself to conform to the period, pedaled back to anci-ent Coventry, hid his
time-bike, and, using his own name, rented a room whose single window faced the narrowest street in
town. Then he sat back to wait till Lady Godiva came riding by on her white horse. When she did, he
threw open the shutters and lookedтАФand she almost clawed his eyes out.
Now wait a minute. Don't jump to conclusions. I didn't say she tried to claw his eyes out because he
looked. I know as well as you do that she probably wanted someone to look. But Tommy Taylor,
remember, was a practi-cal joker first and a Peeping Tom second. Sure, he lookedтАФ
But he also leaned out the win-dow and, with a long pair of bar-ber's shears, cut her hair off.
тАФROBERT F. YOUNG