Sunday Story: The Mistaken Story of Alfred Dunhill

There has been an old story doing the rounds on WhatsApp about Alfred Dunhill on how he came to be a leading tobacconist, with a moral in the end that states that whatever happens is for our good.

My story is not to retell the story, as the story is itself apocryphal, but to give a literary perspective, and in the process derive a broader meaning than originally claimed. However, I need to first recount the original story that has been circulating:

"A church in London had rules that it would not employ anyone, without formal high school education. The old pastor was benign and not a stickler of rules. He allowed Alfred Dunhill (who lacked formal education) as the caretaker to clean the pews, sweep the floor and keep the podium spick and span.

Dunhill had put off taking his high school examination till it became too late. Once the old pastor retired, he was replaced by a younger person who followed the rule book. As he came to know about the caretaker’s education, he issued a notice to him that either he should get a high school certificate in six months or he should resign.

Dunhill knew that you could not teach an old dog new tricks and that he had no option but to resign. He started out his afternoon stroll in deep thought and got into Bond Street. Suddenly, he felt an urge to smoke. He could not find a single tobacco shop on the entire street. He walked further down into a side street where he could purchase his cigarette. He came back to the busy Bond Street. He realized that a small cigarette shop in the street would be a sound business proposition.

He resigned at the church and started a small shop on Bond Street which prospered way beyond his expectations. He noticed that many of his customers were coming from the other side of the street. He started another shop on that side of Bond Street. The two shops multiplied to four and then sixteen In three years, Alfred Dunhill Co. was a leading tobacconist in England.

He started machine-rolling cigarettes and introduced his own brand of Dunhill cigarettes. In five years, he was a millionaire many over. To ensure a consistent supply of tobacco, he entered into an annual purchase agreement with a couple of American tobacco farmers and went across to America to meet them.

It was a big boost for the American tobacco farmers and the contract signing ceremony was converted into a media circus, with a Senator and Governor participating. When the contracts were actually signed, Dunhill affixed his thumb impression because he had not learnt to sign his name.

The Governor was impressed and said, “Well Sir! This is awesome. Even without a formal education you have achieved so much. Just imagine what would you have done if you had a formal education!”

Dunhill’s characteristic often repeated reply was, “If I knew how to read and write, I would still be sweeping the church!”

The story ended with a lesson: Whatever happens in our life is a plan for our Betterment and not for our harassment!"

This story reminded me of almost the exact short story by Somerset Maugham, ‘The Verger’. It made me think if Maugham had cast Alfred Dunhill for his story but then when I did a fact check, realized in fact that Dunhill was educated at a private school and later apprenticed to his father’s business of motoring accessories.

Maugham’s protagonist in his story is Albert Foreman. In the story despite his lack of formal education, Foreman is a dedicated and hardworking individual. Like in the Dunhill story above, Foreman’s life takes an unexpected turn when the new vicar discovers that Foreman cannot read or write and this puts his position in jeopardy. To the new vicar, his  illiteracy (“lamentable ignorance”) can be dangerous and “at a church like St. Peter’s Neville Square, we cannot have a verger who can neither read nor write”. These seems quite reasonable, but the new vicar has ignored the fact that Foreman has managed well without literacy for sixteen years! The vicar fails to examine the situation with sympathy and open-mindedness. Ironically, the Church did not redeem him, but let him down!

Maugham undoubtedly has bared this in mind as he lets the irony reach its peak at the very end of the story. Now that Foreman has become a successful businessman with more than 10 tobacco shops under his hand, he comes to the bank for his regular depositing. The bank manager, impressed by his great wealth, invites him to invest his fortune and is stunned to learn of his client being illiterate. Questions flash in his mind what would have happened if this brilliant man had been able to read and write. To his wonderment, Foreman simply, but aristocratically, replies “I’d be verger of St. Peter’s, Neville Square”. The reply contains no more than 10 words, but all of them are extremely sharp, and irony has peaked. Yes, it is true that if Foreman had been literate, meaning he had accepted the new vicar’s order to learn to read and write, he would have still been a verger!

As a literary technique, ‘The Verger’ is a wonderful example of situational irony. Also worth noting is how Maugham explores parallel themes in his story such as societal expectations, value of formal education, conventions of success and happiness. He also uses the character of Foreman to comment on the importance of practical skills and the arbitrary nature in which society places its norms. There is underlying theme of hypocrisy as well when the vicar pretends to show compassion by giving Foreman three months to learn to read and write, knowing full well that this would be an impossible task. These are hardly Christian values.

Somerset Maugham

Talking of Maugham, it may not seem obvious, but certain books, authors, subconsciously change our world, particularly when they are read in our formative years. 

Maugham for me played a huge role in giving early on in life an insight into the oddities of human nature. Maugham was dispassionate, never critical, and presented his characters in an uninvolved, almost  forgiving way. He stood apart from his stories and characters and left it to the reader to form a judgement. It was a typical British stoic approach, as opposed to French or Russian writers like Maupassant or Chekov, who tended to be involved with the characters as we tended to see them through their eyes.  Later on when I took a job in a blue blooded British company, Lloyd's Register, it was easy to understand the British psyche, including nuances of their language.