Many thanks to the Davy Crockett Almanack for leading me to The Tainted Archive, and their post on "How to Emulate THE SAINT On A Limited Budget." The tips include:
3- You must maintain an air of mystery. To truly emulate the Saint you must create an aura of unpredictability around yourself. Always get up and hour or so before your young lady and sneak out, not returning sometimes for weeks on ends. Never say where you've been and always counter questions with other questions such as, 'has a bald oriental man been around looking for me?' or 'Life's too short. Let's go eat oysters and sip bubbly.' Another way to become an enigma is to jump up, asking if it's the police every-time the doorbell rings. When you do this slip a hand into your suit pocket as if you are reaching for a non existent gun. Whilst it is understood that some of these things will be difficult for a married Saint – it can still be done. Simply carry out the steps listed above but prepare yourself for divorce proceedings. Disappearing for weeks on end has been known to annoy certain wives.
I’m having a *very* long evening at work and that made me laugh quite a lot — I’m _really_ glad you posted that.
Now I’m just going to have to resist the urge to answer the next question I get with: “… yes, I can help you with that — as long as you haven’t seen a bald oriental man looking around for me??”
The best way to BE The Saint is to live by the following, from Leslie Charteris himself:
“We will go out and find more and more adventures. We will swagger and swash-buckle and laugh at the half-hearted. We will boast and sing and throw our weight about. We will put the paltry little things to derision, and dare to be angry about the things that are truly evil. And we shall refuse to grow old.
“Being wise, we shall not rail against the days into which we have been born. We shall see stumbling blocks, but we shall find them dragons meat for our steel. And we shall not mourn the trappings and accouterments of fancy dress. What have they to do with us? Men wore cloaks and ruffles because they were the fashionable things to wear; but it was the way they wore them. Men rode horses because they had nothing else to ride; but it was the way they rode. Men fought with swords because they knew no better weapons; but it was the way they fought. So it shall be with us.
“We shall learn that romance lies not in the things we do, but in the way we do them. We shall discover that catching a bus can be of no less adventure than capturing a galleon, and that if a man loves a lady he need not weep because the pillion of his motor-cycle is not the saddle bow of an Arab steed. We shall find that love and hate can still be more than empty words. We shall speak with fire in our eyes and in our voices; and which of us will care whether we are discussing the destiny of nations or the destination of the Ashes? For we shall know that nothing else counts beside the vision.”
Leslie Charteris – THE HOLY TERROR, 1932
It’s not WHAT we do, it’s HOW we do it….
Thanks for featuring this – I have more HOW TO EMULATE posts going up over the coming months, including HOW TO EMULATE A PORN STAR. Enjoy
Just for fun I did a search for “The Saint” books at the University of Guelph library. Not only did “The Saint on Guard” come up but so did a history of the franchise:
“The Saint : a complete history in print, radio, film, and television of Leslie Charteris’ Robin Hood of modern crime, Simon Templar, 1928-1992” by Burl Barer.
Needless to say, over the holidays, my reading with be “saintly”!
That Leslie Charteris quote is wonderful. WONDERFUL!