I emerge from hibernation at the behest of the Trusty Accountant, who tells me to get three envelopes in the mail today. This means that it’s again time for our annual celebration of Tax Day, marked as is customary with a selection from the works of A.P. Herbert.
In this case it’s from his short story "The Negotiable Cow," featuring his protagonist Albert Haddock, a British author whose long-running battles with the Inland Revenue (Britain’s counterpart to the Internal Revenue Service) are chronicled in many of Mr. Herbert’s stories. In the book version, the action starts in court with a witness being asked "Was the cow crossed?" "No, my lord, it was an open cow." [In British commercial parlance, a "crossed cheque" is a check across which two parallel lines have been drawn, which instructs the bank on which it is drawn to pay only to a bank account and not to cash the check.] It develops that the Crown is prosecuting Haddock for failing to pay his income tax. He had offered to pay, by stenciling onto a cow the words "To the London & Literary Bank, Ltd., pay the Collector of Taxes, who is no gentleman, or order, the sum of 57/0/0 (and may he rot!)," signing the cow, and then leading the cow through central London into the office of the Inland Revenue. The Collector eventually declined to accept the check (or, rather, the cow) and told Haddock to lead it away. When he took it into the street, a crowd gathered, and Haddock was arrested for creating a nuisance.
The court, after a fine discussion, acquits Haddock of all the charges, after observing that "no thinking man can regard those parts of the Finance Acts which govern the income tax with anything but contempt." It is not for that, however, that I remember the story (except on April 15), but for this little exchange between the prosecutor and the judge The prosecutor, explaining why the Collector had declined the check, said that first he had tried to endorse the check. "Really? Where?" asks the judge.
"On the back of the cheque, Sir Basil, that is to say, on the abdomen of the cow," answers the prosecutor, who continues with my favorite line in all of Herbert: "The cow, however, appeared to resent endorsement, and adopted a menacing posture."
Here endeth our reading of Herbert. We will return tomorrow with our usual jovial support for the social welfare state.