I am still in the early
chapters of Maurice Baring Restored but “Already I have learned from
this book one thing which is wholly true,” as Kerin of Nointel would say in The
Silver Stallion. This is contained in the following anecdote of his
childhood:
“There was another book
which I read to myself and liked, if anything, still better. I found it in
Everard’s [his brother's] bedroom. It was a yellow-backed novel, and it had on the cover the
picture of a dwarf letting off a pistol. It was called the Siege of
Castle Something and it was by—that is the question, who was it by? … The
book was in Everard’s cupboard for years, and then, “suddenly, as rare
things will, it vanished.” I never have been able to find it again,
although I have never stopped looking for it. Once I thought I had run it to
earth. I once met at the Vice-Provost’s house at Eton a man who was an expert
lion-hunter and who seemed to have read every English novel that had ever been
published. I described him the book. He had read it. He remembered the picture
on the cover and the story, but, alas! he could recall neither its name nor
that of the author.” – The Puppet Show of Memory, Maurice Baring
(1874-1945).
The words that most
impressed me were the words in quotations, which indicate that they were
someone else’s. But whose? I found out they were Robert Browning’s, from his poem One
Word More. Of course Baring knew Browning’s poetry, and expected everyone else
to know it, too. I also found out that 'Maurice' in English is pronounced 'Morris'.
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