Salutation To Five
Cód:
491_9781406768404
SALUTATION TO FIVE SALUTATION TO FIVE by SHANE LESLIE Biography Index Reprint Series BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS FREEPORT, NEW YORK CONTENTS RETROSPECT .. .. .. .. i I. MRS. FITZHERBERT . . . . . . z6 n. EDMOND WARRE . . . . . . 42 m. SIR WILLIAM BUTLER . . . . . . 66 IV. LEO TOLSTOY . . . . . . . . 99 V. SIR MARK SYKES . . . . 133 7104961 KANSAS CITY MO. PUBUC LIBRARY MORTUIS MORITURUS RETROSPECT THE five essays in biography which compose this volume Edmond Warre, Headmaster of Eton Sir William Butler, British General and Irish patriot Sir Mark Sykes, Orientalist and traveller Mrs. Fitzherbert, wife of George IV and Leo Tolstoy have little in common except their personal interest in my mind for this preface is autobiography. They need framing in the manner that old photographs are glued into a family scrap-book. They need not be relatives but may be objects of hero-worship. All five have been so much a part of my life that I feel I shall carry their remem brance away with me. Warre, the god of Eton days Butler, my first steersman on Irish troubled water Tolstoy, inspiration of my Paris days Mark Sykes, an Occidental star who dipped under the horizons of Versailles not to reappear, Mrs. Fitzherbert, naturally, was the one of the five I could not know while she lived. But her mysterious and gracious memory had remained like a family ghost in my home and I was destined to be her final champion with the pen. llie others passed one by one into my impressionable ken until I felt the debt could only be paid by writing. While weaving each into essay form, I found my own mind s biography collecting in the margins like dust upon the gilt-edge. Life is too short to decide whether chance or heredity, choice or environments play the strongest influences. All shared in mine but particularly certain characters, some strong and some quaint or queer. Thanks to books, one can double and redouble life s brevity. In a great library one can taste or drain the life-blood of the great writ
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