The World’s Tragedy

PREFACE. XV he knows how his missionary brother Jack seduced to so- domy his missionary brother Fred, he may still be ignorant of how that brother Fred (one of my tutors) attempted to seduce me in his own mother’s house at Maze Hill. This came a little later ; and I knew exactly what he was doing, as it happened. I let him go as far as he did, with the deli- berate intention of making sure on that point. I think my readers will agree — enough of my tutors ! I ought to make an honourable exception of one Archi- bald Douglas, an Oxford man and a traveller. He taught me sense and manhood, and I shall not easily forget my debt to him. I hear he is dead — may earth lie light upon him ! Of course my Mother and her brother my uncle Tom couldn’t stand him. (I must excuse my mother and my Uncle. The former was the best of all possible mothers, only marred beyond belief by the religious monomania which perhaps started in what one may call “ Hysteria of Widow- hood ” ; the latter a typical sexual degenerate.) They stole his letters and faked up some excuse for getting rid of him. And if “ an orphan’s curse can drag to hell a spi- rit from on high ” what of the curse of a child on those who betrayed him in their bigotry and meanness to such tor- ture as I have described ? My whole soul cramped ; society denied me ; books debarred me, with the rare exceptions of Scott, Ballantyne, and some Dickens, with a few even worse ! To illustrate the domestic principles of literary criticism : I was forbidden David Copperfield because of “ little