The World’s Tragedy

XVI PREFACE. Em’ly ” — Emily being my Mother’s name, I might cease to respect her. For the same reason she proscribed the Bab Ballads, recommended by a rash tutor, because “ Emily Jane was a nursery maid ” ! Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner was condemned because of the water-snakes whom he “ blessed unaware ” ; snakes being cursed in Genesis ! As it happened, however, I had a backbone in me some where. I had always refused to join the sneaking hypocrite gang at Champney’s ; now I accepted the war, and began to fight for my freedom. I went long walks in the moun- tains, where my tutors could not follow me, and where delightful peasant girls could and did follow me — God bless them ! One day I had a difference of opinion with a tutor, in the course of which he fell from a rock into a loch (whose name I forget) near Forsinard. Memory fails to recall the actual cause of dispute ; but I think I had thrown his fishing-rod into the loch, and thought that it was expedient for him to try and retrieve it. The same night he found me in the heather with Belle Mc. Kay the local beauty (God bless her !), and gave me up as a bad job. So I fought the swine ! They sent me to Malvern, where my weakness made me the prey of every bully, and saved me from the attention of every budding Eulenburg. Sodomy was the rule at Malvern ; my study-companion used even to take money for it. I cunningly used my knowledge of the fact to get taken away from the school.