Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

Sinister Street

By Compton Mackenzie.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint To the Reverend E. D. Stone Epigraph Sinister Street Book I: The Prison House I: The New World II: Bittersweet III: Fears and Fantasies IV: Unending Childhood V: The First Fairy Princess VI: The Enchanted Palace VII: Randell House VIII: Siamese Stamps IX: Holidays in France Book II: Classic Education I: The Jacobean II: The Quadruple Intrigue III: Pastoral IV: Boyhood’s Glory V: Incense VI: Pax VII: Cloven Hoofmarks VIII: Mirrors IX: The Yellow Age X: Stella XI: Action and Reaction XII: Alan XIII: Sentiment XIV: Arabesque XV: Grey Eyes XVI: Blue Eyes XVII: Lily XVIII: Eighteen Years Old XIX: Parents XX: Music Book III: Dreaming Spires I: The First Day II: The First Week III: The First Term IV: Cheyne Walk V: Youth’s Domination VI: Gray and Blue VII: Venner’s VIII: The Oxford Looking-Glass IX: The Lesson of Spain X: Stella in Oxford XI: Sympathy XII: 202 High XIII: Plashers Mead XIV: 99 St. Giles XV: The Last Term XVI: The Last Week XVII: The Last Day Book IV: Romantic Education I: Ostia Ditis II: Neptune Crescent III: The Café d’Orange IV: Leppard Street V: The Innermost Circle VI: Tinderbox Lane VII: The Gate of Ivory VIII: Seeds of Pomegranate IX: The Gate of Horn X: The Old World Epilogical Letter to John Nicolas Mavrogordato Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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To the Reverend E. D. Stone

My dear Mr. Stone,

Since you have on several occasions deprecated the length of my books, I feel that your name upon the dedicatory page of this my longest book deserves explanation, if not apology.

When I first conceived the idea of “Sinister Street,” I must admit I did not realize that in order to present my theme fully in accord with my own prejudice, I should require so much space. But by the time I had written one hundred pages I knew that, unless I was prepared against my judgment to curtail the original scheme, I must publish my book in a form slightly different from the usual.

The exigencies of commercial production forbid a six shilling novel of eight or nine hundred pages, and as I saw no prospect of confining myself even to that length, I decided to publish in two volumes, each to contain two divisions of my tale.

You will say that this is an aggravation of the whole matter and the most impenitent sort of an apology. Yet are a thousand pages too long for the history of twenty-five years of a man’s life, that is to say if one holds as I hold that childhood makes the instrument, youth tunes the strings, and early manhood plays the melody?

The tradition of the English novel has always favoured length and leisure; nor do I find that my study of French and Russian literature leads me to strain after brevity. I do not send forth this volume as the first of a trilogy. It is actually the first half of a complete book. At the same time, feeling as I do that in these days of competitive reading, the sudden vision of over a thousand pages would be inevitably depressing, I give you the opportunity of rest at the five-hundredth page, which reaches a climax at least as conclusive as any climax can be that is not death. I do not pretend that I shall not be greatly disappointed if next January or February you feel disinclined to read “Dreaming Spires” and “Romantic Education,” which will complete the second volume. Yet I will be so considerate as to find someone else to bear the brunt of dedication, and after all there will be no compulsion either upon you or upon the public to resume.

Yours ever affectionately,

Compton Mackenzie

Let me add in postscript that “Sinister Street” is a symbolic title which bears no reference to an heraldic euphemism.

Phillack, August 3, 1913.

“The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted.”

John Keats Sinister Street Book I The Prison House

“What youth, Goddess⁠—what guest
Of Gods or mortals?”

Matthew Arnold

“Slow on your dials the shadows creep,
So many hours for food and sleep,
So many hours till study tire,
So many hours for heart’s desire.”

Robert Bridges I The New World

From a world of daisies as big