Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕
Description
Michael Fane arrives in the thin red house in Carlington Road to his new family of Nurse, Cook, Annie the housemaid, his younger sister Stella, and the occasional presence of Mother. From here, the novel follows the next twenty years of his life as he tries to find his place in the upper echelons of Edwardian society, through prep school, studies at Oxford, and his emergence into the wide world. The setting is rich in period detail, and the characters portrayed are vivid and more nuanced in their actions and stories than first impressions imply.
Sinister Street was an immediate critical success on publication, although not without some worry for its openness to discuss less salubrious scenes, and it was a favourite of George Orwell and John Betjeman. Compton Mackenzie had attended both St. James’ school and St. Mary’s College at Oxford and the novel is at least partly autobiographical, but for the same measure was praised as an accurate portrayal of that experience; Max Beerbohm said “There is no book on Oxford like it. It gives you the actual Oxford experience.” Although originally published in two volumes (in 1913 and 1914) for commercial reasons, the two form a single novel and have been brought back together again for this edition.
Read free book «Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Compton Mackenzie
Read book online «Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕». Author - Compton Mackenzie
Once, Michael asked straight out whether his father was in prison and he was relieved when his mother rippled with laughter and told him he was a stupid boy. At the same time, since he had been positively assured his father was dead, Michael felt that laughter, however convincing it were, scarcely became a widow.
“I cannot think what has happened to you, Michael. You were perfectly charming all last term and never seemed to have a moment on your hands. Now you hang about the house on these lovely fine days and mope and grumble. I do wish you could enjoy yourself as you used to.”
“Well, I’ve got no friends down here,” Michael declared. “What is there to do? I’m sick of the band, and the niggers are rotten, and Stella always wants to hang about on the pier so that people can stare at her. I wish she’d go back to her glorious Germany where everything is so wonderful.”
“Why don’t you read? You used to love reading,” suggested Mrs. Fane.
“Oh, read!” exclaimed Michael. “There’s nothing to read. I hate Henty. Always the same!”
“Well, I don’t know anything about Henty, but there’s Scott and Dickens and—”
“I’ve read all them, mother,” Michael interrupted petulantly.
“Well, why don’t you ask Mrs. Rewins if you can borrow a book from her, or I’ll ask her, as you don’t like going downstairs.”
Mrs. Rewins brought up an armful of books which Michael examined dismally one by one. However, after several gilded volumes of sermons and sentimental Sunday-school prizes, he came across a tattered Newgate Calendar and Roderick Random, both of which satisfied somewhat his new craving for excitement. When he had finished these books, Mrs. Rewins invited him to explore the cupboard in her warm kitchen, and here Michael found Peregrine Pickle, Tom Jones, a volume of Bentley’s Miscellany containing the serial of Jack Sheppard by Harrison Ainsworth, and What Every Woman of Forty-Five Ought to Know. The last work upset him very much because he found it unintelligible in parts, and where it was intelligible extremely alarming. An instinct of shamefulness made him conceal this book in a drawer, but he became very anxious to find out exactly how old his mother was. She, however, was more elusive on this point than he had ever known her, and each elaborate trap failed, even the innocent production of the table for ascertaining anybody’s age in a blue sixpenny Encyclopædia: still, the Encyclopædia was not without its entertainment, and the table of diseases at the end was very instructive. Among the books which Michael had mined down in Mrs. Rewins’ kitchen was The Ingoldsby Legends illustrated by Cruikshank. These he found very enthralling, for though he was already acquainted with The Jackdaw of Rheims, he now discovered many other poems still more amusing, in many of which he came across with pleasure quotations that he remembered to have heard used with much effect by Mr. Neech in the Shell. The macabre and ghostly lays did not affect him so much as the legends of the saints. These he read earnestly as he read Don Quixote, discerning less of laughter than of Gothic adventure in their fantastic pages, while his brain was fired by the heraldic pomps and ecclesiastical glories.
About this time he happened to pay a visit to Christchurch Priory and by the vaulted airs of that sanctuary he was greatly thrilled. The gargoyles and brasses and effigies of dead knights called to him mysteriously, but the inappropriate juxtaposition of an early Victorian tomb shocked him with a sense of sacrilege. He could not bear to contemplate the nautical trousers of the boy commemorated. Yet, simultaneously with his outraged decorum, he was attracted to this tomb, as if he detected in that ingenuous boy posited among sad cherubs some kinship with himself.
In bed that night Michael read The Ingoldsby Legends in a fever of enjoyment, while the shadows waved about the ceiling and walls of the seaside room in the vexed
Comments (0)