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

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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. Jamesβ school and St. Maryβs 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 βThere is no book on Oxford like it. It gives you the actual Oxford experience.β 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.
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- Author: Compton Mackenzie
Read book online Β«Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) πΒ». Author - Compton Mackenzie
βWhatβs all this about?β demanded the constable.
βPlease, my name is Charles Michael Saxby Fane and I live at 64 Carlington Road and I want to go home.β
Michael burst into tears and the policeman bent over and led him by a convulsed hand to the police station. There he was seated in a wooden chair, while various policemen in various states of undress came and talked kindly to him, and in the end, riding on the shoulder of his original rescuer, he arrived at the tall thin house from whose windows Nurse was peering, anxious and monkey-like.
There seemed to be endless talk about his adventure. All day the affair was discussed, all day he was questioned and worried and scolded and threatened. Treats faded from possible granting for months to come. Restrictions and repressions assumed gigantic proportions, and it was not until Nanny went upstairs to put Stella to bed and left Michael in the kitchen with Mrs. Frith and Annie that his adventure came to seem a less terrible breach of natural law. Away from Nurse, the cook and the housemaid allowed a splendid laxity to gild their point of view.
βWell, what a fuss about nothing,β said Mrs. Frith comfortably. βI declare. And what was she doing? Thatβs what some people would like to know. You canβt lose a child the same as you might lay down a thimble. I call it very careless.β
βYes. What a shame!β Annie agreed. βSupposing heβd of been run over.β
βHe might of been run over a dozen times,β said Mrs. Frith. βItβs all very fine to put all the blame on the poor child, but what was she doing?β
Then Mrs. Frith closed her right eye, tightened her mouth and very slowly nodded her head until the most of her pleated chin was buried in the bib of her apron.
βThatβs what I thought,β said Annie mysteriously.
βWhat did you think, Annie?β Michael asked fretfully.
βShe thought you hadnβt no business to be so daring,β said Mrs. Frith. βBut there! Well! And I was daring myself. Very daring I was. Out and about. Hollering after boys. The slappings Iβve had. But I enjoyed myself. And if I sat down a bit tender, thatβs better than a sore heart, I used to think.β
βI expect you enjoyed yourself,β said Annie. βI was one of the quiet ones, I was. Any little trip, and I was sick.β
βCouldnβt bear the motion, I suppose?β Cook enquired.
βOh, it wasnβt the travelling as did it. It was the excitement. I was dreadfully sick in the crypt of St. Paulβs Cathedral.β
βWhat a grand place it is, though,β said Mrs. Frith, nodding. βOh, beautiful. So solemn. Iβve sat there with my late husband, eating nuts as peaceful as if we was in a real church. Beautiful. And that whispering gallery! The things you hear. Ohβ βwell. I like a bit of fun, I do. I rememberβ ββ
Then Nurse came downstairs, and Michael was taken up to bed away from what he knew would be an enthralling conversation between Annie and Cook. It was hateful to be compelled to march up all those stairs farther and farther away from the cheerful voices in the basement.
August arrived without bringing Michaelβs mother, and he did not care for the days by the sea without her. Stella, to be sure, was beginning to show signs of one day being an intelligent companion, but Nurse under the influence of heat grew more repressive than ever, and the whole seaside ached with his motherβs absence. Michael was not allowed to speak to strange children and was still dependent on rare treats to illuminate his dullness. The landladyβs husband, Mr. Wagland, played the harmonium and made jokes with Nurse, while Mrs. Wagland sang hymns and whispered with Nurse. A gleam of variety came into Michaelβs life when Mr. Wagland told him he could catch birds by putting salt on their tails, and for many afternoons, always with a little foolscap of salt, Michael walked about the sunburnt-grass patch in front of the house, waiting for sparrows to perch and vainly flinging pinches of salt in the direction of their tails.
Church was more exciting by the seaside than at home, where every Sunday morning during the long sermon Michael subsided slowly from a wooden bench in the gallery on to a disembowelled hassock, or languished through the Litany with a taste of varnish in his mouth caused by an attempt to support his endurance by licking the back of the pew in front. Nurse told him of wonderful churches with music and incense and candles and scarlet and lace, but, for some reason of inexplicable contrariness, she took Michael to an old Calvinistic church with a fire-breathing vicar, a sniffling vicarβs wife and a curate who sometimes clasped Michaelβs head with a damp hand that always felt as if it were still there when it had long been removed, like a cold linseed poultice. Now at the seaside, Michael went to
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