Thomas de Quincey - "The Caesars"

George William Curtis - "Ars Recte Vivende"

Various - "Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862"

G. Harvey Ralphson - "Boy Scouts in the Philippines"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude




But all of this touched Scaw House not at all. Grey and hard in its
bundle of dark trees it stood apart and refused the sun. Peter, in spite
of himself, rejoiced in this brave weather. As the days slipped past,
curiously aloof and reserved though he was, making no friends and seeking
for none, nevertheless he began to look about him and considered the
future.

All this had in it the element of suspense, of preparation. During
these weeks one day slipped into another. No incidents marked their
preparation--but up at Scaw House they were marching to no mean
climax--every hour hurried the issue--and Peter, meanwhile, as February
came whistling and storming upon the world, grew, with every chiming of the
town clock, more morose, more sullen, more silent ... there were times when
he thought of ending it all. An instant and he would be free of all his
troubles--but after all that was the weakling's way; he had not altogether
forgotten those words spoken so long ago by old Moses.... So much for
the pause. Suddenly, one dark February afternoon the curtain was rung up
outside Zachary Tan's shop and Peter was whirled into the centre of the
stage.

Peter had not seen Zachary Tan for a long time. He had grown into a morbid
way of avoiding everybody and would slink up side streets or go round on
leaving the office by the sea road. When he did meet people who had once
been kind to him he said as little as possible to them and left them
abruptly.

But on this afternoon Zachary was not to be denied. He was standing at the
door of his shop and shouted to Peter:

"Come away in, Mr. Peter. I haven't see you this long time. There's an old
acquaintance of yours inside and a cup of tea for you."

The wind was whistling up the street, the first drops of a rain storm
starred the pavement, and there was a pleasant glow behind Mr. Tan's
window-panes. But there was something stronger yet that drove Peter into
the shop. He knew with some strange knowledge who that old acquaintance was
... he felt no surprise when he saw in the little back room, laughing with
all his white teeth shining in a row, the stout and cheerful figure of Mr.
Emilio Zanti. Peter was a very different person now from that little boy
who had once followed Stephen's broad figure into that little green room
and stared at Mr. Zanti's cheerful countenance, but it all seemed a very
little time ago. Outside in the shop there was the same suit of armour--on
the shelves, the silver candlesticks, the old coins, the little Indian
images, the pieces of tapestry--within the little room the same sense of
mystery, the same intimate seclusion from the outer world.... On the other
occasion of seeing him Mr. Zanti had been dimmed by a small boy's wonder.
Now Peter was old enough to see him very clearly indeed.

Mr. Zanti seemed fat only because his clothes were so tight. He was bigly
made and his legs and arms were round, bolster fashion--huge thighs and
small ankles, thick arms and slender wrists. His clothes were so tight that
they seemed in a jolly kind of way to protest. "Oh! come now, must you
really put us on to anything quite so big? We shall burst in a minute--we
really shall."

The face was large and flat and shining like a sun, with a small nose
like a door knocker and a large mouth, the very essence of good-humoured
surprise. The cheeks and the chin were soft and rounded and looked as
though they might be very fat one day--a double chin just peeped round the
corner.

He was a little bald on the top of his head and round this bald patch his
black hair clustered protectingly. He gave you the impression that every
part of his body was anxious that every other part of his body should have
a good time. His suit was a very bright blue and his waistcoat had little
brass buttons that met a friend with all the twinkling geniality of good
wishes and numberless little hospitalities.

He had in his blue silk tie a pearl so large and so white that
sophisticated citizens might have doubted that it was a pearl at all--but
Peter swallowed Mr. Zanti whole, pearl and suit and all.

"Oh! it is ze little friend--my friend--'ow are you, young gentleman? It is
a real delight to be with you again."

Mr. Zanti swung Peter's hand up and down as he would a pump handle and
laughed as though it were all the best joke in the world. Curiously enough
Peter did not resent this rapturous greeting. It moved him strongly. It
was such a long time now since any one had shown any interest in him or
expressed any pleasure at the sight of him that he was foolishly moved by
Mr. Zanti's warmth.

He blushed and stammered something but his eyes were shining and his lip
trembling.

Mr. Zanti fixed his gaze on the boy. "Oh! but you have grown--yes, indeed.
You were a little slip before--but now--not so 'igh no--not 'igh--but
broad, strong. Oh! ze arms and legs--there's a back!"

Zachary interrupted his enthusiasm with some general remark, and they had
a pleasant little tea-party. Every now and again the shop bell tinkled and
Zachary went out to attend to it, and then Mr. Zanti drew near to Peter as
though he were going to confide in him but he never said anything, only
laughed.

Once he mentioned Stephen.

"You know where he is?" Peter broke in with an eager whisper.

"Ah, ha--that would be telling," and Mr. Zanti winked his eye.

Peter's heart warmed under the friendliness of it all. There was very much
of the boy still in him and he began to look back upon the days that he had
spent with no other company than his own thoughts as cold and friendless.
Zachary Tan had been always ready to receive him warmly. Why had he passed
him so churlishly by and refused his outstretched hand? But there was
more in it than that. Mr. Zanti attracted him most compellingly. The
gaily-dressed genial man spoke to him of all the glitter and adventure of
the outside world. Back, crowding upon him, came all those adventurous
thoughts and desires that he had known before in Mr. Zanti's company--but
tinged now by that grey threatening background of Scaw House and its
melancholy inhabitants! What would he not give to escape? Perhaps Mr.
Zanti!... The little green room began to extend its narrow walls and
to include in its boundaries flashing rivers, shining cities, wide and
bounteous plains. Beyond the shop--dark now with its treasures mysteriously
gleaming--the steep little street held up its lamps to be transformed into
yellow flame, and at its foot by the wooden jetty, as the night fell, the
sea crept ever more secretly with its white fingers gleaming below the
shingles of the beach.

Here was wonder and glory enough with the wind tearing and beating outside
the windows, blowing the young flowers of the lamps up and down inside
their glass houses and screaming down the chimneys for sheer zest of
life.... But here it all had its centre in this little room "with Mr.
Emilio Zanti's chuckling for no reason at all and spreading his broad fat
hand over Peter Westcott's knee.

"Well, Mr. Peter, and 'ave you been to London in all these years? Or
perhaps you 'ave forgotten that you ever wanted to go there?"

No, Peter was still of the same mind but Treliss and a few miles up and
down the road were as much of the world as he'd had the pleasure of
seeing--except for school in Devonshire--

"And you'd still go, my leetle friend?"

"Yes--I want to go--I hate being in an office here."

"And what is it zat you will do when you are there?"

Suddenly, in a flash, illuminating the little room, shining over the whole
world, Peter knew what it was that he would do.

"I will write."

"Write what?"

"Stories."

With that word muttered, his head hanging, his cheeks flushing, as though
it were something of which he was most mightily ashamed, he knew what it
was he had been wanting all these months. The desire had been there, the
impulse had been there ... now with the spoken word the blind faltering
impulse was changed into definite certainty.

Mr. Zanti thought it a tremendous joke. He roared, shouted with riotous
laughter. "Oh, ze boy--he will be the death of me--'I will write
stories'--Oh yes, so easy, so very simple. 'I will write stories'--Oh yes."

But Peter was very solemn. He did not like his great intention to be
laughed at.

"I mean it," he said rather gruffly.

"Oh yes, that's of course--but that is enough. Oh dear, yes ... well, my
friend, I like you. You are very strong, you are brave I can see--you have
a fine spirit. One thing you lack--with all you English it is the same."

He paused interrogatively but Peter did not seem to wish to know what this
quality was.

"Yes, it is ze Humour--you do not see how funny life is--always--always
funny. Death, murder, robberies, violences--always funny--you are. Oh!
so solemn and per'aps you will be annoyed, think it tiresome, because I
laugh--"

"No," said Peter gravely, "I like your laughing."

"Ah! That is well." Suddenly he jerked his body forward and stared into
Peter's face.

"Well!... Will you come?"

Peter hung back, his face white. He was only conscious that Zachary, quiet
and smiling in the background, watched him intently.

"What!... with you ... to London!"

"Yes ... wiz me--what of your father? Will he be furious, hey?"

"He won't like it--" Peter continued slowly. "But I don't care. I'll leave
him--But I should have no money--nothing!"

"An', no matter--I will take you to London for nothing and then--if you
like it--you may work for me. Two pounds a week--you would be useful."

"What should I do?"

"I have a bookshop--you would look after ze books and also ze customers."
This seemed to amuse Mr. Zanti very much. "Two pounds a week is a lot of
money for ze work--and you will have time--ho yes--much time for your
stories."

Peter's eyes burned. London--a bookshop--freedom. Oh! wonderful world! His
heart was beating so that words would not come.

"Oh!" he murmured. "Oh!"

"Ah, that's well!" Mr. Zanti clapped him on the shoulder. "There is no need
for you to say now. On ze Wednesday in Easter week I go--before then you
will tell me. We shall get on together, I know it. If you will 'ave a
leetle more of ze Humour you will be a very pleasant boy--and useful--Ho,
yes!"

To Peter then the shop was not visible--a mist hung about his eyes. "Much
time for your stories"... said Mr. Zanti, and he shouted with laughter as
his big form hung before Peter. The large white hand with the flashing
rings enclosed Peter's.

For a moment the hands were on his shoulders and in his nostrils was the
pungent scent of the hair-oil that Mr. Zanti affected--afterwards silence.

Peter said farewell to Zachary and promised to come soon and see him again.
The little bell tinkled behind him and he was in the street. The great wind
caught him and blew him along the cobbles. The flying mountains of cloud
swept like galleons across the moor, and in Peter's heart was overwhelming
triumph ... the lights of London lit the black darkness of the high sea
road.


IV

The doors of Scaw House clanged behind him and at once he was aware that
his father had to be faced. Supper was eaten in silence. Peter watched his
father and his grandfather. Here were the three of them alone. What his
grandfather was his father would one day be, what his father was, he ...
yes, he must escape. He stared at the room's dreary furniture, he listened
to the driving rain and he was conscious that, from the other side of the
table, his father's eyes were upon him.

"Father," he said, "I want to go away." His heart was thumping.

Mr. Westcott got up from his place at the table and stood, with his legs a
little apart, looking down at his son.

"Why?"

"I'm doing no good here. That office is no use to me. I shall never be a
solicitor. I'm nearly eighteen and I shall never get on here. I remember
things... my mother..." his voice choked.

His father smiled. "And where do you want to go?"

"To London."

"Oh! and what will you do there?"

"I have a friend--he has a bookshop there. He will give me two pounds a
week at first so that I should be quite independent--"

"All very nice," Mr. Westcott was grave again. "And so you are tired of
Treliss?"

"Not only Treliss--this house--everything. I hate it."

"You have no regret at leaving me?"

"You know--father--that..."

"Yes?"

Peter rose suddenly from the table--they faced one another.

"I want you to let me go. You have never cared in the least for me and you
do not want me here. I shall go mad if I stay in this place. I must go."

"Oh, you must go? Well, that's plain enough at any rate--and when do you
propose leaving us?"

"After Easter--the Wednesday after Easter," he said. "Oh, father, please.
Give me a chance. I can do things in London--I feel it. Here I shall never
do anything."

Peter raised his eyes to his father's and then dropped them. Mr. Westcott
senior was not pleasant to look at.

"Let us have no more of this--you will stay here because I wish it. I like
to have you here--father and son--father and son."

He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder--"Never mention this again for
your own sake--you will stay here until I wish you to go."

But Peter broke free.

"I _will_ go," he shouted--"I _will_ go--you _shall_ not keep me here. I
have a right to my freedom--what have you ever done for me that I should
obey you? I want to leave you and never see you again. I ..." And then his
eyes fell--his legs were shaking. His father was watching him, no movement
in his short thick body--Peter's voice faltered--"I _will_ go," he said
sullenly, his eyes on the ground.

His grandfather stirred in his sleep. "Oh, what a noise," he muttered,
"with the rain and all."

But Mr. Westcott removed with a careful hand the melodrama that his young
son had flung about the room.

"That's enough noise," he said, "you will _not_ go to London--nor indeed
anywhere else--and for your own peace of mind I should advise you not to
mention the subject again. The hour is a little early but I recommend your
bedroom."

Peter went. He was trembling from head to foot. Why? He undressed and
prepared himself for battle. Battle it was to be, for the Wednesday in
Easter week would find him in the London train--of that there was to be no
question.

Meanwhile, with the candle blown out, and no moon across the floor, it was
quite certain that courage would be necessary. He was fighting more than
his father.


V

He woke suddenly. A little wind, blowing through the open door flickered
the light of a candle that flung a dim circle about the floor. Within the
circle was his father--black clothes and white face, he was looking with
the candle held high, across the room to the bed.

He drew back the candle and closed the door softly behind him. His feet
made no sound as they passed away down the passage.

Peter lay quaking, wide eyed in his bed, until full morning and time for
getting up.

The opening, certainly, of a campaign.




CHAPTER X

SUNLIGHT, LIMELIGHT, DAYLIGHT


I

Easter fell early that year; the last days of March held its festival and
the winds and rains of that blustering month attended the birth of its
primroses.

Young Peter spent his days in preparation for the swift coming of Easter
Wednesday and in varying moods of exultation, terror, industry and
idleness. He did not see Mr. Zanti during this period--that gentleman was,
he was informed, away on business--and it was characteristic of him that
he asked Zachary Tan no questions whether of the mysterious bookshop,
of London generally, or of any possible news about Stephen, the latter
a secret that he was convinced the dark little curiosity shop somewhere
contained.

But he had an amazing number of things to think about and the solicitor's
office was the barest background for his chasing thoughts. He spoke to no
one of his approaching freedom--but the thought of it hung in rich and
burning colour ever at the back of his thoughts.

Meanwhile the changing developments at Scaw House were of a nature to
frighten any boy who was compelled to share in them. It could not be denied
that Mr. Westcott had altered very strangely since his wife's death.
The grim place with its deserted garden had never seen many callers nor
friendly faces but the man with the milk, the boy with the butcher's meat,
the old postman with the letters stayed now as brief a time over their
business as might be and hurried down the grass-grown paths with eager
haste. Since the departure of the invaluable Mrs. Trussit a new order
reigned--red-faced Mrs. Pascoe, her dress unfastened, her hair astray, her
shoes at heel, her speech thick and uncertain, was queen of the kitchen,
and indeed of other things had they but known all. But to Peter there was
more in this than the arrival of Mrs. Pascoe. With every day his father was
changing--changing so swiftly that when Peter's mother had been buried only
a month, that earlier Mr. Westcott, cold, stern, reserved, terrible, seemed
incredible; he was terrible now but with how different a terror.

To Peter this new figure was a thing of the utmost horror. He had known
how to brace himself for that other authority--there had, at any rate,
been consistency and even a kind of chiselled magnificence in that stiff
brutality--now there was degradation, crawling devilry, things
unmentionable....

This new terror broke upon him at supper two nights after he had first
spoken about London. The meal had not been passed, as usual, in silence.
His father had talked strangely to himself--his voice was thick, and
uncertain--his hand shook as he cut the bread. Mrs. Pascoe had come, in
the middle of the meal, to give food to the old grandfather who displayed
his usual trembling greed. She stood with arms akimbo, watching them as
they sat at table and smiling, her coarse face flushed.

"Pudding," said Mr. Westcott.

"Ye'll be 'aving the pudding when it's ready," says she.

"Damn" from Mr. Westcott but he sits still looking at the table-cloth and
his hand shaking.

To Peter this new thing was beyond all possibility horrible. This new
shaking creature--

"I didn't kill her, you know, Peter," Mr. Westcott says quite smoothly,
when the cloth had been cleared and they are alone. And then suddenly,
"Stay where you are--I have stories to tell you."

Peter, white to the lips, was held in his place. He could not move or
speak. Then during the following two hours, his father, without moving from
his place, poured forth a stream of stories--foul, filthy, horrible beyond
all telling. He related them with no joy or humour or bestial gloating over
their obscenities--only with a staring eye and his fingers twisting and
untwisting on the table-cloth. At last Peter, his head hanging, his cheeks
flaming, crept to his attic.

At breakfast his father was again that other man--stern, immovable, a
rock-where was that trembling shadow of the night before?

And Mrs. Pascoe--once more in her red-faced way, submissive--in her place.

The most abiding impression with Peter, thinking of it afterwards in the
dark lanes that run towards the sea, when the evening was creeping along
the hill, was of a fiery eye gleaming from old grandfather Westcott's pile
of rugs. Was it imagined or was there indeed a triumph there--a triumph
that no age nor weakness could obscure?

And from the induction of that first terrible evening Peter stepped into a
blind terror that gave the promised deliverance of that approaching Easter
Wednesday an air of blind necessity. Also about the house the dust and
neglect crept and increased as though it had been, in its menace and evil
omen, a veritable beast of prey. Doors were off their hinges, windows
screamed to their clanging shutters, the grime lay, like sand, about the
sills and corners of the rooms. At night the house was astir with sound but
with no human voices.


II

But it was only at night that Terror crept from its cupboard and leapt
on to Peter's shoulders. He defied it even then with set lips and the
beginning of a conception of the duties that Courage demands of its
worshippers. He would fight it, let it develop as it would--but, during
these weeks, in the sunlight, he thought nothing of it at all, but only
with eager eyes watched his father.

His reading had, in these latter years, been slender enough. It was seldom
that he had any money, there was no circulating library in Treliss at that
time and he knew no one who could lend him books. He fell back, perforce,
on the few that he had and especially on the three "Henry Galleons." But
he had in his head--and he had known it without putting it into words,
for a very long time--"The Thousand and One Nights of Peter Westcott,
Esq."--stories that would go on night after night before he went to sleep,
stories that were concerned with enormous families whose genealogies had
to be worked out on paper (here was incipient Realism)--or again, stories
concerning Treasure and Masses of it--banks of diamonds, mountains of
pearls, columns of rubies, white marble temples, processions of white
elephants, cloth of gold (here was incipient Romance). Never, be it
noticed, at this time, incipient Humour; life had been too heavy a thing
for that.

But these stories, formerly racing through his brain because they must,
because indeed they were there against his own will or any one else's, had
now a most definite place and purpose in their existence. They were there
now because they were to be trained, to be educated, to be developed, until
they were fit to appear in public. He had, even in these early days, no
false idea of the agonies and tortures of this gift of his. Was it not in
"Henry Lessingham"?... "and so with this task before him he knew that words
were of many orders and regiments and armies, and those that were hard of
purchase and difficult of discipline were the possessions of value, for
nothing that is light and easy in its production is of any duration or
lasting merit."

And so, during these weeks, when he should have attended to the duties of
a solicitor his mind was hunting far away in those forests where very many
had hunted before him. And, behold, he was out for Fame....

Spring was blown across the country by the wildest storms that the
sea-coast had known for very many years. For days the seas rose against the
rocks in a cursing fury--the battle of rock and wave gave pretty spectacle
to the surrounding country and suddenly the warriors, having proved the
mettle of their hardihood, turned once again to good fellowship. But the
wind and the rain had done their work. In the week before Easter, with the
first broadening sweep of the sun across the rich brown earth and down into
the depths of the twisting lanes the spring was there--there in the sweet
smell of the roots as they stirred towards the light, there in the watery
gleam of the grass as it caught diamonds from the sun, but there, above
all, in the primrose clump hidden in the clefts of the little Cornish
woods--so with a cry of delight Spring had leapt from the shoulders of
that roaring wind and danced across the Cornish hills.

On Good Friday there was an incident. Peter was free of the office for the
day and had walked towards Truro. There was a little hill that stood above
the town. It was marked by a tree clump black against the blue sky--at its
side was a chalk pit, naked white--beyond was Truro huddled, with the Fal a
silver ribbon in the sun. Peter stood and watched and sat down because he
liked the view. He had walked a very long way and was tired and it was an
afternoon as hot as Summer.

Suddenly there was a cry: "Help, please--oh--help to get Crumpet."

He looked up and saw standing in front of him a little girl in a black hat
and a short black frock--she had red hair that the sun was transforming
into gold. Her face was white with terror, and tears were making muddy
marks on it and her hands were black with dirt. She was a very little girl.
She appealed to him between her sobs, and he understood that Crumpet was a
dog, that it had fallen some way down the chalk-pit and that "Miss Jackson
was reading her Bible under a tree."

He jumped up immediately and went to find Crumpet. A little way down the
chalk-pit a fox-terrier puppy was balancing its fat body on a ledge of
chalk and looking piteously up and down. Peter clambered down, caught the
little struggling animal in his arms, and restored it to its mistress. And
now followed an immense deal of kissing and embracing. The dog was buried
in red hair and only once and again a wriggling paw might be observed--also
these exclamations--"Oh, the umpty-rumpty--was it nearly falling down
the great horrid pit, the darling--oh, the little darling, and was it
scratched, the pet? But it was a wicked little dog--yes, it was, to go down
that nasty place when it was told not to"--more murmurings, and then the
back was straightened, the red, gold hair flung back, and a flushed face
turned to the rather awkward Peter who stood at attention.

"Thank you--thanks, most awfully--oh, you darling" (this to the puppy).
"You see, Miss Jackson was reading her Bible aloud to herself, and I can't
stand that, neither can Crumpet, and she always forgets all about us, and
so we go away by ourselves--and reading the Bible makes her sleep--she's
asleep now--and then Crumpet wouldn't stay at heel although I was telling
him ever so hard, and he would go over the cliff--and if you hadn't
been there..." at the thought of the awful disaster the puppy was again
embraced. Apparently Crumpet was no sentimentalist, and had had enough of
feminine emotion--he wriggled out of his mistress' arms, flopped to the
ground, shook himself, and, advancing to Peter, smelt his boots.

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