The World' and other unpublished works of Radclyffe Hall by Jana Funke

The World' and other unpublished works of Radclyffe Hall by Jana Funke

Author:Jana Funke [Funke, Jana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784998103
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2016-06-16T00:00:00+00:00


The World

Chapter 1

I

When the searchlight of War illumined Europe in the summer of 1914, some people saw mankind as a whole and in that vision lost sight of themselves. But others – and of these Stephen Winter was one – felt the searchlight turn sharply on their own personalities, on the dim and hitherto unnoticed corners of their quiet, everyday lives.

Stephen had been a very average young man, as far as he had been able to judge. There had been hundreds like him in England alone. Except for the fact that he suffered from asthma and had consequently gone out less than most men in the evenings, he had differed very little from the other clerks with whom he worked at the bank. He was twenty five years old, pale, with kindly brown eyes and hair that looked prematurely thin; he stooped a little from long hours at a desk and a not over strong constitution; he was always neatly dressed but always slightly shabby; he was thoroughly reliable and temperate in all things, and had thus every prospect of attaining his ambition and ultimately becoming a Bank Manager.

Hitherto Stephen had been well content, or at least had imagined that he was so; but the searchlight showed him, all in a moment, that this had not been the case. He had not been discontented either, he found; he had just been nothing at all. For the past five years of his business career, there had been Stephen Winter, his shabby clothes, his cheap cigarettes and his asthma. There had also been that enormous appendage of ledgers and pass-books, dividends and cheques, with here and there an over-draft, and here and there a bank-loan, and here and there a client bringing in a silver-chest or a jewel-case for custody during the holidays. There had been the bus from Notting Hill early every morning, and the bus again to Notting Hill early every evening. There had been the boarding house, the male and female boarders, the badly cooked unappetising meals. There had been the evenings, sometimes spent at [the] cinema or theatre, but more often in his rather dingy bedroom with a book; never if he could help it among his fellow boarders – he always felt so tired in the evenings.

His reading had consisted of imposing books of travel, occasionally varied by a good detective story or a novel of the sentimental kind. For the most part however, he preferred the books of travel, though why he should have done so at that period is a mystery, – he had never been further from England than Boulogne, a place that he had thought distinctly smelly. But there it was, he did enjoy those books of travel, they made him feel less narrow in the chest. He would say, a little smugly, that the wise man did his travelling between the covers of a book. He had quite a useful store of such helpful platitudes wherewith to garnish the cold mutton of his life.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.