Memoirs of Life and LiteratureMallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
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Memoirs of Life and Literature
Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell), 1849-1923
Finding
us not formidable, he had no objection to talking, though he still was
oddly shy. He told us what he could, in answer to some questions which
we put to him. I cannot remember what he said, but I remember his eyes
and the gentle modulations of his voice. They were those of a man living
in a world of dreams, for whom the outer world was as remote, and the
inner world as pure, as the silver of the shining clouds that were
streaking the peaks of Hecla. His face was my last memento of the
mystery of the Outer Isles.
The rest of our journeyings lay among scenes better known to tourists.
We visited Skye and Rum, the latter of which islands was once occupied
as a deer forest by the present Lord Salisbury's grandfather. Rum is
infested by mosquitoes, which almost stung us to death. Lord Salisbury
told a friend that he protected himself from their assaults by
varnishing his person completely with castor oil. The friend asked him
if this was not very expensive. "Ah," he replied, "but I never use the
best." The present owner has built there a great, inappropriate castle.
We wondered whether its walls were proof against these winged enemies.
Pursuing our southward course, we watched the Paps of Jura as they rose
into the sky like sugar loaves. Plunging through drifts of spray we
doubled the Mall of Cantyre, and got into waters familiar to half the
population of Glasgow. We lay for a night off Arran. The following day
we had returned to our original starting point. We were hardly more than
a cable's length from Greenock, and once again we heard the whistling of
locomotive engines. At Greenock we separated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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