The Gods and Mr. Perrin: A Tragi-ComedyWalpole, Hugh
General
The Gods and Mr. Perrin: A Tragi-Comedy
Walpole, Hugh
Endowed public schools (Great Britain) -- Fiction; Teachers -- Fiction
It becomes, perhaps, at once most definitely presented if you take the
Brown Hill as the center, and Pendragon to the right along the coast,
and Truro inland to the left—both at an equal distance—as the farthest
boundaries.
Between Truro and Moffatt's there is a ridge of hill—undulating, gently,
vaguely shaped, with its cool brown colors melting into the blue or gray
of the sky as dim clouds melt into one another.
The Brown Hill itself rises sharply, steeply, straight from the sea,
with the little village—Chattock—at its feet, curling with its steep,
cobbled street up the incline. Halfway down the hill there is a wood—the
Brown Wood—and it hangs with all its feathery trees in friendly, eager
fashion over the little white-stoned and yellow-sanded cove (so tiny and
so perfect in its shape and color that it almost audibly cries out not
to be touched). There is a little part of the wood where the trees part
and you may sit, in a kind of magical wonder, right over the gray carpet
of the sea, hearing what the wood, with its creaking and bending and
rustling, is saying to the water and what the water, with its slipping
and hissing and singing, is saying to the wood. Of the two towns
Pendragon has become, from the invasion of the Vandals, modern and
monotonous. It had, not so long ago, a cove on its outskirts—that was
the whole of Cornwall in a tiny space; now there is a row of modern
villas, red-roofed and wooden-paled. Traill, in his visits there, was
concerned with the chief house there—The Flutes, owned by a certain
Sir Henry Trojan, whose son, Robin Trojan, had been, although senior, a
friend at Cambridge. The house was beautiful both in its position and
in the spirit of its owner, and Traill snatched what moments he could to
visit it and to snatch a respite there.
Had he known, it became in the back of his mind a contrast with the
“lobster red” and the stone corridors of Moffatt's, so that he took its
wide, high rooms and its shining, ordered garden with an added sense of
richness. Had he realized how soon its dignity and peace stood to him
for an “escape,” he would have realized also his growing protest
against his voluntary imprisonment. He went over also on occasions to
Truro—because he liked the walk over the hill, because he liked certain
quaintnesses in the market, in the sharp cobbles of Lemon Street, in the
higher breezes of Kenwyn, because, above all, he liked the dark quiet
and solemnity of the Cathedral.
The point about both Pendragon and Truro is that it was the kind of life
that he was leading at Moffatt's—the sides of it that are soon to be
given you in detail—that led him to notice these places. Contrast drove
him to a sudden opening of his eyes—contrast and Isabel Desart. He was
growing so very quickly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account