Part 1 (1/2)

The Adventure of Living

by John St Loe Strachey

TO MY WIFE

You who know soeneral, and still more of it in the present particular, will not be surprised that, havingof this book, I break theh without any touch of the satirical, that it was only natural that I should do so

The first of my two rules, heartily approved by you, let raphy--We both deem it foolish as well as unseee-- The second, not unlike the first, is not to write about living people

And here am I hard at it in both cases!

Yet, after all, I have kept to my resolve in the spirit, if not in the letter:--and this though it has cost ood ”copy,”--copy, too, which would have afforded s seen by us together which I ret to leave unchronicled, but these must wait for another occasion Many of them are quite suitable to be recorded in one's lifetime For example, I should dearly like to set forth our ride froether with soht have said, concerning the Garden of the Jews at Jahoni, and the strange and beautiful creature we found therein

I count htful and notable things I have seen during nificence of our winter passage of the Splugen, not in a snowstor--a fierce windstor, white dust darkened the air and coated our sledges, our horses, and our faces We shall neither of us ever forget how just below the Hospice your sledge was actually blown over by the h the drifts, and how all ended in ”the welcome of an inn” on the suether, too, that atched the sunrise from the Citadel at Cairo and saw the Pyramids tipped with rose and saffron Ours, too, was the desert e that, in spite of reason and experience, almost betrayed us in our ride to the Fayum You shared with h not of the body, when for the first timethe fateful and well-loved shores of Areat towers of New York, while behind thelowed in sombre splendour the fiery Bastions of a November sunset

But, of course, none of all this affords the reason why I dedicate my book to you That reason will perhaps be fully understood only by me and by our children It can also be found in certain wise and cunning little hearts, inscrutable as those of kings, in a London nursery Susan, Charlotte, and Christopher could tell if they would

If that sounds inconsequent, or, at any rate, incomprehensible, may I not plead that so do the ineffable Mysteries of Life and Death

J ST LOE STRACHEY

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION

It is with great pleasure that I accept Major Putnaestion that I should write a special preface to the Araphy Major Putnam, I, and the _Spectator_, are a triumvirate of old friends, and I should not be likely to refuse a request reeable task than that of addressing an Aht well be described as _Anima naturaliter Americana_ I have always loved Ah I cannot expect them to feel for me as I feel for them, I cherish the belief that, at any rate, they do not dislike ard me as someild and injudicious in my praise of their country I am well aware They hold that I often praise A things,--praise, indeed, where I ought to censure, and so ”spoil” their countrymen Well, if that is a true bill, all I can say is that it is too late to expectmy boyhood people here understood Aerating if I said that there was anything approaching dislike of America or Aland ere apt to parade a kind of conscious and supercilious patronage of the wilder products of Aerated stories about Americans, and especially about the Americans of the Far West,--heard them, that is, represented as semi-barbarians, coarse, rash, and boastful, with bad ends exasperated me beyond words I felt as did the author of _Ionica_ on re-reading the play of Ajax

The world entler voice, the cooler head, That bows a rival to despair, And cheaply compliments the dead

That smiles at all that's coarse and rash, Yet wins the trophies of the fight, Unscathed in honour's wreck and crash, Heartless, but always in the right

There were my superior persons drawn to the life!

When the cohts of the noble Ajax, but gave to another as due to him, the poet touched me even more nearly:--

Thanked, and self-pleased: ay, let him wear What to that noble breast was due; And I, dear passionate Teucer, dare Go through the homeless world with you

The poem I admit does not sound very apposite in the year 1922, but it well reflected ht then be regarded as the Ajax of the Nations Nowadays, not even the youngest of enthusiasts could think it necessary to show his devotion by wanting to ”go through the homeless world” with the richest and the most powerful co tothat Americans may not care to read about the intimate details of ” of a journalist and a public writer whose life, judged superficially, has been quite uneventful I read with pleasure the lives of American men and women when they were not people of action, and I daresay people across the Atlantic will pay ive a word or two of explanation as to the way in which I have treated ht I expect that hty maze and quite without a plan As a matter of fact, however, the as very carefully planned

My sins of omission and of commission were deliberate and, as our forefathers would have said, matters of art

My first object was a negative one; that is, to avoid the kind of autobiography in which the author waddles painfully, diligently, and conscientiously along an arid path, which he has strewn, not with flowers and fruits of joy, but with the cinders of the coraphies only too well They are usually based upon copious diaries and letters The author, as soon as he gets toWe look down endless vistas of dinners and luncheon parties and of stories of how he met the celebrated Mr Jones at the house of the hardly less celebrated Mr Smith and how they talked about Mr Robinson, theelse worthy of gratitude, I have, at any rate, avoided such predestinated dullness