The Complete Works of Saki Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  I - THE SHORT STORIES

  REGINALD

  REGINALD

  REGINALD ON CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

  REGINALD ON THE ACADEMY

  REGINALD AT THE THEATRE

  REGINALD’S PEACE POEM

  REGINALD’S CHOIR TREAT

  REGINALD ON WORRIES

  REGINALD ON HOUSE-PARTIES

  REGINALD AT THE CARLTON

  REGINALD ON BESETTING SINS - THE WOMAN WHO TOLD THE TRUTH

  REGINALD’S DRAMA

  REGINALD ON TARIFFS

  REGINALD’S CHRISTMAS REVEL

  REGINALD’S RUBAIYAT

  THE INNOCENCE OF REGINALD

  REGINALD IN RUSSIA - FIRST COLLECTED, 1910

  REGINALD IN RUSSIA

  THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANNE

  THE LOST SANJAK

  THE SEX THAT DOESN’T SHOP

  THE BLOOD-FEUD OF TOAD-WATER - A WEST-COUNTRY EPIC

  A YOUNG TURKISH CATASTROPHE - IN TWO SCENES

  JUDKIN OF THE PARCELS

  GABRIEL-ERNEST

  THE SAINT AND THE GOBLIN

  THE SOUL OF LAPLOSHKA

  THE BAG

  THE STRATEGIST

  CROSS CURRENTS

  THE BAKER’S DOZEN

  THE MOUSE

  THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS - FIRST COLLECTED, 1911

  ESMÉ

  THE MATCH-MAKER

  TOBERMORY

  MRS. PACKLETIDE’S TIGER

  THE STAMPEDING OF LADY BASTABLE

  THE BACKGROUND

  HERMANN THE IRASCIBLE—A STORY OF THE GREAT WEEP

  THE UNREST-CURE

  THE JESTING OF ARLINGTON STRINGHAM

  SREDNI VASHTAR

  ADRIAN - A CHAPTER IN ACCLIMATIZATION

  THE CHAPLET

  THE QUEST

  WRATISLAV

  THE EASTER EGG

  FILBOID STUDGE, THE STORY OF A MOUSE THAT HELPED

  THE MUSIC ON THE HILL

  THE STORY OF ST. VESPALUUS

  THE WAY TO THE DAIRY

  THE PEACE OFFERING

  THE PEACE OF MOWSLE BARTON

  THE TALKING-OUT OF TARRINGTON

  THE HOUNDS OF FATE

  THE RECESSIONAL

  A MATTER OF SENTIMENT

  THE SECRET SIN OF SEPTIMUS BROPE

  “MINISTERS OF GRACE”

  THE REMOULDING OF GROBY LINGTON

  BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS - FIRST COLLECTED, 1914

  bTHE SHE-WOLF

  LAURA

  THE BOAR-PIG

  THE BROGUE

  THE HEN

  THE OPEN WINDOW

  THE TREASURE-SHIP

  THE COBWEB

  THE LULL

  THE UNKINDEST BLOW

  THE ROMANCERS

  THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD

  THE SEVENTH PULLET

  THE BLIND SPOT

  DUSK

  A TOUCH OF REALISM

  COUSIN TERESA

  THE YARKAND MANNER

  THE BYZANTINE OMELETTE

  THE FEAST OF NEMESIS

  THE DREAMER

  THE QUINCE TREE

  THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS

  THE STAKE

  CLOVIS ON PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES

  A HOLIDAY TASK

  THE STALLED OX

  THE STORY-TELLER

  A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND

  THE ELK

  “DOWN PENS”

  THE NAME-DAY

  THE LUMBER-ROOM

  FUR

  THE PHILANTHROPIST AND THE HAPPY CAT

  ON APPROVAL

  THE TOYS OF PEACE - FIRST COLLECTED, 1923

  THE TOYS OF PEACE

  LOUISE

  TEA

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CRISPINA UMBERLEIGH

  THE WOLVES OF CERNOGRATZ

  LOUIS

  THE GUESTS

  THE PENANCE

  THE PHANTOM LUNCHEON

  A BREAD AND BUTTER MISS

  BERTIE’S CHRISTMAS EVE

  FOREWARNED

  THE INTERLOPERS

  QUAIL SEED

  CANOSSA

  THE THREAT

  EXCEPTING MRS. PENTHERBY

  MARK

  THE HEDGEHOG

  THE MAPPINED LIFE

  FATE

  THE BULL

  MORLVERA

  SHOCK TACTICS

  THE SEVEN CREAM JUGS

  THE OCCASIONAL GARDEN

  THE SHEEP

  THE OVERSIGHT

  HYACINTH

  THE IMAGE OF THE LOST SOUL

  THE PURPLE OF THE BALKAN KINGS

  THE CUPBOARD OF THE YESTERDAYS

  FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR

  THE SQUARE EGG - FIRST COLLECTED, 1924

  THE SQUARE EGG

  BIRDS ON THE WESTERN FRONT

  THE GALA PROGRAMME

  THE INFERNAL PARLIAMENT

  THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE CAT

  THE OLD TOWN OF PSKOFF

  CLOVIS ON THE ALLEGED ROMANCE OF BUSINESS

  THE COMMENTS OF MOUNG KA

  THE POND

  THE HOLY WAR

  THE ALMANACK

  A HOUSING PROBLEM

  THE SOLUTION OF AN INSOLUBLE DILEMMA

  A SACRIFICE TO NECESSITY

  A SHOT IN THE DARK

  I I - THE NOVELS

  THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  WHEN WILLIAM CAME - A STORY OF LONDON UNDER THE HOHENZOLLERNS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE WESTMINSTER ALICE

  THE WESTMINSTER ALICE

  III - THE PLAYS

  THE DEATH-TRAP

  THE DEATH-TRAP

  KARL-LUDWIG’S WINDOW

  KARL-LUDWIG’S WINDOW - A DRAMA IN ONE ACT

  THE WATCHED POT

  THE WATCHED POT - (Alternative Title)

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  ENDNOTES

  SUGGESTED READING

  Introduction and Suggested Reading Copyright © 2006 by Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc.

  Originally published as short stories from 1901 to 1916

  This edition published by Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used

  or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without

  written permission of the Publisher.

  Cover Design by Stacey May

  2006 Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc.

  ISBN 13: 978-0-7607-7373-4 ISBN 0-7607-7373-4

  eISBN : 978-1-411-43154-6

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  INTRODUCTION

  SAKI was called the Oscar Wilde of his day, and hai
led as a master stylist by eminent writers such as G. K. Chesterton, Noël Coward, Graham Greene, and A. A. Milne. Between 1901 and 1916, Saki published more than one hundred short stories, many of which continue to be anthologized in England and America. His lapidary prose, witty dialogue, and macabre humor have influenced generations of popular British writers including Evelyn Waugh, Roald Dahl, and Stephen Fry, as well as best-selling American author Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket). Several of Saki’s most well-known tales of mischievous young men, fatuous aunts, and blood-thirsty beasts have been adapted for television, film, and the theater. Yet Hector Hugh Munro, the man behind the cryptic pseudonym “Saki,” remains something of a mystery, and his large body of work has suffered from unjust critical neglect.

  This edition of Saki’s complete works includes six previously uncollected stories found in the British Library’s archives by biographer A. J. Langguth, and published as an appendix to his extraordinarily well-written Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro. With the addition of these six stories, Barnes & Noble is proud to offer the first truly comprehensive edition of Saki’s voluminous output. Readers who rediscover Saki in these pages will find much of his writing surprisingly modern in its incongruous mixture of humor and horror. Those who probe into Saki’s biography are liable to be equally surprised by his life’s many contradictions; he emerges as a cynical patriot, a xenophobic world-traveler, and a politically conservative homosexual.

  Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab, Burma (now Myanmar), in 1870. For over a century, the Munro family served the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent, and Hector’s lineage included an ancestor who was attacked and killed by a tiger. Given this blood-spattered limb of the family tree, Hector’s father, a police official, understandably sought to protect his wife and three young children from the hazards of life in a remote Burmese outpost. Like other canonical writers born into the Anglo-Indian milieu, such as William Makepeace Thackery, Rudyard Kipling, and George Orwell, Hector was sent to England to receive a proper education. Hector, his two older siblings, and their pregnant mother arrived in the safety of Devonshire in 1872. But in a cruel twist of fate that might have appeared in one of Saki’s own tales, his mother was charged by a cow while strolling along a pastoral lane. A combination of fright and injury caused her to miscarry and die shortly thereafter.

  When their father returned to his post, the Munro children were left in the care of two repressive spinster aunts. In his essay “The Burden of Childhood,” Graham Greene linked the pitiless tone of Saki’s fiction to the isolation he experienced as a young boy. Many of Saki’s witty observations do seem to trace their origin to his early, unhappy memories: “People talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes.” Indeed, Hector’s imperious aunts confined him indoors under a watchful eye and kept him from playing with others. Hector turned to practical jokes and a love of books to stave off loneliness. Like Thackery and Kipling before him, the pleasures of fiction offered Hector an escape from a rigid Victorian upbringing among loveless relations.

  Hector was a teenager by the time his father returned from Burma to rescue his children. They traveled as a family to Europe, and during an extended stay in Davos, Switzerland, Hector made the acquaintance of British man of letters John Addington Symonds. Symonds enjoyed fame at the time for his multi-volume history of the Italian Renaissance, but he later gained notoriety as one of the first openly homosexual writers. He and Hector spent many hours in conversation together, and it is likely that Hector was as impressed with Symonds’ literary accomplishments as he was with the avuncular writer’s candor on same-sex relationships. Hector, however, was to remain closeted all his life. His devoted sister, Ethel, recollected that the “[o]ne subject [Saki] never wrote on, was sex, and I am certain if he had, he would have made fun of it.” Ethel was only partially correct. The almost total absence of sex in Saki’s work suggests that his homosexuality was a painful secret—the one thing he could not make fun of.

  In 1893, Hector followed in his father’s footsteps and sailed to Burma to serve as a policeman. Once there, he adopted a pet tiger despite his family’s history of being eaten by them. Hector seemed to take little interest in his role as a servant of the Empire, and unlike his contemporary, Kipling, and another policeman who served in Burma, George Orwell, his tour of duty left few obvious traces in his work. Malaria, however, ravaged his body and left a lasting mark. Hector was forced to resign his post and return to England in 1894.

  THE WESTMINSTER ALICE (1902)

  After a long convalescence with his family, Hector made his way to London intent on becoming a writer. He had the good fortune there to befriend political cartoonist Francis Carruthers Gould. Gould skewered the pretensions of his day in the Westminster Gazette, a newspaper popular among London’s intelligentsia. Despite Hector’s confirmed support of the Tories, and Gould’s advocacy of the Liberal Party, they collaborated on a serial parody of Alice in Wonderland that adopted the illogic of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece to indict major political figures for their inept prosecution of the Boer War. The mismatched pair’s work became an instant hit and was soon collected in book form as The Westminster Alice. The events satirized are mostly forgotten today, however, readers will certainly enjoy some of the more incendiary rounds fired at political incompetence, as when the White Knight (Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War) brags to Alice that he sent troops into battle with outmoded weapons “[b]ecause if they happened to fall into the hands of the enemy they’d be very little use to him.” Most significantly, the parodies introduced London’s tastemakers to a new talent who signed his work, “Saki.”

  In the twilight of the Victorian era, a vogue for the Rubáiyát of the eleventh century poet-astronomer Omar Khayyám gripped England. The quatrains of the Rubáiyát alternate between extolling the pleasures of wine and song, and conjuring images of decay and death. This oscillation between light and dark must have appealed to Hector, who adopted the name of the winepourer wistfully addressed in the poem: “And when . . . Sákí, you shall pass [. . .] and in your joyous errand reach the spot [. . .]—turn down an empty Glass!” These lines compress the spirit of Saki’s oeuvre, a unique body of work that evinces an intoxication with life’s joys and a morbid fascination with its cruelties. Perhaps no other pseudonym has so accurately reflected a writer’s work and foreshadowed his ultimate fate.

  Saki’s gift for dreaming up felicitous names extended to the fictional characters he invented as well. His knack for a nomenclature that combines sonorous effect with a suggestion of character equals or surpasses that of Charles Dickens and P. G. Wodehouse. We meet in his stories and novels such figures as: Loona Bimberton, Septimus Brope, Merla Blathlington, Framton Nuttel, and Ada Spelvexit. But his most enduring characters are the “brilliant young men” who thumbed their noses at convention: Reginald, Clovis Sangrail, and Comus Bassington.

  REGINALD (1904) & REGINALD IN RUSSIA (1910)

  A taste of success encouraged Saki to publish a series of stories featuring one of those blithe, irresponsible, frivolous bachelors who seem to define Edwardian British humor. Saki’s creation, Reginald, appeared in occasional stories in the Westminster Gazette. These very short pieces were intended as ephemera, though they betray Saki’s aspiration to achieve Wilde’s popularity as an epigrammatist. Reginald remarks that “beauty is only sin deep,” and warns us, “Never be a pioneer. It’s the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.” Reginald upsets his friends and relatives, misbehaves at house parties, borrows money liberally, and chafes at propriety whenever and wherever it is to be found. Yet Saki’s confections could also be bitter. The early Reginald stories evince a melancholy that characterizes Saki’s later output. Perhaps self-loathing lurked in his portrayal of Reginald as a well-tailored dandy and lover of delicacies who could not pay his own way. Certainly some of Saki’s own dismay at the fading of his youth appears in Reginald’s quip that “[t]o
have reached thirty is to have failed in life.”

  Saki, now in his thirties and still supported by his father, sought a way to carve out some lasting success beyond the drawing room notoriety he had achieved. He became a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post, a politically conservative paper. Between 1903 and 1907, he traveled through the Balkans to gauge the growing unrest there, filed reports from Warsaw, reached St. Petersburg in time to witness the Bloody Sunday march on the tsar’s Winter Palace, and concluded by reviewing theater in Paris. The tumultuous times and social ferment he experienced freed him from the constraints of British decorum. According to Langguth, Saki maintained several relationships with men during his years as a correspondent. Nevertheless, his dispatches, signed H. H. Munro, preserve the author’s resolute political conservatism. He found confirmation for his belief in an innate British superiority in all his travels, and this chauvinism would continually be reasserted in his work.

  Despite its title, Saki’s wanderings contributed only marginally to his next volume of short stories, Reginald in Russia. His mastery of the art of narrative compression shines through in several of the tales, as does his unerring sense for well-timed surprise endings reminiscent of his American contemporary, O. Henry (William Sydney Porter). Often the plot twists feature some darkly comic element, as in two fine stories, “The Reticence of Lady Anne” and “The Mouse.” In the case of the even more remarkable “Gabriel-Ernest,” Saki is able to marshal his literary talents to treat some of his favorite characters—children, werewolves, and addled aunts—with a mixture of humor and horror that manages to be both pitiless and good natured.

  THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS (1911)

  When sales of his first slim volumes disappointed, Saki found a new publisher, John Lane. Lane had established himself in the 1890s as the publisher of Oscar Wilde and the Yellow Book, a flamboyant periodical that trumpeted the end of the Victorian era and defined the Decadent Movement of fin-de-siècle London. Oscar Wilde was incorrectly reported to have had a copy of the Yellow Book under his arm when he was arrested for “acts of gross indecency with other male persons.” The scandal led to the end of the Yellow Book and the beginning of Lane’s concern that another of his writers would be jailed for homosexuality. Perhaps fearing that Saki’s homosexuality would be discovered, Lane did not aggressively promote him. Nonetheless, The Chronicles of Clovis received favorable reviews and a growing cadre of admirers. Later testaments from Noël Coward and A. A. Milne make it clear that Saki’s irreverent characters had already become favorites of the aspiring literary set.