Manchurian Books

She never
told me his christian name or indeed spoke a word to me of him; though
at times I came near daring to ask her: add what I have of him--it isn't
much--I got from his brother, my hero, my uncle Ponderevo. She wore her
ring; her marriage certificate she kept in a sealed envelope in the very
bottom of her largest trunk, and me she sustained at a private
school among the Kentish hills. You must not think I was always at
Bladesover--even in my holidays. If at the time these came round, Lady
Drew was vexed by recent Company, or for any other reason wished to take
it out of my mother, then she used to ignore the customary reminder my
mother gave her, and I "stayed on" at the school.
But such occasions were rare, and I suppose that between ten and
fourteen I averaged fifty days a year at Bladesover.
Don't imagine I deny that was a fine thing for me. Bladesover, in
absorbing the whole countryside, had not altogether missed greatness.
The Bladesover system has at least done one good thing for England, it
has abolished the peasant habit of mind.


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