Quiller-Couch The Delectable Duchy

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5080-8108-1
Verlag: Dead Dodo Presents Quiller-Couch
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 220 Seiten

Reihe: Arthur Quiller-Couch Collection

Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Arthur Quiller-Couch 'The Delectable Duchy.'


The Delectable Duchy was first published in 1894.


Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He published his Dead Man's Rock (a romance in the vein of Stevenson's Treasure Island) in 1887, and he followed this up with Troy Town (1888) and The Splendid Spur (1889). After some journalistic experience in London, mainly as a contributor to the Speaker, in 1891 he settled at Fowey in Cornwall. He published in 1896 a series of critical articles, Adventures in Criticism, and in 1898 he completed Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished novel, St Ives. With the exception of the parodies entitled Green Bays: Verses and Parodies (1893), his poetical work is contained in Poems and Ballads (1896). In 1895 he published an anthology from the sixteenth and seventeenth-century English lyrists, The Golden Pomp, followed in 1900 by an equally successful Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (1900). He was made a Bard of Gorseth Kernow in 1928, taking the Bardic name Marghak Cough ('Red Knight').


Quiller-Couch was a noted literary critic, publishing editions of some of Shakespeare's plays (in the New Shakespeare, published by Cambridge University Press, with Dover Wilson) and several critical works, including Studies in Literature (1918) and On the Art of Reading (1920). He edited a successor to his verse anthology: Oxford Book of English Prose, which was published in 1923. He left his autobiography, Memories and Opinions, unfinished; it was nevertheless published in 1945.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Quiller-Couch, Arthur

Leseproben

THE SPINSTER’S MAYING
.................. “The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit; In every street these tunes our ears do greet— Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo! Spring, the sweet Spring.” At two o’clock on May morning a fishing-boat, with a small row-boat in tow, stole up the harbour between the lights of the vessels that lay at anchor. She came on a soundless tide, with her sprit-mainsail wide and drawing, and her foresail flapping idle; and although her cuddy-top and gunwale glistened wet with a recent shower, the man who steered her looked over his shoulder at the waning moon, and decided that the dawn would be a fine one. A furlong below the Town Quay he left the tiller and lowered sail: two furlongs above, he dropped anchor: then, having made all ship-shape, he lit a pipe and pulled an enormous watch from his fob. The vessels he had passed since entering the harbour’s mouth seemed one and all asleep. But a din of horns, kettles, and tea-trays, and a wild tattoo of door-knockers, sounded along the streets behind the stores and houses that lined the water-side. Already the town-boys were ushering in the month of May. The man waited until the half-hour chimed over the ‘long-shore roofs from the church-tower up the hill; set his watch with care; and sat down to wait for the sun. Upon the wooded cliff that faces the town the birds were waking; and by-and-bye, from the three small quays came the sound of voices laughing, and then a boat or two stealing out of the shadow, each crowded with boys and maids. Before the dawn grew red above the cliff where the birds sang, a dozen boats had gone by him on their way up the river, the chatter and broken laughter returning down its dim reaches long after the rowers had passed out of sight. For some moments longer he watched the broadening daylight, till the sun, mounting above the cliff, blazed on the watch he had again pulled out and now shut with a brisk snap. His round, shaven face, still boyish in middle age, wore the shadow of a solemn responsibility. He clambered out into the small boat astern, and, casting loose, pulled towards a bright patch of colour in the grey shore wall: a blue quay-door overhung with ivy. The upper windows of the cottage behind it were draped with snowy muslin, and its walls, coated with recent whitewash, shamed its neighbours to right and left. As the boat dropped under this blue quay-door, its upper flap opened softly, and a voice as softly said— “Thank you kindly, John. And how d’ye do this May morning?” “Charming,” the man answered frankly. “Handsome weather ‘tis, to be sure.” He looked up and smiled at her, like a lover. “I needn’t to ask how you be; for you’m looking sweet as blossom,” he went on. And yet the woman that smiled down on him was fifty years old at least. Her hair, which usually lay in two flat bands, closely drawn over the temples, had for this occasion been worked into waves by curling-papers, and twisted in front of either ear, into that particular ringlet locally called a kiss-me-quick. But it was streaked with grey, and the pinched features wore the tint of pale ivory. “D’ye think you can clamber down the ladder, Sarah? The tide’s fairly high.” “I’m afraid I’ll be showing my ankles.” “I was hoping so. Wunnerful ankles you’ve a-got, Sarah, and a wunnerful cage o’ teeth. Such extremities ‘d well beseem a king’s daughter, all glorious within!” Sarah Blewitt pulled open the lower flap of the door and set her foot on the ladder. She wore a white print gown beneath her cloak, and a small bonnet of black straw decorated with sham cowslips. The cloak, hitching for a moment on the ladder’s side, revealed a beaded reticule that hung from her waist, and clinked as she descended. “I reckon there’s scarce an inch of paint left on my front door,” she observed, as the man steadied her with an arm round her waist, and settled her comfortably in the stern-sheets. He unshipped his oars and began to pull. “Ay. I heard ‘em whackin’ the door with a deal o’ tow-row. They was going it like billy-O when I came past the Town Quay. But one mustn’ complain, May-mornin’s.” “I wasn’ complaining,” said the woman; “I was just remarking. How’s Maria?” “She’s nicely, thank you.” “And the children?” “Brave.” “I’ve put up sixpennyworth of nicey in four packets—that’s one apiece—and I’ve written the name on each, for you to take home to ‘em.” She fumbled in her reticule and produced the packets. The peppermint-drops and brandy-balls were wrapped in clean white paper, and the names written in a thin Italian hand. John thanked her and stowed them in his trousers pockets. “You’ll give my love to Maria? I take it very kindly her letting you come for me like this.” “Oh, as for that—” began John, and broke off; “I don’t call to mind that ever I saw a more handsome morning for the time o’ year.” They had made this expedition together more than a score of times, and always found the same difficulty in conversing. The boat moved easily past the town, the jetties above it, and the vessels that lay off them awaiting their cargoes; it turned the corner and glided by woods where the larches were green, the sycamores dusted with bronze, the wild cherry-trees white with blossom, and all voluble. Every little bird seemed ready to burst his throat that morning with the deal he had to say. But these two—the man especially—had nothing to say, yet ached for words. “Nance Treweek’s married,” the woman managed to tell him at last. “I was thinking it likely, by the way she carried on last Maying.” “That wasn’ the man. She’ve kept company with two since him, and mated with a fourth man altogether—quite a different sort, in the commercial traveller line.” “Did he wear a seal weskit?” “Well, he might have; but not to my knowledge. What makes you ask?” “Because I used to know a Johnny Fortnight that wore one in these parts; and I thought it might be he, belike.” “Jim had a greater gift o’ speech than you can make pretence to,” said the woman abruptly. “I often wonder that of two twin-brothers one should be so glib and t’other so mum-chance.” “‘Tis the Lord’s ways,” the man answered, resting on his oars. “Will you be dabblin’ your feet as usual, Sarah?” “Why not?” He turned the boat’s nose to a small landing-place cut in the solid rock, where a straight pathway dived between hazel-bushes and appeared again twenty feet above, winding inland around the knap of a green hill. Here he helped her to disembark, and waited with his back to the shore. The spinster behind the hazel screen pulled off shoes and stockings, and paddled about for a minute in the dewy grass that fringed the meadow’s lower slope. Then, drawing a saucer from her reticule, she wrung some dew into it and bathed her face. Ten minutes later she re-appeared on the river’s bank. “A happy May, John!” “A happy May to you, Sarah!” John stepped out beside her, and making his boat fast, followed her up the narrow path and around the shoulder of the steep meadow. They overed a stile, then a second, and were among pink slopes of orchards in bloom. Ahead of them a church tower rose out of soft billows of apple-blossom, and above the tower a lark was singing. A child came along the footpath from the village with two garlands mounted cross-wise on a pole and looped together with strings of painted birds’ eggs. John gave him a penny for his show. “Here’s luck to your lass!” said the wise child. Sarah was pleased, and added a second penny from her reticule. The boy spat on it for luck, slipped it into his breeches pocket, and went on his way skipping. They stood still and looked after him for some moments, out of pure pleasure in his good humour; then descended among the orchards to the village. Half-way up the street stood the inn, the Flowing Source, with whitewashed front and fuchsia-trees that reached to the first-floor windows; and before it a well enclosed with a round stone wall, over which the toadflax spread in a tangle. Around the well, in the sunshine, were set a dozen or more small tables, covered with white cloths, and two score at least of young people eating bread and cream and laughing. The landlady, a broad woman in a blue print gown, and large apron, came forward. “Why, Miss Sarah, I’d nigh ‘pon given you up. Your table’s been spread this hour, an’ at last I was forced to ask some o’ the young folks if you was dead or no.” “Why should I be dead more than another?” ...