The Saki Megapack. Saki

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      MEET THE AUTHOR: SAKI

      Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward, and P. G. Wodehouse.

      Beside his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland), and When William Came, subtitled “A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns,” a fantasy about a future German invasion of Britain.

      Born in Akyab, Burma (also known as Myanmar) when it was still part of the British Empire, Hector Hugh Munro was the son of Charles Augustus Munro and Mary Frances Mercer (1843–72). Mary was the daughter of Rear Admiral Samuel Mercer; and her nephew, Cecil William Mercer, became a famous writer as Dornford Yates. Charles Munro was an Inspector-General for the Burmese Police.

      In 1872, on a home visit to England, Mary was charged by a cow; and the shock caused her to miscarry. She never recovered and soon died. Charles Munro sent his children, including two-year-old Hector, to England, where they were brought up by their grandmother and aunts in a strict puritanical household.

      Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth, Devon and at Bedford School. On a few occasions, when he retired, Charles travelled with Hector and his sister to fashionable European spas and tourist resorts. In 1893, Hector followed his father into the Indian Imperial Police, where he was posted to Burma (like George Orwell a generation later). Two years later, having contracted malaria, he resigned and returned to England.

      At the start of World War I, although 43 and officially over-age, Munro refused a commission and joined 2nd King Edward’s Horse as an ordinary trooper, later transferring to 22nd Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, where he rose to the rank of lance sergeant. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially still too sick or injured. In November 1916, when sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, during the Battle of the Ancre he was killed by a German sniper. His last words, according to several sources, were “Put that bloody cigarette out!” After his death, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood.

      ABOUT “THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS”

      TO THE LYNX KITTEN,

       WITH HIS RELUCTANTLY GIVEN CONSENT,

       THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY

       DEDICATED

      The short story collection The Chronicles of Clovis, which follows, was originally appeared in 1911. The original introduction by A.A. Milne is omitted due to copyright issues.

      Story notes from the original publication:

      “The Background” originally appeared in the Leinsters’ Magazine; “The Stampeding of Lady Bastable” in the Daily Mail; “Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger,” “The Chaplet,” “The Peace Offering,” “Filboid Studge” and “Ministers of Grace” (in an abbreviated form) in the Bystander; and the remainder of the stories (with the exception of “The Music on the Hill,” “The Story of St. Vespaluus,” “The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope,” “The Remoulding of Groby Lington,” and “The Way to the Dairy,” which have never previously been published) in the Westminster Gazette. To the Editors of these papers I am indebted for courteous permission to reprint them.

      ESMÉ

      “All hunting stories are the same,” said Clovis; “just as all Turf stories are the same, and all—”

      “My hunting story isn’t a bit like any you’ve ever heard,” said the Baroness. “It happened quite a while ago, when I was about twenty-three. I wasn’t living apart from my husband then; you see, neither of us could afford to make the other a separate allowance. In spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up. But we always hunted with different packs. All this has nothing to do with the story.”

      “We haven’t arrived at the meet yet. I suppose there was a meet,” said Clovis.

      “Of course there was a meet,” said the Baroness; all the usual crowd were there, especially Constance Broddle. Constance is one of those strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas decorations in church. ‘I feel a presentiment that something dreadful is going to happen,’ she said to me; ‘am I looking pale?’

      “She was looking about as pale as a beetroot that has suddenly heard bad news.

      “‘You’re looking nicer than usual,’ I said, ‘but that’s so easy for you.’ Before she had got the right bearings of this remark we had settled down to business; hounds had found a fox lying out in some gorse-bushes.”

      “I knew it,” said Clovis, “in every fox-hunting story that I’ve ever heard there’s been a fox and some gorse-bushes.”

      “Constance and I were well mounted,” continued the Baroness serenely, “and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight, though it was a fairly stiff run. Towards the finish, however, we must have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere. It was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in a hollow just beneath us.

      “‘There they go,’ cried Constance, and then added in a gasp, ‘In Heaven’s name, what are they hunting?’

      “It was certainly no mortal fox. It stood more than twice as high, had a short, ugly head, and an enormous thick neck.

      “‘It’s a hyaena,’ I cried; ‘it must have escaped from Lord Pabham’s Park.’

      “At that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers, and the hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a half-circle and looked foolish. Evidently they had broken away from the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.

      “The hyaena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness. It had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure. Constance and I and the hyaena were left alone in the gathering twilight.

      “‘What are we to do?’ asked Constance.

      “‘What a person you are for questions,’ I said.

      “‘Well, we can’t stay here all night with a hyaena,’ she retorted.

      “‘I don’t know what your ideas of comfort are,’ I said; ‘but I shouldn’t think of staying here all night even without a hyaena. My home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn’t find here. We had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; I imagine the Crowley road is just beyond.’

      “We trotted off slowly along a faintly marked cart-track, with the beast following