Jeremy and Hamlet

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Hugh Walpole

Jeremy and Hamlet

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He was aware that in the upper regions something was preparing. He was aware of this in general by a certain stir that there was, of agitated voices and hurrying footsteps and urgent cries; but he was aware more immediately because of the attentions of Mary, Jeremy’s younger sister.

He had always hated Mary. Are dogs, in their preferences and avoidances, guided at all by physical beauty or ugliness? Was Helen of Troy adored by the dogs of that town and did Sappho command the worship of the hounds of Greece? We are told nothing of it and, on the other hand, we know that Lancelot Gobbo had a devoted dog and that Charon, who cannot have been a handsome fellow, was most faithfully dog-attended. I do not think that Hamlet minded poor Mary’s plainness, her large spectacles, her sallow complexion, colourless hair and bony body. His dislike arose more probably from the certainty that she would always stroke him the wrong way, would poke her fingers into his defenceless eyes, would try to drag him on to her sharp, razor-edged knees and would talk to him in that meaningless sing-song especially invented by the sentimental of heart and slow of brain for the enchantment of babies and animals.

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