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Hugh Walpole
John Cornelius: His Life and Adventures
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CHAPTER II
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FOREWORD It has been only after much thought and consideration that I have finally decided on the form that this book must take. John Cornelius died on December 8th, 1921. During the years since his death there has appeared an official biography;
[1]
also, among others, two critical works of especial importance.
[2]
PART I
SEA AND LAND
CHAPTER I
AT THE AGE OF FIVE HIS ADVENTURES WERE NUMEROUS; THERE WERE THE DUCKLINGS; ALSO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER
His mother was the daughter of William Baring, proprietor of the White Horse Inn at Caerlyn Sands. Baring, from all I ever heard, must have been a grand, boasting, foolish character, famous locally and known even in distant parts of Glebeshire.
CHAPTER II
THE GREAT SHELL-BOX; AND HOW JULIET SPOKE FROM THE BALCONY
From the age of five years to eight John Cornelius must have led a quiet, domestic and very happy existence. During those years only two events of major importance occurred; it is with these that this chapter deals. He may be seen, a small restless enquiring figure, growing in vitality if not in beauty, moving up and down, in and out, talking to anybody, for ever asking questions, afraid of no one (although alert now against circumstance after the death of ‘Old Laces’).
CHAPTER III
DEATH OF HIS FATHER
Reverently he put Ada Montgomery’s address away in the little shell-box that his father had given him two years before for Christmas; he then proceeded on the solemn business of growing older.
CHAPTER IV
AS COUNTRY HEROES ALWAYS DO, JOHN LEAVES FOR LONDON, AFTER MEETING MR. LIPPER
For the next eighteen months John and his mother succeeded in existing. When John was nearly eleven years of age, had a good sentimental education but no sort of a practical one, had still Ada Montgomery’s address in his shell-box but was not a step nearer London, enter Mr. Lipper, the God out of the Machine, the spider in the wash-tub.
they all shouted with laughter. I was not in the least disturbed and suggested that I should sing. So, turning my back on the empty stalls and facing the funny, rather forlorn little group of actors, I gave them “Oft in the stilly night,” “Gone were but the winter cold” and “Weep you no more, sad fountains.” After these they laughed no longer. I knew what is dearest of all things to the actor’s and singer’s heart, that silence of absorption, of emotional fulfilment. And what followed was quite marvellous. There was a moment, it seemed, in Fair Rosamond, when a minstrel sings beneath her bower. On the following evening, dressed in red tights with a feather in my cap and a property lute in my hand, I should step forward and sing to the bower “Weep you no more, sad fountains.” Little Jimmy Despard, who always played the flute in the four-piece Theatre orchestra, was found (he was easily discovered in “The Hare and Hound” next door) and I rehearsed the song to his accompaniment, and everyone was ravished. I was to be paid. I was, in fact, for one night at least, to be a real professional actor.’
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