Читать книгу High Road to China - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 5

William Bede O’Malley died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 22 July 1974, aged 80. He left behind him an autobiography called, plainly, AN ADVENTURE; it ran to over 1500 pages of manuscript. He left no instructions as to whether he wished it to be submitted for publication. After much discussion his family offered it to me, a distant cousin, to use as I thought fit.

I decided to tell the story of what I think was one of the best of Bede O’Malley’s adventures and it was agreed that I could use excerpts from his manuscript. I wished to include them because I thought that, with some minor editing, they would give a sense of perspective to a story that took place when I was only three years old, a time of which my memory is, to say the least, hazy. The year 1920 is almost as remote as 1492 or 1066 to a lot of people today.

I found that certain incidents did not accord with historical fact in respect of time, but Bede O’Malley was writing without benefit of diary or notes and an old man’s memory does not always recognize the calendar. But it does not alter the truth of what he experienced.

He was an adventurer, a dying breed: but who of us does not still dream of being one?