My mother, who was then living with me
alone, perhaps had less enjoyment; for, in the absence of my
wife, who is my usual helper in these times of parturition, I
must spur her up at all seasons to hear me relate and try to
clarify my unformed fancies.
And while I was groping for the fable and the character
required, behold I found them lying ready and nine years old
in my memory. Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease
porridge in the pot, nine years old. Was there ever a more
complete justification of the rule of Horace? Here, thinking
of quite other things, I had stumbled on the solution, or
perhaps I should rather say (in stagewright phrase) the
Curtain or final Tableau of a story conceived long before on
the moors between Pitlochry and Strathardle, conceived in
Highland rain, in the blend of the smell of heather and bog-
plants, and with a mind full of the Athole correspondence and
the memories of the dumlicide Justice. So long ago, so far
away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and the mutual
tragic situation of the men of Durrisdeer.
My story was now world-wide enough: Scotland, India, and
America being all obligatory scenes. But of these India was
strange to me except in books; I had never known any living
Indian save a Parsee, a member of my club in London, equally
civilised, and (to all seeing) equally accidental with
myself. It was plain, thus far, that I should have to get
into India and out of it again upon a foot of fairy
lightness; and I believe this first suggested to me the idea
of the Chevalier Burke for a narrator.
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