combustion engine. I was similarly impressed by Sikorski bombers, Big Bertha and the great Zeppelins which attacked Paris and London, and I had already begun to formulate ideas of my own which, had I been born a year or two earlier, might have changed the course of the War, altering the whole development of world history. But I must try not to sound too grandiose. After all, I am a victim of history, not one of her conquerors, and to make it seem otherwise would be to show myself as a silly old man. I do not intend to confirm the view of those louts who already see me as no more than a ludicrous Russian ancient running a second-hand clothes shop in the Portobello Road.
Well, it suits me to let people think what they like. They will be all the more astonished when they read this and see what I achieved. This is my private glee: to know how the peasants and loafers, the scum of three continents, see me, but to be aware of what I really am. There are a few who respect me and to these I tell my secrets. But I do not want fame now. And honour I shall have in plenty when I am dead. I have had enough of politicians to last several lifetimes. My heart could probably not stand any publicity I might now achieve. Admittedly, a small pension, an OBE or perhaps a knighthood, would help me in my old age, since I am now entirely without regular companionship. Mrs Cornelius was the only one to offer me that. It was to be near her that I moved into this area. I could have gone to Earl’s Court. I could have had a job with the government. But I will not talk about Mrs Cornelius for the moment. It will be best to come to her when you know the kind of person who is writing about that remarkable personality who is justly famous, as are her talented children. Here I will say only one thing: she never betrayed me.
I returned again and again to the shop with its solitary English bicycle, until inevitably it was sold. I saw it once, being ridden over the bridge near the Zoological Gardens, and that was that. But I did not care. The symbol remained. Many years later I read the whole of H.G. Wells’s Wheels of Chance, but was disappointed. It contained the seeds of his later literary decline. It was altogether too flippant and held none of the visionary wonderment I had found in The War of the Worlds, which I read in Pearson’s. His Sea Lady, also published in Pearson’s, was equally worthless. The desire to be fashionably amusing can infect the best of us. How is it that a writer can be so full of optimism and faith in one book and so foolish and cynical in another? My studies of Freud - who, as I was to discover, was a bad-tempered, misanthropic Viennese Jew willing to snub anyone he considered his social inferior - have yet to supply me with an answer to this mystery. Not that I have respect for the so-called psychologists, especially those of that same sordid Viennese school. You can take it from me that most of them were on the edge of absolute madness for the best part of their lives. At my single meeting with H. G. Wells I was able to ask why he had wasted so much time on his non-scientific novels and he answered that he had once thought he could ‘achieve the same sort of thing through comedy’. He baffled me by this. I must assume he was making fun of me or that he was drunk or experiencing, as so many artists do, a form of temporary dementia. It is just possible that he could have misheard me for though my English is excellent, as this narrative testifies, I had at first some difficulty in making myself properly understood. I learned colloquial English almost entirely from Mrs Cornelius. My attempts to apply it so as to put others at ease were not always successful. During my first year as a permanent English resident it was not unusual for me to be left in the basket quite innocently by my friend. I could actually communicate better (as I had done in the twenties) by using Pearson’s English, which was at least readily
Well, it suits me to let people think what they like. They will be all the more astonished when they read this and see what I achieved. This is my private glee: to know how the peasants and loafers, the scum of three continents, see me, but to be aware of what I really am. There are a few who respect me and to these I tell my secrets. But I do not want fame now. And honour I shall have in plenty when I am dead. I have had enough of politicians to last several lifetimes. My heart could probably not stand any publicity I might now achieve. Admittedly, a small pension, an OBE or perhaps a knighthood, would help me in my old age, since I am now entirely without regular companionship. Mrs Cornelius was the only one to offer me that. It was to be near her that I moved into this area. I could have gone to Earl’s Court. I could have had a job with the government. But I will not talk about Mrs Cornelius for the moment. It will be best to come to her when you know the kind of person who is writing about that remarkable personality who is justly famous, as are her talented children. Here I will say only one thing: she never betrayed me.
I returned again and again to the shop with its solitary English bicycle, until inevitably it was sold. I saw it once, being ridden over the bridge near the Zoological Gardens, and that was that. But I did not care. The symbol remained. Many years later I read the whole of H.G. Wells’s Wheels of Chance, but was disappointed. It contained the seeds of his later literary decline. It was altogether too flippant and held none of the visionary wonderment I had found in The War of the Worlds, which I read in Pearson’s. His Sea Lady, also published in Pearson’s, was equally worthless. The desire to be fashionably amusing can infect the best of us. How is it that a writer can be so full of optimism and faith in one book and so foolish and cynical in another? My studies of Freud - who, as I was to discover, was a bad-tempered, misanthropic Viennese Jew willing to snub anyone he considered his social inferior - have yet to supply me with an answer to this mystery. Not that I have respect for the so-called psychologists, especially those of that same sordid Viennese school. You can take it from me that most of them were on the edge of absolute madness for the best part of their lives. At my single meeting with H. G. Wells I was able to ask why he had wasted so much time on his non-scientific novels and he answered that he had once thought he could ‘achieve the same sort of thing through comedy’. He baffled me by this. I must assume he was making fun of me or that he was drunk or experiencing, as so many artists do, a form of temporary dementia. It is just possible that he could have misheard me for though my English is excellent, as this narrative testifies, I had at first some difficulty in making myself properly understood. I learned colloquial English almost entirely from Mrs Cornelius. My attempts to apply it so as to put others at ease were not always successful. During my first year as a permanent English resident it was not unusual for me to be left in the basket quite innocently by my friend. I could actually communicate better (as I had done in the twenties) by using Pearson’s English, which was at least readily
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