It may seem absurd and pretentious, above all apropos of this piece of juvenilia, to say that writers, once they have experienced this intense delight, live fully only when they are writing fast, at the top of their being: the rest of the time only the lacklustre shell of the man is present, often ill-tempered (deprived of his drug), rarely good company.
I cannot remember the genesis of Hussein with great clarity, but I rather think that it derived from a tale I wrote for one of the Oxford annuals, to which I contributed fairly often: Mr Kaberry, an amiable man who ran the annual, said that it would be a pity to publish no more than the abbreviated form I showed him, and suggested that I should expand it to a book.
This I did: I was living in Dublin at the time, in a boarding-house in Leeson Street kept by two very kind sisters from Tipperary and inhabited mostly by young men studying at the national university with a few from Trinity. What fun we had in the evenings: the Miss Spains from Tipperary danced countless Irish dances with wonderful grace, big-boned Séan from Derry sawing away at his fiddle and the others joining in as well as they could. On Sundays we would go to a church where, without impropriety, the priest could say his Mass in eighteen minutes; then we would ride to Blackrock to swim; and all this time the book was flowing well, rarely less than a thousand words a day and sometimes much more. I finished it on a bench in Stephen’s Green with a mixture of triumph and regret.
Although I had known some Indians, Muslim and Hindu, at that time I had never been to India, so the book is largely derivative, based on reading and on the recollections, anecdotes and letters of friends of relations who were well acquainted with that vast country; and it has no pretension to being anything more than what it is called, an Entertainment. But it did have a distinction that pleased my vanity: it was the first work of contemporary fiction that the Oxford University Press had published in all the centuries of its existence.
It was fairly well received, and in the writing of the book I learnt the rudiments of my calling: but infinitely more than that, it opened a well of joy that has not yet run dry.
PATRICK O’BRIAN
Trinity College, Dublin 1999
I will begin my story at the first things that I can remember.
My early days were spent with two brothers and a sister in a large cave, high up in the side of a mountain.
Of my father I remember little, except a hazy recollection of a very large shape which brought food to my mother in the first few days of the opening of my eyes.
The first thing to make any great impression on my mind was the killing of my sister.
It happened like this — the day was very cold, we were huddled together for warmth, and mother had gone for food, when I heard a scratching noise outside, and somehow it frightened us, for the others had heard it too.
Then a head appeared in the mouth of the cave. It was that of a large black bear.
The face seemed to split almost in half as the bear roared, and this sent us into the back of the cave, all except my sister, who sat petrified with fear in the middle of the floor.
The bear came right into the cave, and then shot out one of his great paws, and struck her a blow which laid her dead at our feet.
Then he picked her up and went out growling terribly.
Scarcely had the bear gone, when mother returned carrying a tough old pig.
She smelt around for a little, and seemed worried. Then she noticed my sister’s absence, and with a low growl she went straight out of the cave, following the tracks of the bear.
She came back late in the evening with her white fur splashed with blood, both her own and the bear’s, and in her mouth she carried two bear cubs, both quite dead. She was very tired as she had kept up a running fight for miles before they had reached the bear’s lair, where mother had killed him.
We ate the bear cubs.
Next day passed uneventfully, but I missed my sister in a dim sort of way. We played as usual, but I noticed that one of my brothers stayed out of our games and seemed unhappy.
As the night approached he was more uneasy, and mother licked him to soothe his whimpering, and this calmed him; but by nightfall he was howling and crying, as if in pain, and mother looked anxious.
We tried to make him play, but he just sat still, not even retaliating when I bit his tail.
Soon after this I went to sleep, as there was no fun to be got out of him.
Next morning we found that he was gone, and we saw by his tracks that he had gone straight out of the cave, down the mountain-side and over the frozen stream at its foot. Here we saw the signs of a struggle. A hyena had got him.
Two or three weeks passed quite happily, but the snow did not melt, and food was getting rather scarce, and then one day mother took us out to hunt.
We went down the mountain-side and on to the stream which was still frozen stiff, and here my brother and I slipped and fell many times before mother showed us how to walk on ice.
On the other side we rested, for our little legs soon got tired, and then we went on again.
A snow-hare jumped up about ten yards away, and I, wildly excited, set off after it, but the next moment I received a cuff on the side of the head that sent me sprawling as mother shot by me after the hare. She secured it in a few seconds, and we ate it where we were, as it was only a small one.
As we were eating it I took my little piece behind a fallen bough, and after I had finished it I looked at the branch more closely.
I poked it and rolled it over, and then all at once a lot of bees came buzzing out. One stung me on the nose, and I fled howling dolefully to mother.
She licked the place, but she did not seem to think, as I did, that I was in any immediate danger of death.
Soon after this incident we went home, as my brother and I were quite tired out by our exertions, which chiefly consisted of getting in the way and eating the food which mother had killed.
About a month passed before anything happened. We were quite well and growing very fast, when my brother began to behave rather strangely, and his moping put me in mind of my other brother, who had run away a long time before.
One afternoon when I was teasing him to make him play, I received a blow from mother that sent me sulking into a corner for the rest of the day.
This seemed to cheer my brother somewhat, and he ate a little piece of the goat which mother brought in that night. After this he made one attempt to run away, but mother brought him back before he had got beyond the stream, which had thawed.
Next day mother brought in two little grey apes which we ate, but they did not agree with me, however, as I had horrible dreams all through the night. I have never eaten apes since.
On the following morning my brother was sick, and after this he got rapidly well again, being a strongly constituted young animal.
I awoke rather late in the day and found that mother had gone out, my brother killed a mouse and was immensely proud of it. I thought that it must have been both blind and paralysed, but it made no difference to his pride.
Mother soon returned, carrying with her a sambhur faun, and we ate some of it. Then mother took us out for exercise. We took the same path as before, but almost immediately after stepping out of the cave I missed my footing and started