Sredni Vashtar

I was talking to someone the other day and the subject of Saki's story Sredni Vashtar came up. Unfortunately I don't remember who it was but I do remember that they hadn't read the story. I've hunted it down and here is a html version that's not too hard on the eyes. Weirdly this file doesn't actually say that Saki is the author but he is and the story was collected in the book the Chronicles of Clovis, although Clovis himself does not appear. The story is of course in the public domain since Saki died during the Great War. I'll post the beginning here.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/sk-vashtar.html

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things---such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dulness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. De Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him ``for his good'' was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out---an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

He's such a beautiful writer. I love the bit about hating her with a desperate sincerity. That's a lovely description of the intensity of childhood emotion. And if anyone knew about Aunts it was Saki. (And of course Roald Dahl.)