Author(s): Erskine Childers

Classics

I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude-- save for a few black faces-- have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism. It was in some such spirit, with an added touch of self-consciousness, that, at seven o'clock in the evening of 23rd September in a recent year, I was making my evening toilet in my chambers in Pall Mall. I thought the date and the place justified the parallel; to my advantage even; for the obscure Burmese administrator might well be a man of blunted sensibilities and coarse fibre, and at least he is alone with nature, while I-- well, a young man of condition and fashion, who knows the right people, belongs to the right clubs, has a safe, possibly a brilliant, future in the Foreign Office-- may be excused for a sense of complacent martyrdom, when, with his keen appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed to the outer solitude of London in September.

Robert Erskine Childers DSC, usually known as Erskine Childers, was an English-born Irish writer, whose works included the influential novel The Riddle of the Sands. He became a supporter of Irish Republicanism and smuggled guns into Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard.