Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
By Winston Churchill
My name is Hugh Paret. I was a corporation lawyer, but by no means atypical one, the choice of my profession being merely incidental, anddue, as will be seen, to the accident of environment. The book I am aboutto write might aptly be called The Autobiography of a Romanticist. Inthat sense, if in no other, I have been a typical American, regarding mycountry as the happy hunting-ground of enlightened self-interest, as afunction of my desires. Whether or not I have completely got rid of thisromantic virus I must leave to those the aim of whose existence is toeradicate it from our literature and our life. A somewhat Augean task!
I have been impelled therefore to make an attempt at setting forth, withwhat frankness and sincerity I may, with those powers of selection ofwhich I am capable, the life I have lived in this modern America; thepassions I have known, the evils I have done. I endeavour to write abiography of the inner life; but in order to do this I shall have torelate those causal experiences of the outer existence that take place inthe world of space and time, in the four walls of the home, in the schooland university, in the noisy streets, in the realm of business andpolitics. I shall try to set down, impartially, the motives that haveimpelled my actions, to reveal in some degree the amazing mixture of goodand evil which has made me what I am to-day: to avoid the tricks ofmemory and resist the inherent desire to present myself other and betterthan I am. Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child whobelieves in miracles, whose needs are mostly baubles, whose desires aredreams. Expediency is his motto. Innocent of a knowledge of theprinciples of the universe, he lives in a state of ceaseless activity,admitting no limitations, impatient of all restrictions. What he wants,he wants very badly indeed. This wanting things was the corner-stone ofmy character, and I believe that the science of the future will bear meout when I say that it might have been differently built upon. Certain itis that the system of education in vogue in the 70's and 80's nevercontemplated the search for natural corner-stones.
At all events, when I look back upon the boy I was, I see the beginningsof a real person who fades little by little as manhood arrives andadvances, until suddenly I am aware that a stranger has taken hisplace….
I lived in a city which is now some twelve hours distant from theAtlantic seaboard. A very different city, too, it was in youth, in mygrandfather's day and my father's, even in my own boyhood, from what ithas since become in this most material of ages.
There is a book of my photographs, preserved by my mother, which I havebeen looking over lately. First is presented a plump child of two, gazingin smiling trustfulness upon a world of sunshine; later on a lean boy inplaided kilts, whose wavy, chestnut-brown hair has been most carefullyparted on the side by Norah, his nurse. The face is still childish. Thenappears a youth of fourteen or thereabout in long trousers and thequeerest of short jackets, standing beside a marble table against aclassic background; he is smiling still in undiminished hope and trust,despite increasing vexations and crossings, meaningless lessons which hadto be learned, disciplines to rack an aspiring soul, and long,uncomfortable hours in the stiff pew of the First Presbyterian Church.Associated with this torture is a peculiar Sunday smell and the faintrustling of silk dresses. I can see the stern black figure of Dr.