electoral battle that was for me the opening opportunity. I see the
stencilled names and numbers go up on the green baize, constituency
after constituency, amidst murmurs or loud shouting. . . .

It is over for me now and vanished. That opportunity will come no
more. Very probably you have heard already some crude inaccurate
version of our story and why I did not take office, and have formed
your partial judgement on me. And so it is I sit now at my stone
table, half out of life already, in a warm, large, shadowy leisure,
splashed with sunlight and hung with vine tendrils, with paper
before me to distil such wisdom as I can, as Machiavelli in his
exile sought to do, from the things I have learnt and felt during
the career that has ended now in my divorce.

I climbed high and fast from small beginnings. I had the mind of my
party. I do not know where I might not have ended, but for this red
blaze that came out of my unguarded nature and closed my career for
ever.



CHAPTER THE SECOND

BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER


1

I dreamt first of states and cities and political things when I was
a little boy in knickerbockers.