arles
Wrackham, and must have saved his publishers thousands. His
"grounds" went the whole length of the combe, and up the hill on the
east side of it where his cucumber frames blazed in the sun. And
besides his cucumbers (anybody can have cucumbers) he had a yacht
swinging in Portland Harbor (at least he had that year when he was
at his height). And he had two motor-cars and a wood that he kept
people out of, and a great chunk of beach. He couldn't keep them off
that, and they'd come miles, from Torquay and Exeter, to snapshot
him when he bathed.

The regular approach to him, for pilgrims, was extraordinarily
impressive. And not only the "grounds," but the whole interior of
the Tudor mansion, must have been planned with a view to that alone.
It was all staircases and galleries and halls, black oak darknesses
and sudden clear spaces and beautiful chintzy, silky rooms--lots of
them, for Mrs. Wrackham--and books and busts and statues everywhere.
And these were only his outer courts; inside them was his sanctuary,
his library, and inside that, divided from it by curtains, was the
Innermost, the shrine itself, and inside the shrine, veiled by his
curtains, was Charles Wrackham.

As you came through, everything led up to him, as it were, by easy
stages and gradations. He didn't burst on you cruelly and blind you.
You waited a minute or two in the library, which was all what he
called "silent presences and peace." The silent presences, you see,
prepared you for him. And when, by gazing on the busts of
Shakespeare and Cervantes, your mind was turned up to him, then you
were let in. Over that Tudor mansion, and the whole place, you may
say for miles along the coast, there brooded the shadow of Charles
Wrackham's greatness. If we hadn't been quite so much oppressed by
that we might have enjoyed the silent presences and the motor-cars
and things, and the peace that was established there because of him.
And we did enjoy Antigone and Mrs. Wrackham.

It's no use speculating what he would have been if he'd never
written anything. You cannot detach him from his writings, nor would
he have wished to be detached. I suppose he would still have been
the innocent, dependent creature that he was: fond, very fond of
himself, but fond also of his home and of his wife and daughter. It
was his domesticity, described, illustrated, exploited in a hundred
papers, that helped to endear Charles Wrackham to his preposterous
public. It was part o