Henry Masterman Mist Diaries and Prisoners Pie Magazine
Diaries of Heny Masterman Mist and a copy of Prisoners’ Pie, the Ruhleben Camp magazine. Learn more.
*All transcriptions are provided by volunteers, and the accuracy of the transcriptions is not guaranteed. Please be sure to verify the information by viewing the image record, or visiting the BC Archives in person.
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he passed through the curtains and out on to the stairway. On a rug outside the door the white Persian cat lay asleep. Raising it in his arms, he imprinted a kiss of renunciation on its pure white head, then setting it down, proceeded upstairs. Arriving at his room, he entered, locking the door behind him. Then, shuddering away from the electric switch he lit the long white candles which he had set in the old Italian sconces which had always accompanied him everywhere for more than five years, and sat down at the dressing table. His head throbbed with a maze of terrible thoughts, all converging in one even more terrible direction. Yes, there was no other way; he must do it! Very tenderly he opened a volume bound in vellum which lay on the table before him. "Strife and Spirit: poems in wartime by the author of "Heroics" - so read the title-page. Here he would find some noble thought fitting for the tragedy of his shattered dreams. He turn the pages. Ah! here at last!
"On those who fell at Mons."
He read a few stanzas, and then came upon the sublime passage.
"Lo! He went forth, sacrifice For past glorious ecstasies, Keeping green the Golden [illegible] Fearing not the Mystic [illegible".
With a look at himself in the mirror, full of sorrowful calm, he placed an antique garter to mark the page, then solemnly closed the book. Then, turning, he took up an old Spanish stiletto, raised his arm, - - - and fell, fainting, to the ground.
Round the corner of the street below a newsboy ran, shouting "Retreat of the Allies from Greece! Reverses on the West Front! New pome by the Loryit "The Spirit of Drake!"
L.H.
From a Persian Garden.
A well trained memory is a faithful friend; yea, in all that is retaineth and in all that it rejecteth.
Be not discouraged at relative failure, for that which is worth doing is worth doing badly.
Politeness cevereth many sins; the worldly wise are polite even unto themselves.
Intellectual opinions of Woman are all true; emotional appreciations all false; yet could the wise Khayyam not live without her.
Memory of indiscretions is the sunshine of old age. BC Archives, MS-2570 Box 1 File 6 / MIST, Henry Masterman / Ruhleben magazine, Prisoners’ Pie, 1916.