CHAP.PAGE
[Alfred Budd: A Memoir]3
[Book I: VORTEX]
I[Introit]13
II[Plinth]29
III[Toccata and Fugue]47
IV[Circean]62
V[Guerrilla]76
VI[Voyage en Cythère]90
VII[Joss and Reredos]97
VIII[Hallali]121
[Book II: APEX]
IX[Eklogos]137
X[Open Diapason]151
XI[Spate]164
XII[Funambulesque]181
XIII[Champaign]198
XIV[Colophon]222

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[“’Ullo, Dearie!”]Frontis
FACING PAGE
[“Dear Mongo!”]42
[“Non à tout,” was Gaveston’s answer]134
[Spiritual wrestling with young Bob Limber]184
[“Bladge!” came the unanimous cry]214
[“Renan,” he replied firmly]234

THE OXFORD CIRCUS

Alfred Budd: A Memoir

Entrusted with the literary remains of the late Alfred Budd, we think it fitting to provide the reading public, however briefly and inadequately, with some particulars of his life. They are, alas, only too few (Fate saw to that), but they may serve to indicate those forces of heredity and environment which worked to produce his remarkable novel, The Oxford Circus.

Alfred, as he was known to his intimates, was himself inclined to believe that, in some bygone age, a noble ancestor of his had founded the South Devon sea-side resort of Budleigh Salterton, where one summer he himself spent a happy fortnight. But our own researches[1] have disclosed no earlier trace of his family until Hosea Budd appears, in mid-Victorian days, as a general dealer in the pretty Flintshire village of Llwynphilly. He prospered, and his only son Albert, soon after taking Orders in the Church of England, took to wife Megan Meard, the daughter of a Shropshire corn-factor. The sole issue of this happy union was a boy, christened Alfred Hosea, after his two grandfathers—the future author of The Oxford Circus. The Meards, it is interesting to note, boasted a Huguenot origin, and from this strain perhaps was derived our author’s keen appreciation of the language and culture of France.