[1] We should like here to acknowledge the devoted help afforded us at the Public Records Office by Miss Agatha Anderleigh, B.Litt., than whom England has no more experienced genealogist.
Too delicate by far to be sent to boarding school, Alfred Budd was educated at home by his father, then and still the perpetual curate of Widdleswick, Salop. The boy’s mother unfortunately died while he was still but twelve summers old, but we understand that her influence lived after her, and that her son paid fitting tribute to her pious memory in his charming pen-portrait of Lady Julia Penhaligon.
The lad showed promise. Through the kindness of Sir Pontefract Gribble, the village Squire, he was enabled to browse in the well-stocked library of Widdleswick Manor. That he did not waste this splendid opportunity of reading both widely and wisely, not least in the domain of the contemporary novel, readers of his own, alas, posthumous, work of fiction will soon feel confident.
But how did Mr. Budd come to write the present volume? the reader may well be tempted to inquire. The circumstances have a melancholy interest all their own.
The Rev. Albert Budd had destined his only son to follow him into the ministry of the Church, and so, at the age of seventeen, the boy (for he was no more) was sent to Oxford to compete for an open exhibition at St. Edmund’s Hall. What happened? Perhaps his fragile health had handicapped him in the stern race; perhaps he had devoted too much attention to Sir Pontefract’s collection of modern fiction, and hardly enough to the more apposite writings of Aristotle and Euclid and Origen. Be that as it may, Alfred was unsuccessful in the examination, and, after three whole days in the University city, he left Oxford, as it turned out, for ever.
But those three days left an indelible impression upon his quick imagination.
The leaven worked, and while studying with a view to a second attempt in the next autumn, he devoted his leisure hours to the composition of The Oxford Circus. His incurable weakness in mathematics, however, asserted itself more and more during these months, and when the time came round he did not feel that his chances of success justified a second visit. The clerical career, then, was closed to him, and he had perforce to search for other employment.
His quest was soon rewarded. An advertisement inserted in The Times newspaper, under the appropriately chosen sobriquet of “Gaveston,” brought him an offer of work from a famous memory-training institute, which required the services of a representative in the Far East. Success seemed well within his grasp, and in due course he sailed from Cardiff to take up his post in Japan.
The rest is soon told.