SIDETRACKS
EXPLORATIONS OF
A ROMANTIC BIOGRAPHER
RICHARD HOLMES
To my old friend and adviser
Peter Janson-Smith
through thick and beastly thin
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
I A Romantic Premonition
Introduction
Thomas Chatterton
II Lost in France
Introduction
Monsieur Nadar
Gautier In London
Poor Pierrot
Inside The Tower
III Five Gothic Shadows
Introduction
The Singular Affair Of The Reverend Mr Barham
The Reverend Maturin And Mr Melmoth
M. R. James And Others
John Stuart Mill
Lord Lisle And The Tudor Nixon Tapes
IV A Philosophical Love Story
Introduction
The Feminist And The Philosopher: A Love Story
V Shelley’s Ghost
Introduction
Scrope’s Last Throw
To The Tempest Given
VI Escapes to Paris
Introduction
Scott And Zelda: One Last Trip
A Summer With The Novelist
Letters From Paris
Voltaire’s Grin
VII Homage to the Godfather
Introduction
Boswell’s Bicentenary
Boswell Among The Tulips
Dr Johnson’s First Cat
Acknowledgements
Index
About the Author
Also By Richard Holmes
Praise
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
WE WERE AT a café table, under the plane trees, far in the south, with the evening light flowing away down the river. I was asking the beloved novelist those old, fascinating questions: How do you find your stories? Where do your ideas come from? When she said, with that sudden challenging smile of hers: ‘But how do you find your subjects; where do they come from?’ And I answered almost without thinking, between two mouthfuls of the cold white wine: ‘Down many sidetracks.’ She laughed and looked out into the gathering dark. ‘I think you’d better explain that,’ she said. So I have tried.
This book is my attempt to explore – as well as to explain – something of these mysterious biographical pathways. (I love the French word sentier for a track, because it also hints at the notion of a line of smell or perfume, as in ‘on the scent’.) It is a biographer’s collection of short pieces, rather like a novelist’s collection of short stories, but it has a theme and purpose. It is the fragmented tale of a single biographical quest, a thirty-year journey in search of the perfect Romantic subject, and the form to fit it. It is my personal casebook.
