That famous opening is from my 'Paul Clifford' book which had my name on the front cover which is easily the most British name imaginable but when i wasn't writing amazing first lines i was a Whig Party politician but i wasn't chasing the almighty dollar (one of mine) and found that 'the pen is mightier than the sword' (another one of mine) but my love life was a little more complicated.
I was due to be married but before we got down the aisle the father of my betrothed decided she would be better off marrying someone else and forced her to marry another man so instead i married Rosina Doyle Wheeler although this time the disapproval came from my mother who said she was a bad'un and would disappoint me. Turns out she was right.
We separated a few years later due to the time i committed to my literary and political work, that and the many affairs i had which may also have played a part but the divorce was not amicable and she a firm believer in the well worn route that revenge is best served repeatedly over several decades and she firstly wrote her own book 'The Man of Honour' which was a not very thinly veiled parody of me as a pompous twit.
When i later ran for re-election to Parliament, she denounced me publicly and told 'the great unwashed' (yep, mine again) that i was so awful and corrupt that i should be shipped off to Australia with the rest of the common criminals.
I did what any Politician in my situation would do with an inconvenient family member and used my political connections to have her declared insane and committed to an insane asylum thinking that'll teach her to love me, stand up for herself and then blame me for our marriage failing apart just because i happened to have sex with women who weren't her, the nerve.
Bizarrely having her committed on false pretenses was deemed 'unfair' and the newspapers led a campaign to get have released which was successful and she was freed and immediately accused me of sleeping with Benjamin Disraeli and wrote another book, this time a 'tell all' type but being a wealthy member of the aristocracy in the 19th Century meant it never really affected my career and i was even offered the Greek throne when Greece gained independence but i declined and instead wrote 'The Coming Race', one of the first in the new science fiction genre, about a man's journey to the centre of the Earth where he encounters a civilization called the Vril-ya's who emit a healing fluid named Vril which was pretty standard sci-fi fare until a bunch of nutters took it as a true story.
My novels have fallen out of favour since but i did leave some legacy's even if you don't know it as 'The Coming Race' led to the Hollow Earth Theory also the house i resided in, Craven Cottage, is still in the corner of Fulham Football Club's stadium, the term 'vril' lent it's name to Bovril and the ending of Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' was my suggestion after he got stuck for an ending so all together not a bad legacy if you ignore the theory's that the Earth is flat or hollow inside, my wife was but the Earth certainly isn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment