English Poet, Writer, and Novelist Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Usually, during the month of January, I concentrate on reading the work of authors that I have not read before. Due to illness and wildfires, my reading this month has been mostly nil. As a result of reading an article in the New York Review of Books, however, I have decided on my next new “discovery,” Walter de la Mare. The following quote comes from his Memoirs of a Midget (1921).

Not that in an existence so passive riddles never came my way. As one morning I brushed past a bush of lads’ love (or maidens’ ruin, as some call it), its fragrance sweeping me from top to toe, I stumbled on the carcass of a young mole. Curiosity vanquished the first gulp of horror. Holding my breath, with a stick I slowly edged it up in the dust and surveyed the white heaving nest of maggots in its belly with a peculiar and absorbed recognition. “Ah, ha!” a voice cried within me, “so this is what is in wait; this is how things are”; and I stooped with lips drawn back over my teeth to examine the stinking mystery more closely. That was a lesson I have never unlearned.