Deciding that it was impossible to raise three small children in Burma, C. A. Munro left Ethel, Charles, and Hector with his widowed mother and two unmarried sisters at Broadgate Villa, a large house that he rented in Pilton, near Barnstaple in Devonshire. Broadgate's comforts, which included servants, a governess, gardens, and access to the coast of North Devon, were overshadowed for Hector by his sickliness and the presence of his aunts, from whose bickering and strict governance there was little relief.
By comparison to his childhood at Broadgate, Munro's attendance at Pencarwick, a boarding school in Exmouth, was pleasant. He "was very happy there," his sister wrote, but a year later at the age of fourteen he was sent to Bedford Grammar School in Bedfordshire, which was stricter but acceptable to Munro, who attended the school for four terms. Yet his publicschool education, which confirmed his membership in the English upper class, did not modify his skepticism about its pretenses. Rather, his schooling contributed to a facility with language, which would enable him to cast his skepticism into stories the upper class would read. As J. C. Squire observes, "he polished his sentences with a spinsterish passion for neatness and chose his words as the last of the dandies might choose his ties." In his fiction, through deft turnings of plot and phrase, Munro assures that his upper-class characters will be found wanting in generosity, honesty, and common sense.
This is a free page. This page contains 191 words. This
biography contains 2,003 words (approx. 7 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Saki (H. H. Munro) Access Pass.
