That was luck: I should not then have been a conscientious objector; but I am quite sure that the abominations of war would have made me one, as soon as I got to the front.
The man who bears my name, and who claims to be me, was born on July 15, 1865, the sixth in a family of seven. He was an ugly child, and remained ugly till his eighteenth year, when his looks gradually improved.
The mere dates of my existence do not interest me, except in one connection. When the Great War started I was too old to be acceptable as a volunteer; when conscription followed I was too old to be conscripted.
The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale.
Two more years were to go by before I knew anything about William Blake. Many years later, when his wife died, my godfather gave me the two books as a remembrance.
