Saki

For other uses, see Saki (disambiguation).

Hector Hugh Munro
Pen name	Saki
Occupation	Author, Playwright
Nationality	British

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, was a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. "The Open Window" may be his best known, with a closing line ("Romance at short notice was her speciality") that has entered the lexicon.

In addition to his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was the custom of the time, and then collected into several volumes) he also wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland), and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion of Britain. He was influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Kipling, and himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward, and P. G. Wodehouse.

Name

The name Saki is often thought to be a reference to the cupbearer in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, a poem mentioned disparagingly by the eponymous character in "Reginald on Christmas Presents" and alluded to in a few other stories. (This is stated as fact by Emlyn Williams in his 1978 introduction to a Saki anthology) It may, however, be a reference to the South American primate of the same name, "a small, long-tailed monkey from the Western Hemisphere" that is a central character in "The Remoulding of Groby Lington"

Biography

Family Background and Early Life

Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab, Burma (now known as Sittwe), the son of Charles Augustus Munro and Mary Frances Mercer (1843 to 1872). Mary was the daughter of Rear Admiral Samuel Mercer, and her nephew, Cecil William Mercer, was also to gain fame as an author under the nom-de-plume Dornford Yates. Charles Munro was an inspector-general for the Burmese police when that country was still part of the British Empire. In 1872, Mary, who had gone home on a visit to England, was charged by a cow; the shock caused her to miscarry. She never recovered and soon died. Charles Munro sent his children, including two-year-old Hector, to England, where they were brought up by their grandmother and aunts in a strict, straitlaced household.

Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth and at Bedford Grammar School. When his father retired to England, he travelled on a few occasions with his sister and father, between fashionable European spas and tourist resorts. In 1893, he followed his father in joining the Indian Imperial Police, where he was posted to Burma (as was another acerbic and pseudonymous writer a generation later: George Orwell). Two years later, failing health from malaria forced his resignation and return to England.

Writing career

In England he started his career as a journalist, writing for newspapers such as the Westminster Gazette, Daily Express, Bystander, Morning Post, and Outlook.

In 1900, Munro's first book appeared: The Rise of the Russian Empire, a historical study modelled upon Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

From 1902 to 1908, Munro worked as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Warsaw, Russia (where he witnessed Bloody Sunday), and Paris; he then gave that up and settled in London. Many of the stories from this period feature the elegant and effete Reginald and Clovis, young men-about-town who take heartlessly cruel delight in the discomfort or downfall of their conventional, pretentious elders. In addition to his well-known short stories, Saki also turned his talents for fiction into novels. Shortly before the Great War, with the genre of invasion literature selling well, he published a "what-if" novel, When William Came, subtitled "A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns", imagining the eponymous German emperor conquering Britain.

At the start of World War I, although 43 and officially over age, Munro joined the Royal Fusiliers regiment of the British Army as an ordinary soldier, refusing a commission. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially still too sick or injured to fight. He was sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France in November 1916 when he was killed by a German sniper. His last words, according to several sources, were "Put that bloody cigarette out!" After his death, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood.

Munro was homosexual, but at that time in the UK sexual activity between men was a crime, and the Cleveland Street scandal in 1889, followed by the downfall and disgrace of Oscar Wilde (who was convicted in 1895 after cause celebre trials) meant that "that side of [Munro's] life had to be secret". Politically, Munro was a Tory and somewhat reactionary in his views.

In recognition of his contribution to literature, a blue plaque has been affixed to a building in which Munro once lived on Mortimer Street in central London.

Short stories

Saki's world contrasts the effete conventions and hypocrisies of Edwardian England with the ruthless but straightforward life-and-death struggles of nature. Nature generally wins in the end.

Saki's work is now in the public domain, and all or most of these stories are on the Internet.

Some of his best-known short stories are listed below.

"The Interlopers"

"The Interlopers" is a story based on two men, Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz, whose families have fought over a forest in the eastern Carpathian Mountains for generations. Ulrich's family legally owns the land, but Georg – feeling it rightfully belongs to him – hunts there anyway. One winter night, Ulrich catches Georg hunting in his forest. The two would never shoot without warning and soil their family’s honour, so they hesitate to acknowledge one another. As an “act of God,” a tree branch suddenly falls on each of them, trapping them both under a log. Gradually, they realize the futility of their quarrel and become friends to end the family feud. They call out for their men’s assistance, and after a brief period, Ulrich makes out ten figures approaching over a hill. The story ends with Ulrich’s realization that the "interlopers" on the hill are actually wolves.

"The Schartz-Metterklume Method"

At a railway station, an arrogant and overbearing woman mistakes the mischievous Lady Carlotta for the governess she expected. Lady Carlotta, deciding not to correct the mistake, presents herself as a proponent of "the Schartz-Metterklume method" of making children understand history by acting it out themselves, and chooses a rather unsuitable historical episode for her first lesson.

"The Toys of Peace"

Rather than giving her young son and daughter gifts of toy soldiers and guns, their mother instructs her brother to give the children "peace toys" as an Easter present. When the packages are opened, young Bertie shouts "It's a fort!" and is disappointed when his uncle replies "It's a municipal dust-bin". The children are initially baffled as to how to obtain any enjoyment from models of a school of art and a public library, or from little toy figures of John Stuart Mill, poetess Felicia Hemans, and astronomer Sir John Herschel. Youthful inventiveness finds a way, however.

"The Storyteller"

"The Storyteller" is a cynical antidote to crude didacticism. An aunt is traveling by train with her two nieces and a nephew. The children are naughty and mischievous. A bachelor is sitting opposite. The aunt starts telling a moralistic story, but is unable to satisfy the curiosity of the children. The bachelor intervenes and tells a story where the "good" person ends up being unwittingly devoured by a wolf, much to the children's delight. The bachelor is amused with the knowledge that in the future the children will embarrass their guardian by begging to be told "an improper story".

"The Open Window"

In Saki's best-known and characteristically brief vignette, set in the drawing-room of an upper-class village house, a self-possessed girl of fifteen unfolds a tale of eerie family tragedy for the highly strung visitor, who receives something of a shock. Upper-class social setting and back-story are characteristically sketched in a few deft strokes, and Saki preserves his impeturbably dead-pan narrative delivery and smooth, swift pacing.

"The Unrest-Cure"

Saki's recurring hero Clovis Sangrail, a sly young man, overhears the complacent middle-aged Huddle complaining of his own addiction to routine and aversion to change. Huddle's friend makes the wry suggestion of the need for an "unrest-cure" (the opposite of a rest cure) to be performed, if possible, in the home. Clovis takes it upon himself to "help" the man and his sister by involving them in an invented outrage that will be a "blot on the twentieth century".

"Esmé"

In a hunting story with a difference, the Baroness tells Clovis of a hyena she and her friend Constance encountered alone in the countryside, who cannot resist the urge to stop for a snack. The story is a perfect example of Saki's delight in setting societal convention against uncompromising nature.

The wailing accompaniment was explained. The gypsy child was firmly, and I expect painfully, held in his jaws.

The child is shortly devoured.

Constance shuddered. "Do you think the poor little thing suffered much?" came another of her futile questions.

"The indications were all that way,' I said; 'on the other hand, of course, it may have been crying from sheer temper. Children sometimes do."

"Sredni Vashtar"

The story of a young, sickly child, Conradin. His cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp, "would never... have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him 'for his good' was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome."

"Tobermory"

At a country house party a visiting professor announces to the guests that he has perfected a procedure to teach animals human speech. He demonstrates this on his host's cat, Tobermory. Soon it is clear that animals are permitted to view many private things on the assumption that they will remain silent: "An archangel ecstatically proclaiming the Millennium, and then finding that it clashed unpardonably with Henley and would have to be indefinitely postponed, could hardly have felt more crestfallen than Cornelius Appin at the reception of his wonderful achievement."

"The East Wing"

A 're-discovered' short story, previously cited as a play and therefore less well known. A house party with its typical social mix of bumbling Major Boventry, the precious Lucien Wattleskeat, the wordy Canon Clore and a breathless hostess, Mrs Gramplain, is beset by a fire in the middle of the night in the east wing of the house. Begged by their hostess to save "my poor darling Eva – Eva of the golden hair," Lucien demurs on the grounds that he has never even met her. It is only on discovering that Eva is not a flesh and blood daughter, but Mrs Gramplain's painting of the daughter that she wished that she had had and which she has faithfully updated with the passing years, that Lucien declares a willingness to forfeit his life to rescue her, since "death in this case is more beautiful," a sentiment endorsed by the Major. As the two men disappear into the blaze, Mrs Gramplain recollects that she "sent Eva to Exeter to be cleaned." Thus the two men have lost their lives for nothing. (Compare with Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray

Books

• 1899: "Dogged" (short story, appeared as written by H. H. M. in St. Paul's, 18 February)
• 1900: The Rise of the Russian Empire (history)
• 1902: "The Woman Who Never Should" (political sketch, in Westminster Gazette, 22 July)
• 1902: The Not So Stories (political sketches, in Westminster Annual)
• 1902: The Westminster Alice (political sketches, with F. Carruthers Gould)
• 1904: Reginald (short stories)
• 1910: Reginald in Russia (short stories)
• 1911: The Chronicles of Clovis (short stories)
• 1912: The Unbearable Bassington (novel)
• 1913: When William Came (novel)
• 1914: Beasts and Super-Beasts (short stories)
• 1914: "The East Wing" (short story, in Lucas's Annual]] / [[Methuen's Annual)
• ????: "The Lumber-Room"
• ????: "The Interlopers"

Posthumous publications:

• 1919: The Toys of Peace (short stories)
• 1924: The Square Egg and Other Sketches (short stories)
• 1924: "The Watched Pot" (play, with Charles Maude)
• 1926-1927: The Works of Saki (8 vols.)
• 1930: The Complete Short Stories of Saki
• 1933: The Complete Novels and Plays of Saki (includes The Westminster Alice)
• 1934: The Miracle-Merchant (in One-Act Plays for Stage and Study 8)
• 1950: The Best of Saki (ed. by Graham Greene)
• 1963: The Bodley Head Saki
• 1981: Saki (by A.J. Langguth, includes six uncollected stories)
• 1976: The Complete Saki
• 1976: Short Stories (ed. by John Letts)
• 1988: Saki: The Complete Saki, Penguin editions ISBN 978-0-14-118078-6
• 1995: The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope, and Other Stories
• 2006: A Shot in the Dark (a compilation of 15 uncollected stories)

Television

In 1962, a Granada Television 8-part TV series, produced by Phillip Mackie, dramatised several stories of Saki. Actors included Mark Burns as Clovis, Fenella Fielding as Mary Drakmanton, Richard Vernon as the Major, Rosamund Greenwood as Veronique and Martita Hunt as Lady Bastable. The title of the series was Saki, the Improper Stories of H. H. Munro (a reference to the ending of "The Story Teller").

A dramatisation of "The Schartz-Metterklume Method" was an episode in the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1960.

Who Killed Mrs De Ropp?, a 2007 BBC dramatisation starring Ben Daniels and Gemma Jones, showcased three of Saki's short stories, "The Storyteller", "The Lumber Room" and "Sredni Vashtar".

Theatre

• The Playboy of the Week-End World (1977) by Emlyn Williams, adapts 16 of Saki's stories.
• Wolves at the Window (2008) by Toby Davies, adapts 12 of Saki's stories

• Saki Shorts. A musical based on 9 stories. Music, book and lyrics by John Gould and Dominic McChesney

Literary criticism and biography

• "Mappining London: Urban Participation in Sakian Satire" — by Lorene Mae Birden. Literary criticism focusing on the role of London.
• "People Dined Against Each Other: Social Practices in Sakian Satire" — by Lorene Mae Birden. Literary criticism focusing on social mannerisms.
• The Satire of Saki by George James Spears — A 127 page book encompassing a dissection of satire in Saki's works. Bibliography and overview of all of Saki's works in relation to satire.
• Biography by Ethel M. Munro — A brief biography written by Saki's sister.
• Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro by A. J. Langguth — Includes six uncollected stories and various photographs.
• "An Asp Lurking in An Apple-Charlotte: Animal Violence in Saki's The Chronicles of Clovis" by Joseph S. Salemi — Literary criticism about the recurrence of animals in The Chronicles of Clovis, suggesting that the animals represent the characters' primal instincts and true vicious mannerisms. Available in Student Research Center of EbscoHost Database.
• Beastly humans: Ambivalence, dependent dissidence, and metamorphosis in the fiction of Saki by Brian Gibson — Ph.D. thesis, University of Alberta, 2006
• "The Unrest Cure According to Lawrence, Saki, and Lewis" by Christopher Lane, Modernism/modernity 11.4 (2004): 769-96
• "Saki/Munro: Savage Propensities; or, The Jungle-Boy in the Drawing-room" by Christopher Lane, in The Ruling Passion (Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 212–28
• Stern, Simon (1994), "Saki's Attitude", GLQ : a journal of lesbian and gay studies, 1.3, Duke University Press: 275–98, ISSN 1527-9375, OCLC 42671765
• Van Leer, David (1995), The queening of America: gay culture in straight society, Routledge, pp. 31–37, ISBN 9780415903363
• Sandie Byrne, Dr (2007), The unbearable Saki : the work of H.H. Munro, Oxford, ISBN 0199226059
• Christopher Hitchens (June 2008), Where the Wild Things Are — Review of The Unbearable Saki in Atlantic Monthly

External links

• Works by Saki at Project Gutenberg
• Short Stories of Saki – including novels and those stories published only in newspapers during Saki's lifetime
• The East Wing – a short story omitted from previous collections, apart from later printings (1946 onwards) of The Complete Short Stories of Saki (John Lane The Bodley Head Limited)
• Saki at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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• Works by Saki in spanish