Роберт Шеррифф: The Hopkins Manuscript

Until Professor Bransbury told me of ‘Selim the Liberator’ I had never quite lost hope. Always in the background of my thoughts lay the prayer that this tragic interlude might pass away: that reason would return and peace would come once more to our stricken earth.

I began my story when I returned from the Park that night. For over a year my determination to complete it has given me the will to live. Nothing more has happened save a bitter winter that has left me almost alone, and day by day I have watched the shadows close upon us. Night by night I have written through an unearthly silence, broken only by the clatter and fall of a decaying roof, the hooting of owls and the howl of wild, starving dogs. Selim and his men are no doubt upon the moon by now – probably building upon it a Temple of Deliverance. They have not disturbed me here. Once a great black aeroplane hovered overhead, buzzing like a bloated autumn bluebottle. It circled around and came again next day – then disappeared towards the east and left us alone.

My story is finished. By the setting of the sun this evening I would say that it must be November. Another winter is at hand. My flask stands beside me in readiness for the last page of my manuscript: the bricks lie on the floor beside the recess that I have made to conceal it in. I pray that it may some day be discovered: ‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ that will light these dark ages for the men who may one day live in another era of happiness and culture.

Just beneath these windows, in Uncle Henry’s small wild garden, stands a seat beside an old twisted cherry tree. Tomorrow I shall go to it and sit there for the last time: it brings happy memories to me… memories of a seat beneath the elms of a village cricket ground where once, long years ago, I sat with Colonel Parker, and Pat, and Robin… as we watched the moon wane over us in its last course above this earth.

It is long past midnight and I am very tired. From the blackness of the city comes one solitary, flickering light… one fitful little gleam from a house in Ladbroke Square… I wonder who it is?

R. C. Sherriff was born in 1896 and worked as an insurance clerk after leaving school. He joined the army shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, and from 1917 served as a captain in the East Surrey regiment. He saw action at the battles of Vimy and Loos and was severely wounded at Ypres. After the war, he returned to his desk job and spent ten years as a claims adjuster. It was an interest in amateur theatricals which led him to try his hand at writing. His most famous play, Journey’s End , was based on his letters home from the trenches and was initially rejected by many theatre managements. In December 1928, it was given a single performance by the Incorporated Stage Society, with a young Laurence Olivier in the lead role. The play’s enormous subsequent success enabled Sherriff to become a full-time writer. In his mid-thirties he fulfilled a long-held dream and went to Oxford to study history, but gave up his degree when he was invited to write scripts for Hollywood. His screenplays include The Invisible Man (1933), Goodbye, Mr Chips (1933) and The Dam Busters (1955), while his best novels include The Fortnight in September (1931) and The Hopkins Manuscript (1939). He spent most of his life living quietly with his mother in Esher in Surrey; his autobiography, No Leading Lady , appeared in 1968. Sherriff died in 1975.

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PENGUIN CLASSICS

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First published in 1939

This edition published in Penguin Classics 2018

Copyright © The Estate of R. C. Sherriff

Drowned in Space @ Fran Rodriguez

ISBN: 978-0-241-34908-3