The Life of Mark Sykes.

Extract

The book before me opens with the following words: ‘In the year of the Incarnation of our Lord 1879, and of the Hegira of the Prophet 1296, and on the Eve of the Feast of St. Patrick, an only child was born to Sir Tatton Sykes, Baronet, of Sled-mere, in the county of York, and to Jessica Christina his lawful wife. Mark Sykes was this only son, and he always remained the original child of original parents.’ It may be added that he ended by securing an original biographer. When a biography begins with a sentence like that, we know, long before such guesses are commonly possible in more conventional cases, that the author is not a hack or a humdrum eulogist, but a man with a sense of history as a background to biography. We know that the author is as interesting as the subject. And we could distinguish this quality of distinction, even if we had not seen on the title page the name of Shane Leslie. The first sentence, recording nothing but a fact such as is found in a directory or a genealogical tree, yet gathers round it a crystallisation of creeds and influences, like the conjunction of stars in some horoscope of a happier and more Christian astrology. We have foreshadowed, as in a dissolving view of historic visions, the influences inspiring the subject and his biographer; beginning with the greatest of all influences, the mystery and majesty of their common creed. The date is stated not only as a date, but as a dogma.