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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Juvenilia
- Incomplete and Fragmentary Stories
- Ibbetson Dun
- At the Pit's Mouth
- Sons of Belial
- A Daughter of Heth
- Stories Doubtfully Attributed
- Glossary
At the Pit's Mouth
from Incomplete and Fragmentary Stories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Juvenilia
- Incomplete and Fragmentary Stories
- Ibbetson Dun
- At the Pit's Mouth
- Sons of Belial
- A Daughter of Heth
- Stories Doubtfully Attributed
- Glossary
Summary
Unpublished.
Attribution: Signed manuscript in RK's hand.
Text: Manuscript.
Notes: This unfinished story is a manuscript of twelve pages now in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The story is set in 1884, and that has usually been taken to be the date of its composition as well. But the use, from ‘poverty of inspiration’, of the name ‘Duncan Parrenness’, establishes that it must come after ‘The Dream of Duncan Parrenness’, originally published in the CMG, 25 December 1884, and collected in Life's Handicap, 1891. An entry in RK's diary for 11 February 1885 shows that RK was then at work on ‘At the Pit's Mouth’: ‘(Mem. To make the narrators of “At the Pit's Mouth” tell their tale at a spiritualist séance in the heart of Lahore City. Happy thought’ (Something of Myself, 1990, pp. 204–5).
The manuscript has long been known but has not, until now, been published; it has, therefore, often been confused with another story of the same title, not published separately but included in Under the Deodars, January 1889. That story shares with the unpublished story a guilty pair planning an elopement, but it is a much simplified, conventional treatment of the situation. Another treatment, also much simplified, of the basic situation is the story in dramatic dialogue called ‘The Hill of Illusion’, originally published in the supplement to the Pioneer called The Week's News, 21 April 1888 and collected in Under the Deodars. The two published stories are sometimes described as ‘versions’ of the story in the unpublished MS, but that is misleading. The two published stories belong entirely to waking life; the MS story is a complex mixture of waking life and dream.
Editorial comments and additions are between square brackets in italic type, [thus].
The so-called ‘Digressions’ are an especially interesting part of the MS story.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cause of Humanity and Other StoriesThe Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions, pp. 398 - 409Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018