Sir Victor Sawdon
Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four
children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London
businessman, started several businesses, but, due to his insecurity and his
tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear,
so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as
Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools
frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of
Walter, the father.
The family moved to East
Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents
came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a
clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916
until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he
started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him
to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald
Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the
Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching
Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already
a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an
excellent travel chronicle about our country.
In 1936 he divorced his
first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the
marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other
relationships.
During the Second World
War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while
continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After
World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching
positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California
(1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and
Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan
Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).
Sir Pritchett was
appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and
a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and
mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his
time.
Sir V. S. Pritchett died
of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.
THE STORY
Four cyclists going on a
ride expect to find a bar or a pub at the top of a hill, but they are disappointed
because there is only a house with the old sign “Tavern”, that can mean an inn
(that is no alcohol), so they won’t be able to have some beers. They have
followed this road in the hope of sightseeing an antient Roman way: second
disappointment. And thus, so on with some more. In the house there’s a small and
frail woman with her daughter, also a little girl. The woman is happy to serve
them some tea with some light food, although they would rather have had
stronger food. At the end, they are happy with their tea, and they even start
to have some feelings for the woman and her child. After tea, they went back
again in search of a pub, and the woman feels very happy to have had them at
home, and this not only for the money she got from their meal.
I think there are two very
interesting features in this story. First, the characters: you don’t find the
typical way of composing a story: the narrator begins introducing the
characters with a full description, physical and psychological; instead, you
have to unite the different pieces of the characters to form them, like in a puzzle.
What did the author do this for? And second, the title. In the story, there are
a lot of disappointments, and everyone has their own disappointment. But in the
end, I think they are satisfied with what they had, at the end disappointment
has been disappointed.
Many Are disappointed: Analisys
Many Are disappointed: Review
QUESTIONS
Look for and jot down information about the characters
in order to describe them (surname, appearance, personality, age, likes and
dislikes…)
Bert
Sid
Harry
Ted
The woman
The girl
What kind of bike are they riding? How do you know?
What different feelings does the woman have for the four
different men?
Why does Sid think that he had seen the woman before?
Does he want to flirt with her?
In which part of Great Britain is the story situated
(look for the toponyms in a map)?
Why is there a confusion between Romans and Gypsies?
Describe the meal.
Why do you think the woman trusts a very confidential
thing (she almost died) to Sid?
Do you think the house is really a “tea-house”? Why?
Explain all you know about the ring.
Are the really sportsmen? How do you know?
Why did or didn’t you like the story?
VOCABULARY
dunno, out-building, ruddy,
skylark, stubborn, reed, meadows, hedge, wiry, whimper, frail, drab, moist, dumbfounded,
sell, gasper, treacle (coloured), drizzle, dazed, dippy, cocksure, splice, flash,
dawdle, drably, scabious, bin, boldly, wants, pout