The Film of Memory: An Autobiography

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From the dust jacket:

"A victim of a recent motor accident, Mr. Shane Leslie lay long hours in hospital trying to recollect his identity. When it returned, the activity of his mind had stopped for the first time for a quarter of a century, and although he never attempted to exert his memory he found he had only to lie still for the film of his past life to enroll. He describes it as almost a mystic experience, in that it gave him no intellectual trouble and left a sense of inexplicable happiness.

At first this only seemed an agreeable state of mind in which to endure the mending of bones and righting of concussion. The past was recovered but lost again almost as soon as enjoyed. Later he took pencil notes for his own amusement. He found that if he did not write down some words at the time, whatever had swum into his mental gaze slipped away irretrievably. The memory-machine seemed to have no hold upon it.

What was scribbled down then passed into the ordinary cells of recollection and could afterwards be worked into literary form. In this fashion Mr. Leslie has rescued many years from oblivion: his early childhood in Ireland and Paris; the last of Victorian London; all the 'nineties and a little of the 'eighties in which he was born; his life at an English private school, followed by three years at Eton; Paris in the early days of the new century and the Dreyfus affair; student days in the Rome of Pope Leo XIII before taking his degree at Cambridge.

Four years at King's College in its palmy days were followed by a series of idealistic experiements - visiting Tolstoy in Russia; founding a settlement in the East End of London; joining the Irish Party and contesting elections for Home Rule in between tours in America and absorption in the Gaelic Literary Movement.

Mr. Leslie finds in recollection the peace of mind which activity cannot bring. Happiness he believes to be a delusion, but contentent he believes is within the reach of almost all if they will cultivate the intellect or the inner spirit. He has found his philosophy and passes it on to another generation. In his human and revealing book the trivial and the epoch-making touch and both the humblest and the greatest who have crossed his way in the world come to life."