Word: ackerley
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...JEAN C. ACKERLEY...
Wearing the aura of perfect, slightly homosexual manhood often given by the English universities, along with their diplomas, to their handsomer graduates, Author Ackerley takes a trip to India to tutor a native Maharajah's son, aged two years. In Chhokrapur (a fictitious name for the Maharajah's State) he finds much that Alice found in Wonderland, a topsy-turvy world with a peculiar logic all its own. Out of jottings in the journal kept during his stay he produces an effervescent book that will aerate many a reader's slough of midsummer despond...
Though ostensibly a tutor himself, Author Ackerley's chief duties were to be tutored in Hindi himself, and to converse with the Maharajah from time to time. That strange potentate, with his Pekingese face and nasturtium-colored tongue, was a fantastic hodge-podge of East and West. Once while out motoring to catch sight of a mongoose which would bring good luck, Tutor Ackerley admired a particular stretch of scenery. Unfortunately that particular land was not a part of Chhokrapur, belonged to the Maharajah of Deori, with whom the Prince was not on speaking terms. "Well...
From the Dewan, or Prime Minister, and from Babaji Rao, the Maharajah's secretary, Tutor Ackerley learned much native common sense, much native lore that he scatters rather indiscriminately throughout his book. His own pupil he saw apparently only once, but he was pestered nearly to death by his tutor Abdul who, despite profuse apologies, was always "boring upon" his time. When the day of departure came, however, he was half sad to leave these queer Hindus. They, with their queer illogic, hit the nail of his experience on the head: "Four days of moonlight-then darkness," say they...
...Author. Born at Rossall, Lancashire in 1896, Author Ackerley served throughout the War, ended it a Captain. After taking a degree at Cambridge University, he took up with the stage, played in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, produced in 1925 a play of his own, The Prisoners of War, since published in book form. Hindoo Holiday is his second book...