20
RECOLLECTIONS OF A CONFEDERATE GENERAL BY JUBAL DE BROOKE
Liverpool, England, December, 1863.
The drawing room at Dunstead Manor was a peephole into the soul of its owner: a carefully arranged chaos. Harrowby vacillated on where to position the various statuettes, vases and sundry objets d’art lying haphazardly on the floor. Strewn among these were books of poetry, illustrated volumes of flora and fauna, scientific tomes and philosophical treatises, each left open at the page where the reader’s itinerant mind lost interest and wandered to the next all-consuming but short-lived distraction.
Sitting opposite each other, we exchanged polite smiles and pleasantries about the continuing mild weather as we commenced our forenoon ritual of tea and cakes.
Perhaps I should have inferred som
