William Olaf Stapledon

Odd John William Olaf Stapledon

WHEN I told John that I intended to write his biography, he laughed. "My dear man!" he said, "But of course it was inevitable." The word "man" on John's lips was often equivalent to "fool.""Well," I protested, "a cat may look at a king."He replied, "Yes, but can it really see the king? Can you, puss, really see me?"This from a queer child to a full-grown man. John was right. Though I had known him since he was a baby, and was in a sense intimate with him, I knew almost nothing of the inner, the real John.