One After Another: "It is always easier to be an epicure of a small repast than of a banquet"

by Stacy Aumonier

Stacy Aumonier was born at Hampstead Road near Regent’s Park, London on 31st March 1877.

He came from a family with a strong and sustained tradition in the visual arts; sculptors and painters.

On leaving school it seemed the family tradition would also be his career path. In particular his early talents were that of a landscape painter. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy in the early years of the twentieth century.

In 1907 he married the international concert pianist, Gertrude Peppercorn, at West Horsley in Surrey. A year later Aumonier began a career in a second branch of the arts at which he enjoyed a short but outstanding success—as a stage performer writing and performing his own sketches.

The Observer newspaper commented that "...the stage lost in him a real and rare genius, he could walk out alone before any audience, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, and make it laugh or cry at will."

In 1915, Aumonier published a short story ‘The Friends’ which was well received (and was subsequently voted one of the 15 best stories of 1915 by the Boston Magazine, Transcript).

Despite his age in 1917 at age 40 he was called up for service in World War I. He began as a private in the Army Pay Corps, and then transferred as a draughtsman in the Ministry of National Service.

By now he had four books published—two novels and two books of short stories—and his occupation is recorded with the Army Medical Board as ‘author.’

In the mid-1920s, Aumonier received the shattering diagnosis that he had contracted tuberculosis. In the last few years of his life, he would spend long spells in various sanatoria, some better than others.

Shortly before his death, Stacy Aumonier sought treatment in Switzerland, but died of the disease in Clinique La Prairie at Clarens beside Lake Geneva on 21st December 1928. He was 55.

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 10, 2010

Reviews

[Dew Mikelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. The story of "Tom" growing from a young boy to an older man. Again Aumonier's stile of writing short stories is seen in this longer novel. The beginning of one chapter is at times several years from the end of the last. However once tied together the complete story is well told. The last chapters seem not to be leading to an ending but rather extending it to bring a final closure to the book but to the lif but leaving open more of his life to be finished.
There is quiet allot of Aumoniers personal philosophy about life, family and religion in the main caricature. Sometimes leaving a sense of his own personal confusion as though he was trying to define it for himself through writing a story. As a result each of the segments become very real and alive.