"Do you really want me, Peter?" He didn't speak but his whole body
turned towards her, answering her question. "Because I am yours
entirely. I became yours that day when your hand touched mine. I wasn't
sure before-I knew then-" He looked at her. He saw her, he thought for
the first time.... -from Fortitude The first great success of one of the
most popular novelists of the early 20th century, Fortitude (1913) is
the author's own favorite work. A romantic novel with a fairy-tale air,
it is the life story of Peter Wescott, "who very naïvely believed in
almost everything," as Walpole himself described him. As a quiet, polite
child, Peter stoically endures horrific beatings from his father; as a
dreamy young man, Peter finds himself swept away into reverie by the
titles of books (he doesn't even need to read them) and escapes into his
own fiction when grief and tragedy strike. With early hints of the
supernatural and the psychological suspense that would infuse Walpole's
later work, this is an important formative work of a writer whose work
deserves to be seen anew. British writer SIR HUGH WALPOLE (1884-1941)
was born in New Zealand and moved to England as a child. His works
include novels, short stories, biographies, plays, and screenplays.