Saki is Scottish-born writer whose stories satirize the Edwardian social scene, often in a macabre and cruel way.
Munro's columns and short stories were published under the pen name 'Saki', who was the cupbearer in The
Rubayat of Omar Khayyam, an ancient Persian poem. Saki's stories were full of witty sayings - such as "The cook was
a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went." Sometimes they also included coded references to
homosexuality.
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations." (from The Square Egg, 1924)
Saki was born Hector Hugh Munro in Akyab, Burma (now Myanmar), the son of Charles Augustus Munro, an
inspector-general in the Burma police. Munro's mother, the former Mary Frances Mercer, died in 1872 - she was
killed by a runaway cow in an English country lane. Munro was brought up in England with his brother and sister by
aunts who frequently used the birch and whip. He was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth and Bedford
Grammar School. From 1887 he traveled with his family in France, Germany and Switzerland. In 1891 his father
settled in Devon, where he worked as a teacher. In 1893 Munro joined the Burma police. Three years later he was
back in England and started his career as a journalist, writing for the Westminster Gazette.
In 1900 Munro's first book, The Rise of the Russian Empire, appeared. It is a historical study modelled upon Gibbon's
famous The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The book was received with hostile reviews in America. It was
followed in 1902 with a collection of short stories, Not-so-Stories. From 1902 to 1908 Munro worked as a foreign
correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Russia and Paris, and then returned to London. In 1914 his novel
When William Came appeared, in which he portrayed what might happen if the German emperor conquered
England.´
"Only the old and the clergy of Established churches know how to be flippant gracefully,'' commented Reginald;
"which reminds me that in the Anglican Church in a certain foreign capital, which shall be nameless, I was present
the other day when one of the junior chaplains was preaching in aid of distressed somethings or other, and he
brought a really eloquent passage to a close with the remark, 'The tears of the afflicted, to what shall I liken them--to diamonds?' The other junior chaplain, who had been dozing out of professional jealousy, awoke with a start and
asked hurriedly, 'Shall I play to diamonds, partner?' (from Reginald in Russia, 1910)
After the outbreak of World War I, although officially too old, Munro volunteered for the army as an ordinary
soldier. He was killed by a sniper's bullet on November 14, 1916 in France, near Beaumont-Hamel. Munro was
sheltering in a shell crater. His last words, according to several sources, were: "Put that damned cigarette out!" After
his death, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood. Like her
brother, Ethel never married.
Saki's best fables are often more macabre than Kipling's. In his early stories Saki often portrayed eccentric
characters, familiar from Oscar Wilde's plays. Among Saki's most frequently anthologized short stories is
'Tobermory', in which a cat, who has seen too much scandal through country house windows, learns to talk and
starts to repeat the guests' vicious comments about each other. 'The Open Window' was a tale-within-a-tale. In the
short story 'Sredni Vashtar' from The Chronicles of Clovis (1911) a young boy makes an idol of his illicit pet ferret. It
kills his oppressive cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp, modelled on Saki's aunt Agnes. "Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth / were white. / His enemies called to peace, but he brought / them
death. Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful."
Saki was a misogynist, anti-Semite, and reactionary, who also did not take himself too serious. His stories, "true
enough to be interesting and not true enough to be tiresome", were considered ideal reading for schoolboys.
However, Saki did not have any interest in safeguarding the Edwardian way of life. "Saki writes like an enemy, " said
V.S. Pritchett later. "Society has bored him to the point of murder. Out laughter is only a note or two short of a
scream of fear." In 'Laura' the title character is first reincarnated as a destructive otter after her death, and then as a
naked brown Nubian boy. Reginald and Clovis, two of his most famous heroes, appeared in a series of stories in
which the two soul mates of Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz shock the conventional world or leave the reader to
read between the lines. When Amabel asks Reginald's help to supervise "the annual outing of the bucolic infants
who composed the local choir", Reginald's eyes start to shine "with the dangerous enthusiasm of a convert." Once
Reginald states: "People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity; the religious system that produced
green Chartreuse can never really die."
--------------------------------------------------x--------------------------------------------------x-----------------------------------------Saki (H. H. Munro) succeeds in his fiction because of his inimitable blend of satire, irony, startling endings, clever
dialogue, sparkling wit, psychological insight, unconventional settings, mystery, and sometimes even horror.
While Saki is almost always a satirist, his satire is not biting; rather it seems more a practical joke upon a character of
the narrative rather than an invective against the social class Saki criticizes. In his short story, "The Mouse," for
instance, Theodoric Voler has been brought up in a society that has screened him from "the coarser realities of
life." His fastidious nature is satirzed as part of the Ewardian society which Saki often ridicules; however, the
surprise ending seems more a joke on Voler himself than a criticism of his society. Likewise, in "Dusk," the
satirization of the cynical Gortsby who feels himself better than the others who come to sit in the park at
twilight, ends with an ironic twist that again sharply humorizes Gortsby's character.
"The Interlopers" is another story that is socially satiric as well as psychologically insightful. Two Russian aristocrats
hold each other in enmity because of an inherited feud over a parcel of land. As they unexpectedly encounter each
other one night in the forest, a sudden storm pinions them under the branches of a huge beech tree. Ironically, with
death hovering over them, they realize the foolishness of their feud and resolve to be good neighbors after they are
rescued by their men who will search for them. But, when they think they hear men shouting, one of them laughs
hollowly, and tells the other that wolves are coming instead.
Saki's writing is certainly clever, socially satiric, and surprising; with its unconventionalities, there is little obeisance
for the rules of realism.