Farewell The Tranquil Mind [antikvár]

Author's Note A brief explanatory note is necessary in this record if only to explain an occasionai modernity of phrase which might puzzle the purist in such matters. The fact is that only about one-third of David Treloar's story has been reproduced in anything like his own words, and even this proportion has been almost entirely rewritten. I took this liberty reluctantly but editorial despotism was essential, for even the revised version of David's original statement was not set down by his own hand but by that of his grandson, Abel Treloar, of Westdown and Littlecot in East Devon. I do not know whether Abel Treloar collaborated with his griandfather in the revision. He might well have done for David did not die until the late eighteen-forties. David Treloar's originai record, i.e. the one he compiled for the authorities whilst lodged in Exeter Castle Jail awaiting the Assizes, was seemingly not written in anything like the style employed by the present-day novelist David probably learned to write some years after he learned to read and it is doubtful whether he had ever written anything longer than a letter until he began the ohronicle of his adventures during his imprisonment. Moreover, it should be remembered that David's reading and writing exercises were based in the main on the Old Testament, eighteenth-century news sheets and Tom Paine's Rights of Man, and it is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that his style was very far removed from that of a professional diarist or journalist. His grandson's revision, although clearly written, was less than half the length of the present book and there were several gaps in the narrative. The most serious omissions dealt with David's actions both immediately be-fore his flight to France in the spring of 1792 and imme-ix