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AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO THE
AMERICAN EDITION
_______________
WHEN authors attempt to explain such of their works
as should explain themselves, it makes the case no better that they can
say they do it on express invitation. And yet, though I think so, I
am about to give some little account of two stories of mine which are
connected together,―"Off
the Skelligs," and "Fated to be Free."
I am told that they are peculiar; and I feel that they must
be so, for most stories of human life are, or at least aim at being, works
of art,―selections of interesting
portions of life, and fitting incidents, put together and presented as a
picture is; and I have not aimed at producing a work of art at all, but a
piece of nature. I have attempted to beguile my readers into
something like a sense of reality; to make them fancy that they were
reading the unskillful chronicle of things that really occurred, rather
than some invented story as interesting as I knew how to make it.
It seemed to me difficult to write, at least in prose, an
artistic story; but easy to come nearer to life than most stories do.
Thus, after presenting a remarkable child, it seemed proper
to let him (through the force of circumstance) fall away into a very
commonplace man. It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with
children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly
with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books
written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them. It seemed
proper also to make the more important and interesting events of life fall
at rather a later age than is commonly chosen, and also to make the more
important and interesting persons not extremely young; for, in fact,
almost all the noblest and finest men and the loveliest and sweetest women
of real life are considerably older than the vast majority of heroes and
heroines in the world of fiction.
I have also let some of the same characters play a part in
both stories, though the last opens long before the first, and runs on
after it is finished. It is by this latter device that I have
chiefly hoped to give to each the air of a family history, and thus excite
curiosity and invite investigation; the small portion known to a young
girl being told by her from her own point of view and mingled into her own
life and love, and the larger narrative taking a different point of view
and giving both events and motives.
But in general, while describing the actions and setting down
the words, I have left the reader to judge my people; for I think many
writers must feel as I do, that, if characters are at all true to life,
there is just as much uncertainty as to how far they are to blame in any
course that they may have taken as there is in the case of our actual
living contemporaries.
But why then, you may ask, do I write this preface, which
must, if nothing else had done so, destroy any such sense of truth and
reality? Why, my American friends, because I am told that a great
many of you are pleased to wish for some explanation. I am sure you
more than deserve of me some efforts to please you. I seldom have an
opportunity of saying how truly I think so; and besides, even if I had
declined to give it, I know very well that for all my pains you would
still have never been beguiled into the least faith as to the reality of
these two stories!
LONDON,
June, 1875.
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