by
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
1899
To THE RIGHT HON. LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY, M.P.
My Dear Mr. Courtney,
It is with a peculiar pleasure and, I dare to hope, with someappropriateness that I dedicate to you this story of the WestCountry, which claims you with pride. To be sure, the places herewritten of will be found in no map of your own or any neighbouringconstituency. A visitor may discover Nannizabuloe, but only towonder what has become of the lighthouse, or seek along thesand-hills without hitting on Tredinnis. Yet much of the tale istrue in a fashion, even to fact. One or two things which happen toSir Harry Vyell did actually happen to a better man, who lived andhunted foxes not a hundred miles from the “model borough” ofLiskeard, and are told of him in my friend Mr. W. F. Collier’s memoirof Harry Terrell, a bygone Dartmoor hero: and a true account of whatfollowed the wreck of the Samaritan will be found in a chapter ofRemembrances by that true poet and large-hearted man, Robert StephenHawker.
But a novel ought to be true to more than fact: and if this one comenear its aim, no one will need to be told why I dedicate it to you.If it do not (and I wish the chance could be despised!), its authorwill yet hold that among the names of living Englishmen he could havechosen none fitter to be inscribed above a story which in the tellinghas insensibly come to rest upon the two texts, “Lord, make men astowers!” and “All towers carry a light.” Although for you Heaven hasseen fit to darken the light, believe me it shines outwards over thewaters and is a help to men: a guiding light tended by brave hands.We pray, sir—we who sail in little boats—for long life to the towerand the unfaltering lamp.
A. T. Q. C.
St. John’s Eve, 1899.