Author of "Garth," "Sebastian Strome," "Dust," Etc.
When I was a child, I used to hope my fairy-stories were true. Sincereaching years of discretion, I have preferred acknowledged fiction. Thisinconsistency, however, is probably rather apparent than real. Experiencehas taught me that the greater the fairy-story the less the truth; andcontrariwise, that the greater the truth the less the fairy-story. Inother words, the artistic graces of romance are irreconcilable with thecrude straightforwardness of fact. The idealism of childhood, believingthat all that is most beautiful must on that very account be most true,clamors accordingly for truth. The knowledge of maturity, which hasdiscovered that nothing that is true (in the sense of being existent) canbe beautiful, deprecates truth beyond everything. What happens, we find,is never what ought to happen; nor does it happen in the right way orseason. In palliation of this hardship, the sublime irony of fate grantsus our imagination, wherewith we create little pet worlds of poetry andromance, in which everything is arranged in neat harmonies and surprises,to gratify the scope of our little vision. The actual world, the realuniverse, may, indeed, be picturesque and perfect beyond the grandest ofour imaginative miniatures; but since the former can be revealed to usonly in comparatively infinitesimal portions, the miniatures still havethe best of it.
To preface a story with the information that it is true, is not, therefore,the way to recommend it. Your hearer's life, and those of his friends, areenough true stories for him; what he wants of you is merciful fiction.Destiny, to his apprehension, is always either vapid, or clumsy, orbrutal; and he feels certain that, do your worst, you can never rival thebrutality, the clumsiness, or the vapidity of destiny. If you are silly,he can at least laugh at you; if you are clumsy or brutal, he has hisremedy; and meanwhile there is always the chance that you may turn out tobe graceful and entertaining. But to bully him with facts is like askinghim to live his life over again; and the civilized human being has yet tobe found who would not rather die than do that.
No; we are all spontaneously sure that no story-teller, though he were aTimon of Athens double distilled, can ever be so unsympathetic andunnatural as destiny, who tells the only story that never winds up. Wecannot understand destiny; we never know to what lengths she may go: butthe story-teller we know inside and out; he is only a possible ourself,and we defy him to do us any serious harm. I trust I am rendering mymeaning clear, and that no one will suppose that in making this onslaughtupon truth, I have anything else in view than truth as applied to what arecalled stories. With truth scientific, moral, religious, I am at presentin nowise concerned. Only, I have no respect for the weakness that willoutrage a promising bit of narrative for the sake of keeping to the facts.Imbecile! the facts are given you, like the block of marble or theelements of a landscape, as material for the construction of a work ofart. Which would you rather be, a photographer or Michael Angelo? "Nonvero ma ben trovato" should be your motto; and if you refuse to killyour heroine on the Saturday night because, forsooth, she really did,despite all dramatic propriety, survive till Monday morning--why, pleaseyourself; but do not bring your inanities to me!
I have now to reconcile this profession of faith with the incongruous factthat the following story is a true one. True it is, in whole and in part;furthermore, the events took place in the present century, and within ahundred miles of London. But let me observe, in the first p