So far as my literary work is concerned ‘Pierre and His People’ may
be likened to a new city built upon the ashes of an old one. Let me
explain. While I was in Australia I began a series of short stories and
sketches of life in Canada which I called ‘Pike Pole Sketches on the
Madawaska’. A very few of them were published in Australia, and I
brought with me to England in 1889 about twenty of them to make into a
volume. I told Archibald Forbes, the great war correspondent, of my wish
for publication, and asked him if he would mind reading the sketches and
stories before I approached a publisher. He immediately consented, and
one day I brought him the little brown bag containing the tales.
A few days afterwards there came an invitation to lunch, and I went to
Clarence Gate, Regent’s Park, to learn what Archibald Forbes thought of
my tales. We were quite merry at luncheon, and after luncheon, which
for him was a glass of milk and a biscuit, Forbes said to me, “Those
stories, Parker--you have the best collection of titles I have ever
known.” He paused. I understood. To his mind the tales did not live up
to their titles. He hastily added, “But I am going to give you a letter
of introduction to Macmillan. I may be wrong.” My reply was: “You need
not give me a letter to Macmillan unless I write and ask you for it.”
I took my little brown bag and went back to my comfortable rooms in an
old-fashioned square. I sat down before the fire on this bleak winter’s
night with a couple of years’ work on my knee. One by one I glanced
through the stories and in some cases read them carefully, and one by
one I put them in the fire, and watched them burn. I was heavy at heart,
but I felt that Forbes was right, and my own instinct told me that my
ideas were better than my performance--and Forbes was right. Nothing was
left of the tales; not a shred of paper, not a scrap of writing. They
had all gone up the chimney in smoke. There was no self-pity. I had a
grim kind of feeling regarding the thing, but I had no regrets, and I
have never had any regrets since. I have forgotten most of the titles,
and indeed all the stories except one. But Forbes and I were right; of
that I am sure.
The next day after the arson I walked for hours where London was
busiest. The shop windows fascinated me; they always did; but that day I
seemed, subconsciously, to be looking for something. At last I found it.
It was a second-hand shop in Covent Garden. In the window there was
the uniform of an officer of the time of Wellington, and beside it--the
leather coat and fur cap of a trapper of the Hudson’s Bay Company! At
that window I commenced to build again upon the ashes of last night’s
fire. Pretty Pierre, the French half-breed, or rather the original of
him as I knew him when a child, looked out of the window at me. So
I went home, and sitting in front of the fire which had received my
manuscript the night before, with a pad upon my knee, I began to write
‘The Patrol of the Cypress Hills’ which opens ‘Pierre and His People’.
The next day was Sunday. I went to service at the Foundling Hospital in
Bloomsbury, and while listening superficially to the sermon I was also
reading the psalms. I came upon these words, “Free among the Dead
like unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, that are out of
remembrance,” and this text, which I used in the story ‘The Patrol of
the Cypress Hills’, became, in a sense, the text for all the stories
which came after. It seemed to suggest the lives and the end of the
lives of the workers of the pioneer world.
So it was that Pierre and His People chiefly concerned those who had
been wounded by Fate, and had suffered the robberies of life and time
while they did their work in the wide places. It may be that my readers
have found what I tried, instinctively, to convey in the pioneer life I
portrayed--“The soul of goodness in things evil.” Such, on the whole, my
observation had found in life, and the original of Pierre, with all his
mistakes, misdemeanours, and even crimes, was such an one as I would
have gone to in trouble or in hour of need, knowing that his face would
never be turned from me.
These stories made their place at once. The ‘Patrol of the Cypress
Hills’ was published first in ‘The Independent’ of New York and in
‘Macmillan’s Magazine’ in England. Mr. Bliss Carman, then editor of
‘The Independent’, eagerly published several of them--‘She of the Triple
Chevron’ and others. Mr. Carman’s sympathy and insight were a great help
to me in those early days. The then editor of ‘Macmillan’s Magazine’,
Mr. Mowbray Morris, was not, I think, quite so sure of the merits of
the Pierre stories. He published them, but he was a little credulous
regarding them, and he did not pat me on the back by any means. There
was one, however, who made the best that is in ‘Pierre and His People’
possible; this was the unforgettable W. E. Henley, editor of The
‘National Observer’. One day at a sitting I wrote a short story called
‘Antoine and Angelique’, and sent it to him almost before the ink was
dry. The reply came by return of post: “It is almost, or quite, as good
as can be. Send me another.” So forthwith I sent him ‘God’s Garrison’,
and it was quickly followed by ‘The Three Outlaws’, ‘The Tall Master’,
‘The Flood’, ‘The Cipher’, ‘A Prairie Vagabond’, and several others. At
length came ‘The Stone’, which brought a telegram of congratulation, and
finally ‘The Crimson Flag’. The acknowledgment of that was a postcard
containing these all too-flattering words: “Bravo, Balzac!” Henley would
print what no other editor would print; he gave a man his chance to do
the boldest thing that was in him, and I can truthfully say that
the doors which he threw open gave freedom to an imagination and an
individuality of conception, for which I can never be sufficiently
grateful.
These stories and others which appeared in ‘The National Observer’, in
‘Macmillan’s’, in ‘The English Illustrated Magazine’ and others made
many friends; so that when the book at length came out it was received
with generous praise, though not without some criticism. It made its
place, however, at once, and later appeared another series, called ‘An
Adventurer of the North’, or, as it is called in this edition, ‘A Romany
of the Snows’. Through all the twenty stories of this second volume the
character of Pierre moved; and by the time the last was written there
was scarcely an important magazine in the English-speaking world which
had not printed one or more of them. Whatever may be thought of the
stories themselves, or of the manner in which the life of the Far North
was portrayed, of one thing I am sure: Pierre was true to the life--to
his race, to his environment, to the conditions of pioneer life through
which he moved. When the book first came out there was some criticism
from Canada itself, but that criticism has long since died away, and it
never was determined.
Plays have been founded on the ‘Pierre’ series, and one in particular,
‘Pierre of the Plains’, had a considerable success, with Mr. Edgar
Selwyn, the adapter, in the main part. I do not know whether, if I were
to begin again, I should have written all the Pierre stories in quite
the same way. Perhaps it is just as well that I am not able to begin
again. The stories made their own place in their own way, and that there
is still a steady demand for ‘Pierre and His People’ and ‘A Romany of
the Snows’ seems evidence that the editor of an important magazine in
New York who declined to recommend them for publication to his firm (and
later published several of the same series) was wrong, when he said that
the tales “seemed not to be salient.” Things that are not “salient”
do not endure. It is twenty years since ‘Pierre and His People’
was produced--and it still endures. For this I cannot but be deeply
grateful. In any case, what ‘Pierre’ did was to open up a field which
had not been opened before, but which other authors have exploited since
with success and distinction. ‘Pierre’ was the pioneer of the Far North
in fiction; that much may be said; and for the rest, Time is the test,
and Time will have its way with me as with the rest.