I feel a good deal of hesitation about telling you this story of my
own. You see it is not a story like the other stories that I have
been telling you, or rather that Teddy Biffles, Mr. Coombes, and my
uncle have been telling you: it is a true story. It is not a
story told by a person sitting round a fire on Christmas Eve,
drinking whisky punch: it is a record of events that actually
happened.
Indeed, it is not a 'story' at all, in the commonly accepted
meaning of the word: it is a report. It is, I feel, almost out of
place in a book of this kind. It is more suitable to a biography,
or an English history.
There is another thing that makes it difficult for me to tell you
this story, and that is, that it is all about myself. In telling
you this story, I shall have to keep on talking about myself; and
talking about ourselves is what we modern-day authors have a strong
objection to doing. If we literary men of the new school have one
praiseworthy yearning more ever present to our minds than another
it is the yearning never to appear in the slightest degree
egotistical.
I myself, so I am told, carry this coyness--this shrinking
reticence concerning anything connected with my own personality,
almost too far; and people grumble at me because of it. People
come to me and say -
"Well, now, why don't you talk about yourself a bit? That's what
we want to read about. Tell us something about yourself."
But I have always replied, "No." It is not that I do not think the
subject an interesting one. I cannot myself conceive of any topic
more likely to prove fascinating to the world as a whole, or at all
events to the cultured portion of it. But I will not do it, on
principle. It is inartistic, and it sets a bad example to the
younger men. Other writers (a few of them) do it, I know; but I
will not--not as a rule.
Under ordinary circumstances, therefore, I should not tell you this
story at all. I should say to myself, "No! It is a good story, it
is a moral story, it is a strange, weird, enthralling sort of a
story; and the public, I know, would like to hear it; and I should
like to tell it to them; but it is all about myself--about what I
said, and what I saw, and what I did, and I cannot do it. My
retiring, anti-egotistical nature will not permit me to talk in
this way about myself."
But the circumstances surrounding this story are not ordinary, and
there are reasons prompting me, in spite of my modesty, to rather
welcome the opportunity of relating it.
As I stated at the beginning, there has been unpleasantness in our
family over this party of ours, and, as regards myself in
particular, and my share in the events I am now about to set forth,
gross injustice has been done me.
As a means of replacing my character in its proper light--of
dispelling the clouds of calumny and misconception with which it
has been darkened, I feel that my best course is to give a simple,
dignified narration of the plain facts, and allow the unprejudiced
to judge for themselves. My chief object, I candidly confess, is
to clear myself from unjust aspersion. Spurred by this motive--and
I think it is an honourable and a right motive--I find I am enabled
to overcome my usual repugnance to talking about myself, and can
thus tell -