A weaver goes to the mart with a divided tapestry, and with half in
either hand he walks about telling that whoever possesses one must,
perforce, possess the other for the sake of the story. But
allegories are out of place in popular editions; they require linen
paper, large margins, uncut edges; even these would be insufficient;
only illuminated vellum can justify that which is never read. So
perhaps it will be better if I abandon the allegory and tell what
happened: how one day after writing the history of "Evelyn Innes"
for two years I found myself short of paper, and sought vainly for a
sheet in every drawer of the writing-table; every one had been
turned into manuscript, and "Evelyn Innes" stood nearly two feet
high.
"Five hundred pages at least," I said, "and only half of my story
finished.... This is a matter, on which I need the publisher's
opinion."
Ten minutes after I was rolling away in a hansom towards Paternoster
Square, very anxious to persuade him that the way out of my
difficulty would be to end the chapter I was then writing on a full
close.
"That or a novel of a thousand pages," I said.
"A novel of a thousand pages!" he answered. "Impossible! We must
divide the book." It may have been to assuage the disappointment he
read on my face that he added, "You'll double your money."
My publisher had given way too easily, and my artistic conscience
forthwith began to trouble me, and has never ceased troubling me
since that fatal day. The book the publisher puts asunder the author
may not bring together, and I shall write to no purpose in one
preface that "Evelyn Innes" is not a prelude to "Sister Teresa" and
in another that "Sister Teresa" is not a sequel to "Evelyn Innes."
Nor will any statement of mine made here or elsewhere convince the
editors of newspapers and reviews to whom this book will be sent for
criticism that it is not a revised edition of a book written ten
years ago, but an entirely new book written within the last eighteen
months; the title will deceive them, and my new book will be thrown
aside or given to a critic with instructions that he may notice it
in ten or a dozen lines. Nor will the fact that "Evelyn Innes"
occupies a unique place in English literature cause them to order
that the book shall be reread and reconsidered--a unique place I
hasten to add which it may easily lose to-morrow, for the claim made
for it is not one of merit, but of kind.
"Evelyn Innes" is a love story, the first written in English for
three hundred years, and the only one we have in prose narrative.
For this assertion not to seem ridiculous it must be remembered that
a love story is not one in which love is used as an ingredient; if
that were so nearly all novels would be love stories; even Scott's
historical novels could not be excluded. In the true love story love
is the exclusive theme; and perhaps the reason why love stories are
so rare in literature is because the difficulty of maintaining the
interest is so great; probably those in existence were written
without intention to write love stories. Mine certainly was. The
manuscript of this book was among the printers before it broke on me
one evening as I hung over the fire that what I had written was a
true love story about a man and a woman who meet to love each other,
who are separated for material or spiritual reasons, and who at the
end of the story are united in death or affection, no matter which,
the essential is that they should be united. My story only varies
from the classical formula in this, that the passion of "the lovely
twain" is differentiated.
It would be interesting to pursue this subject, and there are other
points which it would be interesting to touch upon; there must be a
good deal for criticism in a book which has been dreamed and
re-dreamed for ten years. But, again, of what avail? The book I now
offer to the public will not be read till I am dead. I have written
for posterity if I have written for anybody except myself. The
reflection is not altogether a pleasant one. But there it is; we
follow our instinct for good or evil, but we follow it; and while the
instinct of one man is to regard the most casual thing that comes
from his hand as "good enough," the instinct of another man compels
him to accept all risks, seeking perfection always, although his work
may be lost in the pursuit.
My readers, who are all Balzacians, are already thinking of Porbus
and Poussin standing before _le chef d'oeuvre Inconnu_ in the studio
of Mabuse's famous pupil--Frenhofer. Nobody has seen this picture
for ten years; Frenhofer has been working on it in some distant
studio, and it is now all but finished. But the old man thinks that
some Eastern woman might furnish him with some further hint, and is
about to start on his quest when his pupil Porbus persuades him that
the model he is seeking is Poussin's mistress. Frenhofer agrees to
reveal his mistress (_i.e._, his picture) on condition that Poussin
persuades his mistress to sit to him for an hour, for he would
compare her loveliness with his art. These conditions having been
complied with, he draws aside the curtain; but the two painters see
only confused colour and incoherent form, and in one corner "a
delicious foot, a living foot escaped by a miracle from a slow and
progressive destruction."
In the first edition of "Evelyn Innes" (I think the passage has been
dropped out of the second) Ulick Dean says that one should be
careful what one writes, for what one writes will happen. Well,
perhaps what Balzac wrote has happened, and I may have done no more
than to realise one of his most famous characters.