I
Dear little book, what shall I say about thee? Belated offspring of
mine, out of print for twenty years, what shall I say in praise of thee?
For twenty years I have only seen thee in French, and in this English
text thou comest to me like an old love, at once a surprise and a
recollection. Dear little book, I would say nothing about thee if I
could help it, but a publisher pleads, and "No" is a churlish word. So
for him I will say that I like thy prattle; that while travelling in a
railway carriage on my way to the country of "Esther Waters," I passed
my station by, and had to hire a carriage and drive across the downs.
Like a learned Abbé I delighted in the confessions of this young man, a
_naïf_ young man, a little vicious in his _naïveté_, who says that his
soul must have been dipped in Lethe so deeply that he came into the
world without remembrance of previous existence. He can find no other
explanation for the fact that the world always seems to him more new,
more wonderful than it did to anyone he ever met on his faring; every
wayside acquaintance seemed old to this amazing young man, and himself
seemed to himself the only young thing in the world. Am I imitating the
style of these early writings? A man of letters who would parody his
early style is no better than the ancient light-o'-love who wears a wig
and reddens her cheeks. I must turn to the book to see how far this is
true. The first thing I catch sight of is some French, an astonishing
dedication written in the form of an epitaph, an epitaph upon myself,
for it appears that part of me was dead even when I wrote "Confessions
of a Young Man." The youngest have a past, and this epitaph dedication,
printed in capital letters, informs me that I have embalmed my past,
that I have wrapped the dead in the finest winding-sheet. It would seem
I am a little more difficult to please to-day, for I perceived in the
railway train a certain coarseness in its tissue, and here and there a
tangled thread. I would have wished for more care, for _un peu plus de
toilette_. There is something pathetic in the loving regard of the
middle-aged man for the young man's coat (I will not say winding-sheet,
that is a morbidity from which the middle-aged shrink). I would set his
coat collar straighter, I would sweep some specks from it. But can I do
aught for this youth, does he need my supervision? He was himself, that
was his genius; and I sit at gaze. My melancholy is like her's--the
ancient light-o'-love of whom I spoke just now, when she sits by the
fire in the dusk, a miniature of her past self in her hand.