Although the faulty judgment of authors on their own productions has
assumed something like the force of a proverb, I am ready to incur the
hazard of avowing that the present volume is, to my own thinking, better
than anything else I have done. I am not about to defend its numerous
shortcomings and great faults. I will not say one word in extenuation of
a plan which, to many readers, forms an insuperable objection,--that
of a story in letters. I wish simply to record the fact that the book
afforded me much pleasure in the writing, and that I felt an amount of
interest in the character of Kenny Dodd such as I have never before nor
since experienced for any personage of my own creation.
The reader who is at all acquainted with the incidents of foreign
travel, and the strange individuals to be met with on every European
highway, will readily acquit me of exaggeration either in describing the
mistaken impressions conceived of Continental life, or the difficulties
of forming anything like a correct estimate of national habits by those
whose own sphere of observation was so limited in their own country.
In Kenny Dodd, I attempted to portray a man naturally acute and
intelligent, sensible and well judging where his prejudices did not
pervert his reason, and singularly quick to appreciate the ridicule
of any absurd situation in which he did not figure himself. To all the
pretentious ambitions of his family,--to their exaggerated sense of
themselves and their station,--to their inordinate desire to figure in a
rank above their own, and appear to be something they had never hitherto
attempted,--I have made him keenly and sensitively alive. He sees Mrs.
Dodd's perils,--there is not a sunk rock nor a shoal before her that he
has not noted, and yet for the life of him he can't help booking himself
for the voyage. There is an Irishman's love of drollery,--that passion
for what gives him a hearty laugh, even though he come in for his share
of the ridicule, which repays him for every misadventure. If he is
momentarily elated by the high and distinguished company in which he
finds himself, so far from being shocked when he discovers them to be
swindlers and blacklegs, he chuckles over the blunders of Mrs. D. and
Mary Anne, and writes off to his friend Purcell a letter over which he
laughs till his eyes run.
Of those broad matters to which a man of good common-sense can apply
his faculties fairly, his opinions are usually just and true; he likes
truth, he wants to see things as they are. Of everything conventional he
is almost invariably in error; and it is this struggle that in a manner
reflects the light and shade of his nature, showing him at one moment
clear-headed and observant, and at the next absurdly mistaken and
ignorant.
It was in no spirit of sarcasm on my countrymen that I took an Irishman
to represent these incongruities; nay, more, I will say that in the very
liability to be so strongly impressed from without, lies much of that
unselfishness which forms that staple of the national character which so
greatly recommends them to strangers.
If I do not speak of the other characters of the book, it is because I
feel that whatever humble merit the volume may possess is ascribable to
the truthfulness of this principal personage. It is less the Dodd family
for which I would bespeak the reader's interest, than for the trials of
Kenny Dodd himself, his thoughts and opinions.
Finally, let me observe that this story has had the fortune to be better
liked by my friends, and less valued by the public, than any other of my
books.
I wrote it, as I have said, with pleasure; well satisfied should I be
that any of my readers might peruse it with as much. It was planned and
executed in a quiet little cottage in the Gulf of Spezia, something more
than six years ago. I am again in the same happy spot; and, as I turn
over the pages, not altogether lost to some of the enjoyment they once
afforded me in the writing, and even more than before anxious that I
should not be alone in that sentiment.
It is in vain, however, for an author to bespeak favor for that which
comes not recommended by merits of its own; and if Kenny Dodd finds no
acceptance with you on his own account, it is hopeless to expect that he
will be served by the introduction of so partial a friend as
Your devoted servant,