Back there in London--how many leagues and aeons distant!--I threw
down my pen and fled here to the ends of the earth, in pursuit of rest
and self-comprehending peace of mind. Here I now take up the pen again
and return in thought to London: that vast cockpit; still in pursuit
of rest and self-comprehending peace of mind.
That seems wasteful and not very hopeful. But, to be honest--and if
this final piece of pen-work be not honest to its core, it certainly
will prove the very acme of futility--I must add the expression of
opinion that most of the important actions of my life till now have
had the self-same goal in view: peace of mind. The surprising thing is
that, right up to this present, every one of my efforts has been
backed by a substantial if varying amount of solid conviction; of
belief that that particular action would bring the long-sought reward.
I suppose I thought this in coming here, in fleeing from London. Nay,
I know I did.
The latest, and I suppose the last, illusion bids me believe that if,
using the literary habit of a lifetime, I can set down in ordered
sequence the salient facts and events of that restless, struggling
pilgrimage I call my life, there is a likelihood that, seeing the
entire fabric in one piece, I may be able truly to understand it, and,
understanding it, to rest content before it ends. The ironical habit
makes me call it an illusion. In strict truth I listen to the call
with some confidence; not, to be sure, with the flaming ardour which
in bygone years has set me leaping into action in answer to such a
call; yet with real hope.
It is none so easy a task, this exact charting out of so complex a
matter as a man's life. And it may be that long practice of the
writer's art but serves to heighten its difficulties. For example,
since writing the sentence ending on that word 'hope,' I have covered
two whole pages with writing which has now been converted into ashes
among the logs upon my hearth. For the covering of those pages two
volumes had been fingered and referred to, if you please, and my
faulty memory drawn upon for yet a third quotation. So much for the
habit of literary allusiveness, engrained into one by years of
book-making, and yet more surely, I suspect, by labour for hire on the
newspaper press.
But, though I have detected and removed these two pages of
irrelevance, I foresee that unessential and therefore obscurantic
matter will creep in. Well, when I come to weigh the completed record,
I must allow for that; and, meanwhile, so far as time and my own
limitations as selector permit, I will prune and clear away from the
line of vision these weeds of errant fancy. For the record must of all
things be honest and comprehensive; rather than shapely, effective, or
literary. To be sure the pundits would say that this is to misuse and
play with words; to perpetrate a contradiction in terms. Well, we
shall see. Whatever the critics might say, your author by profession
would understand me well enough when I say: 'Honest, rather than
literary.'
How, to begin with, may I label and describe my present self? There,
immediately, I am faced with one of the difficulties of this task. One
can say of most men that they are this or that; of this class, order,
sect, party, or type; and, behold them neatly docketed! But in all
honesty I cannot say that I am of any special class, or that I
'belong' anywhere in particular. There is no circle in any community
which is indefeasibly my own by right of birth and training. I am
still a member of two London clubs, I believe. They were never more
than hotels for me. I am probably what most folk call a gentleman; but
how much does that signify in the twentieth century? Many simple
people would likely call me a person of education, even of learning,
belike, seeing a list of books under my name. A schoolman who examined
me would be pardoned (by me, at all events) for calling me an
ignoramus of no education whatever. For--and this I never reflected
upon until the present moment--I could not for the life of me
'analyse' the simplest sentence, in the rather odd scholastic sense of
that word. Inherited instinct and long practice make me aware, I
believe, of an error in syntax, when I chance upon one. But I could
only tell you that it was wrong, and never how or why. I know
something of literature, but less of mathematics than I assume to be
known by the modern ten-year-old schoolboy; something of three or four
languages, but nothing of their grammar. I have met and talked with
some of the most notable people of my time, but truly prefer cottage
life before that of the greatest houses. And so, in a score of other
ways, I feel it difficult informingly and justly to label myself.
But--let me have done with difficulties and definitions. My task shall
be the setting forth of facts, out of which definitions must shape
themselves. And, for a beginning, I must turn aside from my present
self, pass by a number of dead selves, each differing in a thousand
ways from every other, and bring my mind to bear for the moment upon
that infinitely remote self: the child, Nicholas Freydon. It may be
that curious and distant infant will help to explain the man.