_Some years ago I met my old master, Sir Frank Benson--he was Mr. F. R.
Benson then--and he asked me in his friendly way what I had been doing
lately._
_"I am just finishing a book," I replied, "a book that everybody will
hate."_
_"As usual," said the Don Quixote of our English stage--if I knew any
nobler title to bestow upon him, I would, bestow it--"as usual; running
your head against a stone wall!"_
_Well, I don't know about "as usual"; there may be something to be said
for the personal criticism or there may not; but it has struck me that
Sir Frank's remark is a very good description of "The Secret Glory," the
book I had in mind as I talked to him. It is emphatically the history of
an unfortunate fellow who ran his head against stone walls from the
beginning to the end. He could think nothing and do nothing after the
common fashion of the world; even when he "went wrong," he did so in a
highly unusual and eccentric manner. It will be for the reader to
determine whether he were a saint who had lost his way in the centuries
or merely an undeveloped lunatic; I hold no passionate view on either
side. In every age, there are people great and small for whom the times
are out of joint, for whom everything is, somehow, wrong and askew.
Consider Hamlet; an amiable man and an intelligent man. But what a mess
he made of it! Fortunately, my hero--or idiot, which you will--was not
called upon to intermeddle with affairs of State, and so only brought
himself to grief: if it were grief; for the least chink of the door
should be kept open, I am inclined to hold, for the other point of view.
I have just been rereading Kipling's "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," the
tale of the Brahmin Prime Minister of the Native State in India, who saw
all the world and the glory of it, in the West as well as in the East,
and suddenly abjured all to become a hermit in the wood. Was he mad, or
was he supremely wise? It is just a matter of opinion._
_The origin and genesis of "The Secret Glory" were odd enough. Once on a
time, I read the life of a famous schoolmaster, one of the most notable
schoolmasters of these later days. I believe he was an excellent man in
every way; but, somehow, that "Life" got on my nerves. I thought that
the School Songs--for which, amongst other things, this master was
famous--were drivel; I thought his views about football, regarded, not
as a good game, but as the discipline and guide of life, were rot, and
poisonous rot at that. In a word, the "Life" of this excellent man got
my back up._
_Very good. The year after, schoolmasters and football had ceased to
engage my attention. I was deeply interested in a curious and minute
investigation of the wonderful legend of the Holy Grail; or rather, in
one aspect of that extraordinary complex. My researches led me to the
connection of the Grail Legend with the vanished Celtic Church which
held the field in Britain in the fifth and sixth and seventh centuries;
I undertook an extraordinary and fascinating journey into a misty and
uncertain region of Christian history. I must not say more here,
lest--as Nurse says to the troublesome and persistent child--I "begin
all over again"; but, indeed, it was a voyage on perilous seas, a
journey to faery lands forlorn--and I would declare, by the way, my
conviction that if there had been no Celtic Church, Keats could never
have written those lines of tremendous evocation and incantation._
_Again; very good. The year after, it came upon me to write a book. And
I hit upon an original plan; or so I thought. I took my dislike of the
good schoolmaster's "Life," I took my knowledge of Celtic mysteries--and
combined my information._
_Original, this plan! It was all thought of years before I was born. Do
you remember the critic of the "Eatanswill Gazette"? He had to review
for that admirable journal a work on Chinese Metaphysics. Mr. Pott tells
the story of the article._
_"He read up for the subject, at my desire, in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica ... he read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China
under the letter C, and combined his information!"_