Every man who writes about himself is, on the face of the matter,
obnoxious to the suspicion which haunts the daily pathway of the Bore.
To talk of self and not be offensive demands an art which is not always
given to man. And yet we are always longing to get near each other and
to understand each other; and in default of a closer communion with
our living fellows we take to our bosoms the shadows of fiction and the
stage. If the real man could be presented to us by any writer of his own
history we should all hail him with enthusiasm.
Pepys, of course, came nearer than anybody else; but this is only
because he wrote for his own reading and meant to keep himself a secret.
Dickens exquisitely veils and unveils his own personality and career in
_Copperfield_, and scores of smaller writers have done the same thing in
fiction to our great pleasure. But to set down boldly, openly, and as a
fact for general publication the things of one's own doing, saying, and
thinking is an impertinence whose only justification can be found in the
public approval. If Pepys had written his Diary for publication he would
have been left to oblivion as a driveller. But we surprise the man's
secret, we see what he never meant to show us, the peering jackdaw
instinct is satisfied; and we feel, besides, a certain sense of humorous
pity and affectionate disdain which the man himself, had we known him in
life as we know him in his book, could never have excited. Rousseau, to
me, is flatly intolerable, because he meant to tell the world what every
man should have the decency to hide.
The perfect autobiography is yet to seek, and will probably never
be written. A partial solution of a difficulty is offered in this
experimental booklet. It is offered without diffidence, because it is
offered in perfect modesty. I have tried to show how one particular
novelist was made; where he got some of his experiences, and in
what varying fashions the World and Fate have tried to teach him his
business. It has been my effort to do this in the least egotistical and
the most straightforward fashion. The narrative is quite informal and
wanders where it will; but in its serial publication it received marked
favour from an indulgent public, and I like to give it an equal chance
of permanence with the rest of my writings, which I trust will not
convey the notion that I covet a too-exaggerated longevity. Should
the public favour continue, the field of experience is wide; and I may
repeat Dick Swiveller's saying to Mr. Quilp--'There is plenty more in
the shop this comes from.'