_IS OF AN EXPLANATORY NATURE ONLY._
When the first rough draft of this diary was lying on my study table,
there called to see me, at a time when I chanced to be out, a certain
novelist who is an old and intimate friend of mine. He was shown into
the study to await my coming, and, on my return, I found him amusing
himself with these papers. Of the reality of my death-experiences
(which he persistently refused to regard as other than dreams) I had
never been able to convince him, and I was not surprised therefore
when, after the conversation turned upon the work each of us had in
hand, he referred to my booklet in his usual sceptical tone.
"My dear fellow," he said, laying one hand upon the offending
manuscript, "I haven't the slightest intention of disputing the truth
of your statements, or of denying that your diary has a certain
unwholesome interest of its own, but seriously, I don't think fiction
is altogether in your line."
"Nor satire in yours," I replied; "but what have you to say against the
thing now?"
"This," he answered, more evidently in earnest, "that you haven't
scored as you might have done, but have let slip what opportunities you
had for turning out something original. 'Letters from Hell' (which, by
the bye, you must expect to be charged with imitating, though _that_
needn't trouble you much) was confessedly a work of pure imagination,
and I shouldn't be surprised if the fact helped somewhat to lessen
the interest of the volume. Now your book has just enough shadow of
probability or possibility to sustain the delusion, and all that
will tell in its favour. The public likes--just as Dick Swiveller's
Marchioness did--to 'make believe' in the reality of that which is
meant to interest it; and books or plays can't be too life-like or
realistic nowadays. You have 'made believe' until you have brought
yourself to believe in the reality of something which I can't think
ever happened; but that isn't my business. What I complain of is
this:--that although you have a story to tell with sufficient shadow
of probability or possibility, as I have said, to make it interesting,
and to keep up the delusion, you have failed most lamentably to turn
your opportunities to account. Take your death scene, for instance. Any
practical writer of ordinary ability could _imagine_ the sensations
of dying, and could draw a far more powerful picture of them than you
have done, who profess to have actually experienced those sensations
personally. Then what you have to say about Heaven and Hell, and all
the rest of it, is curious, and some may think it not uninteresting,
but you haven't given us any idea of what the places are like, after
all. Why didn't you draw on your imagination, man? Why didn't you go
in for the grim, and grey, and ghastly? Why didn't you revel in the
weird (never mind Mr. Lang's abuse of the word), or conjure up blissful
dreams of the blest and of Paradise? I know a dozen men who could have
made twice as much capital, and far more saleable copy, out of that
idea of yours about a man dying, or nearly so, and then coming back to
relate what he has seen, as it appears from the standpoint of frail
mortality; and I tell you frankly that I don't think you have scored as
you ought to have done."
"But what has all this," says the reader, "to do with your diary? We
are willing to hear what you have to tell about your experiences,
but we didn't bargain for an article setting forth the opinion of
your friends on the subject, and we can't help thinking that the
introduction of this chapter is somewhat uncalled for."
Well, perhaps it is so, but it is because the conversation given
above touches upon some points concerning which I am anxious that the
reader should come to a right understanding before he enters upon my
after-death experience, that I have inserted it here, and if a very
few minutes' indulgence be granted me, I will say what I have to say
as briefly as possible. I could, I am sure, by drawing a little on
my imagination, have written a far more striking description of the
sensations of death, than that which I have given in the preceding
chapter, for of such description, in the sense of "working-up a
situation" there is absolutely none. All that I have tried to do is
to relate my story with a resolute avoidance of anything akin to the
sensational. If aught of the sensational there be in the narrative, it
is because the thing is sensational in itself, and not because I have
attempted to make it so. As George Eliot says, it is far easier to draw
a griffin, with wings and claws filled in according to our own fancy,
than to correctly limn the outlines of a lion; and to keep to the
truth has been the hardest part of my task.
When the mental picture or impression left on my mind is but an
imperfect one, I have not attempted, as I might easily and perhaps
pardonably have done, to fill in the missing outline from my
imagination, but have given the picture or impression for what it
is worth, and have left it so. My memory is, generally speaking,
excellent, and during the first few hours of consciousness after the
return of vitality, the recollection of that which I had seen was
as fresh as are the events of yesterday. Within a week, however, I
found that the greater part of it had gone from me, and that all my
efforts to recall the mental pictures were unavailing. I have sometimes
wondered if it can be possible that when my presence was missed
from the realms into which I had so untimely wandered, some angelic
messenger was despatched with instructions to wipe out from the tablets
of my memory the records of my experiences. Whether it be so, or not,
I cannot say, but this I do know, that had I commenced my diary within
a week of my return to life, the booklet would have been one such as
it is not often given to man to write. The subject, however, seemed
then, and for a long time after, too solemn to be turned to account
for "copy," and each of the several years which have elapsed since I
died, has taken with it some part of the recollections that remained
to me; and now that I have all too tardily set about my task, I have
but blurred and broken reminiscences to offer in place of a life-like
picture.
These reminiscences, vague, disconnected, and fragmentary as they
are, I have given for what they are worth. If any reader think that I
have overrated the value of my experiences, and that I have failed to
verify the promise with which I started, I can only assure him that
the failure is due, not to the insufficiency of what is strange and
striking in my experiences, but to my inability to recall what I have
seen, and to my incompetency to do fitting justice to my singular
subject.
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