Produced by David Widger and Andrew SlyMRS FALCHIONBy Gilbert ParkerINTRODUCTIONThis novel was written in the days of the threedecker and it went outto sea as such Every novel of mine written until 1893 was published intwo or three volumes and the sale to the libraries was greater than thesale to the general public This book was begun in 1892 at the time whenthe Pierre stories were being written and it was finished in the summerof 1893 It did not appear serially indeed I made no attempt at serialpublication I had a feeling that as it was to be my first novel itshould be judged as a whole and taken at a gasp as it were I believethat the reader of Messrs Methuen  Company was not disposed to publishthe book but Mr Methuen himself or Mr Stedman as he was then calledwas impressed by it and gave it his friendly confidence He was certainthat it would arrest the attention of the critics and of the publicwhether it became popular or not I have not a set of those originalthree volumes I wish I had because they won for me an almostunhopedfor pleasure The Daily Chronicle gave the volumes overa column of review and headed the notice A Coming Novelist TheAthenaeum said that Mrs Falchion was a splendid study of characterThe Pall Mall Gazette said that the writing was as good as anythingthat had been done in our time while at the same time it took rather adark view of my future as a novelist because it said I had not probeddeep enough into the wounds of character which I had inflicted Thearticle was written by Mr George W Stevens and he was right in sayingthat I had not probed deep enough Few very young menand I was veryyoung thendo probe very deeply At the appearance of When ValmondCame to Pontiac however Mr Stevens came to the conclusion that myfuture was assuredI mention these things because they were burnt into my mind at the timeMrs Falchion was my first real novel as I have said though it hadbeen preceded by a short novel called The Chief Factor since rescuedfrom publication and never published in book form in England I realisedwhen I had written Mrs Falchion that I had not found my metier and Iwas fearful of complete failure I had come but a few years before fromthe South Seas I was full of what I had seen and felt I was eager towrite of it all and I did write of it but the thing which was deeperstill in me was the life which Pierre and His People The Seats ofthe Mighty The Trail of the Sword The Lane That Had no Turningand The Right of Way portrayed That life was destined to give mean assured place and public while Mrs Falchion and the South Seastories published in various journals before the time of its productionand indeed anterior to the writing of the Pierre series only assured meattentionHappily for the book which has faults of construction superficialitiesas to incident and with some crudity of plot it was in the main astudy of character There was focus there was illumination in the bookto what degree I will not try to say and the attempt to fasten themind of the reader upon the central figure and to present that centralfigure in many aspects safeguarded the narrative from the chargeof being a mere novel of adventure or as one writer called it animpudent melodrama which has its own fascinationsReading Mrs Falchion again after all these years I seem to realisein it an attempt to combine the objective and subjective methods oftreatmentto combine analysis of character and motive with arrestingepisode It is a difficult thing to do as I have found It was not doneon my part wholly by design but rather by instinct and I imagine thatthis tendency has run through all my works It represents the elementsof romanticism and of realism in one and that kind of representationhas its dangers to say nothing of its difficulties It sometimesalienates the reader who by instinct and preference is a realist andit troubles the reader who wants to read for a story alone who caresfor what a character does and not for what a character is or saysexcept in so far as it emphasises what it does One has to workhowever in ones own way after ones own idiosyncrasies and hereis the book that represents one of my own idiosyncrasies in its mostprimitive formCONTENTS     BOOK I     BELOW THE SUN LINE          I     THE GATES OF THE SEA          II    MOTLEY IS YOUR ONLY WEAR          III   A TALE OF NO MANS SEA          IV    THE TRAIL OF THE ISHMAELITE          V     ACCUSING FACES          VI    MUMMERS ALL          VII   THE WHEEL COMES FULL CIRCLE          VIII  A BRIDGE OF PERIL          IX    THE PROGRESS OF THE SUNS          X     BETWEEN DAY AND DARK     BOOK II     THE SLOPE OF THE PACIFIC          XI    AMONG THE HILLS OF GOD          XII   THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME          XIII   THE SONG OF THE SAW