AUTHOR'S NOTE.

SET OF SIX.

The six stories in this volume are the result of some three or
four years of occasional work. The dates of their writing are far
apart, their origins are various. None of them are connected direct-
ly with my personal experiences. In all of them the facts are
that they are not only possible, but they have actually happened.
For instance, the last story in the
volume, the one I call Pathetic, whose first title is Il Conde (mis-
spelt by-the-by) is almost verbatim an transcript of the tale told me by a
very charming old gentleman whom I met in Italy. I don't mean to say
that it is only that. Anybody can see that it is something more thana
verbatim report, but where he left off and where I began must be left
to the acute discrimination of the reader who may be interested
in the problem. I don't mean to say that the problem is worth the
trouble. What I am certain of however is that it is not to be resolved
I am not at all clear about it myself by this time. All I will say
is that the personality of the narrator was extremely suggestive of a
quite apart from the story he was telling me. I heard it some years ago
that he had died far away from his beloved Naples where that"abominable
adventure" did happen to him really.

2.

Thus the genealogy of Il Conde is simple. It is not the case with the other stories. Various strains contributed to their composition, ~~and~~ the nature of many. Some of those I have forgotten, not having the habit of making notes either before or after the fact. I mean the fact of writing a story. What I remember best about Gaspar Ruiz is that it was written, or at any rate begun, within a month of finishing Nostromo; but apart from the locality, and that a pretty wide one (all the South American Continent), the novel and the story have nothing in common, neither mood, nor intention and, certainly, not the style. The manner for the most part is that of General Santierra, and that old warrior, I note with satisfaction, is very true to himself all through. I look ing now dispassionately at the various ways in which this story could have been written. I can't honestly think the general superfluous. It is he, an old man, talking of the days of his youth, who characterises the whole narrative and gives it an air of actuality which I doubt. I could have achieved without his help. In the mere writing of course, no help at all, because the whole thing had to be carefully kept within the frame of his simple mind. But all this is a laborious searching of memories. My present feeling is that the story could not have been told otherwise. The hint for Gaspar Ruiz, the man himself, I found in a book by Captain Hall, R.N. who was for some time, between the years 1824 to 1828, senior officer of a small British Squadron on the West Coast of South America. His book published in the '30's had a certain celebrity in my mind, and I suppose is to be found still in some libraries. The curious who may be mistrusting my imagination are

3.

referred to that printed document, Vol. II, I forget the page, but it's somewhere not far from the end. Another document connected with this story is a letter of a biting and ironic kind from a friend then in Burmah passing certain strictures upon "the gentleman with the gun on his back" which I do not intend to make accessible to the public. Yet the gun episode did really happen, or at least I am bound to believe it because I remember it, described in an extremely matter-of-fact tone, in some book I read in my boyhood; and I am not going to discard the beliefs of my boyhood for anybody on earth.

The Brute, which is the only sea-story in the volume, is like Il Conde associated with a direct narrative, a suggestion gathered from warm human lips. I will not disclose the real name of the criminal nosey habits of the ship but the first I heard of her amusements was from the late Captain Blake, of the London ship, in which I served in 1884 as Second Officer. Captain Blake was one of the all-time greatest affection. I have sketched in his personality, without however mentioning his name, in the first paper of the Mirror of the Sea. In his young days he had had a personal experience of the brute and it is perhaps for that reason that I have put the story in the mouth of a young man and made of it what the reader will see. The existence of the brute was a fact. The end of the brute as a person character is also a fact, well-known at the time though it really happened to another ship, of great beauty of form and blameless character, which certainly

4.

deserved a better fate. I have unscrupulously adapted it to the needs of my story thinking that I had something in the nature of poet-ical justice. I hope that little villainy will not cast a shadow upon the general honesty of my prose as a writer of tales.

Of The Informer and The Anarchist I will say next to nothing. The Pedigree of these tales is hopelessly complicated and at this distance of time, I found them and here they are. The discriminating reader will guess that I have round them my mind, but how they or their elements came in there I have forgotten for the most part; and for the rest I really don't see why I should give myself away more than I have done already.

It remains for me only now to mention The Duel, the longest story in the book. That story attained the dignity of publication all by itself a small illustrated volume, under the title, The Point of Honour. That was many years ago. It has been reinstated in its proper place, which is the place it occupies in this volume, in all the subsequent editions of my work. Its pedigree is extremely simple. It springs from a ten-line paragraph in a provincial paper published in the South of France. That paragraph, occasioned by a duel with a fatal ending between two well-known Parisian personalities, referred for some reason or other to the "well-known fact" of two officers in Napoleon's Grand Army having fought a series of duels in the midst of great wars and on some futile pretext. The pretext was never disclosed. I had to invent it; and I think, given the character of the two officers which I had to invent too, I have made it sufficiently possible by the Commanding

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mere force of its absurdity, in my mind the
Story is nothing but a serious attempt at
a bit of historical fiction. In my boyhood I had heard a good deal
of the great Napoleonic legend. I would at home in it, and
is the result of that feeling or, if the reader prefers, of that
presumption. Personally I have no quails of conscience about it.

The story might have been better of course. All one's work might have been better, but this is the sort of work a worker must do; and if he doesn't mean his conception to remain for ever a vision, an private and evanescent reverie. How many of those have I seen?

This one however has a proof of its truth. It remains a testimony if you like, to my courage or to my rashness.

I like to remember that I have heard from one of my
who volunteered the opinion that in those hundred pages or so I had
managed to give render "wonderfully" the spirit of the whole epoch.

No doubt; but even so I hug it to my breast, because in
truth it is what I was trying to capture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch - a military epoch in the long clash of arms, youthful, almost childlike, in its exaltation and naively heroic.

In its exaltation and naively heroic in its faith.