PORTRAIT OF A MAN
WITH RED HAIR
A ROMANTIC MACABRE
By
HUGH WALPOLE
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1925,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
COMPANY, INC. (HARPER'S BAZAAR)
PORTRAIT OF A MAN WITH RED HAIR
—A—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO MY FRIENDS
ETHEL AND ARTHUR FOWLER
DEDICATORY LETTER.
BRACKENBURN,
April 1925.
DEAR ETHEL AND ARTHUR—
It is appropriate, in a way, that I should give you this book when somuch of it was written under your roof. It is a romance, and this hasnot been, during the last twenty years, a favourable time for romances.But I like to give it to you because you know how it was written, in avery happy summer after a long and arduous lecture tour during which,more than ever before, I learned to love your country.
I wrote it as a rest and a refreshment, and I will tell you frankly thatI have enjoyed writing it very much. But I do not know whether, in thesestern days, stories are intended to be enjoyed either by the writer ofthem or the reader.
I have noticed sometimes that people speak rather scornfully of a storyas "readable." But if it be not first of all "readable" what afterwardscan it be? Surely dead before it is born.
I hope then, and I believe, that this tale is "readable" at least. Iknow no more than that what it is—fancy, story allegory, what youwill. I might invoke the great names of Hoffmann and Hawthorne for itsGodfathers. I might recall a story much beloved by me, Sintram and HisCompanions, did I not, most justly, fear the comparison!
But the word allegory is, in these days, a dangerous one, and some onewill soon be showing me that we have, each one of us, his Sea-Fog, hisWhite Tower, and that it is the fault of his own weakness if he does notfling out of the window his Red-Haired man.
No, no, God forbid. This is a tale and nothing but a tale, and allI ask is that once beginning it you will find it hard to lay downunfinished—
and that you will think of me always as
Your affectionate friend
HUGH.
. . . Within these few restrictions, I think, every writer may bepermitted to deal as much in the wonderful as he pleases; nay, if hethen keeps within the rules of credibility, the more he can surprise thereader the more he will engage his attention, and the more he will charmhim.
As a genius of the highest rank observes in his fifth chapter of theBathos, "The great art of all poetry is to mix truth with fiction, inorder to join the credible with the surprising."
For though every good author will confine himself within the bounds ofprobability, it is by no means necessary that his characters or hisincidents should be trite, common, or vulgar; such as happen in everystreet, or in every house, or which may be met with in the home articlesof a newspaper. Nor must he be inhibited from showing many persons andthings which may possibly never have fallen within the knowledge ofgreat part of his readers.
HENRY FIELDING.