Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
1888
It ought to be stated that the account of the play Elvira, given inChapter VII. of the present story, is based upon an existing play, thework of a little known writer of the Romantic time, whose short,brilliant life came to a tragical end in 1836.
So many criticisms, not of a literary but of a personal kind, have beenmade on this little book since its appearance, that I may perhaps beallowed a few words of answer to them in the shape of a short preface tothis new edition. It has been supposed that because the book describes aLondon world, which is a central and conspicuous world with interests andactivities of a public and prominent kind, therefore all the charactersin it are drawn from real persons who may be identified if the seeker isonly clever enough. This charge of portraiture is constantly broughtagainst the novelist, and it is always a difficult one to meet; but onemay begin by pointing out that, in general, it implies a radicalmisconception of the story-teller's methods of procedure. An idea, asituation, is suggested to him by real life, he takes traits andpeculiarities from this or that person whom he has known or seen, butthis is all. When he comes to write—unless, of course, it is a case ofmalice and bad faith—the mere necessities of an imaginative effortoblige him to cut himself adrift from reality. His characters become tohim the creatures of a dream, as vivid often as his waking life, butstill a dream. And the only portraits he is drawing are portraits ofphantoms, of which the germs were present in reality, but to which hehimself has given voice, garb, and action.
So the present little sketch was suggested by real life; the first hintfor it was taken from one of the lines of criticism—not that of theauthor—adopted towards the earliest performances of an actress who,coming among us as a stranger a year and a half ago, has won the respectand admiration of us all. The share in dramatic success which, in thiscountry at any rate, belongs to physical gift and personal charm; theeffect of the public sensitiveness to both, upon the artist and upon art;the difference between French and English dramatic ideals; these were thevarious thoughts suggested by the dramatic interests of the time. Theywere not new, they had been brought into prominence on more than oneoccasion during the last few years, and, in a general sense, they arecommon to the whole history of dramatic art. In dealing with them theproblem of the story-teller was twofold—on the one hand, to describe thepublic in its two divisions of those who know or think they know, andthose whose only wish is to feel and to enjoy; and on the other hand, todraw such an artist as should embody at once all the weakness and all thestrength involved in the general situation. To do this, it was necessaryto exaggerate and emphasise all the criticisms that had ever been broughtagainst beauty in high dramatic place, while, at the same time, charm andloveliness were inseparable from the main conception. And further, it wassought to show that, although the English susceptibility to physicalcharm—susceptibility greater here, in matters of art, than it is inFrance—may have, and often does have, a hindering effect upon theartist, still, there are other influen