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[A Ladder of Swords]
By Gilbert Parker
If it does not seem too childish a candour to say so, 'Michel and Angele'always seems to me like some old letter lifted out of an ancient cabinetwith the faint perfume of bygone days upon it. Perhaps that is becausethe story itself had its origin in a true but brief record of some goodHuguenots who fled from France and took refuge in England, to be found,as the book declares, at the Walloon Church, in Southampton.
The record in the first paragraphs of the first chapter of the bookfascinated my imagination, and I wove round Michel de la Foret and AngeleAubert a soft, bright cloud of romance which would not leave my visionuntil I sat down and wrote out what, in the writing, seemed to me a truehistory. It was as though some telepathy between the days of Elizabethand our own controlled me—self-hypnotism, I suppose; but still, there itwas. The story, in its original form, was first published in 'Harper'sWeekly' under the name of Michel and Angele, but the fear, I think, thatmany people would mispronounce the first word of the title, induced me tochange it when, double in length, it became a volume called 'A Ladder ofSwords'.
As it originally appeared, I wrote it in the Island of Jersey, out at thelittle Bay of Rozel in a house called La Chaire, a few yards away fromthe bay itself, and having a pretty garden with a seat at its highestpoint, from which, beyond the little bay, the English Channel ran away tothe Atlantic. It was written in complete seclusion. I had no visitors;there was no one near, indeed, except the landlord of the little hotel inthe bay, and his wife. All through the Island, however, were people whomI knew, like the Malet de Carterets, the Lemprieres, and old GeneralPipon, for whom the Jersey of three hundred years ago was as near as theJersey of to-day, so do the Jersiais prize, cultivate, and conserve everyhour of its recorded history.
As the sea opens out to a vessel making between the promontories to themain, so, while writing this tale which originally was short, the largerscheme of 'The Battle of the Strong' spread out before me, luring me, asthough in the distance were the Fortunate Isles. Eight years after'Michel and Angele' was written and first published in 'Harper's Weekly',I decided to give it the dignity of a full-grown romance. For years Ihad felt that it had the essentials for a larger canvas, and at theearnest solicitation of Messrs. Harper & Brothers I settled to do whathad long been in my mind. The narrative grew as naturally from what itwas to larger stature as anything that had been devised upon a greaterscale at the beginning; and in London town I had the same joy in thecompany of Michel and Angele—and a vastly increased joy in the companyof Lempriere, the hulking, joyous giant—as I had years before in Jerseyitself when the story first stirred in my mind and reached my pen.
While adverse reviews of the book were few if any, it cannot be said thatthis romance is a companion in popularity with, for instance, 'The Rightof Way'. It had its friends, but it has apparently appealed to smalleraudiences—to those who watch the world go by; who are not searching forthe exposure of life's grim realities; who do not seek the clinic of thesoul's tragedies. There was tragedy here, but there was comedy too;there was also joy and faith, patience and courage. The book, taken byitself, could not make a permanent reputation for any man, but it has itsplace in the scheme