A Simpleton | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, [email protected].

A SIMPLETON
by Charles Reade

PREFACE.
It has lately been objected to me, in studiously courteous terms of
course, that I borrow from other books, and am a plagiarist. To this I
reply that I borrow facts from every accessible source, and am not a
plagiarist. The plagiarist is one who borrows from a homogeneous
work: for such a man borrows not ideas only, but their treatment. He
who borrows only from heterogeneous works is not a plagiarist. All
fiction, worth a button, is founded on facts; and it does not matter one
straw whether the facts are taken from personal experience, hearsay, or
printed books; only those books must not be works of fiction.
Ask your common sense why a man writes better fiction at forty than
he can at twenty. It is simply because he has gathered more facts from
each of these three sources,--experience, hearsay, print.
To those who have science enough to appreciate the above distinction, I
am very willing to admit that in all my tales I use a vast deal of
heterogeneous material, which in a life of study I have gathered from
men, journals, blue-books, histories, biographies, law reports, etc. And
if I could, I would gladly specify all the various printed sources to
which I am indebted. But my memory is not equal to such a feat. I can

only say that I rarely write a novel without milking about two hundred
heterogeneous cows into my pail, and that "A Simpleton" is no
exception to my general method; that method is the true method, and
the best, and if on that method I do not write prime novels, it is the fault
of the man, and not of the method.
I give the following particulars as an illustration of my method:
In "A Simpleton," the whole business of the girl spitting blood, the
surgeon ascribing it to the liver, the consultation, the final solution of
the mystery, is a matter of personal experience accurately recorded. But
the rest of the medical truths, both fact and argument, are all from
medical books far too numerous to specify. This includes the strange
fluctuations of memory in a man recovering his reason by degrees. The
behavior of the doctor's first two patients I had from a surgeon's
daughter in Pimlico. The servant-girl and her box; the purple-faced,
pig-faced Beak and his justice, are personal experience. The business of
house-renting, and the auction-room, is also personal experience.
In the nautical business I had the assistance of two practical seamen:
my brother, William Barrington Reade, and Commander Charles
Edward Reade, R.N.
In the South African business I gleaned from Mr. Day's recent
handbooks; the old handbooks; Galton's "Vacation Tourist;" "Philip
Mavor; or, Life among the Caffres;" "Fossor;" "Notes on the Cape of
Good Hope," 1821; "Scenes and Occurrences in Albany and Caffre-
land," 1827; Bowler's "South African Sketches;" "A Campaign in
South Africa," Lucas; "Five Years in Caffre-land," Mrs. Ward; etc., etc.,
etc. But my principal obligation on this head is to Mr. Boyle, the author
of some admirable letters to the Daily telegraph, which he afterwards
reprinted in a delightful volume. Mr. Boyle has a painter's eye, and a
writer's pen, and if the African scenes in "A Simpleton" please my
readers, I hope they will go to the fountain-head, where they will find
many more.
As to the plot and characters, they are invented.
The title, "A Simpleton," is not quite new. There is a French play called
La Niaise. But La Niaise is in reality a woman of rare intelligence, who
is taken for a simpleton by a lot of conceited fools, and the play runs on
their blunders, and her unpretending wisdom. That is a very fine plot,
which I recommend to our female novelists. My aim in these pages has

been much humbler, and is, I hope, too clear to need explanation.
CHARLES READE.

A SIMPLETON.

CHAPTER I
.
A young lady sat pricking a framed canvas in the drawing-room of
Kent Villa, a mile from Gravesend; she was making, at a cost of time
and tinted wool,