Pierre And His People | Page 2

nearly twenty
years and only emerged when it was full grown, as it were; when I was
so familiar with the characters that they seemed as real in all ways as
though they were absolute people and incidents of one's own
experience.
Little more need be said. In outward form the publishers have made
this edition beautiful. I should be ill-content if there was not also an
element of beauty in the work of the author. To my mind truth alone is
not sufficient. Every work of art, no matter how primitive in conception,

how tragic or how painful, or even how grotesque in design --like the
gargoyles on Notre Dame must have, too, the elements of beauty--that
which lures and holds, the durable and delightful thing. I have a hope
that these books of mine, as faithful to life as I could make them, have
also been touched here and there by the staff of beauty. Otherwise their
day will be short indeed; and I should wish for them a day a little
longer at least than my day and span.
I launch the ship. May it visit many a port! May its freight never lie
neglected on the quays!

INTRODUCTION
So far as my literary work is concerned 'Pierre and His People' may be
likened to a new city built upon the ashes of an old one. Let me explain.
While I was in Australia I began a series of short stories and sketches
of life in Canada which I called 'Pike Pole Sketches on the Madawaska'.
A very few of them were published in Australia, and I brought with me
to England in 1889 about twenty of them to make into a volume. I told
Archibald Forbes, the great war correspondent, of my wish for
publication, and asked him if he would mind reading the sketches and
stories before I approached a publisher. He immediately consented, and
one day I brought him the little brown bag containing the tales.
A few days afterwards there came an invitation to lunch, and I went to
Clarence Gate, Regent's Park, to learn what Archibald Forbes thought
of my tales. We were quite merry at luncheon, and after luncheon,
which for him was a glass of milk and a biscuit, Forbes said to me,
"Those stories, Parker--you have the best collection of titles I have ever
known." He paused. I understood. To his mind the tales did not live up
to their titles. He hastily added, "But I am going to give you a letter of
introduction to Macmillan. I may be wrong." My reply was: "You need
not give me a letter to Macmillan unless I write and ask you for it."
I took my little brown bag and went back to my comfortable rooms in
an old-fashioned square. I sat down before the fire on this bleak
winter's night with a couple of years' work on my knee. One by one I
glanced through the stories and in some cases read them carefully, and
one by one I put them in the fire, and watched them burn. I was heavy
at heart, but I felt that Forbes was right, and my own instinct told me
that my ideas were better than my performance--and Forbes was right.

Nothing was left of the tales; not a shred of paper, not a scrap of
writing. They had all gone up the chimney in smoke. There was no
self-pity. I had a grim kind of feeling regarding the thing, but I had no
regrets, and I have never had any regrets since. I have forgotten most of
the titles, and indeed all the stories except one. But Forbes and I were
right; of that I am sure.
The next day after the arson I walked for hours where London was
busiest. The shop windows fascinated me; they always did; but that day
I seemed, subconsciously, to be looking for something. At last I found
it. It was a second-hand shop in Covent Garden. In the window there
was the uniform of an officer of the time of Wellington, and beside
it--the leather coat and fur cap of a trapper of the Hudson's Bay
Company! At that window I commenced to build again upon the ashes
of last night's fire. Pretty Pierre, the French half-breed, or rather the
original of him as I knew him when a child, looked out of the window
at me. So I went home, and sitting in front of the fire which had
received my manuscript the night before, with a pad upon my knee, I
began to write 'The Patrol of the Cypress Hills' which opens 'Pierre and
His People'.
The next day was Sunday. I went to service at the Foundling Hospital
in Bloomsbury, and while listening superficially