The Right of Way | Page 3

this love
story anew under the stones of my most exacting criticism and troubled
regard. I go to bury myself at a solitary little seaside place" (it was
Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire), "there to live alone with Rosalie and
Charley, and if I do not know them hereafter, never ask me to write for
'Harper's' again. . . . This book has been written out of something vital
in me--I do not mean the religious part of it, I mean the humanity that
becomes one's own and part of one's self, by observation, experience,
and understanding got from dead years."
Anyhow that shows the spirit in which the book was written, and there
must have been something in it that rang true, because not only did it
have an enormous sale and therefore a multitude of readers, but I
received hundreds of letters from people who in one way or another

were deeply interested in the story.
The majority of them were inquisitive letters. A great many of them
said that the writer had shared in controversy as to what the relations of
Charley and Rosalie were, and asked me to set for ever queries and
controversies at rest by declaring either that the relations of these two
were what, in the way of life's stern conventions, they ought not to be,
or that Rosalie passed unscathed through the fire. I had foreseen all this,
though I could not have foreseen the passionately intense interest which
my readers would take in the life-story of these unhappy yet happy
people. I had, however, only one reply. It was that all I had meant to
say concerning Charley and Rosalie had been said in the book, to the
last word. All I had meant not to say would not be said after the book
was written. I asked them to take exactly the same view of Charley and
Rosalie as they would in real life regarding two human beings with
whom they were acquainted, and concerning whom, to their minds,
there was sufficient evidence, or not sufficient evidence, to come to a
conclusion as to what their relations were. I added that, as in real life
we used our judgment upon such things with a reasonable amount of
accuracy, I asked them to apply that judgment to Charley Steele and
Rosalie Evanturel. They and their story were there for eyes to see and
read, and when I had ended my manuscript in the year 1900 I had said
the last word I ever meant to say as to their history. The controversy
therefore continues, for the book still makes its appeal to an ever
increasing congregation of new readers.
But another kind of letter came to me--the letter of some man who had
just such a struggle as Charley Steele, or whose father or brother or
friend had had such a struggle. Letters came from clergymen who had
preached concerning the book; from men who told me in brief their
own life problems and tragedies. These letters I prize; most of them had
the real thing in them, the human truth.
That the book drew wide attention to the Dominion of Canada,
particularly to French Canada, and crystallised something of the life of
that dear Province, was a deep pleasure to me; and I was glad that I had
been able to culminate my efforts to portray the life of the
French-Canadian as I saw it, by a book which arrested the attention of
so comprehensive a public.
I have seen many statements as to the original of Charley Steele, but I

have never seen a story which was true. Many people have told me that
they had seen the original of Charley Steele in an American lawyer.
They knew he was the original, because he himself had said so. The
gentleman was mistaken; I have never seen him. As with the purple
cow, I never hope to see him. Whoever he is or whatever he is, the
original Charley was an abler and a more striking man. I knew him as a
boy, and he died while I was yet a boy, taking with him, save in the
memory of a few, a rare and wonderful, if not wholly lovable
personality. For over twenty years I had carried him in my mind,
wondering whether, and when, I should-make use of him. Again and
again I was tempted, but was never convinced that his time had come;
yet through all the years he was gaining strength, securing possession
of my mind, and gathering to him, magnet-like, the thousand
observations which my experience sent in his direction. In my mind his
life-story ended with his death at the Cote Dorion. For years and years I
saw his ending there. Yet it all seemed to me so