Villa Rubein and Other Stories | Page 5

up the scanty harvests of 1899, 1900,
and 1901--especially in the tales: "A Knight," and "Salvation of a
Forsyte." Men, women, trees, and works of fiction-- very tiny are the
seeds from which they spring. I used really to see the "Knight"--in 1896,
was it?--sitting in the "Place" in front of the Casino at Monte Carlo; and
because his dried-up elegance, his burnt straw hat, quiet courtesy of
attitude, and big dog, used to fascinate and intrigue me, I began to
imagine his life so as to answer my own questions and to satisfy, I
suppose, the mood I was in. I never spoke to him, I never saw him
again. His real story, no doubt, was as different from that which I wove
around his figure as night from day.
As for Swithin, wild horses will not drag from me confession of where
and when I first saw the prototype which became enlarged to his bulky
stature. I owe Swithin much, for he first released the satirist in me, and
is, moreover, the only one of my characters whom I killed before I gave

him life, for it is in "The Man of Property" that Swithin Forsyte more
memorably lives.
Ranging beyond this volume, I cannot recollect writing the first words
of "The Island Pharisees"--but it would be about August, 1901. Like all
the stories in "Villa Rubein," and, indeed, most of my tales, the book
originated in the curiosity, philosophic reflections, and unphilosophic
emotions roused in me by some single figure in real life. In this case it
was Ferrand, whose real name, of course, was not Ferrand, and who
died in some "sacred institution" many years ago of a consumption
brought on by the conditions of his wandering life. If not "a beloved,"
he was a true vagabond, and I first met him in the Champs Elysees, just
as in "The Pigeon" he describes his meeting with Wellwyn. Though
drawn very much from life, he did not in the end turn out very like the
Ferrand of real life--the, figures of fiction soon diverge from their
prototypes.
The first draft of "The Island Pharisees" was buried in a drawer; when
retrieved the other day, after nineteen years, it disclosed a picaresque
string of anecdotes told by Ferrand in the first person. These two-thirds
of a book were laid to rest by Edward Garnett's dictum that its author
was not sufficiently within Ferrand's skin; and, struggling heavily with
laziness and pride, he started afresh in the skin of Shelton. Three times
be wrote that novel, and then it was long in finding the eye of Sydney
Pawling, who accepted it for Heinemann's in 1904. That was a period
of ferment and transition with me, a kind of long awakening to the
home truths of social existence and national character. The liquor
bubbled too furiously for clear bottling. And the book, after all, became
but an introduction to all those following novels which
depict--somewhat satirically--the various sections of English "Society"
with a more or less capital "S."
Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is
interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the
emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other,
getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the
mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's
readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this
side than of that. My early work was certainly more emotional than
critical. But from 1901 came nine years when the critical was, in the

main, holding sway. From 1910 to 1918 the emotional again struggled
for the upper hand; and from that time on there seems to have been
something of a "dead beat." So the conflict goes, by what mysterious
tides promoted, I know not.
An author must ever wish to discover a hapless member of the Public
who, never yet having read a word of his writing, would submit to the
ordeal of reading him right through from beginning to end. Probably
the effect could only be judged through an autopsy, but in the remote
case of survival, it would interest one so profoundly to see the
differences, if any, produced in that reader's character or outlook over
life. This, however, is a consummation which will remain devoutly to
be wished, for there is a limit to human complaisance. One will never
know the exact measure of one's infecting power; or whether, indeed,
one is not just a long soporific.
A writer they say, should not favouritize among his creations; but then
a writer should not do so many things that be does. This writer,
certainly, confesses to having favourites, and of his novels so far be
likes best: