University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

Real life is not as commonplace as it is represented. The
contrasts, surprises, combinations, and novel situations, which
some say “are only found in plays,” occur in every day society
—with the difference, that those in a play are published to the
world, while those in private life are known only to one or two.
The dread of misrepresentation conceals from us most of the machinery
of life, and all of its most wonderful occurrences, except
now and then one that is disclosed by accident. He who fancies
that he sees all that is dramatic, even in the circle where he is
most intimate, is like a deaf and blind man unconsciously present
at a play.

There is, of course, great difference in the power of observation—some
men seeing less than seems natural, and others more
than would be thought possible—but the most common observer
has only to allow every other man to know as many surprising things
as himself, (which few would, at first thought, allow,) and he will

easily understand how the sum total fills the world with invisible
dramas. Little we know what the heart is busy with, while the
lips are phrasing for us the small talk of the day! Little we
dream what we interrupt or further—precede or follow—help to
forget or while away the time for. Few are only about what they
seem to be about, or are only what they seem to be.

The freedom to draw truly, in fiction, gives a fidelity to portraitures
in a story, which would be almost impossible even in a
literal biography. The most common man's exact and entire
impression of any one whom he knows, would read like a passage
of Shakspeare—because Shakspeare's power of description consists,
not in the coloring of his imagination, but in his utter
fidelity to nature. Between what we have seen ourselves, and the
same thing verbally described to us by others, there is often little
or no resemblance, because, from various influences which do not
affect a professedly fictitious description, the describer wavers
from the truth.

It is not from his imagination, as is commonly supposed, but
from his store of private observation and knowledge, that the
author draws his most effective pictures of character and human
event. The names may be fictitious, the scenery and circumstances
ideal, the personages painted from fancy, but the motive of
the story is true—the mainspring of feeling which it developes was
a mystery that could not otherwise be told—the lesson that the author
teaches in words to many was first taught by actual occurrences

to himself. No one who is conversant with authors, for instance,
could doubt, that, in Bulwer's novels, under merely such
disguises as make identification impossible, are embodied all his
own experiences of feeling, and all that he has learned, of human
vicissitude and conduct, by access to the inner life of those about
him. Does any one suppose that there is one, among the women
he has loved, who cannot find, in his books, the picture of
herself,—of her heart as he read it—and the record, in truth's
most accurate light and shade, of all that was worth remembering
between them?

It is in the memory of authors alone, that these vivid and best
lessons, in the knowledge of human nature—the lessons of experience
and personal observation—are sown, not buried. The exhibition
of character contained in the under-currents of life—in an
undisclosed conflict, trial, temptation, affection or passion—is, when
stripped of its names and circumstances, no more recognizable than
the particular tree by its seed. The author plants it in another soil,
reproduces it in another shape and with other leaves and branches;
and, though the new story has all the essential qualities of the pang
or pleasure from which it is drawn, its origin is untraceable. It is
one of the rewards of the over-envied and under-paid profession of
literature, that the world is led unaware through the author's
heart, and sympathizes with all that has moved him. To the
hidden qualities he has found and loved, he brings thousands, to
add their homage also. For a fine action that could not otherwise

be told, for a generous self sacrifice made in secret, for pangs
and trials unconfessed, for all the deep drama of private life, played
discouragingly to the appreciation of the few and un-applauding,
he can secure a tribute, which the actors alone identify; though
its applause, of the heart unnamed, is as universal as it is unprofaning
and grateful.

There is more or less of truth, the author of the following pages
may, perhaps, as well say, in all the stories he has written. In a
world sown so thickly with surprises and exceptions to general
rules, one has little need to draw on his imagination for a theme.
Having suffered, however, from erroneous applications of some of
these descriptions to individuals, he takes this opportunity to state,
that by character alone, (which has been an open field to writers since
writing began,) and not by true circumstances, names, or histories
of private life, is any portion of the ridicule or censure in this
volume, applicable or traceable. The greater number of its
stories embody such passages, in the personal history of the eminent
men and women of Europe, as the author came to the
knowledge of, by conversance with the circles in which they
moved—portions of the inner life which is seen so imperfectly by observers
from without—lights and shadows, which in their life-time,
at least, could not be used for their individual biography, but which
are invaluable as aids to the general portraiture of genius. In
revealing thus what has impressed and interested him, the author
has the pleasure, of course, of so far sharing his secrets with the

reader; but the reader will remember, that, like the visitor to
the robber's cave, in the Eastern story, he is brought in, and
taken out, blindfold—and, of what he has seen, he can reveal
nothing.