Short Story Index Reprint Series
AYER COMPANY PUBLISHERS, INC.
NORTH STRATFORD, NH 03590
First Published 1922
Reprint Edition, 1999
AYER Company Publishers, Inc.
Lower Mill Road
North Stratford, NH 03590
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER:
0-8369-3806-2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:
72-152947
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
It was somewhere, I think, towards the autumn ofthe year 1889 that the thought occurred to me that Imight perhaps try to write a little in the modern way.For, hitherto, I had been, as it were, wearing costumein literature. The rich, figured English of the earlierpart of the seventeenth century had always had apeculiar attraction for me. I accustomed myself towrite in it, to think in it; I kept a diary in that manner,and half-unconsciously dressed up my every daythoughts and common experiences in the habit of theCavalier or of the Caroline Divine. Thus, when in1884 I got a commission to translate the Heptameron,I wrote quite naturally in the language of my favouriteperiod, and, as some critics declare, made my Englishversion somewhat more antique and stiff than theoriginal. And so "The Anatomy of Tobacco" wasan exercise in the antique of a different kind; and "TheChronicle of Clemendy" was a volume of tales thattried their hardest to be mediæval; and the translationof the "Moyen de Parvenir" was still a thing in theancient mode.
It seemed, in fine, to be settled that in literatureI was to be a hanger on of the past ages; and I don'tquite know how I managed to get away from them.I had finished translating "Casanova"—more modern,but not thoroughly up to date—and I had nothing[viii]particular on hand, and, somehow or other, it struckme that I might try a little writing for the papers.I began with a "turnover" as it was called, for the oldvanished Globe, a harmless little article on old Englishproverbs; and I shall never forget my pride and delightwhen one day, being at Dover, with a fresh autumnwind blowing from the sea, I bought a chance copyof the paper and saw my essay on the front page.Naturally, I was encouraged to persevere, and I wrotemore turnovers for the Globe and then tried the St.James's Gazette and found that they paid two poundsinstead of the guinea of the Globe, and again, naturallyenough, devoted most of my attention to the St.James's Gazette. From the essay or literary paper, Isomehow got into the habit of the short story, and dida good many of these, still for the St. James's, till in theautumn of 1890, I wrote a tale called "The DoubleReturn." Well, Oscar Wilde asked: "Are you theauthor of that story that fluttered the dovecotes? Ithought it was very good." But: it did flutter thedovecotes, and the St. James's Gazette and I parted.