INTRODUCTION
It may very well be that I am doing something now which is totally unnecessary, indeed that is a foregone conclusion as far as many omnivorous readers are concerned, for they never by any chance read a Preface or an Introduction. But only the other day I was reading an interesting volume of reminiscences, and the writer said that after the publisher had received the manuscript he wrote sternly demanding the reason why there was no Introduction. More, he said that one must be written forthwith, and it was so.
Now I cannot honestly say that I, like that writer whom I have quoted, am a novice at book writing, or have much to learn concerning the ways of publishers, since this book will make about the thirty-sixth that has been perpetrated by me during the last seventeen years. Too many, far too many, I know (this to forestall the obvious remark), but what I want to say is that in no case have I ever been asked for an Introduction, or questioned why I had written one. Follows inevitably the remark, “Why this one, then? Can’t you let your book tell its own tale?”
And yet I feel very strongly that an Introduction to this book is needed, if ever a book needed such a thing. For I really believe that it may be my last; I dare not be more definite than that, though I would dearly love to emulate those giants of literature who can calmly announce that they have written their last page for publication, that for good or ill their message has been delivered and they will say no more. Ah no, fate has not dealt kindly enough with me for that, and because the snarl of the proverbial wolf is never out of my ears and the spoor of his stealthy footfall is but too clearly traceable near my door, I must still be ready to take up my pen. This Introduction may serve as my valedictory, if, as it is most reasonable to expect, this book happens to be my last.
And now for the Introduction. For a good many years I have been telling the stories that I have gathered here. It may very well be, of course, that, as Kipling says, all that seemed so definite and amusing in the spoken word has escaped when committed to paper. But I hope not, because I have often been asked why I did not write my reminiscences of the lecture platform, and I have always made some excuse, so that now when I have done it at last, it would be a great pity for it to be a failure.
Of course, the thing has been done before; it would be strange if it hadn’t; but I have not had the pleasure of reading even the very entertaining book written on the subject by the late Paul Blouet (Max O’Rell), a veritable prince of humorists. I am inclined to think that in one sense at any rate this is an advantage in that I cannot consciously or unconsciously have copied any of their sayings, or told of any of their doings, however interesting or funny. For the same reason there cannot be any “chestnuts” in this book. Everything told in it, except where the contrary has been expressly stated, is an experience of my own. I am rather pleased about this, for I have recently been more than a little disgusted to find how many oft-told stories have been repeated in costly books of memoirs, the names of whose writers should have been guarantee enough that they had sufficient good stories of their own to tell without drawing upon antiquities.
I hope I shall be given due credit for the fact that many really good stories (as I think) have been omitted by me simply because the point of them demanded that the actors should be known, and I would not give those good people pain. Other stories I have had to leave out because I was not looking for trouble and because I was somewhat doubtful of the far-reaching operations of the law of libel. And that, I think, is all I can say by way of Introduction to my book.
FRANK T. BULLEN.
BOURNEMOUTH,
Dec. 17, 1914.