In the year 1894, I published in two volumes a romance of the Indian Mutiny, under the title of “The Star of Fortune.” A short prefatory note intimated that it was my lot to be in India during the terrible time of the Sepoy Rebellion. From this it may be inferred that I not only wrote with feeling, but with some personal knowledge of my subject. “The Star of Fortune” was exceedingly well received by the public, and last year a cheaper edition was called for. That edition has been extensively circulated throughout India and the Colonies. The book on the whole was well reviewed, while my critics were good enough to accord me praise, by no means stinted, for the portions which dealt with the Mutiny proper. One London paper said it was “a very fine picture narrative,” another spoke of it as “a spirited piece of writing,” a third declared it was “written with spirit and vivacity,” a fourth as being “really breathless in interest.” I could go on multiplying quotations similar to the foregoing, but those I have given will serve the purpose I have in view.
On the other hand I was taken somewhat severely to task because the opening portions of the tale dealt with Edinburgh, and about one-third of the book was exhausted before India was reached. Whether or not that was really a fault is not for me to say; it was certainly part of my original plan, but I cannot be indifferent to the fact that a consensus of opinion condemned it, and declared that the Mutiny was far too interesting a subject to be mixed up with any love-making scenes in Edinburgh or elsewhere other than in India. I was very bluntly told that I ought to have plunged at once into medias res, and that a story purporting to be a story of the Mutiny should deal with the Mutiny only. The advice has not been lost upon me. I have steadily kept it in view while writing the “Great White Hand,” and I venture to express a hope that whatever shortcomings may be found in the work, whatever sins of omission and commission I am guilty of, I shall at least be credited with keeping strictly to the locale and incidents of the Great Rebellion, which, in my opinion, affords, and will continue to afford for generations to come, a fund of the most romantic material all ready to the novelist’s hand. If it should be urged against me that the dramatic situations in which my characters become involved are overstrained or improbable, I shall claim on the authority of history that the thrilling times of the Revolt were rich in situations so sensational, so dramatic, so tragic and pathetic, that they put fiction into the shade. The bare ungarnished story of the Rising is in itself one of the most sensational records the world has ever known. Not even the Crusades, not even the wonderful defence of Malta by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, against the infidel Turk, present us with a more thrilling, romantic, and stirring panorama of battle scenes and incidents than the Indian Mutiny. It was not a struggle of the Cross against the Crescent, but of the Cross against Vishnu, against Shiva, against Brahma. The “Phantom” King of Delhi, and the “Tiger of Cawnpore,” both believed that the doom of Christianity in India had knelled. But they were undeceived, and all that was best, bravest, and noble in British men and women was brought to the surface. Of course, in a work of this kind, history must necessarily be used simply as a means to an end; therefore, while it is not claimed for the story that it is a piece of reliable history in the guise of fiction, it may truthfully be said it records certain stirring events and incidents which are known to have taken place. These incidents and events have been coloured and set with a due regard for the brilliant and picturesque Orient, which forms the stage on which the dramatic action is worked out. Those who knew India as I knew it in those lurid and exciting days, will probably admit that there is scarcely an incident introduced into my book but what might have happened during the enactment of the great tragedy. An air of vraisemblance represents true art in fiction, and when it becomes difficult for the reader to tell where fiction begins and truth ends, it may be said that the story-teller can go no further. If I should be fortunate in establishing a claim to this praise, I shall be proud indeed; but though I fail in that respect, I humbly venture to believe that “The Great White Hand” will be found neither dull nor uninteresting.
THE AUTHOR.
LONDON, 1896.