Chapter XI: Preface: To “deliverance”22

_By E. L. Grant Watson_

When I had completed my first book, I had a desire to write a preface, but was so strongly advised to let the book carry its own message that I refrained: with the result that only one reviewer saw what I was driving at. Later when the book was published in America, I was asked by my American publisher to write the preface which at first I had desired to write. Eighty per cent. of the American reviewers were not only sympathetic, but intelligent. Having been given the key, they read the book in the mood in which it was written. It seems to me permissible to provide such a key.

In writing this my third book, I have tried to portray a process of spiritual emancipation, of a freedom which is not content to find itself by any premature or artificial way of denial. Emancipation of this kind is difficult enough even for men; and for women, whose lives are, by nature of their biological functions, more closely interwoven in the material process, it is almost impossible. Yet sometimes it is achieved; perhaps most frequently through long or intense suffering. Yet all suffering ultimately entails joy; and so, also, through joy. Such a form of deliverance from the difficult complex of material things is not incompatible with the acceptance of life. Indeed the mistake has too often been made, that through _any_ haphazard form of renunciation the spirit could find a short cut to its own freedom. Only through the acceptance of life can be attained a confidence strong enough for the happiness and that deliverance.

In this story I have chosen a woman so sensitive to the beauty of existence as to be conscious, through all her youth and adolescence, of that veiled terror that lurks at the very heart of beauty. Through fear she learns first humility, then courage and at last attains the spiritual power that raises its possessor above accident. And at each step her love for the increasing light of her own spirit grows stronger. It becomes more precious than even the unique love of woman for man. It becomes the arbiter of life, determining with a confidence unshaken by pity or desire the material limitations through which it can best find expression.

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Footnote 4:

From “Punch: The Immortal Liar.” To be published May, 1921.

Footnote 5:

See Bibliography.

Footnote 6:

See Bibliography.

Footnote 7:

From “October.” See Bibliography.

Footnote 8:

See page 138.

Footnote 9:

See Couperus’ novel “Een Stille Kracht.”

Footnote 10:

“Door Duisternis tot Licht”—title under which Kartini’s Letters were
first published in Holland.

Footnote 11:

From “Collected Poems of W. H. Davies.” See Bibliography.

Footnote 12:

A PAGE FROM THE THREE MULLA-MULGARS, BY WALTER DE LA MARE, ILLUSTRATED
BY DOROTHY P. LATHROP.

See Bibliography and page 136.

Footnote 13:

From “Poems of T. S. Eliot.” See Bibliography.

Footnote 14:

See Bibliography and page 142.

Footnote 15:

See Bibliography.

Footnote 16:

From “The Forerunner.” See Bibliography.

Footnote 17:

From “Country Sentiment.” See Bibliography.

Footnote 18:

This and the following two sketches are from Mr. Howe’s “The Anthology
of Another Town.” See page 139.

Footnote 19:

When I arranged with Mr. Hudson for the publication of an American
Edition of “A Little Boy Lost” (see page 136), I asked him to write a
special foreword to his American readers. He replied with this
characteristic letter.

Footnote 20:

From “Lustra and Earlier Poems.” See Bibliography.

Footnote 21:

From “Books in General: Second Series.” See Bibliography.

Footnote 22:

See Bibliography.