Mrs. Falchion, Volume 1.

Excerpt

This novel was written in the days of the three-decker, and it went out
to sea as such.  Every novel of mine written until 1893 was published in
two or three volumes, and the sale to the libraries was greater than the
sale to the general public.  This book was begun in 1892 at the time when
the Pierre stories were being written, and it was finished in the summer
of 1893.  It did not appear serially; indeed, I made no attempt at serial
publication.  I had a feeling that as it was to be my first novel, it
should be judged as a whole and taken at a gasp, as it were.  I believe
that the reader of Messrs. Methuen & Company was not disposed to publish
the book, but Mr. Methuen himself (or Mr. Stedman as he was then called)
was impressed by it and gave it his friendly confidence.  He was certain
that it would arrest the attention of the critics and of the public,
whether it became popular or not.  I have not a set of those original
three volumes.  I wish I had, because they won for me an almost unhoped-
for pleasure.  The ‘Daily Chronicle’ gave the volumes over a column of
review, and headed the notice, “A Coming Novelist.”  The ‘Athenaeum’ said
that ‘Mrs. Falchion’ was a splendid study of character; ’The Pall Mall
Gazette’ said that the writing was as good as anything that had been done
in our time, while at the same time it took rather a dark view of my
future as a novelist, because it said I had not probed deep enough into
the wounds of character which I had inflicted.  The article was written
by Mr. George W. Stevens, and he was right in saying that I had not
probed deep enough.  Few very young men—­and I was very young then—­do
probe very deeply.  At the appearance of ‘When Valmond Came to Pontiac’,
however, Mr. Stevens came to the conclusion that my future was assured.