Aylwin

Aylwin

Though written many years ago this story was, for certain personal reasons easy to guess, withheld from publicationwithheld, as The Times pointed out, because 'with the Dichtung was mingled a good deal of Wahrheit,' But why did I still delay in publishing it after these reasons for withholding it had passed away? This is a question that has often been put to me both in print and in conversation. And yet I should have imagined that the explanation was not far to seek. It was simply diffidence; in other words it was that infirmity which, though generally supposed to belong to youth, comes to a writer, if it comes at all, with years. Undoubtedly there was a time in my life when I should have leapt with considerable rashness into the brilliant ranks of our contemporary novelists. But this was before I had reached what I will call the diffident period in the life of a writer. And then, again, I had often been told by George Borrow, and also by my friend Francis Groome, the great living authority on Romany matters, that there was in England no interest in Gypsies. Altogether then, had it not been for the unexpected success of The Coming of Love, a story of Gypsy life, it is doubtful whether I should not have delayed the publication of Aylwin until the great warder of the gates of day we call Death should close his portal behind me and shut me off from these dreams. However, I am very glad now that I did publish it; for it has brought around me a number of new friendsbrought them at a time when new friends were what I yearned fora time when, looking back through this vision of my life, I seem to be looking down an Appian waya street of tombsthe tombs of those I loved. No wonder, then, that I was deeply touched by the kindness with which the Public and the Press received the story. One critic did me the honour of remarking upon what he called the 'absolute newness of the plot and incidents of Aylwin.' He seems to have forgotten, however, that one incidentthe most daring incident in the bookthat of the rifling of a grave for treasure is not new: it will at once remind folk-lorists of certain practices charged against our old Norse invaders. And students of Celtic and Gaelic literature are familiar with the same idea. Quite, lately, indeed, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his analysis of the Gaelic Agallamh na Senorach, or 'Colloquy of the Elders,' has made some interesting remarks upon the subject. As far as I remember, the only objection made by the critics to Aylwin was that I had imported into a story written for popular acceptance too many speculations and breedings upon the gravest of all subjectsthe subject of love at struggle with death. My answer to this is that although it did win a great popular acceptance I never expected it to do so. I knew the book to be an expression of idiosyncrasy, and no man knows how much or how little his idiosyncrasy is in harmony with the temper of his time, until his book has been given to the world. It was the story of Aylwin that was born of the speculations upon Love and Death; it was not the speculations that were pressed into the story; without these speculations there could have been no story to tell. Indeed the chief fault which myself should find with Aylwin, if my business were to criticise it, would be that it gives not too little but too much prominence to the strong incidents of the storya story written as a comment on love's warfare with deathwritten to show that confronted as a man is every moment by signs of the fragility and brevity of human life, the great marvel connected with him is not that his thoughts dwell frequently upon the unknown country beyond Orion where the beloved dead are loving us still, but that he can find time and patience to think upon anything elsea story written further to show how terribly despair becomes intensified when a man has lostor thinks he has losta woman whose love was the only light of his worldwhen his soul is torn from his body, as it were, and whisked off on the wings of the 'viewless winds' right away beyond the farthest star, till the universe hangs beneath his feet a trembling point of twinkling light, and at last even this dies away and his soul cries out for help in that utter darkness and loneliness. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 13454
Author: Watts-Dunton, Theodore
Release Date: Sep 14, 2004
Format: eBook
Language: English