MY DEAR WILLIAM ARCHER,
Severe and ruthlessly honest man that you are, you will find that thelevities and the gravities of this book do not accord, and will say so.
I plead only that they were written at intervals, and in part forrecreation, during years in which their author has striven to maintain acheerful mind while a popular philosophy which he believed to be cheaptook possession of men and translated itself into politics which he knewto be nasty. I may summarise it, in its own jargon, as the philosophy ofthe Superman, and succinctly describe it as an attempt to stretch a partof the Darwinian hypothesis and make it cover the whole of man's life andconduct. I need not remind you how fatally its doctrine has flattered, inour time and in our country, the worst instincts of the half-educated:but let us remove it from all spheres in which we are interested andcontemplate it as expounded by an American Insurance 'Lobbyist,' a few daysago, before the Armstrong Committee:—
"The Insurance world to-day is the greatest financial proposition in the United States; and, as great affairs always do, it commands a higher law."
I have read precisely the same doctrine in a University Sermon preached byan Archbishop; but there its point was confused by pietistic rhetoric:the point being that in life, which is a struggle, success has in itselfsomething divine, by virtue of which it can be to itself a law of rightand wrong; and (inferentially) that a man is relieved of the nobleobligation to command himself so soon and in so far as he is rich enoughor strong enough to command other people.
But why (you will ask) do I drag this doctrine into a dedication?Because, my dear Archer, I have fought against it for close upon seventeenyears; because seventeen years is no small slice of a man's life—rather,so long a time that it has taught me to prize my bruises and prefer that,if anybody hereafter care to know me, he shall know me as one whose spirittook its cheer in intervals of a fight against detestable things;that—let him rank me in talent never so low beside my contemporaries whopreached this doctrine—he shall at least have no excuse but to acquit meof being one with them in mind or purpose; and lastly, because in thesetimes few things have brought me such comfort (stern comfort!) as I havederived from your criticism, so hospitable to ideas, so inflexible injudging right from wrong. As I have lived lonelier it has been better forme, and a solace beyond your guessing, to have been reminded thatcriticism still lives amongst us and has a Roman spirit.
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
The Haven,
FOWEY,
April 3rd, 1906.
My old friend and publisher, Mr. Arrowsmith, maintains that the time hascome for a cheap edition of this book. Should the public endorse thatopinion, he will probably go about pretending that his head is as good ashis heart.
From a Cornish Window first appeared between cloth covers some six orseven years ago. I see that its Dedication bears the date, April 3rd,1906. But parts of it were written years before in the old Pall MallMagazine, under the editorship of Lord Frederic Hamilton (who inventedits title for me), and a few fragments date back almost to undergraduatedays. The book, in short, is desultory to the last degree, and discoursesin varying moods on a variety of topics. Yet