This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
The Story of a Lost Napoleon
By Gilbert Parker
In one sense this book stands by itself. It is like nothing else I havewritten, and if one should seek to give it the name of a class, it mightbe called an historical fantasy.
It followed The Trail of the Sword and preceded The Seats of the Mighty,and appeared in the summer of 1895. The critics gave it a receptionwhich was extremely gratifying, because, as it seemed to me, theyrealised what I was trying to do; and that is a great deal. One greatjournal said it read as though it had been written at a sitting; anothercalled it a tour de force, and the grave Athenaeum lauded it in a keywhich was likely to make me nervous, since it seemed to set a standardwhich I should find it hard to preserve in the future. But in truth thenewspaper was right which said that the book read as though it waswritten at a sitting, and that it was a tour de force. The facts arethat the book was written, printed, revised, and ready for press in fiveweeks.
The manuscript of the book was complete within four weeks. It possessedme. I wrote night and day. There were times when I went to bed and,unable to sleep, I would get up at two o'clock or three o'clock in themorning and write till breakfast time. A couple of hours' walk afterbreakfast, and I would write again until nearly two o'clock. Thenluncheon; afterwards a couple of hours in the open air, and I would againwrite till eight o'clock in the evening. The world was shut out. Imoved in a dream. The book was begun at Hot Springs, in Virginia, in theannex to the old Hot Springs Hotel. I could not write in the hotelitself, so I went to the annex, and in the big building—in the earlyspring-time—I worked night and day. There was no one else in the placeexcept the old negro caretaker and his wife. Four-fifths of the book waswritten in three weeks there. Then I went to New York, and at the LotusClub, where I had a room, I finished it—but not quite. There were a fewpages of the book to do when I went for my walk in Fifth Avenue oneafternoon. I could not shake the thing off, the last pages demanded tobe written. The sermon which the old Cure was preaching on Valmond'sdeath was running in my head. I could not continue my walk. Then andthere I stepped into the Windsor Hotel, which I was passing, and asked ifthere was a stenographer at liberty. There was. In the stenographer'soffice of the Windsor Hotel, with the life of a caravanserai buzzingaround me, I dictated the last few pages of When Valmond Came to Pontiac.It was practically my only experience of dictation of fiction. I hadnever been able to do it, and have not been able to do it since, andI am glad that it is so, for I should have a fear of being led into mererhetoric. It did not, however, seem to matter with this book. It wroteitself anywhere. The proofs of the first quarter of the book were in myhands before I had finished writing the last quarter.
It took me a long time to recover from the great effort of that fiveweeks, but I never regretted those consuming fires which burned up sleepand energy and ravaged the vitality of my imagination. The story wasfounded on the incident described in the first pages of the book, whichwas practically as I experienced it when I was a little child.