LONDON,
November 20, 1832.
“CALEB WILLIAMS” has always been regarded by the public with an unusual degree of favour. The proprietor1 of “THE STANDARD NOVELS” has therefore imagined that even an account of the concoction2 and mode of writing of the work would be viewed with some interest.
I finished the “Enquiry concerning Political Justice,” the first work which may be considered as written by me in a certain degree in the maturity3 of my intellectual powers, and bearing my name, early in January, 1793; and about the middle of the following month the book was published. It was my fortune at that time to be obliged to consider my pen as the sole instrument for supplying my current expenses. By the liberality of my bookseller, Mr. George Robinson, of Paternoster Row, I was enabled then, and for nearly ten years before, to meet these expenses, while writing different things of obscure note, the names of which, though innocent and in some degree useful, I am rather inclined to suppress. In May, 1791, I projected this, my favourite work, and from that time gave up every other occupation that might interfere4 with it. My agreement with Robinson was that he was to supply my wants at a specified5 rate while the book was in the train of composition. Finally, I was very little beforehand with the world on the day of its publication, and was therefore obliged to look round and consider to what species of industry I should next devote myself.
I had always felt in myself some vocation6 towards the composition of a narrative7 of fictitious8 adventure; and among the things of obscure note which I have above referred to were two or three pieces of this nature. It is not therefore extraordinary that some project of the sort should have suggested itself on the present occasion.
But I stood now in a very different situation from that in which I had been placed at a former period. In past years, and even almost from boyhood, I was perpetually prone9 to exclaim with Cowley:
“What shall I do to be for ever known,
And make the age to come my own?”
But I had endeavoured for ten years, and was as far from approaching my object as ever. Everything I wrote fell dead-born from the press. Very often I was disposed to quit the enterprise in despair. But still I felt ever and anon impelled10 to repeat my effort.
At length I conceived the plan of Political Justice. I was convinced that my object of building to myself a name would never be attained11 by merely repeating and refining a little upon what other men had said, even though I should imagine that I delivered things of this sort with a more than usual point and elegance12. The world, I believed, would accept nothing from me with distinguishing favour that did not bear upon the face of it the undoubted stamp of originality13. Having long ruminated14 upon the principles of Political Justice, I persuaded myself that I could offer to the public, in a treatise15 on this subject, things at once new, true, and important. In the progress of the work I became more sanguine16 and confident. I talked over my ideas with a few familiar friends during its progress, and they gave me every generous encouragement. It happened that the fame of my book, in some inconsiderable degree, got before its publication, and a certain number of persons were prepared to receive it with favour. It would be false modesty17 in me to say that its acceptance, when published, did not nearly come up to everything that could soberly have been expected by me. In consequence of this, the tone of my mind, both during the period in which I was engaged in the work and afterwards, acquired a certain elevation18, and made me now unwilling19 to stoop to what was insignificant20.
I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adventure that should in some way be distinguished21 by a very powerful interest. Pursuing this idea, I invented first the third volume of my tale, then the second, and last of all the first. I bent22 myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive23 in perpetual apprehension24 of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities25, and the pursuer, by his ingenuity26 and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume. I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly27 to alarm and harass28 his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never to allow him the least interval29 of peace and security. This I apprehended30 could best be effected by a secret murder, to the investigation31 of which the innocent victim should be impelled by an unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus have a sufficient motive32 to persecute33 the unhappy discoverer, that he might deprive him of peace, character, and credit, and have him for ever in his power. This constituted the outline of my second volume.
The subject of the first volume was still to be invented. To account for the fearful events of the third, it was necessary that the pursuer should be invested with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution that nothing could defeat or baffle, and with extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor could my purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale be answered without his appearing to have been originally endowed with a mighty34 store of amiable35 dispositions36 and virtues37, so that his being driven to the first act of murder should be judged worthy38 of the deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was necessary to make him, so to speak, the tenant39 of an atmosphere of romance, so that every reader should feel prompted almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were ample materials for a first volume.
I felt that I had a great advantage in thus carrying back my invention from the ultimate conclusion to the first commencement of the train of adventures upon which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity40 of plot would be the infallible result; and the unity of spirit and interest in a tale truly considered gives it a powerful hold on the reader, which can scarcely be generated with equal success in any other way.
I devoted41 about two or three weeks to the imagining and putting down hints for my story before I engaged seriously and methodically in its composition. In these hints I began with my third volume, then proceeded to my second, and last of all grappled with the first. I filled two or three sheets of demy writing-paper, folded in octavo, with these memorandums. They were put down with great brevity, yet explicitly42 enough to secure a perfect recollection of their meaning, within the time necessary for drawing out the story at full, in short paragraphs of two, three, four, five, or six lines each.
I then sat down to write my story from the beginning. I wrote for the most part but a short portion in any single day. I wrote only when the afflatus43 was upon me. I held it for a maxim44 that any portion that was written when I was not fully45 in the vein46 told for considerably47 worse than nothing. Idleness was a thousand times better in this case than industry against the grain. Idleness was only time lost; and the next day, it may be, was as promising48 as ever. It was merely a day perished from the calendar. But a passage written feebly, flatly, and in a wrong spirit, constituted an obstacle that it was next to impossible to correct and set right again. I wrote therefore by starts; sometimes for a week or ten days not a line. Yet all came to the same thing in the sequel. On an average, a volume of “Caleb Williams” cost me four months, neither less nor more.
It must be admitted, however, that during the whole period, bating a few intervals49, my mind was in a high state of excitement. I said to myself a thousand times, “I will write a tale that shall constitute an epoch50 in the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before.”— I put these things down just as they happened, and with the most entire frankness. I know that it will sound like the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But such perhaps ought to be the state of mind of an author when he does his best. At any rate, I have said nothing of my vainglorious51 impulse for nearly forty years.
When I had written about seven-tenths of the first volume, I was prevailed upon by the extreme importunity52 of an old and intimate friend to allow him the perusal53 of my manuscript. On the second day he returned it with a note to this purpose: “I return you your manuscript, because I promised to do so. If I had obeyed the impulse of my own mind, I should have thrust it in the fire. If you persist, the book will infallibly prove the grave of your literary fame.”
I doubtless felt no implicit54 deference55 for the judgment56 of my friendly critic. Yet it cost me at least two days of deep anxiety before I recovered the shock. Let the reader picture to himself my situation. I felt no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly critic. But it was all I had for it. This was my first experiment of an unbiassed decision. It stood in the place of all the world to me. I could not, and I did not feel disposed to, appeal any further. If I had, how could I tell that the second and third judgment would be more favourable57 than the first? Then what would have been the result? No; I had nothing for it but to wrap myself in my own integrity. By dint58 of resolution I became invulnerable. I resolved to go on to the end, trusting as I could to my own anticipations59 of the whole, and bidding the world wait its time before it should be admitted to the consult.
I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in the third person. But I speedily became dissatisfied. I then assumed the first person, making the hero of my tale his own historian; and in this mode I have persisted in all my subsequent attempts at works of fiction. It was infinitely60 the best adapted, at least, to my vein of delineation61, where the thing in which my imagination revelled62 the most freely was the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical dissecting63 knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive, and recording64 the gradually accumulating impulses which led the personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way of proceeding65 in which they afterwards embarked66.
When I had determined67 on the main purpose of my story, it was ever my method to get about me any productions of former authors that seemed to bear on my subject. I never entertained the fear that in this way of proceeding I should be in danger of servilely copying my predecessors68. I imagined that I had a vein of thinking that was properly my own, which would always preserve me from plagiarism69. I read other authors, that I might see what they had done, or, more properly, that I might forcibly hold my mind and occupy my thoughts in a particular train, I and my predecessors travelling in some sense to the same goal, at the same time that I struck out a path of my own, without ultimately heeding70 the direction they pursued, and disdaining71 to inquire whether by any chance it for a few steps coincided or did not coincide with mine.
Thus, in the instance of “Caleb Williams,” I read over a little old book, entitled “The Adventures of Mademoiselle de St. Phale,” a French Protestant in the times of the fiercest persecution72 of the Huguenots, who fled through France in the utmost terror, in the midst of eternal alarms and hair-breadth escapes, having her quarters perpetually beaten up, and by scarcely any chance finding a moment’s interval of security. I turned over the pages of a tremendous compilation73, entitled “God’s Revenge against Murder,” where the beam of the eye of Omniscience74 was represented as perpetually pursuing the guilty, and laying open his most hidden retreats to the light of day. I was extremely conversant75 with the “Newgate Calendar” and the “Lives of the Pirates.” In the meantime no works of fiction came amiss to me, provided they were written with energy. The authors were still employed upon the same mine as myself, however different was the vein they pursued: we were all of us engaged in exploring the entrails of mind and motive, and in tracing the various rencontres and clashes that may occur between man and man in the diversified76 scene of human life.
I rather amused myself with tracing a certain similitude between the story of Caleb Williams and the tale of Bluebeard, than derived77 any hints from that admirable specimen78 of the terrific. Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes, which, if discovered, he might expect to have all the world roused to revenge against him. Caleb Williams was the wife who, in spite of warning, persisted in his attempts to discover the forbidden secret; and, when he had succeeded, struggled as fruitlessly to escape the consequences, as the wife of Bluebeard in washing the key of the ensanguined chamber79, who, as often as she cleared the stain of blood from the one side, found it showing itself with frightful80 distinctness on the other.
When I had proceeded as far as the early pages of my third volume, I found myself completely at a stand. I rested on my arms from the 2nd of January, 1794, to the 1st of April following, without getting forward in the smallest degree. It has ever been thus with me in works of any continuance. The bow will not be for ever bent:
“Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum.”
I endeavoured, however, to take my repose81 to myself in security, and not to inflict82 a set of crude and incoherent dreams upon my readers. In the meantime, when I revived, I revived in earnest, and in the course of that month carried on my work with unabated speed to the end.
Thus I have endeavoured to give a true history of the concoction and mode of writing of this mighty trifle. When I had done, I soon became sensible that I had done in a manner nothing. How many flat and insipid83 parts does the book contain! How terribly unequal does it appear to me! From time to time the author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken man. And, when I had done all, what had I done? Written a book to amuse boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled up by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous84 and unanimated mood, without chewing and digestion85. I was in this respect greatly impressed with the confession86 of one of the most accomplished87 readers and excellent critics that any author could have fallen in with (the unfortunate Joseph Gerald). He told me that he had received my book late one evening, and had read through the three volumes before he closed his eyes. Thus, what had cost me twelve months’ labour, ceaseless heartaches and industry, now sinking in despair, and now roused and sustained in unusual energy, he went over in a few hours, shut the book, laid himself on his pillow, slept, and was refreshed, and cried,
“To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”
I had thought to have said something here respecting the concoction of “St. Leon” and “Fleetwood.” But all that occurs to me on the subject seems to be anticipated in the following
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proprietor
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concoction
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| n.调配(物)；谎言 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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specified
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vocation
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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fictitious
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| adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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ruminated
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| v.沉思( ruminate的过去式和过去分词 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼 | |
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treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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calamities
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| n.灾祸，灾难( calamity的名词复数 )；不幸之事 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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harass
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| vt.使烦恼，折磨，骚扰 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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persecute
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| vt.迫害，虐待；纠缠，骚扰 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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dispositions
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| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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afflatus
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| n.灵感，神感 | |
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maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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vainglorious
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| adj.自负的；夸大的 | |
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importunity
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| n.硬要，强求 | |
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perusal
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implicit
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| a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的 | |
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deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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dint
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| n.由于，靠；凹坑 | |
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anticipations
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| 预期( anticipation的名词复数 )； 预测； （信托财产收益的）预支； 预期的事物 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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delineation
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| n.记述；描写 | |
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revelled
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| v.作乐( revel的过去式和过去分词 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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dissecting
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| v.解剖（动物等）( dissect的现在分词 )；仔细分析或研究 | |
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recording
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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plagiarism
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| n.剽窃，抄袭 | |
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heeding
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的现在分词 ) | |
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disdaining
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| 鄙视( disdain的现在分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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compilation
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| n.编译，编辑 | |
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omniscience
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| n.全知，全知者，上帝 | |
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conversant
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| adj.亲近的，有交情的，熟悉的 | |
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diversified
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| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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78
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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79
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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80
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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81
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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82
inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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83
insipid
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| adj.无味的，枯燥乏味的，单调的 | |
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84
pusillanimous
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| adj.懦弱的，胆怯的 | |
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85
digestion
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| n.消化，吸收 | |
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86
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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87
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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