I am not as conceited as Bernard Shaw. I hesitate to call myself “an exceedingly clever man”; but I am at least, a moderately clever man. I have made a comparative success of various occupations calling for considerable education, foresight, intelligence and ingenuity, and I am at present deriving an income sufficient to keep me alive from the sale of scenarios to Moving Pictures concerns. I commenced to write when I was eight years old, a week after I had devoured “Robinson Crusoe,” and I have been writing ever since—and reading ten times as much as I have written. And now—tonight—as I sat smoking in my old, dilapidated armchair, a terrible thought came to me; a thought that I have crushed and smothered a thousand times during the past few months; a thought that wrecks what little peace still lingers in my soul; a thought that threatens to mar my whole future existence;—the thought that I am wasting my life.
Try as I could that thought would not be smothered into silence tonight. The hurried ideas, summoned at random, and crammed into the theatre of my brain were not virile enough to crowd out that terrible thought. It was as though some frightful spectre that had been knocking at the door of my consciousness for centuries had at last gained admittance, and stood confronting me, a decisive grin of defiance distorting its horrible features. For hours I sat facing it, staring at it, and all the while my soul wrestled. Now that it is over I can think of no parallel for that awful struggle, save the story that is told of Jacob wrestling with the angel until the daybreak.
It is dawn, now. And I am wondering—even as I pen these words— wondering whether it was an angel that I wrestled with last night. Do you believe in angels any longer?
You have heard men speak of having wasted their lives, and so have I; and heard them speak lightly of it; but I cannot think lightly of it. Like Carlyle life is a grim and earnest thing for me. With the first overwhelming flood of realization I remembered a tremendous line in one of James Lane Allen’s novels—“One chance,” cries the hero of that book, towards its close, “One chance in all of eternity to be an honest man—and to have lost it.” And I feel that I have had one chance to be a man—not a particularly honest man—but a man; and that I have lost it. I can see now that I have been a mere drifting log in the wide stream of existence, a mere mote in the broad beam of life that lies athwart the world. I can see now that I have been a coward—a shiftless, worthless coward. I can see now that I have done always what other men have been doing. I can see now that I have lost the one chance I had in all eternity of being a real man; and lying as I am in the pit of despair, I am raising my voice now that they may hear who pass by, and hearing may understand, and understanding may change the mould of their lives. Like Dives in Hades I would that all men might be warned of this awful state wherein I lie.
I have waited in silence many years. Over and over again I have said to myself—the time is not yet. I have deluded myself. I have said to my soul— this book that you are to write must roar like the sea. It must contain vast thunderings. There must be something of the lightning in it. Every word must sting. Every sentence must crack like a whip. Every paragraph must be saturated with poison. Every page must end with a dagger-thrust. I have diligently studied the great writers of the past. I have written reams, only to throw them aside. I have been merciless with the scratchings of my pen. All that this book might sink to the hilt, like a keen sword, in Humanity’s side. And in the silence and solitude deeper and deeper channels of hate have been carved in me.
But I have changed, now. I labour no more after style. I am no longer concerned with dramatic forms of speech. The volcano that smoulders within me shall burst forth out upon you unhindered.
What are words? What is a sentence? Has a paragraph an identity? Can a page of a book speak? It is not words I am concerned with now. I know now that words cannot express anything. Yet must I write with words. But it is not the words that shall smite your souls—not the words; but my soul behind them. For though this book never be printed, though not one word of all this reaches any living eye in the world, yet, in writing it, the angry sparks of my consciousness shall blaze through the ether and beat against the souls of men for evermore. There is so much heat in my heart, that Humanity cannot escape being scorched, no man shall escape the heat of my heart. Even the unborn are destined to be smitten to the heart’s core by the residue of my passion, even though they remain unborn for a thousand centuries. I am the overflowing scourge whom God has sent down to chasten the earth.
Rough-hewn, this book shall be hurled in the midst of scrambling humanity. Misshapen, crude, ugly—like some fiery rock wrenched from the heart of the world; I hurl it back at the world. This is no idle book. I ask no idlers to trifle with it. It is a stern and terrible book, for behind every word lurks a spectre; and at the end of it, you shall meet God face to face, and no man can face God unafraid.
I
Listen.
What is that low vast terrible murmuring?—those sighs issuing from thousands of thousands of throats?—that calamitous moaning that never abates, never ceases for a second?—that tumultuous torrent of tears?—those sobs?—those frenzied fists beating at breasts?—those cries in the dead of night?—that chaotic chorus of wailing?
Whose voices are these?
Whose bodies are these, rocking to and fro, racked in torment? Whose eyes are these so red and wet and swollen with tears? What is this on the ground here? Is it blood? Whose blood? Who are these people walking in blood?
The Underfolk!
II
I am the Champion of the Underfolk.
I am a mountain pouring forth the frightful lava of a soul on fire. This is not a book. It is an eruption. Beware of it, and me, and that awful Urge—I know not what it is—behind us both.
For I am not alone. Pervading my solitude there is a terrible presence.