If my Russians seem more Muscovite than
any Russian, and my English people more insular than any Briton,
I will not plead, as I honestly might, that the fiction has yet
to be written that can exaggerate the reality of such subjects;
that the apparently outrageous Patiomkin is but a timidly
bowdlerized ghost of the original; and that Captain Edstaston is
no more than a miniature that might hang appropriately on the
walls of nineteen out of twenty English country houses to this
day. An artistic presentment must not condescend to justify
itself by a comparison with crude nature; and I prefer to admit
that in this kind my dramatic personae are, as they should be, of
the stage stagey, challenging the actor to act up to them or
beyond them, if he can. The more heroic the overcharging, the
better for the performance.
In dragging the reader thus for a moment behind the scenes, I am
departing from a rule which I have hitherto imposed on myself so
rigidly that I never permit myself, even in a stage direction, to
let slip a word that could bludgeon the imagination of the reader
by reminding him of the boards and the footlights and the sky
borders and the rest of the theatrical scaffolding, for which
nevertheless I have to plan as carefully as if I were the head
carpenter as well as the author.
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