Patchwork #225947

It is the custom of novelists to-day, even when writing obviously of public men or women, glibly to inform their readers that these characters are entirely imaginary. Whether such a fiction expresses a secret wish that they had indeed been creatures of the brain and not' of the flesh, I do not know. I would merely say that it is not a fiction in which I would myself in dalge. It would have been quite impossible, in writing of that university from which I have so recently and so reluctantly departed, to banish from my memory the figures which coloured its stage so vividly, to try to shut from my ears the echo of their laughter and their talk. And so I may as well admit that a few a very few — of the characters in this book are founded on fact. Where this has been the case I have been scrupulous that the persons concerned should read the manuscript before it was published. In no case has any objection been raised. Raymond Sheldon, however, the chief figure (he would have hated to be called a is, to the best of my knowledge, an imaginary character. It is true that he did many things which I myself did, but he did them in quite a different way; and though I admire him very much, I do not approve of all his actions.