老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
In the autumn of 1903 I used to dine frequently in a restaurant inthe Rue de Clichy, Paris. Here were, among others, two waitressesthat attracted my attention. One was a beautiful, pale young girl,to whom I never spoke, for she was employed far away from thetable which I affected. The other, a stout, middle-aged managingBreton woman, had sole command over my table and me, and graduallyshe began to assume such a maternal tone towards me that I saw Ishould be compelled to leave that restaurant. If I was absent fora couple of nights running she would reproach me sharply: "What!you are unfaithful to me?" Once, when I complained about someFrench beans, she informed me roundly that French beans were asubject which I did not understand. I then decided to be eternallyunfaithful to her, and I abandoned the restaurant. A few nightsbefore the final parting an old woman came into the restaurant todine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had aridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see thatshe lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she haddeveloped the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among thethoughtless. She was burdened with a lot of small parcels, whichshe kept dropping. She chose one seat; and then, not liking it,chose another; and then another. In a few moments she had thewhole restaurant laughing at her. That my middle-aged Bretonshould laugh was indifferent to me, but I was pained to see acoarse grimace of giggling on the pale face of the beautiful youngwaitress to whom I had never spoken.
I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was onceyoung, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from theseridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of hersingularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to makea heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she."Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque--far from it!--butthere is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stoutageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youthin her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that thechange from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up ofan infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived byher, only intensifies the pathos.
It was at this instant that I was visited by the idea of writingthe book which ultimately became "The Old Wives' Tale." Of courseI felt that the woman who caused the ignoble mirth in therestaurant would not serve me as a type of heroine. For she wasmuch too old and obviously unsympathetic. It is an absolute rulethat the principal character of a novel must not be unsympathetic,and the whole modern tendency of realistic fiction is againstoddness in a prominent figure. I knew that I must choose the sortof woman who would pass unnoticed in a crowd.
I put the idea aside for a long time, but it was never verydistant from me. For several reasons it made a special appeal tome. I had always been a convinced admirer of Mrs. W. K. Clifford'smost precious novel, "Aunt Anne," but I wanted to see in the storyof an old woman many things that Mrs. W. K. Clifford had omittedfrom "Aunt Anne." Moreover, I had always revolted against theabsurd youthfulness, the unfading youthfulness of the averageheroine. And as a protest against this fashion, I was already, in1903, planning a novel ("Leonora") of which the heroine was agedforty, and had daughters old enough to be in love. The reviewers,by the way, were staggered by my hardihood in offering a woman offorty as a subject of serious interest to the public. But I meantto go much farther than forty! Finally as a supreme reason, I hadthe example and the challenge of Guy de Maupassant's "Une Vie." Inthe nineties we used to regard "Une Vie" with mute awe, as beingthe summit of achievement in fiction. And I remember being verycross with Mr. Bernard Shaw because, having read "Une Vie" at thesuggestion (I think) of Mr. William Archer, he failed to see in itanything very remarkable. Here I must confess that, in 1908, Iread "Une Vie" again, and in spite of a natural anxiety to differfrom Mr. Bernard Shaw, I was gravely disappointed with it. It is afine novel, but decidedly inferior to "Pierre et Jean" or even"Fort Comme la Mort." To return to the year 1903. "Une Vie"relates the entire life history of a woman. I settled in theprivacy of my own head that my book about the development of ayoung girl into a stout old lady must be the English "Une Vie." Ihave been accused of every fault except a lack of self-confidence,and in a few weeks I settled a further point, namely, that my bookmust "go one better" than "Une Vie," and that to this end it mustbe the life-history of two women instead of only one. Hence, "TheOld Wives' Tale" has two heroines. Constance was the original;Sophia was created out of bravado, just to indicate that Ideclined to consider Guy de Maupassant as the last forerunner ofthe deluge. I was intimidated by the audacity of my project, but Ihad sworn to carry it out. For several years I looked it squarelyin the face at intervals, and then walked away to write novels ofsmaller scope, of which I produced five or six. But I could notdally forever, and in the autumn of 1907 I actually began to writeit, in a village near Fontainebleau, where I rented half a housefrom a retired railway servant. I calculated that it would be200,000 words long (which it exactly proved to be), and I had avague notion that no novel of such dimensions (exceptRichardson's) had ever been written before. So I counted the wordsin several famous Victorian novels, and discovered to my reliefthat the famous Victorian novels average 400,000 words apiece. Iwrote the first part of the novel in six weeks. It was fairly easyto me, because, in the seventies, in the first decade of my life,I had lived in the actual draper's shop of the Baines's, and knewit as only a child could know it. Then I went to London on avisit. I tried to continue the book in a London hotel, but Londonwas too distracting, and I put the thing away, and during Januaryand February of 1908, I wrote "Buried Alive," which was publishedimmediately, and was received with majestic indifference by theEnglish public, an indifference which has persisted to this day.
I then returned to the Fontainebleau region and gave "The OldWives' Tale" no rest till I finished it at the end of July, 1908.It was published in the autumn of the same year, and for six weeksafterward the English public steadily confirmed an opinionexpressed by a certain person in whose judgment I had confidence,to the effect that the work was honest but dull, and that when itwas not dull it had a regrettable tendency to facetiousness. Mypublishers, though brave fellows, were somewhat disheartened;however, the reception of the book gradually became less and lessfrigid.
With regard to the French portion of the story, it was not until Ihad written the first part that I saw from a study of mychronological basis that the Siege of Paris might be brought intothe tale. The idea was seductive; but I hated, and still hate, theawful business of research; and I only knew the Paris of theTwentieth Century. Now I was aware that my railway servant and hiswife had been living in Paris at the time of the war. I said tothe old man, "By the way, you went through the Siege of Paris,didn't you?" He turned to his old wife and said, uncertainly, "TheSiege of Paris? Yes, we did, didn't we?" The Siege of Paris hadbeen only one incident among many in their lives. Of course, theyremembered it well, though not vividly, and I gained muchinformation from them. But the most useful thing which I gainedfrom them was the perception, startling at first, that ordinarypeople went on living very ordinary lives in Paris during thesiege, and that to the vast mass of the population the siege wasnot the dramatic, spectacular, thrilling, ecstatic affair that isdescribed in history. Encouraged by this perception, I decided toinclude the siege in my scheme. I read Sarcey's diary of the siegealoud to my wife, and I looked at the pictures in Jules Claretie'spopular work on the siege and the commune, and I glanced at theprinted collection of official documents, and there my researchended.
It has been asserted that unless I had actually been present at apublic execution, I could not have written the chapter in whichSophia was at the Auxerre solemnity. I have not been present at apublic execution, as the whole of my information about publicexecutions was derived from a series of articles on them which Iread in the Paris Matin. Mr. Frank Harris, discussing my book in"Vanity Fair," said it was clear that I had not seen an execution,(or words to that effect), and he proceeded to give his owndescription of an execution. It was a brief but terriblyconvincing bit of writing, quite characteristic and quite worthyof the author of "Montes the Matador" and of a man who has beenalmost everywhere and seen almost everything. I comprehended howfar short I had fallen of the truth! I wrote to Mr. Frank Harris,regretting that his description had not been printed before Iwrote mine, as I should assuredly have utilized it, and, ofcourse, I admitted that I had never witnessed an execution. Hesimply replied: "Neither have I." This detail is worth preserving,for it is a reproof to that large body of readers, who, when anovelist has really carried conviction to them, assert off hand:"O, that must be autobiography!"
ARNOLD BENNETT.