The Duke in the Suburbs

(1909)

Dedication: To MARION CALDECOTT, With The Author's Homage

Author's Apology:

The author, who is merely an inventor
of stories, may at little cost impress
his readers with the scope of his general
knowledge. For he may place the scene of
his story in Milan at the Court of the Visconti
and throw back the action half a thousand
years, drawing across his stage splendid
figures slimly silked or sombrely satined, and
fill their mouths with such awsome oaths as
"By Bacchus!" or "Sapristi!" and the
like. He may also, does the fine fancy seize
him, take for his villain no less a personage
than Monseigneur, for hero a Florentine
Count, as bright lady of the piece, a swooning
flower of the Renaissance, all pink and
white, with a bodice of plum velvet cut
square at the breast, and showing the
milk-white purity of her strong young throat.
It is indeed a more difficult matter when
one is less of an inventor, than a painstaking
recorder of facts.
When our characters are conventionally
attired in trousers of the latest fashion, and
ransacking mythology the oath-makers can
accept no god worthier of witness than High
Jove.
Greatest of all disabilities consider this
fact: that the scene must be laid in
Brockley, S.E., a respectable suburb of London,
and you realize the apparent hopelessness
of the self-imposed task of the writer who
would weave romance from such unpromising
material.
It would indeed seem well-nigh hopeless
to extract the exact proportions of tragedy
and farce from Kymott Crescent that go
to make your true comedy, were it not for
the intervention of the Duke, of Hank,
his friend, of Mr. Roderick Nape, of Big
Bill Slewer of Four Ways, Texas, and last,
but by no means least, Miss Alicia Terrill of
"The Ferns," 66, Kymott Crescent.

Fan of this book? Help us introduce it to others by writing a better introduction for it. It's quick and easy, click here.

Recent Forum Posts on The Duke in the Suburbs

No active discussions on Wallace found. Why not post a question or comment yourself? Just click the link below.

Post a New Comment/Question on The Duke in the Suburbs