Polly the Pagan: Her Lost Love Letters Read online

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  _From an ideal portrait by DeWitt Lockman_ _Polly_]

  POLLY THE PAGAN

  HER LOST LOVE LETTERS

  _BY_ ISABEL ANDERSON

  WITH A FOREWORD BY BASIL KING

  THE PAGE COMPANY BOSTON MDCCCCXXII

  _Copyright, 1922,_ BY THE PAGE COMPANY

  _All rights reserved_

  _Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_

  Made in U. S. A.

  First Impression, September, 1922

  PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A.

  I dedicate this book with love to my cousin, Mary Brandegee, who is as dear to me as a sister.

  "_She vanished through the fingers like a card in the hands of a magician._"

  FOREWORD

  Of the many subjects open to the novelist none is more fertile ininterests than the international theme, and none more arresting inappeal. Clash of character being the starting point of drama we haveit amplified in the international by both sympathy and dissonance.Mutual attraction between individuals will sometimes overleap racialdifferences in point of view; and yet racial differences in point ofview will always be at war with mutual attraction between individuals.All contrasts, all complexities, are focussed on this single stage,while one gets as nowhere else the conflict which each new-borngeneration cannot but wage against the dictation of the ages. On thiscrowded scene bring in that American element to which the dictation ofthe ages means relatively nothing and the wealth of the dramatic fieldbecomes obvious.

  It is curious, therefore, that it has been so little touched. It hasbeen entered, but not very far. The great Russian and Frenchnovelists, with their concentration on the life immediately roundthem, in the main ignore it. The English have worked it a little, butnot often, and not with much insight. The truth seems to be that theEuropean nations, with their strong lines of cleavage, have difficultyin understanding each other, while they understand America not at all.Steeped and dyed in their own national prepossessions they regardother national prepossessions with indifference, amazement, orhostility. There are exceptions to this statement, of course. I speakonly of general tendencies. The trend of events since the war evenmore than the war itself brings home to us the fact that the Europeanmind is tribal.

  The American mind is more open, as it is natural that it should be. Ithas its national prepossessions; but it has them less exclusively.Moreover, it is endowed to an unusual degree with the impulse ofcuriosity. It likes to see, to know, to explore. Beyond any other typeof mind it regards a foreigner as a man and a brother, and not as afoe. To the American a foreigner's life, habits, prejudices, andoutlooks are of interest. He often likes them. He generally finds thempicturesque. He may think them foolish, but he never thinks them dull.Being so busily occupied in creating a life for himself he enjoysinspecting the lives other men have created for themselves, just as aman who is building a house will examine with care the experiments ofa neighbor doing the same thing.

  The international attracts the American, and yet even the American hasno broad international strain in his literature. The theme crops outoccasionally, but is never constant. Two or three writers have made itspecially their own, but they have founded no line. When we havementioned Hawthorne in one notable book, Henry James and MarionCrawford in not a few from each, we have almost exhausted the list ofthe great names of the past, while of the present there is practicallyno one to quote.

  The explanation, if we wanted one, might be found in lack ofauthority. Though many writers travel in foreign countries few live inthem with sufficient intimacy to see below the surface. Againstoutsiders continental European private life is guarded like a shrine.The Latin countries in particular know little of the easy throwingopen of the home instinctive to the Anglo-Saxon, so that, as a rule, astranger steps within the seclusion of a French or Italian family onlyby marriage or some unusual set of conditions.

  And yet both marriage and the unusual set of conditions occur.

  In the case of the former we who remain in America are not greatlybenefited, since few of the American women who marry into continentalEurope ever tell what they know for the information of compatriots.The power of absorption of a highly organized social life, like thatof Italy, France, or Spain, is such that not many who enter it evercome out of it again. They are held by a thousand social and domestictentacles, which have no counterpart in happy-go-lucky Americanrelationships. Amid their surroundings they may always remain alien,and yet they are enclosed by them, as insects in amber.

  It is to the unusual set of conditions that we owe most, and theauthor of the novel of which these words are meant to be a prelude hasenjoyed those conditions to an exceptional degree. Diplomatic life hasthe special advantage that it establishes close relations as a matterof course. It admits one to the palace of which the chance travellersees only the windows and walls. It knows no slow approaches orapprenticeships. Not only are the barred doors thrown open, but to themost sealed society the foreigner in diplomacy is given the key.

  Of this _entree_ not merely to foreign houses and hearths but toforeign points of view Mrs. Anderson has been always quick to perceivethe potentialities. Revealed by her other books as gifted with a powerof observation at once delicate and shrewd, she has shown a remarkablefaculty for reaching the significance of things beyond the objectiveand the ceremonious. She knows the value of European stateliness asset over against our American slap-dash; and she can also throw intorelief the human spontaneous qualities in our American slap-dash incontrast to the calculated efforts of European stateliness. In hergame she plays the New World against the Old, and the Old Worldagainst the New, in the spirit of comedy, not without its tragicpoints. She uses her hemispheres like cymbals, for resonance andclash, for emotion and conflict, and also for joy, for wonder, forlaughter, and for the leaping of the heart.

  BASIL KING.