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"WHAT YOU SAID SHALL BE SACRED."

Table of Contents

Has a novelist a right to alter his novel after its publication, tocondense it, to add to it, to modify or to heighten its situations, andotherwise so to change it that to all outward appearance it ispractically a new book? I leave this point in literary ethics to theconsideration of those whose business it is to discuss such questions,and content myself with telling the reader the history of the presentstory.

About ten years ago I went to Russia with some idea (afterwardsabandoned) of writing a book that should deal with the racial strugglewhich culminated in the eviction of the Jews from the holy cities ofthat country, and the scenes of tyrannical administration which Iwitnessed there made a painful and lasting impression on my mind. Thesights of the day often followed me through the night, and after a morethan usually terrible revelation of official cruelty, I had a dream of aJewish woman who was induced to denounce her husband to the Russianpolice under a promise that they would spare his life, which they saidhe had forfeited as the leader of a revolutionary movement. The husbandcame to know who his betrayer had been, and he cursed his wife as hisworst enemy. She pleaded on her knees that fear for his safety had beenthe only motive for her conduct, and he cursed her again. His cause waslost, his hopes were dead, his people were in despair, because the onebeing whom heaven had given him for his support had delivered him up tohis enemies out of the weakness of her womanly love. I awoke in themorning with a vivid memory of this new version of the old story ofSamson and Delilah, and on my return to England I wrote the draft of aplay with the incident of husband and wife as the central situation.