When Valmond Came to Pontiac: Introduction

Introduction

In one sense this book stands by itself. It is like nothing else I have
written, and if one should seek to give it the name of a class, it might
be called an historical fantasy.

It followed The Trail of the Sword and preceded The Seats of the Mighty,
and appeared in the summer of 1895. The critics gave it a reception which
was extremely gratifying, because, as it seemed to me, they realised what
I was trying to do; and that is a great deal. One great journal said it
read as though it had been written at a sitting; another called it a tour
de force, and the grave Athenaeum lauded it in a key which was likely to
make me nervous, since it seemed to set a standard which I should find it
hard to preserve in the future. But in truth the newspaper was right
which said that the book read as though it was written at a sitting, and
that it was a tour de force. The facts are that the book was written,
printed, revised, and ready for press in five weeks.

The manuscript of the book was complete within four weeks. It possessed
me. I wrote night and day. There were times when I went to bed and,
unable to sleep, I would get up at two o'clock or three o'clock in the
morning and write till breakfast time. A couple of hours' walk after
breakfast, and I would write again until nearly two o'clock. Then
luncheon; afterwards a couple of hours in the open air, and I would again
write till eight o'clock in the evening. The world was shut out. I moved
in a dream. The book was begun at Hot Springs, in Virginia, in the annex
to the old Hot Springs Hotel. I could not write in the hotel itself, so I
went to the annex, and in the big building--in the early spring-time--I
worked night and day. There was no one else in the place except the old
negro caretaker and his wife. Four-fifths of the book was written in
three weeks there. Then I went to New York, and at the Lotus Club, where
I had a room, I finished it--but not quite. There were a few pages of the
book to do when I went for my walk in Fifth Avenue one afternoon. I could
not shake the thing off, the last pages demanded to be written. The
sermon which the old Cure was preaching on Valmond's death was running in
my head. I could not continue my walk. Then and there I stepped into the
Windsor Hotel, which I was passing, and asked if there was a stenographer
at liberty. There was. In the stenographer's office of the Windsor Hotel,
with the life of a caravanserai buzzing around me, I dictated the last
few pages of When Valmond Came to Pontiac. It was practically my only
experience of dictation of fiction. I had never been able to do it, and
have not been able to do it since, and I am glad that it is so, for I
should have a fear of being led into mere rhetoric. It did not, however,
seem to matter with this book. It wrote itself anywhere. The proofs of
the first quarter of the book were in my hands before I had finished
writing the last quarter.

It took me a long time to recover from the great effort of that five
weeks, but I never regretted those consuming fires which burned up sleep
and energy and ravaged the vitality of my imagination. The story was
founded on the incident described in the first pages of the book, which
was practically as I experienced it when I was a little child. The
picture there drawn of Valmond was the memory of just such a man as stood
at the four corners in front of the little hotel and scattered his hot
pennies to the children of the village. Also, my father used to tell me
as a child a story of Napoleon, whose history he knew as well as any man
living, and something of that story may be found in the fifth chapter of
the book where Valmond promotes Sergeant Lagroin from non-commissioned
rank, first to be captain, then to be colonel, and then to be general,
all in a moment, as it were.

I cannot tell the original story as my father told it to me here, but it
was the tale of how a sergeant in the Old Guard, having shared his
bivouac supper of roasted potatoes with the Emperor, was told by Napoleon
that he should sup with his Emperor when they returned to Versailles. The
old sergeant appeared at Versailles in course of time and demanded
admittance to the Emperor, saying that he had been asked to supper. When
Napoleon was informed, he had the veteran shown in and, recognising his
comrade of the baked potatoes, said at once that the sergeant should sup
with him. The sergeant's reply was: "Sire, how can a non-commissioned
officer dine with a general?" It was then, Napoleon, delighted with the
humour and the boldness of his grenadier, summoned the Old Guard, and had
the sergeant promoted to the rank of captain on the spot.

It was these apparently incongruous things, together with legends that I
had heard and read of Napoleon, which gave me the idea of Valmond. First,
a sketch of about five thousand words was written, and it looked as
though I were going to publish it as a short story; but one day, sitting
in a drawing-room in front of a grand piano, on the back of which were a
series of miniatures of the noted women who had played their part in
Napoleon's life, the incident of the Countess of Carnstadt (I do not use
the real name) at St. Helena associated itself with the picture in my
memory of the philanthropist of the street corner. Thereupon the whole
story of a son of Napoleon, ignorant of his own birth, but knowing that a
son had been born to Napoleon at St. Helena, flitted through my
imagination; and the story spread out before me all in an hour, like an
army with banners.

The next night--for this happened in New York--I went down to Hot
Springs, Virginia, and began a piece of work which enthralled me as I had
never before been enthralled, and as I have never been enthralled in the
same way since; for it was perilous to health and mental peace.

Fantasy as it is, the book has pictures of French-Canadian life which are
as true as though the story itself was all true. Characters are in it
like Medallion, the little chemist, the avocat, Lajeunesse the
blacksmith, and Madeleinette, his daughter, which were in some of the
first sketches I ever wrote of French Canada, and subsequently appearing
in the novelette entitled The Lane That Had No Turning. Indeed, 'When
Valmond Came to Pontiac', historical fantasy as it is, has elements both
of romance and realism.

Of all the books which I have written, perhaps because it cost me so
much, because it demanded so much of me at the time of its writing, I
care for it the most. It was as good work as I could do. This much may at
least be said: that no one has done anything quite in the same way or
used the same subject, or given it the same treatment. Also it may be
said, as the Saturday Review remarked, that it contained one whole, new
idea, and that was the pathetic--unutterably pathetic--incident of a man
driven by the truth in his blood to impersonate himself.

       "Oh, withered is the garland of the war,
        The Soldier's pole is fallen."

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