The Coast of Bohemia

The Coast of Bohemia, by
William Dean Howells

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Title: The Coast of Bohemia
Author: William Dean Howells
Release Date: August 10, 2007 [EBook #22297]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE COAST OF BOHEMIA

By W. D. Howells
Biographical Edition

NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS,
PUBLISHERS 1899
Copyright, 1893, 1899, by WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.
In one of the old-fashioned books for children there was a story of the
adventures of a cent (or perhaps that coin of older lineage, a penny)
told by itself, which came into my mind when the publishers suggested
that the readers of a new edition of this book might like to know how it
happened to be written. I promptly fancied the book speaking, and
taking upon itself the burden of autobiography, which we none of us
find very heavy; and no sooner had I done so than I began actually to
hear from it in a narrative of much greater distinctness than I could
have supplied for it.
"You must surely remember," it protested to my forgetfulness, "that
you first thought of me in anything like definite shape as you stood
looking on at the trotting-races of a county fair in Northern Ohio, and
that I began to gather color and character while you loitered through the
art-building, and dwelt with pitying interest upon the forlorn,
unpromising exhibits there.
"But previous to this, my motive existed somewhere in that nebulous
fore-life where both men and books have their impalpable beginning;
for even you cannot have forgotten that when a certain passionately
enterprising young editor asked you for a novel to be printed in his
journal, you so far imagined me as to say that I would be about a girl.

When you looked over those hapless works of art at the Pymantoning
County Fair, you thought, 'What a good thing it would be to have a nice
village girl, with a real but limited gift, go from here to study art in
New York! And get in love there! And married!' Cornelia and her
mother at once stepped out of the inchoate; Ludlow advanced from
another quarter of Chaos, and I began really to be.
"The getting me down on paper was a much later affair--nearly two
years later. There were earlier engagements to be met; there was an
exciting editorial episode to be got behind you; and there was material
for a veridical representation of the ardent young life of the New York
Synthesis of Art Studies to be gathered as nearly at first hands and as
furtively as possible.
"I should be almost ashamed to remind you of the clandestine means
you employed before you were forced to a frankness alien to your
nature, and went and threw yourself on the mercy of a Member who,
upon your avowing your purpose, took you through the schools of the
Synthesis and instructed you in its operation. Not satisfied with this,
you got an undergraduate of the Synthesis to coach you as to its social
side, and while she was consenting to put it all down in writing for your
convenience, you were shamelessly making notes of her
boarding-house, as the very place to have Cornelia come to.
"Your methods were at first so secret and uncandid that I wonder I ever
came to be the innocent book I am; and I feel that the credit is far less
due to you than to the friends who helped you. But I am glad to
remember how you got your come-uppings when, long after, a student
of the Synthesis whom you asked, in your latent vanity, how she
thought that social part of me was managed, answered, 'Well, any one
could see that it was studied altogether from the outside, that it wasn't
at all the spirit of the Synthesis.'
"It was enough almost to make me doubt myself, but I recovered my
belief in my own truth when I reflected that it was merely a just
punishment for you. I could expose you in other points, if I chose, and
show what slight foundations you built my facts and characters upon;
but perhaps that would be ungrateful.