The Eternal City

The Eternal City, by Hall Caine

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Title: The Eternal City
Author: Hall Caine
Release Date: November 7, 2006 [EBook #19732]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ETERNAL CITY ***

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[Illustration: "WHAT YOU SAID SHALL BE SACRED."]
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THE ETERNAL CITY

By Hall Caine
Author of "The Christian," etc.
"He looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker
is God."
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
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Copyright, 1901, 1902 By HALL CAINE Popular Edition
Published October, 1902
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PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
Has a novelist a right to alter his novel after its publication, to condense
it, to add to it, to modify or to heighten its situations, and otherwise so
to change it that to all outward appearance it is practically a new book?
I leave this point in literary ethics to the consideration of those whose
business it is to discuss such questions, and content myself with telling
the reader the history of the present story.
About ten years ago I went to Russia with some idea (afterwards
abandoned) of writing a book that should deal with the racial struggle
which culminated in the eviction of the Jews from the holy cities of that
country, and the scenes of tyrannical administration which I witnessed
there made a painful and lasting impression on my mind. The sights of
the day often followed me through the night, and after a more than
usually terrible revelation of official cruelty, I had a dream of a Jewish
woman who was induced to denounce her husband to the Russian
police under a promise that they would spare his life, which they said

he had forfeited as the leader of a revolutionary movement. The
husband came to know who his betrayer had been, and he cursed his
wife as his worst enemy. She pleaded on her knees that fear for his
safety had been the only motive for her conduct, and he cursed her
again. His cause was lost, his hopes were dead, his people were in
despair, because the one being whom heaven had given him for his
support had delivered him up to his enemies out of the weakness of her
womanly love. I awoke in the morning with a vivid memory of this
new version of the old story of Samson and Delilah, and on my return
to England I wrote the draft of a play with the incident of husband and
wife as the central situation.
How from this germ came the novel which was published last year
under the title of "The Eternal City" would be a long story to tell, a
story of many personal experiences, of reading, of travel, of meetings
in various countries with statesmen, priests, diplomats, police
authorities, labour leaders, nihilists and anarchists, and of the
consequent growth of my own political and religious convictions; but it
will not be difficult to see where and in what way time and thought had
little by little overlaid the humanities of the early sketch with many
extra interests. That these interests were of the essence, clothing, and
not crushing the human motive, I trust I may continue to believe, and
certainly I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception of my
book at the hands of that wide circle of general readers who care less
for a contribution to a great social propaganda than for a simple tale of
love.
But when the time came to return to my first draft of a play, the tale of
love was the only thing to consider, and being now on the point of
producing the drama in England, America, and elsewhere, and
requested to prepare an edition of my story for the use of the audiences
at the theatre, I have thought myself justified in eliminating the politics
and religion from my book, leaving nothing but the human interests
with which alone the drama is allowed to deal. This has not been an
easy thing to do, and now that it is done I am by no means sure that I
may not have alienated the friends whom the abstract problems won for
me without conciliating the readers who called for the story only. But

not to turn my back on the work of three laborious years, or to discredit
that part of it which expressed, however