The Old Wives Tale | Page 3

of
the war. I said to the old man, "By the way, you went through the Siege
of Paris, didn't you?" He turned to his old wife and said, uncertainly,
"The Siege of Paris? Yes, we did, didn't we?" The Siege of Paris had
been only one incident among many in their lives. Of course, they
remembered it well, though not vividly, and I gained much information
from them. But the most useful thing which I gained from them was the
perception, startling at first, that ordinary people went on living very
ordinary lives in Paris during the siege, and that to the vast mass of the
population the siege was not the dramatic, spectacular, thrilling,
ecstatic affair that is described in history. Encouraged by this
perception, I decided to include the siege in my scheme. I read Sarcey's

diary of the siege aloud to my wife, and I looked at the pictures in Jules
Claretie's popular work on the siege and the commune, and I glanced at
the printed collection of official documents, and there my research
ended.
It has been asserted that unless I had actually been present at a public
execution, I could not have written the chapter in which Sophia was at
the Auxerre solemnity. I have not been present at a public execution, as
the whole of my information about public executions was derived from
a series of articles on them which I read in the Paris Matin. Mr. Frank
Harris, discussing my book in "Vanity Fair," said it was clear that I had
not seen an execution, (or words to that effect), and he proceeded to
give his own description of an execution. It was a brief but terribly
convincing bit of writing, quite characteristic and quite worthy of the
author of "Montes the Matador" and of a man who has been almost
everywhere and seen almost everything. I comprehended how far short
I had fallen of the truth! I wrote to Mr. Frank Harris, regretting that his
description had not been printed before I wrote mine, as I should
assuredly have utilized it, and, of course, I admitted that I had never
witnessed an execution. He simply replied: "Neither have I." This detail
is worth preserving, for it is a reproof to that large body of readers, who,
when a novelist has really carried conviction to them, assert off hand:
"O, that must be autobiography!"
ARNOLD BENNETT.

CONTENTS
BOOK I.
MRS. BAINES
I. THE SQUARE
II. THE TOOTH
III. A BATTLE

IV. ELEPHANT
V. THE TRAVELLER
VI. ESCAPADE
VII. A DEFEAT

BOOK II.
CONSTANCE
I. REVOLUTION
II. CHRISTMAS AND THE FUTURE
III. CYRIL
IV. CRIME
V. ANOTHER CRIME
VI. THE WIDOW
VII. BRICKS AND MORTAR
VIII. THE PROUDEST MOTHER

BOOK III.
SOPHIA
I. THE ELOPEMENT
II. SUPPER
III. AN AMBITION SATISFIED

IV. A CRISIS FOR GERALD
V. FEVER
VI. THE SIEGE
VII. SUCCESS

BOOK IV.
WHAT LIFE IS
I. FRENSHAM'S
II. THE MEETING
III. TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE
IV. END OF SOPHIA
V. END OF CONSTANCE

BOOK I
MRS. BAINES
CHAPTER I
THE SQUARE
I
Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to the
manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had never
been conscious. They were, for example, established almost precisely
on the fifty-third parallel of latitude. A little way to the north of them,

in the creases of a hill famous for its religious orgies, rose the river
Trent, the calm and characteristic stream of middle England. Somewhat
further northwards, in the near neighbourhood of the highest
public-house in the realm, rose two lesser rivers, the Dane and the
Dove, which, quarrelling in early infancy, turned their backs on each
other, and, the one by favour of the Weaver and the other by favour of
the Trent, watered between them the whole width of England, and
poured themselves respectively into the Irish Sea and the German
Ocean. What a county of modest, unnoticed rivers! What a natural,
simple county, content to fix its boundaries by these tortuous island
brooks, with their comfortable names--Trent, Mease, Dove, Tern, Dane,
Mees, Stour, Tame, and even hasty Severn! Not that the Severn is
suitable to the county! In the county excess is deprecated. The county is
happy in not exciting remark. It is content that Shropshire should
possess that swollen bump, the Wrekin, and that the exaggerated
wildness of the Peak should lie over its border. It does not desire to be a
pancake like Cheshire. It has everything that England has, including
thirty miles of Watling Street; and England can show nothing more
beautiful and nothing uglier than the works of nature and the works of
man to be seen within the limits of the county. It is England in little,
lost in the midst of England, unsung by