The Chronicles of the Imp: A Romance — Themes and Context

was about to fulfil an engagement in Boston, and offered to show the manuscript to a publisher in that city. Long months afterwards that friend returned to New York, and Mr. Farnol found to his chagrin that he had forgotten all about his promise. The unlucky story was still at the bottom of his trunk. The author, now almost in despair, sent the manuscript to his wife, who was residing at Engelwood, New Jersey, and asked her to burn it. But his wife had the happy thought of sending it to England--to Mr. Shirley Jevons, who was then occupying the editorial chair of _The Sportsman_, and was a friend of the family. Mr. Jevons read it with enthusiasm, and with such results as we have already noted. The book sold like wildfire. The author returned to England to win further laurels. Here I find a pleasant coincidence in the fact that the London firm of Sampson Low, having accepted the story, offered it to Little, Brown & Co. of Boston, where their accomplished representative, Mr. Herbert Jenkins, at once perceived the merits of the story and acquired the American rights. This, it seems, was the very firm to which Mr. Farnol’s actor-friend intended to show the manuscript and forgot to keep his promise. _The Broad Highway_, as I have said, sold in hundreds of thousands. It has appeared in an édition de luxe with beautiful illustrations by C. E. Brock. It is a breezy, healthy book, as unpretentious as it is sincere. Neither its author nor his friends need to worry themselves as to whether it is a masterpiece of literature. For our day, at least, it has added to the stock of harmless pleasures. To the critic who complains that "it is but an exercise in archæology," and that the author "has never felt what he has written but has gathered it up from books," one can but reply in the language of Goldsmith’s Mr. Burchell, "Fudge." It is still possible in England, in spite of its railway trains and its mechanical development, to feel the impulse which inspired Charles Dickens, George Borrow, and all the masters of the picaresque romance, who have in days gone by travelled with delight through the countryside, seeking adventures and finding them. "I felt some desire," says Lavengro, "to meet with one of those adventures which, upon the roads of England, are as plentiful as blackberries in autumn." Mr. Farnol has a talent for recreating such adventures, and he is perfectly frank with his readers, anticipating a certain type of criticism. "Whereas the writing of books was once a painful art," he makes Peter Vibart say in _The Broad Highway_, "it has of late become a trick very easy of accomplishment, requiring no regard for probability and little thought, so long as it is packed sufficiently full of impossible incidents through which a ridiculous heroine and a more absurd hero duly sigh their appointed way to the last chapter. Whereas books were once a power, they are of late degenerated into things of amusement, with which to kill an idle hour, and be promptly forgotten the next."

One might almost have believed that it was impossible to accomplish the "trick" twice and to provide yet a second adventure story as good as the first, but this our author has achieved in _The Amateur Gentleman_, where the adventures of Barnabas, the son of the prize-fighter, are as varied and exciting as those of Peter Vibart in the earlier romance. Mr. Farnol has been responsible for yet two other stories, _The Money Moon_ and _The Honourable Mr. Tawnish_, but nothing has he written quite in the lines of _The Chronicles of the Imp_. Here indeed is a simple story with which we may pass a pleasant hour. I hope you will like the Imp and his Aunt as much as I have done. Alone among the successful authors of our generation--among those, that is, whose work runs into circulations of hundreds of thousands--Mr. Farnol wins me by his unpretentiousness. He has no gospel to preach, no crude law of life to enunciate. He is content to entertain and amuse, to give us sunny hours of recreation, and never more than now are writers of this order needed for our solace.

I. Treasure Trove II. The Sheriff of Nottingham III. The Desperadoes IV. At the Three Jolly Anglers V. The Episode of the Indian’s Aunt VI. The Outlaw VII. The Blasted Oak VIII. The Land of Heart’s Delight

*THE CHRONICLES OF THE IMP*

I sat fishing. I had not caught anything, of course--I rarely do, nor am I fond of fishing in the very smallest degree, but I fished assiduously all the same, because circumstances demanded it.