The Maréchale (Catherine Booth-Clibborn)

THE MARÉCHALE
THE MARÉCHALE
(CATHERINE BOOTH-CLIBBORN)
BY JAMES STRAHAN
AUTHOR OF HEBREW IDEALS, THE BOOK OF JOB, ETC.
HODDER & STOUGHTON NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
The right of translation is reserved
Dedicated WITH REVERENCE AND AFFECTION TO THÉODORE MONOD WHO TAUGHT US TO SAY TO OUR DIVINE MASTER NONE OF SELF AND ALL OF THEE
PREFACE
This book is the unexpected result of a brief visit which the Maréchale paid her daughter and the writer in the spring of this year. She was daily persuaded, not so much to talk of the past, as to live parts of her life over again, for in her case the telling of a story is the enacting of a drama. At a meal-time she rarely keeps her seat, though she is apparently unconscious of leaving it and surprised that she requires to return to it. She begins to describe an incident, to recall a conversation, to sketch a character, and straightway she is suiting the word to the action, the action to the word, holding the mirror up to nature, using her brilliant dramatic gift, which is as natural to her as singing is to birds, to call up faces, to bring back voices, to restore scenes, which are all, whether grave or gay, summoned out of a dead past that has suddenly, as by the wave of a magician's wand, become once more alive.
One day I said to her, Have you never thought of giving all this to the world? She answered, I am often asked to do so, and some day I may. Soon after she surprised me by saying, I have come to the conclusion that something ought to be written now, and you must write it.