“The author of 'Con Cregan,' whoever he be, is no ordinary man.”
“Another daring author has entered the lists, and with every promise of success.”—Exeter Post.
It may sound very absurd to confess it, but I was excessively provoked at the superior success of the unacknowledged book, and felt the rivalry to the full as painfully as though I had never written a line of it. Was it that I thought well of one story and very meanly of the other, and in consequence was angry at the want of concurrence of my critics? I suspect not. I rather imagine I felt hurt at discovering how little hold I had, in my acknowledged name, on a public with whom I fancied myself on such good terms; and it pained me to see with what little difficulty a new and a nameless man could push for the place I had believed to be my own.
“The Daltons” I always wrote, after my habit, in the morning; I never turned to “Con Cregan” until nigh midnight; and I can still remember the widely different feelings with which I addressed myself to the task I liked, and to a story which, in the absurd fashion I have mentioned, was associated with wounded self-love.
It is scarcely necessary for me to say that there was no plan whatever in this book. My notion was, that “Con Cregan,” once created, would not fail to find adventures. The vicissitudes of daily poverty would beget shifts and contrivances; with these successes would come ambition and daring. Meanwhile a growing knowledge of life would develop his character, and I should soon see whether he would win the silver spoon or spoil the horn. I ask pardon in the most humble manner for presuming for a moment to associate my hero with the great original of Le Sage.
But I used the word “Irish” adjectively, and with the same amount of qualification that one employs to a diamond, and indeed, as I have read it in a London paper, to a “Lord.”
An American officer, of whom I saw much at the time, was my guide to the interior of Mexico; he had been originally in the Santa Fé expedition, was a man of most adventurous disposition, and a love of stirring incident and peril, that even broken-down health and a failing constitution could not subdue.
It was often very difficult for me to tear myself away from his Texan and Mexican experiences, his wild scenes of prairie life, or his sojourn amongst Indian tribes, and keep to the more commonplace events of my own story; nor could all my entreaties confine him to those descriptions of places and scenes which I needed for my own characters.
The saunter after tea-time, with this companion, generally along that little river that tumbles through the valley of the Bagno di Lucca, was the usual preparation for my night's work; and I came to it as intensely possessed by Mexico—dress, manner, and landscape—as though I had been drawing on the recollection of a former journey.
So completely separated in my mind were the two tales by the different parts of the day in which I wrote them, that no character of “The Daltons” ever crossed my mind after nightfall, nor was there a trace of “Con Cregan” in my head at my breakfast next morning.