WHEREIN IS SET FORTH THE HISTORY OF JESSICA LEVERET, AS ALSO THAT OF PIERRE LE MOYNE OF IBERVILLE, GEORGE GERING, AND OTHER BOLD SPIRITS; TOGETHER WITH CERTAIN MATTERS OF WAR, AND THE DEEDS OF ONE EDWARD BUCKLAW, MUTINEER AND PIRATE DEDICATION
My Dear Father:
Once, many years ago, in a kind of despair, you were impelled to say
that I would “never be anything but a rascally lawyer.” This, it
may be, sat upon your conscience, for later you turned me gravely
towards Paley and the Thirty-nine Articles; and yet I know that in
your deepest soldier’s heart, you really pictured me, how
unavailingly, in scarlet and pipe-clay, and with sabre, like
yourself in youth and manhood. In all I disappointed you, for I
never had a brief or a parish, and it was another son of yours who
carried on your military hopes. But as some faint apology—I almost
dare hope some recompense for what must have seemed wilfulness, I
send you now this story of a British soldier and his “dear maid,”
which has for its background the old city of Quebec, whose high
ramparts you walked first sixty years ago; and for setting, the
beginning of those valiant fightings, which, as I have heard you
say, “through God’s providence and James Wolfe, gave England her
best possession.”
You will, I feel sure, quarrel with the fashion of my campaigns, and
be troubled by my anachronisms; but I beg you to remember that long
ago you gave my young mind much distress when you told that
wonderful story, how you, one man, “surrounded” a dozen enemies, and
drove them prisoners to headquarters. “Surrounded” may have been
mere lack of precision, but it serves my turn now, as you see. You
once were—and I am precise here—a gallant swordsman: there are
legends yet of your doings with a crack Dublin bully. Well, in the
last chapter of this tale you shall find a duel which will perhaps
recall those early days of this century, when your blood was hot and
your hand ready. You would be distrustful of the details of this
scene, did I not tell you that, though the voice is Jacob’s the hand
is another’s. Swordsmen are not so many now in the army or out of
it, that, among them, Mr. Walter Herrim Pollock’s name will have
escaped you: so, if you quarrel, let it be with Esau; though, having
good reason to be grateful to him, that would cause me sorrow.
My dear father, you are nearing the time-post of ninety years, with
great health and cheerfulness; it is my hope you may top the arch of
your good and honourable life with a century key-stone.
Believe me, sir,
Your affectionate son,
GILBERT PARKER.
15th September, 1894, 7 Park Place,
St. James’s S.W.
INTRODUCTION
THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD
This book, like Mrs. Falchion, was published in two volumes in January. That was in 1894. It appeared first serially in the Illustrated London News, for which paper, in effect, it was written, and it also appeared in a series of newspapers in the United States during the year 1893. This was a time when the historical novel was having its vogue. Mr. Stanley Weyman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a good many others were following the fashion, and many of the plays at the time were also historical—so-called. I did not write The Trail of the Sword because it was in keeping with the spirit of the moment. Fashion has never in the least influenced my writing or my literary purposes. Whatever may be thought of my books, they represent nothing except my own bent of mind, my own wilful expression of myself, and the setting forth of that which seized my imagination.
I wrote The Trail of the Sword because the early history of the struggles between the French and English and the North American Continent interested me deeply and fascinated my imagination. Also, I had a most intense desire to write of the Frenchman of the early days of the old regime; and I have no idea why it was so, because I have no French blood in my veins nor any trace of French influence in my family. There is, however, the Celtic strain, the Irish blood, immediate of the tang, as it were, and no doubt a sympathy between the Celtic and the Gallic strain is very near, and has a tendency to become very dear. It has always been a difficulty for me to do anything except show the more favourable side of French character and life.