About a year later I received the proofs of Aliens while in Cristobal, Canal Zone. Without exaggeration, I scarcely knew what to do with them. The outward trappings of literature had fallen away from me with the heavy northern clothing which I had discarded on coming south. I was first assistant engineer on a mail-boat serving New Orleans, the West Indies and the Canal Zone. I had become inured once more to an enchanting existence which alternated between bunk and engine-room. I regarded the neatly-bound proof-copy of Aliens with misgiving. My esteemed Chief, a Scotsman in whose family learning is an honorable tradition, suggested an empty passenger cabin as a suitable study. I forget exactly how the proof-reading was dove-tailed into the watch below, but dove-tailed it was, and when the job was done, the book once more sailed across the Atlantic.
But I was not satisfied. Through the dense jungle of preoccupying affairs in which I was buried I could see that I was not satisfied. I was trying to eat my cake and have it. I make no complaint. If there be one person for whom I cherish a profound dislike it is the literary character who whines because his circumstances hinder his writing. I was no George Gissing, cursed with a dreary distaste of common toil and mechanical things. I love both the Grecian Isles and gas-burners. But for the moment I had chosen gas-burners, or rather steam engines, and I knew I could not have both. So Aliens went back to London, and I went my daily round of the Caribbean. I felt that for once I could trust the judgment of a first-class publisher.
The publishers of this new edition will understand me when I say that an author has no business to trust blindly to the judgment of any house, however first-class. He has no business to do so because that outside estimate of his work must of necessity be based on scanty data. The publisher, for all his enthusiasm, takes a chance, sometimes a pretty long one. An author, as I conceive it, must be his own most uneasy, captious, cantankerous critic. He dare not delegate this job to anyone else, for that way lies the pot-boiler and the formal romance, the "made" book. I was busy, and let go the reins. And I place on record here my gratitude to those who knew enough and cared enough to recall me to my post, that I might deal with the book afresh and do justice to the reader.
Much happened between the day when I mailed my proofs from the big Post Office on Canal Street in New Orleans, and the day when I set out to write this present version. I was now in another hemisphere and the world was at war. By a happy chance I laid hold of a copy of Aliens, sent previously to a naval relative serving on the same station. Up and down the Ægean Sea, past fields of mines and fields of asphodel, past many an isle familiar in happier days to me, I took my book and my new convictions about human folly. It was a slow business, for it so chanced that my own contribution to the war involved long hours. But Aliens grew.
And one evening, I remember, I left off in the middle of Mr. Carville's courtship and went to bed. We were speeding southward. It was a dark, moonless night. The islands of the Grecian Archipelago were roofed over with a vault of low-lying clouds, as if those ferriferous hummocks and limestone peaks were the invisible pillars of an enormous crypt. And since across the floor of this crypt many other vessels were speeding without lights, it was not wonderful that for once our good fortune failed us. For we had had good fortune. Aeroplanes had bombed, and missed us by yards. Zeppelins had come down in flaming ruin before our astonished eyes. Islands had loomed under the very fore-foot of our ship in a fog, and we had gone astern in time. But this time it was our turn. We were, in the succinct phraseology of the sea, in collision.
The story of that night will no doubt be told in its proper place and time. Suffice it that for some weeks we were laid aside, and local Levantine talent invoked to make good the disaster. And in spite of the clangour of rivetters, the unceasing cries of fezzed and turbaned mechanics, and the heavy blows of sweating carpenters, caulkers and blacksmiths, Aliens grew. There was a blessed interval, between five o'clock, when my day's work ended, and the late cabin-dinner at six-thirty, when the setting sun shone into my room and illumined my study-table—a board laid across an open drawer. And Aliens grew. For some time, while the smashed bulwarks and distorted frames of the upper-works were being hacked away outside my window, the uproar was unendurable, and I would go ashore, note-book in pocket, to find a refuge where I could write. I would walk through the city and sit in her gardens; and the story grew. I found obscure cafés where I could sit with coffee and narghileh, and watch the Arabic letter-writers worming the thoughts from their inarticulate clients, and Aliens grew. And later, near the Greek Patriarchate, I found that which to me is home—a secondhand book-store. For I mark my passage about this very wonderful world by old book-stores. London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Genoa, Venice, New York, Ancona, Rouen, Tunis, Savannah, Kobé and New Orleans have in my memory their old book-stores, where I could browse in peace. And here in Alexandria I found one that might have been lifted out of Royal Street or Lafayette Square. A ramshackle wooden building, bleached and blistered by many a dust-storm and torrid sun, its cracked and distorted window-panes were curtained with decayed illustrated papers in many tongues, discoloured Greek and Italian penny-dreadfuls, and a few shelves of cheap curios. Over the door a long shingle displayed on one side the legend Librairie Universelle, while the other bore the word ΒΙΒΛΙΟΠΩΛΙΟΝ, which you may translate as it please your fancy. Inside the narrow doors were craters and trenches and redoubts and dug-outs of books. They lay everywhere, underfoot and overhead. They ran up at the back in a steep glacis with embrasures for curios, and were reflected to infinity in tall dusty pier-glasses propped against the walls. High up under the mansard roof hung an antique oriental candelabrum with one candle. Hanging from twine were stuffed fish of grotesque globular proportions, and with staring apoplectic eyes. A stuffed monkey was letting himself down, one-hand, from a thin chain, and regarded the customer with a contemptuous sneer, the dust lying thick on his head and arms and his exquisitely curled tail. And out of an apparently bomb-proof shelter below several tons of books there emerged a little old gentleman in a brilliant tarbush, who looked inquiringly in my direction. For a moment I paused, fascinated by the notion that I had discovered the great Library of Alexandria, reported burnt so many centuries ago. For once within those musty, warped, unpainted walls one forgot the modern world. I looked out. Across the street, backed by the immense and level blaze of an Egyptian sunset, blocks of Carrara marble blushed to pink with mauve shadows, and turned the common stone mason's yard into a garden of gigantic jewels. The hum of a great city, the grind of the trolley-cars, the cries of the itinerant sellers of nuts and fruit, of chewing gum and lottery-tickets, of shoe laces and suspenders, of newspapers, and prawns, and oysters, and eggs, and bread, the rattle of carriages and all the flashing brilliance of the palaces of pleasure, were shut out from that quiet street near the Greek Patriarchate. I had the sudden notion of asking for permission to sit in that Universal Library, and write. And Mr. Bizikas, the little old gentleman in the vivid tarbush, who was lighting a very dirty tin lamp to assist the one candle in the oriental candelabrum, had no objection. I have a feeling occasionally that here I topped the rise of human felicity, as I conceive it. Perhaps I did. Anyhow, Aliens grew.
I must be brief. It came to pass, after certain days, that Aliens grew to accomplishment, and I made my way into the city through one of the many gates of the harbour. I sought the office of the Censor in a large building with a courtyard. It was a large room on the top floor, with a long table occupied by busy orderlies opening and stamping letters with astonishing rapidity. At the back, flanking an open balcony over whose balustrade I could see the blue Mediterranean and a flawless sapphire sky, were two roll-top desks concealing two officers whose polished bald heads shone above stacks of papers. At the deferential insistence of an orderly, one of the heads rose, and a large, ruddy Yorkshire face examined the intruder. In some diffidence I explained the delicate nature of my mission. I opened my parcel and displayed, with the pride of a parent, how Aliens had grown. The officer rose to his feet, a tall, strong, north-country figure, and looked keenly at me over his glasses. Was I a British subject? What was the nature of the manuscript? What was the name of my transport? What was my rank? And so on. To all of which I gave courteous and, I hope, truthful answers. "Well, there's a great deal of it, you know," he remarked. I bowed. I knew, having written it. "Well, call in a week's time." I retired, silently blessing the British Army Officer for his blunt courtesy, his admirable brevity and matchless common sense.
And I called in a week's time. It appeared that the Captain had gone through Aliens and was satisfied that it divulged nothing of military importance, nor did it provide any comfort for the King's enemies. An orderly, a fattish person with a fine mustache and scorched knees, was commanded to secure, seal and register the parcel. The tall officer with the good-humoured country-gentleman's face came to the balcony and discussed for a moment the production of literature under difficulties. "You know, we have very strict orders," he remarked, looking down thoughtfully. "We must be most careful ... h—m ... Neutral countries ... America." He seemed to regard the idea of America with misgiving. I agreed that America was food for thought. "And you write books at sea?" he inquired. Yes, I said, anywhere, everywhere. He nodded. "It is, you know," I added slyly, "our national art." He looked grave at this and said he supposed so. By this time the orderly had tied and sealed Aliens in so many places that I pitied anyone who tried to tamper with it; and so, with an expression of my profound appreciation, I retired. The officer bowed, and the orderly and I clattered down stairs and made our way into the Rue de la Poste. He was a Londoner, and professed great interest in literature, having a brother a news agent. We had some beer together, when Aliens had been safely bestowed. He was getting his leave soon, he said, and I informed him I hoped to get mine in a month or so. We drank to our three years' active service and to our safe trip home. He was much impressed by this coincidence, as he called it, and begged me, if I happened down Deptford way at all, to call and see him over his brother's shop. I asked him if he knew a certain old book-store in Deptford, where I had once gotten a Bandello's Novelle for four shillings, and he said he knew it well. But I think he only said this to please an obvious bibliomaniac. We parted with mutual good wishes, and I went back to the ship.
And so I send it to you, trusting to my good fortune to get it through. It may never reach you, and I shall have had my labour in vain. It may be, also, that ere it see the light I shall have gone away myself, an aggrieved participant in one of the trivial disasters of the sea-affair. But whatever betide, I shall have had my shot at the alluring yet ineluctable problem of human folly.
William McFee.
Port Said, Egypt, April 14, 1917.