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Online text of this book
Charlotte
Yonge's own Preface to The Long VacationIf
a book by an author who must call herself
a veteran should be taken up by readers of
a younger generation, they are begged to consider
the first few chapters as a sort of prologue,
introduced for the sake of those of elder
years, who were kind enough to be interested
in the domestic politics of the Mohuns and
the Underwoods. Continuations are proverbially
failures, and yet it is perhaps a consequence
of the writer's realization of characters
that some seem as if they could not be parted
with, and must be carried on in the mind,
and not only have their after-fates described,
but their minds and opinions under the modifications
of advancing years and altered circumstances. Turner
and other artists have been known literally
to see colours in absolutely different hues
as they grew older, and so no doubt it is
with thinkers. The outlines may be the same,
the tints are insensibly modified and altered,
and the effect thus far changed. Thus
it is with the writers of fiction. The young
write in full sympathy with, as well as for,
the young, they have a pensive satisfaction
in feeling and depicting the full pathos of
a tragedy, and on the other hand they delight
in their own mirth, and fully share it with
the beings of their imagination, or they work
out great questions with the unhesitating
decision of their youth. But those who
write in elder years look on at their young
people, not with inner sympathy but from the
outside. Their affections and comprehension
are with the fathers, mothers, and aunts,
they dread, rather than seek, piteous scenes,
and they have learnt that there are two sides
to a question, that there are many stages
in human life, and that the success or failure
of early enthusiasm leaves a good deal more
yet to come. Thus the vivid fancy passes
away, which the young are carried along with,
and the older feel refreshed by; there is
still a sense of experience, and a pleasure
in tracing the perspective from another point
of sight, where what was once distant has
become near at hand, the earnest of many a
day-dream has been gained, and more than one
ideal has been tried, and merits and demerits
have become apparent. And thus it is
hoped that the Long Vacation may not
be devoid of interest for readers who have
sympathized in early days with Beechcroft,
Stoneborough, and Vale Leston, when they were
peopled with the outcome of a youthful mind,
and that they may be ready to look with interest
on the perplexities and successes attending
on the matured characters in after years. If
they will feel as if they were on a visit
to friends grown older, with their children
about them, and if the young will forgive
the seeing with elder eyes, and observing
instead of participating, that is all the
veteran author would ask.
C. M. YONGE. Elderfield
January 31, 1895
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