Thus he
and his wife become the Adam and Eve of a new epoch, and the fitting
missionaries of a new social faith, of which there must be continual
hints through the book.
A knot of characters may be introduced as gathering around Middleton,
comprising expatriated Americans of all sorts: the wandering printer who
came to me so often at the Consulate, who said he was a native of
Philadelphia, and could not go home in the thirty years that he had been
trying to do so, for lack of the money to pay his passage; the large
banker; the consul of Leeds; the woman asserting her claims to half
Liverpool; the gifted literary lady, maddened by Shakespeare, &c., &c.
The Yankee who had been driven insane by the Queen's notice, slight as it
was, of the photographs of his two children which he had sent her. I have
not yet struck the true key-note of this Romance, and until I do, and
unless I do, I shall write nothing but tediousness and nonsense. I do not
wish it to be a picture of life, but a Romance, grim, grotesque, quaint,
of which the Hospital might be the fitting scene. It might have so much
of the hues of life that the reader should sometimes think it was
intended for a picture, yet the atmosphere should be such as to excuse
all wildness. In the Introduction, I might disclaim all intention to draw
a real picture, but say that the continual meetings I had with Americans
bent on such errands had suggested this wild story.
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