Preface

I recall with perfect ease the idea in which "The Awkward Age" had its
origin, but re-perusal gives me pause in respect to naming it. This
composition, as it stands, makes, to my vision--and will have made
perhaps still more to that of its readers--so considerable a mass beside
the germ sunk in it and still possibly distinguishable, that I am half-
moved to leave my small secret undivulged. I shall encounter, I think,
in the course of this copious commentary, no better example, and none on
behalf of which I shall venture to invite more interest, of the quite
incalculable tendency of a mere grain of subject-matter to expand and
develop and cover the ground when conditions happen to favour it. I say
all, surely, when I speak of the thing as planned, in perfect good
faith, for brevity, for levity, for simplicity, for jocosity, in fine,
and for an accommodating irony. I invoked, for my protection, the spirit
of the lightest comedy, but "The Awkward Age" was to belong, in the
event, to a group of productions, here re-introduced, which have in
common, to their author's eyes, the endearing sign that they asserted in
each case an unforeseen principle of growth. They were projected as
small things, yet had finally to be provided for as comparative
monsters. That is my own title for them, though I should perhaps resent
it if applied by another critic--above all in the case of the piece
before us, the careful measure of which I have just freshly taken. The
result of this consideration has been in the first place to render sharp
for me again the interest of the whole process thus illustrated, and in
the second quite to place me on unexpectedly good terms with the work
itself. As I scan my list I encounter none the "history" of which
embodies a greater number of curious truths--or of truths at least by
which I find contemplation more enlivened. The thing done and dismissed
has ever, at the best, for the ambitious workman, a trick of looking
dead, if not buried, so that he almost throbs with ecstasy when, on an
anxious review, the flush of life reappears. It is verily on recognising
that flush on a whole side of "The Awkward Age" that I brand it all, but
ever so tenderly, as monstrous--which is but my way of noting the
QUANTITY of finish it stows away. Since I speak so undauntedly, when
need is, of the value of composition, I shall not beat about the bush to
claim for these pages the maximum of that advantage. If such a feat be
possible in this field as really taking a lesson from one's own
adventure I feel I have now not failed of it--to so much more
demonstration of my profit than I can hope to carry through do I find
myself urged. Thus it is that, still with a remnant of self-respect, or