Author's Notes:

NOTES TO CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION

SOURCES OF THE PLAY

I claim as a notable merit in the authorship of this play that I
have been intelligent enough to steal its scenery, its
surroundings, its atmosphere, its geography, its knowledge of the
east, its fascinating Cadis and Kearneys and Sheikhs and mud
castles from an excellent book of philosophic travel and vivid
adventure entitled Mogreb-el-Acksa (Morocco the Most Holy) by
Cunninghame Graham. My own first hand knowledge of Morocco is
based on a morning's walk through Tangier, and a cursory
observation of the coast through a binocular from the deck of an
Orient steamer, both later in date than the writing of the play.

Cunninghame Graham is the hero of his own book; but I have not
made him the hero of my play, because so incredible a personage
must have destroyed its likelihood--such as it is. There are
moments when I do not myself believe in his existence. And yet he
must be real; for I have seen him with these eyes; and I am one of
the few men living who can decipher the curious alphabet in which
he writes his private letters. The man is on public record too.
The battle of Trafalgar Square, in which he personally and bodily
assailed civilization as represented by the concentrated military
and constabular forces of the capital of the world, can scarcely
be forgotten by the more discreet spectators, of whom I was one.
On that occasion civilization, qualitatively his inferior, was
quantitatively so hugely in excess of him that it put him in
prison, but had not sense enough to keep him there. Yet his
getting out of prison was as nothing compared to his getting into
the House of Commons. How he did it I know not; but the thing
certainly happened, somehow. That he made pregnant utterances as a
legislator may be taken as proved by the keen philosophy of the
travels and tales he has since tossed to us; but the House, strong
in stupidity, did not understand him until in an inspired moment
he voiced a universal impulse by bluntly damning its hypocrisy. Of
all the eloquence of that silly parliament, there remains only one
single damn. It has survived the front bench speeches of the
eighties as the word of Cervantes survives the oraculations of the
Dons and Deys who put him, too, in prison. The shocked House
demanded that he should withdraw his cruel word. "I never
withdraw," said he; and I promptly stole the potent phrase for the
sake of its perfect style, and used it as a cockade for the
Bulgarian hero of Arms and the Man. The theft prospered; and I
naturally take the first opportunity of repeating it. In what
other Lepantos besides Trafalgar Square Cunninghame Graham has
fought, I cannot tell. He is a fascinating mystery