Perhaps in the first few pages of 'The Right of Way'
portraiture is more nearly reached than in any other of these books, but
it was only the nucleus, if I may say so, of a larger development which
the original Charley Steele never attained. In the novel he grew to
represent infinitely more than the original ever represented in his short
life.
That would not be strange when it is remembered that the germ of The
'Right of Way' was growing in my mind over a long period of years, and
it must necessarily have developed into a larger conception than the
original character could have suggested. The same may be said of the
chief characters in 'The Weavers'. The story of the two brothers--David
Claridge and Lord Eglington--in that book was brewing in my mind for
quite fifteen years, and the main incidents and characters of other
novels in this edition had the same slow growth. My forthcoming novel,
called 'The Judgment House', had been in my mind for nearly twenty years
and only emerged when it was full grown, as it were; when I was so
familiar with the characters that they seemed as real in all ways as
though they were absolute people and incidents of one's own experience.
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