Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) The Secret Glory By Arthur Machen New York Alfred A Knopf Mcmxxii COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. _Published August, 1922_ _Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y._ _Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y._ _Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y._ MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO VINCENT STARRETT Note _One of the schoolmasters in "The Secret Glory" has views on the subject of football similar to those entertained by a well-known schoolmaster whose Biography appeared many years ago. That is the only link between the villain of invention and the good man of real life._ PREFACE _Some years ago I met my old master, Sir Frank Benson--he was Mr. F. R. Benson then--and he asked me in his friendly way what I had been doing lately._ _"I am just finishing a book," I replied, "a book that everybody will hate."_ _"As usual," said the Don Quixote of our English stage--if I knew any nobler title to bestow upon him, I would, bestow it--"as usual; running your head against a stone wall!"_ _Well, I don't know about "as usual"; there may be something to be said for the personal criticism or there may not; but it has struck me that Sir Frank's remark is a very good description of "The Secret Glory," the book I had in mind as I talked to him. It is emphatically the history of an unfortunate fellow who ran his head against stone walls from the beginning to the end. He could think nothing and do nothing after the common fashion of the world; even when he "went wrong," he did so in a highly unusual and eccentric manner. It will be for the reader to determine whether he were a saint who had lost his way in the centuries or merely an undeveloped lunatic; I hold no passionate view on either side. In every age, there are people great and small for whom the times are out of joint, for whom everything is, somehow, wrong and askew. Consider Hamlet; an amiable man and an intelligent man. But what a mess he made of it! Fortunately, my hero--or idiot, which you will--was not called upon to intermeddle with affairs of State, and so only brought himself to grief: if it were grief; for the least chink of the door should be kept open, I am inclined to hold, for the other point of view. I have just been rereading Kipling's "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," the tale of the Brahmin Prime Minister of the Native State in India, who saw all the world and the glory of it, in the West as well as in the East, and suddenly abjured all to become a hermit in the wood. Was he mad, or was he supremely wise? It is just a matter of opinion._