It might be supposed that the character of Elsie Veneer was suggested by some of the fabulous personages of classical or mediaeval story.  I remember that a French critic spoke of her as cette pauvre Melusine.  I ought to have been ashamed, perhaps, but I had, not the slightest idea who Melusina was until I hunted up the story, and found that she was a fairy, who for some offence was changed every Saturday to a serpent from her waist downward.  I was of course familiar with Keats’s Lamia, another imaginary being, the subject of magical transformation into a serpent.  My story was well advanced before Hawthorne’s wonderful “Marble Faun,” which might be thought to have furnished me with the hint of a mixed nature,—­human, with an alien element,—­was published or known to me.  So that my poor heroine found her origin, not in fable or romance, but in a physiological conception fertilized by a theological dogma.

I had the dissatisfaction of enjoying from a quiet corner a well-meant effort to dramatize “Elsie Veneer.”  Unfortunately, a physiological romance, as I knew beforehand, is hardly adapted for the melodramatic efforts of stage representation.  I can therefore say, with perfect truth, that I was not disappointed.  It is to the mind, and not to the senses, that such a story must appeal, and all attempts to render the character and events objective on the stage, or to make them real by artistic illustrations, are almost of necessity failures.  The story has won the attention and enjoyed the favor of a limited class of readers, and if it still continues to interest others of the same tastes and habits of thought I can ask nothing more of it.

January 23, 1883.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

I have nothing of importance to add to the two preceding Prefaces.  The continued call for this story, which was not written for popularity, but with a very serious purpose, has somewhat surprised and, I need not add, gratified me.  I can only restate the motive idea of the tale in a little different language.  Believing, as I do, that our prevailing theologies are founded upon an utterly false view of the relation of man to his Creator, I attempted to illustrate the doctrine of inherited moral responsibility for other people’s misbehavior.  I tried to make out a case for my poor Elsie, whom the most hardened theologian would find it hard to blame for her inherited ophidian tastes and tendencies.  How, then, is he to blame mankind for inheriting “sinfulness” from their first parents?  May not the serpent have bitten Eve before the birth of Cain, her first-born?  That would have made an excuse for Cain’s children, as Elsie’s ante-natal misfortune made an excuse for her.  But what difference does it make in the child’s responsibility whether his inherited tendencies come from a snake-bite or some other source which he knew nothing about and could not have prevented from acting?  All this is plain enough, and the only use of the story is to bring the dogma of inherited guilt and its consequences into a clearer point of view.