The World’s Tragedy

PREFACE. XXXV appears in me as little less than a blind lust of Destruction. (That is to say, on the rare occasion when I so far fall from adeptship as to credit the evidence of my senses). I have consequently done all I can to shock and hurt the enemy. I have painted their God as the obscene thing he is from my knowledge of my Uncle Tom ; I have made his Trinity ridiculous and his scheme disgusting ; I have painted Magdalen as the Syrian strumpet she was from the best models among English society whores (thank you, Ada ; thank you, Kathleen !) ; I have painted Mary as a lascivious flapper from my knowledge of English virgins — thank you, Vera ! thank you, Lydia ! thank you, Millicent ! — the hag is my mother- in-law, and the baboon the Reverend F. F. Kelly. I cannot pretend to remember exactly who ’ sat ’ for the ox and the ass, though the names of Charles Watts and Joseph Mc. Cabe somehow instinctively suggest themselves in this connection. The satyr and nymph crowd are mostly painted from imagination, for on my honour I hardly know so many decent people ; I painted Jesus first as a joke — the brass bottle of our braying clergy ; I developed him as a low class Jew [not knowing any South African millionnaires I took him straight out of the Gospel] and lastly I miracu- lously turned him into a real man, chiefly out of compli- ment to the distinguished fictionist Ernest Renan. In other words, I have kept as close to my documents as any one has any reason to expect. With regard to the plot, I must ask my readers to believe in the existence of a great magical brotherhood