The mere dates of my existence do not interest me, except in one connection. When the Great War started I was too old to be acceptable as a volunteer; when conscription followed I was too old to be conscripted.
I had never thought of myself as a dramatist, and, for really good technical results, the thought came too late: a man of letters has become too wordy to write economically for the stage.
The man who bears my name, and who claims to be me, was born on July 15, 1865, the sixth in a family of seven. He was an ugly child, and remained ugly till his eighteenth year, when his looks gradually improved.
I was just then going through a healthy reaction from the orthodoxy of my youth; religion had become for me not so much a possession as an obsession, which I was trying to throw off, and this iconoclastic tale of an imaginary tribe was the result.
It is the sincerest thing I have written, caught by the drama of a soul struggling in the contrary toils of love and religion - death brought them into harmony.
Two more years were to go by before I knew anything about William Blake. Many years later, when his wife died, my godfather gave me the two books as a remembrance.
