e necessity, a
completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle and
frivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spell
over me through his parlour window as I explored the maze of streets
east and west in solitary leisurely walks without chart and compass.
Till I began to write that novel I had written nothing but letters, and
not very many of these. I never made a note of a fact, of an impression,
or of an anecdote in my life. The conception of a planned book was
entirely outside my mental range when I sat down to write; the ambition
of being an author had never turned up among those gracious imaginary
existences one creates fondly for oneself at times in the stillness and
immobility of a day-dream: yet it stands clear as the sun at noonday
that from the moment I had done blackening over the first manuscript
page of "Almayer's Folly" (it contained about two hundred words and this
proportion of words to a page has remained with me through the fifteen
years of my writing life), from the moment I had, in the simplicity of
my heart and the amazing ignorance of my mind, written that page the die
was cast. Never had Rubicon been more blindly forded without invocation
to the gods, without fear of men.

That morning I got up from my breakfast, pushing the chair back, and
rang the bell violently, or perhaps I should say resolutely, or perhaps
I should say eagerly--I do not know. But manifestly it must have been
a special ring of the bell, a common sound made impressive, like the
ringing of a bell for the raising of the curtain upon a new scene.
It was an unusual thing for me to do. Generally, I dawdled over my
breakfast and I seldom took the trouble to ring the bell for the table
to be cleared away; but on that morning, for some reason hidden in the
general mysteriousness of the event, I did not dawdle. And yet I was
not in a hurry. I pulled the cord casually, and while the faint tinkling
somewhere down in the basement went on, I charged my pipe in the usual
way and I looked for the match-box with glances distraught indeed,
but exhibiting, I am ready to swear, no signs of a fine frenzy. I was
composed enough to perceive after some considerable time the match-box
lying there on the mantelpiece right under my nose. And all this was
beautifully and safely usual. Before I had thrown down the match my
landlady's daughter appeared with her calm, pale face and an inquisitive
look, in the doorwa