Some Diversions of a Man of Letters

PEN

dy Burg

ure. I excused myself on the ground that the three thick volumes of her reminiscences made a further portrait needless, and I reflected, though I did not say, that the difficulties of presenting the evanescent charm and petulant wit of Lady Dorothy wer

ion. Her Memoirs were composed, as you know, by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who is a practised writer and not otherwise could they have been given to the public. On this point her own evidence is explicit. She wrote to me, in all the excitement of the success of the volume of 1906: "The Press has been wonderfully good to my little efforts, but to Ralph the better part is due, as, out of the tangled remnants of my brain, he extracte

onour of desiring that I should be invited to meet her. She had known my venerable relative, the zoologist, Thomas Bell of Selborne, and she had corresponded in years long past, about entomology, with my father. We talked together on tha

tual amusement of curiosity. Her head, slightly sunken into the shoulders, was often poised a little sideways, like a bird's that contemplates a hemp-seed. She had no quick movements, no gestures; she held herself very still. It always appeared to me that, in face of her indomitable energy and love of observation, this was an unconscious economy of force. It gave her a very peculiar aspect; I remember once frivolously saying to her that she looked as though she were going to "pounce" at me; but she never pounced. When she had to move, she rose energetically and moved with determination, but she never wasted a movement. Her physical strength-and she such a tiny creature-seemed to be wonderful. She was seldom unwell, altho

intense enjoyment. I think that this was the main reason of the delight which her company gave to almost every one. She was like a household blaze upon a rainy day, one stretched out one's hands to be warmed. She guarded herself against the charge of being amiable. "It would be hor

ies." I think she disliked the disturbance of social arrangements which these festivals entailed. But there was more than that. She was certainly a little superstitious, in a mocking, eighteenth-century sort of way, as Madame du Deffand might have been. She constantly said, and still more frequently wrote, "D.V." after a

," she added imperturbably. The story is perhaps known to you of how, in a circle of superfine ladies, the conversation turned to food, and the company outdid one another in protestations of delicacy. This one could only touch a little fruit, and that one was practically confined to a cup of tea. Lady Dorothy, who had remained silent and detached, was appealed to as to her opinion. In a sort of loud cackling-a voice she sometimes surprisingly adopted-she replied, "Oh, give me a blow-out of tripe and onions!" to the confusion of the précieuses. She had a wholesome respect for food, quite orthodox and old-fashioned, although I think she ate rather markedly little. But she liked that little good. She wrote to me once from Cannes, "This is not an intellectual place, but then the body rejoices in the cooking, and th

ence Nightingale. But she had no impulse whatever towards active benevolence, nor any interest in masses of men and women. And, above all, she was not an actor, but a spectator in life, and she evaded, often with droll agility, all the efforts which people made to drag her into propagandas of various kinds. She listened to what

d that hospitality "hampered" her, it was not that it interfered with any occupation or duty, but simply that she could not eat luncheon at three different houses at once. I remember being greatly amused when I congratulated her on having enjoyed some eminent public funeral, by her replying, grudgingly: "Yes-but I lost another most

Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short while. Then a letter signed "Your recluse, D.N.," would show the dawn of a return to nature. Then boutades of increasing vehemence would mark the rising impatience. Sept 12: "How dreadful it is that the country is so full of ladies." Sept. 15: "I am surrounded by tall women and short women, all very tiresome." Sept. 20: "So dull here, except for one pleasant

The curious thing about it was that it was not markedly intellectual, and still less literary. It had not the finish of such wit as is preserved in anthologies of humour. Every one who enjoyed the conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of solitude." What she said seemed at the time to be eminently right and

. Her own favourites were treated with reserve in this respect: it was as though they were put in a pen by themselves, not to be criticised so long as they remained in favour; and she was not capricious, was, on the contrary, conspicuously loyal. But they always had the impression that it was only by special

for those who knew how to interpret her language-the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what stuff this is, not worth your reading!" She

y stimulating and entertaining; and in the course of them phrases would be struck out, like sparks from flint, which were nearly as good, and of the very same quality, as the things she used to say. She wrote her letters on a fantastic variety of strangely coloured paper, pink and blue and snuff-brown, violet and green and grey, paper that was stamped with patterns like a napkin, or f

ciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most of her thoughts. In her letters of those years the references to him are incessant, but when he is not "the F.M." and "our C.C.," she rings the changes on all possible forms of his name, from "Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she

nt, and calm; she never raised her voice, or challenged an opinion, or asserted her individuality. She played, very consistently, her part of the amused and attentive spectator in the theatre of life. But in her letters she pretended to b

fter all to go meandering off and leaving you to cuss and swear on the doorstep, and you will never come again now,

e broadest Wiltshire dialect, and ended with the postscript: "Dang 'un, there 'ee goes again!" As a matter of fact, her letters, about which she had no species of vanity or self-consciousness, were to her merely instruments of friendship. There was an odd mingling of affection and stiffness in them. She marshalled her acquaintances with them, and almost invariably they were concerned with arrangements for meeting or explanations of absence. In my o

es you very much; but I believe he has lost his

eem could hug to its bosom. Of a very

took a great interest), was to perform on the stage of life, in her unruffled presence, the part which you had been called upon by Providence to fill. Even a criminal might be "satisfactory" if he did his job thoroughly. The only entirely unsatisfactory people were those who were insipid, conventional, and empty. "The first principle of society should be to extinguish the bores," she onc

la was in the act of producing the tremendous series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. It was one of our early themes of conversation. Zola was then an object of shuddering horror to the ordinary English reader. Lady Dorothy had already read L'Assommoir, and had not shrunk from it; so I ventured to tell her of La Terre, which was just appearing. She wrote to me about it: "I have been reading Zola. He takes the varnish off rural life, I must say. Oh! these horrid demons of Frenchmen know how

ad his poems." I think she was very much annoyed that he had never been a visitor at Charles Street. When Verlaine was in England, to deliver a lecture, in 1894, Lady Dorothy was insistent that, as I was seeing him frequently, I should bring the author of Parallelement to visit her. She said-I think under some illusion-"Verlaine is one of my pet poets, though," she added, "not of this world." I was ob

cynicism had a heart. When this was once questioned in company, one who knew her well replied: "Ah! yes, she has a heart, and it is like a grain of mustard-seed!" But her kindliness was shown, with great fidelity, to those whom she really honoured with her favour. I do not know whether it would be strictly correct to say that she had the genius of friendship, because that supposes a certain initiative and action which were foreign to Lady Dorothy's habits. But she possessed, to a high degree, the genius of comradeship. She held the reins very tightly, and she let no one escape whom she wished to retain. She took immense pains to preserve her friendships, and

referred that a visit to her should not be immediately prefaced by one of these adventures among the "pore dear things" at the hospital, because that was sure to mean the recital of some gruesome operation she had heard of, or the details of some almost equally gruesome cure

aderie; I have forgotten why at one time she took to signing herself "Your Koh-i-Noor," and wrote: "If I can hope to be the Koh-i-Noor of Mrs. Gosse's party, I shall be sure to come on Monday." One might go on indefinitely reviving these memories of her random humour and kindly whimsicality. But I close on a word of tenderer gravity, which I am sure will affect you. She had been a little tyrannical, as usual, and perhaps thought the tone of her persiflage rather

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