By _Edmund Gosse_.
... Not the least interesting and delicate of my duties as a confidential
adviser were connected with a work of reminiscences which created some stir
in the nineteen-twenties. How it came about I cannot recollect, but it was
thought that my poor assistance as a friendly censor of a too florid
exuberance in candour might not be of disservice to the book, and I
accepted the invitation. The volume being by no means yet relegated to
oblivion's dusty shelves I am naturally reluctant to refer to it with such
particularity as might enable my argus-eyed reader to identify it and my
own unworthy share therein, and therefore in the following dialogue,
typical of many between the author and myself, I disguise her name under an
initial. _Quis custodiet?_ It would be grotesque indeed if one whose
special mission was to correct the high spirits of others should himself
fail in good taste.
_Mrs. A. (laying down the MS. with a bang)._ I see nothing but blue pencil
marks, and blue was never my colour. Why are you so anxious that I should
be discreet? Indiscretion is the better part of authorship.
_EDMUND (earnestly)._ It is your fame of which I am thinking. If you adopt
my emendations you will go down to history as the writer of the best book
of reminiscences in English.
_Mrs. A. (with fervour)._ I don't want to go down to history. I want to
stay here and make it. And you (_with emotion_)--you have cramped my style.
I can't think why I asked you to help.
_EDMUND._ Everyone asks me to help. It is my destiny. I am the Muses'
_amicus curiæ_.
_Mrs. A._ Oh, blow Latin! (_Lighting two cigarettes at once_) What's the
good of reminiscences of to-day, by me, without anything about L.G.?
_EDMUND._ Dear lady, it would never have done. Be reasonable. There are
occasions when reticence is imperative.
_Mrs. A._ Reticence! What words you use!
(_Cætera desunt._)