ave in this affected
way in order to win the applause of vulgar readers. One vaguely hopes,
indeed, that some of the dismal platitudes that they are represented as
uttering may have been addressed to them in the form of questions by
the interviewer, and that they have merely stammered a shamefaced
assent. It makes a real difference, for instance, whether as a matter
of fact a celebrated authoress leads her golden-haired children up to
an interviewer, and says, "These are my brightest jewels;" or whether,
when she tells her children to shake hands, the interviewer says, "No
doubt these are your brightest jewels?" A mother is hardly in a
position to return an indignant negative to such a question, and if she
utters an idiotic affirmative, she is probably credited with the
original remark in all its unctuousness!

It is a difficult question to decide what is the most simple-minded
thing to do, if you are in the unhappy position of being requested to
grant an interview for journalistic purposes. My own feeling is that if
people really wish to know how I live, what I wear, what I eat and
drink, what books I read, what kind of a house I live in, they are
perfectly welcome to know. It does not seem to me that it would detract
from the sacredness of my home life, if a picture of my dining-room,
with the table laid for luncheon in a very cramped perspective, or if a
photogravure of the scrap of grass and shrubbery that I call my garden,
were to be published in a magazine. All that is to a certain extent
public already. I should not wish to have a photograph of myself in
bed, or shaving, published in a magazine, because those are not moments
when I am inclined to admit visitors. Neither do I particularly want my
private and informal conversation taken down and reproduced, because
that often consists of opinions which are not my deliberate and
thought-out utterances. But I hope that I should be able to talk simply
and courteously to an interviewer on ordinary topics, in a way that
would not discredit me it is was made public; and I hope, too, that
decency would restrain me from making inflated and pompous remarks
about my inner beliefs and motives, which were not in the least
characteristic of my usual method of conversation.

The truth is that what spoils these records is the desire on the part
of worthy and active people to appear more impressive in ordinary life
than they actually are; it is a well-meant sort of hypocrisy, bec