e culture of chastity, but I do not remember so crude
a promiscuity as seems to be practised in the present day.
We did not think it hypocritical to draw over our vagaries the
curtain of a decent silence. The spade was not invariably
called a bloody shovel. Woman had not yet altogether come
into her own.

I lived near Victoria Station, and I recall long excursions by
bus to the hospitable houses of the literary. In my timidity
I wandered up and down the street while I screwed up my
courage to ring the bell; and then, sick with apprehension,
was ushered into an airless room full of people. I was
introduced to this celebrated person after that one, and the
kind words they said about my book made me excessively
uncomfortable. I felt they expected me to say clever things,
and I never could think of any till after the party was over.
I tried to conceal my embarrassment by handing round cups of
tea and rather ill-cut bread-and-butter. I wanted no one to
take notice of me, so that I could observe these famous
creatures at my ease and listen to the clever things they said.

I have a recollection of large, unbending women with great
noses and rapacious eyes, who wore their clothes as though
they were armour; and of little, mouse-like spinsters, with
soft voices and a shrewd glance. I never ceased to be
fascinated by their persistence in eating buttered toast with
their gloves on, and I observed with admiration the unconcern
with which they wiped their fingers on their chair when they
thought no one was looking. It must have been bad for the
furniture, but I suppose the hostess took her revenge on the
furniture of her friends when, in turn, she visited them.
Some of them were dressed fashionably, and they said they
couldn't for the life of them see why you should be dowdy just
because you had written a novel; if you had a neat figure you
might as well make the most of it, and a smart shoe on a small
foot had never prevented an editor from taking your "stuff."
But others thought this frivolous, and they wore "art fabrics"
and barbaric jewelry. The men were seldom eccentric in appearance.
They tried to look as little like authors as possible.
They wished to be taken for men of the world, and could
have passed anywhere for the managing clerks of a city firm.
They always seemed a little tired. I had never known
writers before, and I found them very strange, but I do not
think they ever seemed to me quite real.

I re