ecially awful examples of the abuses they set out to remedy. She
was all sympathy and interest, and the propagandist started with
this glittering ally in tow; but he turned, and where was she? She
had slipped off, and was in contemplation of some other scheme of
experience.

She described her life to me, in 1901, as a "treadmill of
friendship, perpetually on the go"; and later she wrote: "I am
hampered by perpetual outbursts of hospitality in every shape."
Life was a spectacle to her, and society a congeries of little
_guignols_, at all of which she would fain be seated, in a front
stall. If she complained 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 interesting ceremony through its
being at the same hour." She grumbled: "People are tugging me to
go and see things," not from any shyness of the hermit or
reluctance to leave her home, but simply because she would gladly
have yielded to them all. "Such a nuisance one can't be in two
places at once, like a bird!" she remarked to me.

In this relation, her attitude to country life was droll. After
long indulgence in her amazing social energy in London, she would
suddenly become tired. The phenomenon never ceased to surprise her;
she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this
must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to
Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the
soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss
of rural calm. "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 episode of a drunken housemaid."
Sept. 23: "Oh! I am