In good company

IN GOOD COMPANY SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF SWINBURNE, LORD ROBERTS WATTS-DUNTON, OSCAR WILDE EDWARD WHYMPER, S. J. STONE STEPHEN PHILLIPS BY COULSON KERNAHAN
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVII
SECOND EDITION
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
TO THE HON. MRS. ARTHUR HENNIKER
My Dear Mrs. Henniker,
It is many years since we first met at the house of one whom we both loved, whose memory we both cherish. It was that friend’s hope that you and I should become, and should remain friends; and that the hope has been realised has given me many happy hours—sometimes in your company as my gracious hostess, sometimes, scarcely less closely in your company, as a reader of your delightful and beautiful stories. Were your gallant General—I remember how proud he was of those stories—alive to-day, I should have asked to be allowed to dedicate this book to the two of you. Now that—alas for the England that he so faithfully loved, so nobly served—he is with us no more, may I inscribe it to yourself and to his honoured memory?
Yours ever sincerely, Coulson Kernahan.

One of the subjects of these studies said in my hearing, that “Recollections” are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memory, or have never, themselves, done anything in life worth remembering.
To the second indictment I plead guilty, but my best excuse for the publication of this volume is that I write while the first indictment fails. My memory is still good, and the one thing which seems most worth remembering in my life is my undeservedly fortunate friendships.
In writing of my friends and of those with whom I was associated, I am, therefore, I believe, giving of my best. I ought to add that these papers were penned for inclusion in a volume of frankly personal and intimate “Recollections.” A work of that sort is the one book of his life in which an author is allowed some freedom from convention. That is why I hope to be pardoned should any passage, letter, or incident in these pages seem too intimate or too personal.