‘But,’ I said, ‘are not such inventions calculated to injure the influence of the prints that resort to them?’
‘I should think so,’ she said, honouring me for once by talking seriously. ‘But whose, and what, influence is not being injured just now by their own misdoings? The House of Commons, for instance, though more written and talked about than ever, has long been losing influence, and the Press is now following suit; and it is the silent, or comparatively silent, persons and forces that are acquiring or increasing influence; the Monarchy, the House of Lords, and——’
‘The House of Lords!’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought it was going to be abolished, or to have its very moderate claims yet further curtailed.’
‘Did you?’ she answered. ‘Then your thoughts are not of much value. I daresay it would be difficult to persuade Politicians that Shakespeare was wiser than all the sons of the Mother of Parliaments put together; and what does he say?
‘Take but degree away, untune that string,
And mark what discord follows.
And so long as the British nation continues on the whole to be sane, it will never consent to take “degree” away, in order to fasten on itself a dead level and a tyrannical uniformity.‘
I was so flattered by Lamia having, in a short space of time, condescended to talk seriously with me, that I thought a favourable opportunity had arisen for preferring any request that I wanted her to grant. Encouraged by this feeling, I ventured to say:
‘A great adornment and advantage to the forthcoming volume would be a portrait of the person whose name is associated with it; in other words, a portrait of Lamia.’
‘So it has come to that!’ she replied. ‘Not satisfied with having travestied me in—let me see—yes, one, two, three, four, five successive volumes, The Garden That I Love, In Veronica’s Garden, Lamia’s Winter-Quarters, Haunts of Ancient Peace, and The Poet’s Diary, you now propose to vulgarise my ideal loveliness and magnetic personality in order to gratify the curiosity of a number of persons who have never seen me, and never will. Let me never hear of such a proposal again. As the little boy said, “Myself is my own”; and, if it please you, part of