In fact, the champagne made me decidedly too pleased with all I had done, and I believe, if the truth could have been known, that I talked rather big to Aunt Augusta and was on better terms with myself than the occasion demanded.
I began to sketch out my programme of life for my eighteenth year, and there is no doubt that it was too ambitious. At any rate, Aunt Augusta evidently felt that I was planning more than I could perform, and she turned my thoughts into another channel.
“Of course all sorts of delightful new things will happen to you,” she said, “but it would be a pity to forget the adventures you have already had.”
“I shall never forget them,” I assured her; but she told me that memory played tricks with the wisest people, and strongly advised me to spend some few spare evenings in writing a diary of the past, while it was fresh in mind.
“It would be of great help to your next brother,” she told me. “He’ll be coming to London from Merivale in another eighteen months or so, and he’d love to hear all that has happened to you.”
In fact, Aunt Augusta openly advised a diary founded upon the past, and though my feeling is always to let the past bury the past and be pushing forward to fresh fields and pastures new, as the poet has it, still, there are many people—generally of the female sex—who take a great interest in looking back to the time when they were younger, and mourning their golden prime—though it probably wasn’t half as golden really as it seems to them, looking back at it. Therefore, solely to please my Aunt Augusta, I fell in with this suggestion and allowed myself to retrace my first wavering steps in the worlds of art and finance.
I set down the bare, unvarnished tale and told the simple truth as far as I could remember it. I preserved the aloof attitude of the born raconteur, and allowed my dramatis personæ to flit across the page in the habit in which they lived. I don’t think I forgot anybody, and tried to deal impartially with them all. I told of my dinner with Mr. Pepys and his sister, of the official life, enriched with the ripe humanity of Mr. Westonshaugh, the generous friendship of Mr. Blades and the various characteristics of Dicky Travers, the hero of the L.A.C.; Bassett, the martial; Wardle, the musical; Tomlinson, the equine; and Bent, the horticultural. I told of my experiences with the shady customer, and on the cinder-path and the cricket-field. I retraced my approach to the drama, and the grey-eyed girl, and Brightwin, and Mr. Smith, and the others, crowned by the soaring figure of Mr. Montgomery Merridew.
Then I chronicled the glad hour when I repaired to our West-End Branch and was lifted to the friendship of Mr. Walter and Mr. Bright; and lastly, I set down my earliest experience on the paths of literature, in connection with tragic poetry and dramatic criticism.
By a happy thought, I presented the manuscript of this “crowded hour of glorious life,” as the poet has it, to Aunt Augusta on her own birthday. In fact, the thirty-eighth anniversary of that auspicious event was gladdened for her by the gift of my diary.
I rejoice to say that it afforded her pleasure, but regret to add that it was not the sort of pleasure I intended.