Until now I have generally managed to keep I out of books by using that delightful editorial WE, but somehow this volume cannot be written as WE, and the hunting of the snark never afforded more trouble than the hunting out of I. There it is and there it remains. It refuses to be removed. It glares upon the pages, and spurns all attempts to be suppressed.
Let me humbly apologise, once and for all, for
“I.”
Some people are born smart, just as others are born good—some are born stupid—and some are born haunted by the first personal pronoun. People believe they are relating the honest truth when they speak ill of themselves, and yet it is so pleasant to relate appreciative little stories of “ego.”
Why mention my early youth in a book only meant to treat of working years?—it may be asked. Well, for this friends are to blame. Folk have constantly asked, “What first made you write? Was it an inherited gift?”
Did my second baptismal name predestine my career? On this subject my father wrote in a diary:
“The next favours I received from Fortune were domestic ones—a boy and a girl. The name of Ethel was given the little maid to please her mother, that of Brilliana to please me. Brilliana, I called her, out of respect for the only woman of the name of Harley who added by her writings to the celebrity of the race. The Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley, 1625-43, wife of Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Bryan, Knight of the Bath, were reprinted by the Camden Society, with introductions and notes by Thomas Taylor Lewis, M.A., Vicar of Bridstow, Herefordshire.[2]
“Of men authors we have had abundance: of women only one. No wonder, then, I wished our daughter to perpetuate her name.”