Thus it seems to have been my father’s wish to dedicate me to the memory of the well-known Dame Brilliana who shone in both social and literary circles in the seventeenth century. Did he, perhaps, remember that the old Romans, at the birth of a child, used to choose for it the name of some ancestor, whose career they wished to be its example, in the belief that the deceased would protect and influence the infant to follow in the same path?
This second name of mine is queer enough, and seems to have suggested penmanship, followed by a number of strange nicknames, chosen promiscuously by my friends, but all tending in two directions:
“Madame la Duchesse.”
“Liege Lady.”
“She who would be obeyed.”
“Grande Dame.”
“Esmeralda.”
“Carmen.”
“Vixen.”