AUTHOR'S NOTE
In view of the fact that I have received many tiresome and even carping letters from the more captious critics of this child of my brain, I feel in justice to myself and Miss Macnaughtan that it is incumbent upon me to protest, in no measured terms, against what is not only an organised opposition and a pusillanimous display of superficial egotism, but a dirty trick.
I have been taunted with my inaccuracies; I have been called a fool; an idiot; an uneducated dolt; and an illiterate cow! This is far from kind, and I resent it.
My concentrated researches prove these memoirs to be absolutely accurate in every historical detail.
I refute utterly these criticisms, fostered by naught but the basest jealousy.
My parents and other relatives consider the book excellent.
NOEL COWARD.
"The Hollies,"
Marine Crescent,
Rome.
FOREWORD
I HAVE endeavoured in writing and compiling this book, to emphasize not only actual deeds and historical facts, but to aspire to an even higher goal—to conjure to life for a few brief moments the "Souls" of my subjects, stark in all their deathless beauty. What task could be nobler than to delve in these vivid famous lives and bring to light, perhaps, some hitherto undiscovered motive—some delicate and radiant action which so far has escaped the common historian and lain unplucked like a wee wood violet in an old, old garden!