IF WE ALL TOOK TO MARGOTRY.
[Mrs. Asquith's feuilleton, which for so many people has transformed Sunday into a day of unrest, sets up a new method of autobiography, in which the protagonist is, so to speak, both Johnson and Boswell too. Successful models being always imitated we may expect to see a general use of her lively methods; and as a matter of fact I have been able already, through the use of a patent futurist reading-glass (invented by Signer Margoni), to get glimpses of two forthcoming reminiscent works of the future which, but for the chronique égoïstique of the moment might never have been written, and certainly not in their present interlocutory shape.]
I.
From "First Aid to Literature."
By Edmund Gosse.
... Not the least interesting and delicate of my duties as a confidential adviser were connected with a work of reminiscences which created some stir in the nineteen-twenties. How it came about I cannot recollect, but it was thought that my poor assistance as a friendly censor of a too florid exuberance in candour might not be of disservice to the book, and I accepted the invitation. The volume being by no means yet relegated to oblivion's dusty shelves I am naturally reluctant to refer to it with such particularity as might enable my argus-eyed reader to identify it and my own unworthy share therein, and therefore in the following dialogue, typical of many between the author and myself, I disguise her name under an initial. Quis custodiet? It would be grotesque indeed if one whose special mission was to correct the high spirits of others should himself fail in good taste.
Mrs. A. (laying down the MS. with a bang). I see nothing but blue pencil marks, and blue was never my colour. Why are you so anxious that I should be discreet? Indiscretion is the better part of authorship.
Edmund (earnestly). It is your fame of which I am thinking. If you adopt my emendations you will go down to history as the writer of the best book of reminiscences in English.
Mrs. A. (with fervour). I don't want to go down to history. I want to stay here and make it. And you (with emotion)—you have cramped my style. I can't think why I asked you to help.