her reputation, and not on a post card, either! Gladstone had no sense of
humour--at any rate when he ventured into literature. Nor has Mrs. Humphry
Ward. If she had she would not concoct those excruciating heroines of
hers. She probably does not know that her heroines are capable of rousing
temperaments such as my own to ecstasies of homicidal fury. Moreover, in
literature all girls named Diana are insupportable. Look at Diana Vernon,
beloved of Mr. Andrew Lang, I believe! What a creature! Imagine living
with her! You can't! Look at Diana of the Crossways. Why did Diana of the
Crossways marry? Nobody can say--unless the answer is that she was a
ridiculous ninny. Would Anne Elliot have made such an inexplicable fool of
herself? Why does Diana Mallory "go to" her preposterous Radical ex-M.P.?
Simply because she is tiresomely absurd. Oh, those men with strong chins
and irreproachable wristbands! Oh, those cultured conversations! Oh, those
pure English maids! That skittishness! That impulsiveness! That noxious
winsomeness!

* * * * *

I have invented a destiny for Mrs. Humphry Ward's heroines. It is
terrible, and just. They ought to be caught, with their lawful male
protectors, in the siege of a great city by a foreign army. Their lawful
male protectors ought, before sallying forth on a forlorn hope, to provide
them with a revolver as a last refuge from a brutal and licentious
soldiery. And when things come to a crisis, in order to be concluded in
our next, the revolvers ought to prove to be unloaded. I admit that this
invention of mine is odious, and quite un-English, and such as would never
occur to a right-minded subscriber to Mudie's. But it illustrates the mood
caused in me by witnessing the antics of those harrowing dolls.