This distressed him. I told him that he was evidently ashamed of
my love for him, but that I was proud of it.

JOWETT (after a long silence): "Would you like to have your life
written, Margaret?"

MARGOT: "Not much, unless it told the whole truth about me and
every one and was indiscreet. If I could have a biographer like
Froude or Lord Hervey, it would be divine, as no one would be
bored by reading it. Who will you choose to write your life,
Master?"

JOWETT: "No one will be in a position to write my life, Margaret."
(For some time he called me Margaret; he thought it sounded less
familiar than Margot.)

MARGOT: "What nonsense! How can you possibly prevent it? If you
are not very good to me, I may even write it myself!"

JOWETT (smiling): "If I could have been sure of that, I need not
have burnt all my correspondence! But you are an idle young lady
and would certainly never have concentrated on so dull a subject."

MARGOT (indignantly): "Do you mean to say you have burnt all
George Eliot's letters, Matthew Arnold's, Swinburne's, Temple's
and Tennyson's?"

JOWETT: "I have kept one or two of George Eliot's and Florence
Nightingale's; but great men do not write good letters."