2. An Impossible Ideal.



Chapter 2.I.

To understand how we prized him, Dora Harris and I, it is necessary
to know Simla. I suppose people think of that place, if they ever
do think of it, as an agreeable retreat in the wilds of the
Himalayas where deodars and scandals grow, and where the Viceroy if
he likes may take off his decorations and go about in flannels. I
know how useless it would be to try to give a more faithful
impression, and I will hold back from the attempt as far as I can.
Besides, my little story is itself an explanation of Simla.
Ingersoll Armour might have appeared almost anywhere else without
making social history. He came and bloomed among us in the
wilderness, and such and such things happened. It sounds too rude a
generalization to say that Simla is a wilderness; I hasten to add
that it is a waste as highly cultivated as you like, producing many
things more admirable than Ingersoll Armour. Still he bloomed there
conspicuously alone. Perhaps there would have been nothing to tell
if we had not tried to gather him. That was wrong; Nature in Simla
expects you to be content with cocked hats.

There are artists almost everywhere and people who paint even in the
Himalayas, though Miss Harris and I in our superior way went yearly
to the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition chiefly to amuse ourselves by