if I had kept a systematic and conscientious record of my life. But
although I was at one time conscientious and diligent enough in keeping
a diary, I kept it for use at the moment, not for future reference. I
kept it with paste-pot and scissors as much as with a pen. My method was
to cut bits out of the newspapers and stick them into my diary day by
day. Before the end of the year was reached Mr. Letts would have been
ashamed to own his diary. It had become a bursting, groaning dust-bin of
information, for the most part useless. The biggest elastic band made
could hardly encircle its bulk, swelled by photographs, letters,
telegrams, dried flowers--the whole making up a confusion in which every
one but the owner would seek in vain to find some sense or meaning.

About six years ago I moved into a smaller house in London, and I burnt
a great many of my earlier diaries as unmovable rubbish. The few
passages which I shall quote in this book from those which escaped
destruction will prove that my bonfire meant no great loss!

Still, when it was suggested to me in the year of my stage jubilee that
I ought to write down my recollections, I longed for those diaries! I
longed for anything which would remind me of the past and make it live
again for me. I was frightened. Something would be expected of me, since
I could not deny that I had had an eventful life packed full of
incident, and that by the road I had met many distinguished and
interesting men and women. I could not deny that I had been fifty years
on the stage, and that this meant enough material for fifty books, if
only the details of every year could be faithfully told. But it is not
given to all of us to see our lives in relief as we look back. Most of
us, I think, see them in perspective, of which our birth is the
vanishing point. Seeing, too, is only half the battle. How few people
can describe what they see!