exterior. They represent what she saw and heard, not what others
perceived in her. In the first place, they are very much better
written than she would have written them herself. I must dwell
presently on the curious fact that, with all her wit, she
possessed no power of sustained literary expression. Her Memoirs
were composed, as you know, by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who is a practised
writer and not otherwise could they have been given to the public.
On this point her own evidence is explicit. She wrote to me, in all
the excitement of the success of the volume of 1906: "The Press has
been wonderfully good to my little efforts, but to Ralph the better
part is due, as, out of the tangled remnants of my brain, he
extracted these old anecdotes of my early years." This is as
bravely characteristic of her modesty as it is of her candour, but
I think it shows that there is still room for some record of the
more intimate features of her charming and elusive character. I
take up my pencil, but with little hope of success, since no more
formidable task could be set me. I will at least try to be, as she
would have scorned me for not being, sincere.

My friendship with Lady Dorothy Nevill occupied more than a quarter
of a century. I met her first in the house of Sir Redvers and Lady
Audrey Buller in the winter of 1887, soon after their return from
Ireland. She had done me the great honour of desiring that I should
be invited to meet her. She had known my venerable relative, the
zoologist, Thomas Bell of Selborne, and she had corresponded in
years long past, about entomology, with my father. We talked
together on that first occasion for hours, and it seems to me that
I was lifted, without preliminaries, into her intimacy. From that
afternoon, until I drank tea with her for the last time, ten days
before her death, the precious link was never loosened.