I have a small house in Lingfield Terrace, on the north side of
the Regent's Park, so that my drawing-room, on the first floor,
has a southern aspect. It has been warm and sunny for the past
few days, and the elms and plane-trees across the road are
beginning to riot in their green bravery, as if intoxicated with
the golden wine of spring. My French window is flung wide open,
and on the balcony a triangular bit of sunlight creeps round as
the morning advances. My work-table is drawn up to the window.
I am busy over the first section of my "History of Renaissance
Morals," for which I think my notes are completed. I have a
delicious sense of isolation from the world. Away over those
tree-tops is a faint purpurine pall, and below it lies London,
with its strife and its misery, its wickedness and its vanity.
Twenty minutes would take me into the heart of it. And if I
chose I could be as struggling, as wretched, as much imbued with
wickedness and vanity as anybody. I could gamble on the stock
exchange, or play the muddy game of politics, or hawk my precious
title for sale among the young women of London society. My Aunt
Jessica once told me that London was at my feet. I am quite
content that it should stay there. I have much the same nervous
dread of it as I have of an angry sea breaking in surf on the
shingle. If I ventured out in it I should be tossed hither and
thither and broken on the rocks, and I should perish. I prefer
to stand aloof and watch. If I had a little more of daring in my
nature I might achieve something. I am afraid I am but a waster
in the world's factory; but kind Fate, instead of pitching me on
the rubbish-heap, has preserved me, perhaps has set me under a
glass case, in her own museum, as a curiosity. Well, I am happy
in my shelter.