But I must not bore you with good advice.  Child, why don’t you make a better use of your noble gifts?  And yet you do not do anything wrong—­only what other people do, but with more success.  And you are very faithful to your friends.  And so, God bless you.

He was much shocked by hearing that I smoked.  This is what he says: 

What are you doing—­breaking a young man’s heart; not the first time nor the second, nor the third—­I believe?  Poor fellows! they have paid you the highest compliment that a gentleman can pay a lady, and are deserving of all love.  Shall I give you a small piece of counsel?  It is better for you and a duty to them that their disappointed passions should never be known to a single person, for as you are well aware, one confidante means every body, and the good-natured world, who are of course very jealous of you, will call you cruel and a breaker of hearts, etc.  I do not consider this advice, but merely a desire to make you see things as others see them or nearly.  The Symonds girls at Davos told me that you smoked!!! at which I am shocked, because it is not the manner of ladies in England.  I always imagine you with a long hookah puffing, puffing, since I heard this; give it up, my dear Margaret—­it will get you a bad name.  Please do observe that I am always serious when I try to make fun.  I hope you are enjoying life and friends and the weather:  and believe me

Ever yours truly,
B. Jowett.

He asked me once if I ever told any one that he wrote to me, to which I answered: 

“I should rather think so!  I tell every railway porter!”

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.”