“Physically I have done pretty well for myself.  I ride better than most people and have spent or wasted more time on it than any woman of intellect ought to.  I have broken both collar-bones, all my ribs and my knee-cap; dislocated my jaw, fractured my skull, gashed my nose and had five concussions of the brain; but—­though my horses are to be sold next week [Footnote:  My horses were sold at Tattersalls, June 11th, 1906.]—­I have not lost my nerve.  I dance, drive and skate well; I don’t skate very well, but I dance really well.  I have a talent for drawing and am intensely musical, playing the piano with a touch of the real thing, but have neglected both these accomplishments.  I may say here in self-defence that marriage and five babies, five step-children and a husband in high politics have all contributed to this neglect, but the root of the matter lies deeper:  I am restless.

“After riding, what I have enjoyed doing most in my life is writing.  I have written a great deal, but do not fancy publishing my exercises.  I have always kept a diary and commonplace books and for many years I wrote criticisms of everything I read.  It is rather difficult for me to say what I think of my own writing.  Arthur Balfour once said that I was the best letter-writer he knew; Henry tells me I write well; and Symonds said I had l’oreille juste; but writing of the kind that I like reading I cannot do:  it is a long apprenticeship.  Possibly, if I had had this apprenticeship forced upon me by circumstances, I should have done it better than anything else.  I am a careful critic of all I read and I do not take my opinions of books from other people; I have not got ‘a lending-library mind’ as Henry well described that of a friend of ours.  I do not take my opinions upon anything from other people; from this point of view—­not a very high one—­I might be called original.

“When I read Arthur Balfour’s books and essays, I realised before I had heard them discussed what a beautiful style he wrote.  Raymond, whose intellectual taste is as fine as his father’s, wrote in a paper for his All Souls Fellowship that Arthur had the finest style of any living writer; and Raymond and Henry often justify my literary verdicts.

“From my earliest age I have been a collector:  not of anything particularly valuable, but of letters, old photographs of the family, famous people and odds and ends.  I do not lose things.  Our cigarette ash-trays are plates from my dolls’ dinner-service; I have got china, books, whips, knives, match-boxes and clocks given me since I was a small child.  I have kept our early copy-books, with all the family signatures in them, and many trifling landmarks of nursery life.  I am painfully punctual, tidy and methodical, detesting indecision, change of plans and the egotism that they involve.  I am a little stern and severe except with children:  for these I have endless elasticity and patience.  Many of my faults are physical.  If I could have chosen my own life—­ more in the hills and less in the traffic—­I should have slept better and might have been less overwrought and disturbable.  But after all I may improve, for I am on a man-of-war, as a friend once said to me, which is better than being on a pirate-ship and is a profession in itself.