[Footnotes:  1 The Right Eton A. J. Balfour. 2 Mr. and Mrs White. 3 The Duke and Duchess of Sutherland. 4 Col. and Mrs L. Drummond. 5 Now the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. 6 Earl and Countess of Pembroke. 7 Hon. Evan Charteris. 8 Earl and Countess Brownlow. 9 Sir J. and Lady Horner.
10 Lord and Lady Elcho (now Earl and Countess of Wemyss).
11 Lord and Lady Wenlock.
12 Mr. Godfrey Webb.
13 The Hon. Mrs. E. Bourke.
14 The Hon. Spencer Lyttelton.
15 The Hon. Alan Charteris.
16 Sir E. Vincent (now Lord D’Abernon).
17 Mrs. Graham Smith.
18 Lady Ribblesdale.
19 Mrs. Asquith.
20 Lord Ribblesdale.
21 The Hon. Alfred Lyttelton.
22 The Hon. St. John Brodrick (now Earl of Midleton) and Lady
   Hilda Brodrick.
23 Mr. and Mrs. Willy Grenfell (now Lord and Lady Desborough).
24 Mr. A. G. Liddell.
25 Mr. Harry Cust.
26 Earl and Countess de Grey.
27 Earl and Countess Cowper.
28 Countess Grosvenor.
29 The late Right Hon. George Wyndham.
30 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild.
31 Now Viscount Chaplin.
32 Lady Windsor (now Marchioness of Plymouth).
33 Miss E. Balfour (Widow of the Hon. Alfred Lyttelton).
34 Mrs. Chanler, the American novelist (now Princess Troubetzkoy).]

For my own and the children’s interest I shall try, however imperfectly, to make a descriptive inventory of some of the Souls mentioned in this poem and of some of my friends who were not.

Gladstone’s secretary, Sir Algernon West, [Footnote:  The Right Hon. Sir Algernon West.] and Godfrey Webb had both loved Laura and corresponded with her till she died and they spent all their holidays at Glen.  I never remember the time when Algy West was not getting old and did not say he wanted to die; but, although he is ninety, he is still young, good-looking and—­what is even more remarkable—­a strong Liberal.  He was never one of the Souls, but he was a faithful and loving early friend of ours.

Mr. Godfrey Webb was the doyen of the Souls.  He was as intimate with my brothers and parents as he was with my sisters and self.  Godfrey—­or Webber as some called him—­was not only a man of parts, but had a peculiar flavour of his own:  he had the sense of humour and observation of a memoirist and his wit healed more than it cut.  For hours together he would poke about the country with a dog, a gun and a cigar, perfectly independent and self-sufficing, whether engaged in sport, repartee, or literature.  He wrote and published for private circulation a small book of poems and made the Souls famous by his proficiency at all our pencil-games.  It would be unwise to quote verses or epigrams that depend so much upon the occasion and the environment.  Only a George Meredith can sustain a preface boasting of his heroine’s wit throughout the book, but I will risk one example of Godfrey Webb’s quickness.  He took up a newspaper one morning in the dining-room at Glen and, reading that a Mr. Pickering Phipps had broken his leg on rising from his knees at prayer, he immediately wrote this couplet: