I am not-as I trust shall become clear-a woman given to bawdy talk or mere faithless, wanton ways. I have never indulged in the loose and immoral speech which nowadays cloaks so many novels. I find such productions crude and tasteless, lacking entirely in finesse and given to unlikely descriptions of equally unlikely behaviour by characters who are no more than cardboard people.

Even so, I am not a prude. Prudery is for those who fear the consequences of their own desires, however errant such desires may be. Neither will I countenance hypocrisy. There are always to be found a number of mealy-mouthed and self-inflated persons who would suppress all references to the most satisfying of physical pleasures. It is not my intention to do so here, but neither will I proclaim that they should be widely copied unless such art and sophistication is brought to them as I have been fortunate enough to be able to engender.

For I must make no bones about the fact that the comforts of wealth have provided often enough the wherewithal for many of my amorous luxuries. I call them that since they appertain to such voluptuous aspects of good living as the less well-to-do must mainly do without.

I am told by some that this view is false. All views to some are false. One can do no more or less than hold to one's own. I have known some quite pretty and adorable girls of the working classes. I have known, too, some doughty young males from the same milieu who could be counted upon to dispense with the normal crudities of their behaviour when in the presence of ladies. Removed temporarily from their drab surroundings and mean streets and brought into an atmosphere of luxury, their amorous abilities improved vastly, though ever requiring tuition.

But I must not delay my narrative too long by philosophising and shall commence-with the many secret diary entries I have made throughout my life-beginning when I was seventeen. It was the year 1882-that selfsame year when our dear Queen gave Epping Forest to the nation and the British Fleet bombarded Alexandria. I was proud to note such events in my early years, but as wisdom grew and the world progressed even more, so I devoted my immediate recollections to more personal events.