Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's Life

UNLESS a book starts with some interest it finds no readers. The first page is often the key to the whole. But how is one to be interesting about such commonplace events as being born and vaccinated, cutting one’s first tooth or having measles and whooping-cough? They are all so uneventful, and while important to the little “ego” are so dull to the public. Therefore I refuse to be either “born” or even cut a wisdom tooth within these pages anent a busy woman’s life, except to say that on the night of my birth my father and his friend, the famous surgeon John Erichsen (later Sir John), walked home from a meeting of the Royal Society together, and on reaching the old house in Harley Street a servant greeted them with the announcement that my mother was very ill. Up the stairs my father hurried, while his colleague went off for the nurse. I was too small to be dressed, so my early days were spent rolled up in cotton wool—which fact did not deter my further development, as at fourteen years of age I stood five feet eight inches high. On my second day of existence I was introduced in my cradle to him who for nearly thirty years was as a second father to me—him whom I always called “dear Uncle John.” What a horribly egotistical thing it is to write about one’s self! Until now I have generally managed to keep I out of books by using that delightful editorial WE, but somehow this volume cannot be written as WE, and the hunting of the snark never afforded more trouble than the hunting out of I. There it is and there it remains. It refuses to be removed. It glares upon the pages, and spurns all attempts to be suppressed.