IN GOOD COMPANY

IN GOOD COMPANY SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF SWINBURNE, LORD ROBERTS WATTS-DUNTON, OSCAR WILDE EDWARD WHYMPER, S. J. STONE STEPHEN PHILLIPS BY COULSON KERNAHAN

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVII

SECOND EDITION

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND

TO THE HON. MRS. ARTHUR HENNIKER

My Dear Mrs. Henniker,

It is many years since we first met at the house of one whom we both loved, whose memory we both cherish. It was that friend’s hope that you and I should become, and should remain friends; and that the hope has been realised has given me many happy hours—sometimes in your company as my gracious hostess, sometimes, scarcely less closely in your company, as a reader of your delightful and beautiful stories. Were your gallant General—I remember how proud he was of those stories—alive to-day, I should have asked to be allowed to dedicate this book to the two of you. Now that—alas for the England that he so faithfully loved, so nobly served—he is with us no more, may I inscribe it to yourself and to his honoured memory?

Yours ever sincerely, Coulson Kernahan.