In Down the Years (I make no apology for recurring
to a volume whose varied contents have given me singular enjoyment) Sir Austen Chamberlain tells of an evening he spent with Lord Balfour at Paris during. the Peace Conference, when the conversation seems to have ranged over every field except politics and peace. The two discussed among other things their favourite heroines in fiction. Sir 'Austen's was Ethel Newcome, with Beatrix Esmond a close rival. Lord Balfour mystified the company by naming as his choice " the girl in The Initials." An allusion that was Greek to the others Sir Austen took up with enthusiasm. " Not Hildegarde ? " he asked. " Hildegarde, Hilde- garde ? Was her name Hildegarde ? " asked the Foreign Secretary vaguely. " Anyway, the girl in The Initials.". And it turned out that that had been Joseph Chamber-, lain's favourite heroine too. Does anyone, I wonder, read that forgotten Anglo-German romance, by Baroness Tautphoeus, today? Well, I for one have—in the past week, on the Balfour-Chamberlain recommendation, and I feel under a considerable obligation to Sir Austen for the introduction. Hildegarde, attractive character, as she is, has not established herself as my favourite. heroine, but the novel—written in 1850 by an Irish- woman who married the Chamberlain at the Bavarian Court—is admirable reading, and if I were the editor of the Everyman's Library or ,the World's Classics I would have arranged already to republish it.
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