Or was I? Am 1? When I look back upon
the last thirty years, I observe with surprise that the high points of enjoy- ment which rise above the level plain of memory are in most cases associated with a mood of physical exertion, even of strain. I must have attended many thousand dinner-parties in my life, yet I can remember only three or four of them, and even then they are little more than a blur of napery and knives. I have visited countless picture galleries and wit- nessed many historic ceremonies ; yet upon the switch-board of my memory these experiences light up only with a faint pink bulb. The true flash of recovered memory, as bright as any pre-war torch, comes when I recall incidents which have been a release from, or culmination of, a period of physical endurance. I can remember, as if it were yester- day, coming upon a cushion of gentians nestling among the rich Vanilla Orchis of the Forcella Lungieres. I can re- member how, in the hush of an August evening, we dropped down on Amberley after a ten hours' walk across the South Downs. The sudden silence of Falmouth harbour after a day and night of strain and stress ; bathing at Sunium ; the stars flung like rice above the mountains of Kermanshah— each of these memories, the actual vitality of scent and colour and air, is set in a mood of physical exhaustion. I question whether the memories of any of my five French professors were irradiated by such vivid lights. * * * *
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