the amazing colours of sea and earth. The earth, instead of
being brown, was red, purple, green. "You won't believe me,"
she added, "there is no colour like it in England." She
adopted, indeed, a condescending tone towards that poor island,
which was now advancing chilly crocuses and nipped violets
in nooks, in copses, in cosy corners, tended by rosy old garden-
ers in mufflers, who were always touching their hats and bob-
bing obsequiously. She went on to deride the islanders them-
selves. Rumours of London all in a ferment over a General
Election had reached them even out here. "It seems incredi-
ble," she went on, "that people should care whether Asquith
is in or Austen Chamberlain out, and while you scream your-
selves hoarse about politics you let the only people who are
trying for something good starve or simply laugh at them.
When have you ever encouraged a living artist? Or bought
his best work? Why are you all so ugly and so servile? Here
the servants are human beings. They talk to one as if they
were equals. As far as I can tell there are no aristocrats."

Perhaps it was the mention of aristocrats that reminded her
of Richard Dalloway and Rachel, for she ran on with the same
penful to describe her niece.

"It's an odd fate that has put me in charge of a girl," she
wrote, "considering that I have never got on well with women,
or had much to do with them. However, I must retract some
of the things that I have said against them. If they were prop-
erly educated I don't see why they shouldn't be much the same
as men--as satisfactory I mean; though, of course, very dif-
ferent. The question is, how should one educate them? The
present method seems to me abominable. This girl, though
twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and,
until I explained it, did not know how children were born. Her
ignorance upon other matters as important" (here Mrs. Am-
brose's letter may not be quoted)..."was complete. It
seems to me not merely foolish but criminal to bring people up
like that. Let alone the suffering to them, it explains why
women are what they are--the wonder is they're no worse.
I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though
still a good deal prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is
more or less a reasonable human being. Keeping them ig-

-96-