[#] _I will be just and generous to this writer simultaneously. The Protector was born in 1599. Pre-Cromwellian days were the sixteenth century, clearly. In the sixteenth century St. James's and Piccadilly would not be includable in residential quarters, because the latter was not born or thought of. If by Pre-Cromwellian this writer means Pre-Commonwealth, the inclusion of Piccadilly in the description of a country girl's conception of swell London, written a hundred years later, when Piccadilly was "fait accompli," seems to me not unnatural. I am bound to say, however, that when I first read the passage (p. 181)--immediately after I had written it--I thought "those days" meant the days of the story. Analysis of London topography would have been out of place in treating of the cogitations of a country girl unfamiliar with the metropolis._ _To fulfil the conditions which literary usage appears to dictate, and to signalise his conformity with public opinion, there is no doubt that the writer of "An Affair of Dishonour"--or, shall I drop the thin veil adopted to avoid egotism, and say I myself--should have made that work not only Early Victorian, but Suburban. For, as I understand, I am expected to be Suburban. This is less difficult, as suburbs do not depend on chroniclers, like periods, but remain to speak for themselves. One knows when one is being Suburban. Among epochs one treads gingerly, like the skater on ice that scarcely bears him. I may take as an instance a book I wrote, called "Somehow Good," whose cradle, as it were, was the Twopenny Tube. The frequent reference to this story as an "Early Victorian" tale has impressed me that Early Victorianism is an abstract quality, which owes its fascination neither to its earliness, nor to its epoch. I am stating the case broadly, but as this is entirely between ourselves, very great niceties are hardly called for. We may leave the Sciolist, and the Merest Tyro, to fight about niceties. On the other hand, outside opinion, though a little vague about Early Victorianism, has not been inconsistent about Suburbanity. It has shrewdly identified, in my first four novels, the Suburban character of Tooting, Balham, Hampstead, Putney, Shepherd's Bush, and Wimbledon; and I now perceive that my reader was entitled to expect Clapham Junction or Peckham Bye, at least. Nothing would have pleased me better, when writing my last book, than to supply the nearest practicable Carolean equivalent, had I seen more clearly how the land lay. However, it's done now and can't be helped._