We had also (as what fashionable Society has not?) our dare-devils; the people who were always taking on eccentric bets and issuing fantastic challenges. I suppose physical courage among men tends always to decline; or is it that the objects over which we are called upon to exercise physical courage differ from one generation to another? I suppose, if you come to think of it, helico-driving needs nerve; and yet we would shrink from some of the tests to which our fathers put themselves. I have seen, as late as the forties, a man jump a five-barred gate on horseback.[7] One of the most reckless men in London was John Ducie, who accompanied a friend’s helico from London to Paris hanging on by his hands, and on another occasion drove his old motor-bicycle through a hundred yards belt of some new gas that was being tried at Aldershot, holding his breath all the way. He also challenged a friend to see how many volts of electricity each could stand, and I forget what fantastic record he achieved. The curious thing about him was that he did not in the least care how high or how low the stakes were: one heard that his London-to-Paris flight was only for a bet of five pounds. Dame Louise Merewether was another of these reckless challengers: it was she who shot the tide-trap water-race at Greenwich in a canoe, and, as Archie Lock said, all but got turned into electric power. And then there were the sheer follies that were devised from time to time by adventurous hostesses; a sad witness to the jaded palate that demanded them. There was Angela Nuneaton’s midnight picnic in Hyde Park: all the guests had to climb over the railings, and there were a good many accidents: Archie Lock looked round him and said that dresses were being torn very low this season. It was only the bursting of a champagne cork that attracted the attention of the police; and even so very few of us were caught. Then there was a rather macabre breakfast party, organized by Trevor Hodgkins, who was something or other at the Zoo; we had it in the hyena run on the Mappin terraces, to the intense interest of the regular inhabitants. I didn’t care for it much; laughter at breakfast always seems to me out of place. I think the jolliest parties we had were the more ordinary picnics on Hampstead Heath: my mother always imagined that these must be desperately vulgar, because in her younger days Hampstead Heath used to be the playground of the democracy! It was Sybil Linklater, I think, who started the idea of revolving ball-rooms, which caught on so about this time; I never could see much fun in it myself. There used to be a story of Sir A. F. (I will not give his full name), who was all too much addicted to the liquid pleasures of the table: it was said that he set out one night after dinner for Sybil’s, and by mistake got into the next house, where there was also a dance on; he proceeded to dance there the whole evening without discovering that the floor was not revolving!