Page:The spirit of place, and other essays, Meynell, 1899.djvu/23

Rh and "her" of every letter. And this shall be a paper of reparation to Mrs. Dingley.

No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her honours. In love "to divide is not to take away," as Shelley says; and Dingley's half of the tender things said to MD is equal to any whole, and takes nothing from the whole of Stella's half. But the sentimentalist has fought against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He has disliked her, shirked her, misconceived her, and effaced her. Sly sentimentalist—he finds her irksome. Through one of his most modern representatives he has but lately called her a "chaperon." A chaperon!

MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she has been pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in this respect been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were "saucy charming MD," "saucy little, pretty, dear rogues," "little monkeys mine," "little mischievous girls," "nautinautinautidear girls," "brats," "huzzies both," "impudence and saucy-face," "saucy noses," "my dearest lives and delights," "dear little young women," "good dallars, not crying dallars" (which means "girls"), "ten thousand times dearest MD," and so forth in a hundred