Excerpt from Portraits of the SeventiesThese inconvenient obligations of confidence pressed themselves on my mind when Mr. Fisher Unwin asked me to write a book about people eminent in the Seventies and Eighties, as a sequel to Mr. Justin mccarthy's Portraits of the Sixties. I felt, and now feel, that in this kind of writing one goes perilously near the edge of what is confidential, but, on full con sideration of the case, I decided to make the attempt. My endeavour has been to describe only what must have been seen and heard by many besides myself, whether in public or in social life and, whenever a point was doubtful, I have cultivated reticence at the expense of piquancy.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.