Excerpt from The Fourth GenerationI feel that the title of this book needs a few words of explanation. Life moves so swiftly nowadays that people are soon forgotten, and books written about them are put away on top shelves out of sight, and therefore out of mind. In 1888 when I offered Mr. John Murray, an old family friend, my Three Generations of English Women, to which this is a sequel, he was kind enough to say that the title was a good one. As several Three Generations (without the English Women) have appeared since, he must have been right. When friends urged me to write the present book, they all seemed to think that the story of my life ought to be linked in some way to that of my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, and the words Fourth Generation were added to gratify them.My life in England as a child, in Egypt as a young married woman, and in later years in Italy, has not been an eventful one, but I have known so many distinguished people who were fond of me for the sake of my parents and grandparents, that my reminiscences of them may prove interesting. Only a short time ago the Miss Berrys were mentioned, and Mr. Berenson, who was sitting next to me, exclaimed: "How I should like to have met someone who had known those two dear old ladies." When I said: "Well, here is someone, I knew them and remember them well, " he looked astonished, and replied: "You, impossible." The truth is I often feel as though I had a dual personality - at times quite old, at others many years younger than I really am.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.