February 22 + 

What an amazing Masque is Rotten Row on a Sunday morning! I sat on a seat there this morning and watched awhile. + 

It was most exasperating to be in this kaleidoscope of human life without the slightest idea as to who they all were. One man in particular, I noticed⁠—a first-class “swell”⁠—whom I wanted to touch gently on the arm, slip a half-a-crown into his hand and whisper, “There, tell me all about yourself.” + 

Such “swells” there were that out in the fairway, my little cockleshell boat was well-nigh swamped. To be in the wake of a really magnificent Duchess simply rocks a small boat in an alarming fashion. I leaned over my paddles and gazed up. They steamed past unheeding, but I kept my nerve all right and pulled in and out quizzing and observing. + 

It is nothing less than scandalous that here I am aged twenty-five with no means of acquainting myself with contemporary men and women even of my own rank and station. The worst of it is, too, that I have no time to lose⁠—in my state of health. This accursed ill-health cuts me off from everything. I make pitiful attempts to see the world around me by an occasional visit (wind, weather, and health permitting) to Petticoat Lane, the Docks, Rotten Row, Leicester Square, or the Ethical Church. Tomorrow I purpose going to the Christian Scientists’. Meanwhile, the others participate in Armageddon. + 