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In 1908 I began to be a little restless. The Himalayas had cured me of the habit of going to the Alps. 
I could not play any longer with dolls after wooing such grown-up girls as Chogo Ri and 
Kangchenjunga. I tried to settle down in the Latin Quarter, finding a real home at 50 rue Vavin with 
M. and Madame Bourcier, people in whom the spirit of the early days of d'Artagnan was still alive. 
There is a peculiar relation between the best bourgeois of this type and the wandering 
gentilhomme, who is seeking his fortune in one way or another and requires a pied ŕ terre. It is one 
which implies great mutual respect and affection, and, alas, the qualities which make such relations 
possible are becoming very rare in the world. Despite all its drawbacks, there was never a better 
social system than the feudal, so far as it derived from the patriarchal. In getting rid of its abuses, 
we have also got rid of the noblest springs of action and the most congenial code of manners. The 
war destroyed this relation altogether. The Bourciers ended by being as disgusting as any other 
French people. 
In April I wandered from Paris to Deal and played golf enthusiastically. Rose was going from bad to 
worse. I had begun to learn to detect the smell of alcohol, but her cunning was so extraordinary 
that I was never able to catch her in the act of drinking. During the whole period, in fact, I only did 
so twice. The second occasion makes an interesting story. It shows the extent to which the 
obsessing demon can conceal his presence. 
It was one evening in our house at 21 Warwick Road. Rose and I were sitting in my library on the 
ground floor in the front of the house. The dining-room and kitchen were in the basement, the 
whisky being kept in the sideboard. Rose said that she would go and lock up the house, and went 
downstairs. I put off my slippers and followed stealthily. The stair case was partly illuminated, a 
shadow being cast diagonally across it. I heard the dining-room door open and began to descend. 
Rose came quickly back and looked up the stairs; but luckily I was in the shadow and she did not see 
me. She then went very quickly back into the dining-room, leaving the door open, and I went down 
the stairs as quickly as possible, hoping to catch her in the act. As I reached the foot, whence I 
could see into the dining-room, I heard the noise of a door being closed. Rose was standing by the 
sideboard; but there was no evidence of her act except an empty wet glass. During the few seconds 
it had taken me to descend the stairs, she had opened the sideboard, uncorked the bottle, poured 
out and drunk the whisky, and restored 
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everything to its normal condition. It was an act of prestidigitation and nothing else. 
I was at my wits' end. She was no better than before she went to Leicester. I thought I would try 
moral pressure and took counsel of Fuller, Eckenstein and Gerald Kelly, as well as her doctor. They 
were none of them very hopeful, but they agreed that it might do some good to leave her and 
refuse to return until guarantees were given that she had stopped drinking. There did really seem 
some hope; the power of love might work the miracle, and certainly my love for Rose was stronger 
than ever, although cut away completely from its physical support. I have always been peculiarly 
sensitive about trifles in my rapports with women; the most trivial thing can put me off completely. 
(Alexander Harvey has a superb story, "The Mustache", in which this psychology is admirably set 
forth.) I could have borne her death more philosophically. I was constantly tortured by the "memory 
of the Rose-red hours". I was not allowed to forget. There was the possibility of paradise at my 
elbow and there was nothing there but the reek of hell. 
I reel back beneath the blow of her breath 
As she comes smiling to me, that disgust 
Changes her drunken lust 
Into a shriek of hate --- half conscious still 
(Beneath the obsession of her will) 
Of all she was --- before her death, her death! 
I hated to go away; in my diary, April 26th I find: "Gerald at twenty-one. Wonders I didn't put my 
foot down a year ago. But Rose's tenderness is such, and I love her so dearly." However, I left on the 
twenty-eighth for Paris.