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First edition, American issue (British sheets with a new title page), 8vo, pp. xiii, [1], 338; frontispiece, 15 plates and 2 folding maps; original pictorial red cloth stamped in gilt on upper cover and spine; a very good, sound, and clean copy. With the bookplate of William Macpherson Wiltbank, and with his wife's calling card laid in presenting this book to another at Christmas, 1904. (William himself died in 1905 at the age of 35.) "The fourth daughter of the seventh Earl of Albemarle, [Lady Susan Townley] came of a family with a record of public service since the days of William of Orange. Widely travelled even before her marriage in 1896, she was an ideal partner for her husband [Sir Walter Beaupré Townley (1863-1945), a British diplomat, who most notably served as the British Ambassador to the Netherlands during the final years of the First World War] in his career in Lisbon, Berlin, Rome, Peking, Constantinople, South America, Persia, Belgium, and finally Holland, the home of her ancestors. She had that best of all conversational gifts, that of stimulating conversation in others, and she had a long and accurate memory, as her delightful volume of reminiscences proves. These, though published over 30 years ago, are still very well worth reading for the picture they give of the life of a bygone era, not only in this country but in, for instance, China, which in the days recalled by Lady Susan was still dominated by the Dowager Empress" (Wikipedia).
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