TO FAY COMPTON

My dear Fay.

For several reasons I am anxious to inscribe this book to you. Unlesssomehow or other I safeguard you publicly, you are liable to be accusedby gossip of having written it, an accusation that both you and I mightbe justified in resenting. Many people suppose that you wrote an earliernovel of mine called Carnival, which, were it true, would make you outto be considerably older than you are, since I take it that even yourprecocity, though it did run to marriage at the age of seventeen (or wasit sixteen?), would hardly have allowed you to write Carnival at thesame age. One day, if Mr. Matheson Lang will allow me to use my owntitle—at present he is using it for a play that he and somebody elsehave adapted from an Italian original—you may act the part of JennyPearl; but that is as near as you will ever get to her creation. Thenlately a young gentleman wrote to ask me if I would inform him whetherthe generally accepted theory that you had written the first twochapters of Sinister Street had any existence in fact. So you see, Ido not exaggerate when I say that you are liable to be credited withThe Vanity Girl. Equally I should not like gossip to pretend that theheroine if not drawn by you was certainly drawn from you; and though anyfriend of yours or mine would laugh at such a suggestion, it is just aswell to kill the cacklers before they lay their eggs. But the chiefreason for inscribing this book to you is my desire to record, howeverinadequately, what pleasure and pride, dear Fay, your charm, yourtalents, your beauty, and success have given to

Your affectionate brother,     
Compton Mackenzie.

Capri, August 4, 1919.