Elliott & Fry. Photo Walker & Cookerell Ph. So.
Eleanor A. Ormerod
ELEANOR ORMEROD, LL.D.,
ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGIST:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND CORRESPONDENCE
PREFACE
The idea that Miss Ormerod should write her biographyoriginated with the present writer during one of many visitspaid to her at St. Albans. Miss Ormerod had unfolded incharming language and with admirable lucidity and fluencysome interesting chapters of her personal experiences andreminiscences. The first working plan of the project involvedthe concealment of a shorthand writer behind ascreen in the dining-room while dinner was proceeding,and while the examination of ethnological specimens orother attractive objects gave place for a time to generalconversation on subjects grown interesting by age.Although the shorthand writer was selected and is severaltimes referred to in letters written about this period(pp. 304-307), Miss Ormerod, on due reflection, felt thatthe presence, though unseen, of a stranger at these meetingsin camera would make the position unnatural, anddislocate the association of ideas to the detriment of thenarrative.
She then bethought herself of the method of writingdown at leisure moments, from time to time as a suitablesubject occurred to her, rough notes (p. 318) to be elaboratedlater, and when after a time a subject had been exhausted,the rough notes were re-written and welded into a narrative(pp. 304-321). Some four or five of the early chapters werethus treated and then typewritten, but the remainder ofthe Autobiography was left in crude form, requiring muchpiecing together and editorial trimming. Had the bookbeen produced on the original plan, it was proposed to nameit “Recollections of Changing Times.”[1] It would havedealt with a number of subjects of general interest, such asthe history of the Post Office, early records of floods and