11. “One of the last persons to get on board ship when Boulogne was evacuated under fire was the Dowager Lady Dudley, known to so many of your elder readers as Miss Gertie Miller of the Gaiety. Lady was at her villa at Le Touquet [so was Wodehouse] where she usually spends the spring. Her first appearance on the stage was as the girl babe in the pantomime at the St. James’s Theatre Manchester, in 1892.” Compare this with the episode recounted by Orwell on 30 May: “Connolly related that recently a ship was coming away from northern France with refugees on board and a few ordinary passengers. The refugees were mostly children who were in a terrible state having been machine-gunned, etc. Among the passengers was Lady — who tried to push herself to the head of the queue to get on the boat, and when ordered back said indignantly, ‘Do you know who I am?’ The steward answered, ‘I don’t care who you are, you bloody bitch. You can take your turn in the queue.’ Interesting if true” (Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, 2:341).