The true writer will stop everywhere and anywhere to put down his notes, as the true painter will stop everywhere and anywhere to sketch.

I do not see why an author should not have a sale of literary sketches, each one short, slight and capable of being framed and glazed in small compass. They would make excellent library decorations and ought to fetch as much as an artist’s sketches. They might be cut up in suitable lots, if the fashion were once set, and many a man might be making provision for his family at odd times with his notes as an artist does with his sketches.

London

If I were asked what part of London I was most identified with after Clifford’s Inn itself, I should say Fetter Lane—every part of it. Just by the Record Office is one of the places where I am especially prone to get ideas; so also is the other end, about the butcher’s shop near Holborn. The reason in both cases is the same, namely, that I have about had time to settle down to reflection after leaving, on the one hand, my rooms in Clifford’s Inn and, on the other, Jones’s rooms in Barnard’s Inn where I usually spend the evening. The subject which has occupied my mind during the day being approached anew after an interval and a shake, some fresh idea in connection with it often strikes me. But long before I knew Jones, Fetter Lane was always a street which I was more in than perhaps any other in London. Leather Lane, the road through Lincoln’s Inn Fields to the Museum, the Embankment, Fleet Street, the Strand and Charing Cross come next.

A Clifford’s Inn Euphemism

People when they want to get rid of their cats, and do not like killing them, bring them to the garden of Clifford’s Inn, drop them there and go away. In spite of all that is said about cats being able to find their way so wonderfully, they seldom do find it, and once in Clifford’s Inn the cat generally remains there. The technical word among the laundresses in the inn for this is, “losing” a cat:

“Poor thing, poor thing,” said one old woman to me a few days ago, “it’s got no fur on its head at all, and no doubt that’s why the people she lived with lost her.”

London Trees

They are making a great outcry about the ventilators on the Thames Embankment, just as they made a great outcry about the Griffin in Fleet Street. [See Alps and Sanctuaries. Introduction.] They say the ventilators have spoiled the Thames Embankment. They do not spoil it half so much as the statues do—indeed, I do not see that they spoil it at all. The trees that are planted everywhere are, or will be, a more serious nuisance. Trees are all very well where there is plenty of room, otherwise they are a mistake; they keep in the moisture, exclude light and air, and their roots disturb foundations; most of our London Squares would look much better if the trees were thinned. I should like to cut down all the plane trees in the garden of Clifford’s Inn and leave only the others.

What I Said to the Milkman

One afternoon I heard a knock at the door and found it was the milkman. Mrs. Doncaster [his laundress] was not there, so I took in the milk myself. The milkman is a very nice man, and, by way of making himself pleasant, said, rather complainingly, that the weather kept very dry.

I looked at him significantly and said: “Ah, yes, of course for your business you must find it very inconvenient,” and laughed.

He saw he had been caught and laughed too. It was a very old joke, but he had not expected it at that particular moment, and on the top of such an innocent remark.

The Return of the Jews to Palestine

A man called on me last week and proposed gravely that I should write a book upon an idea which had occurred to a friend of his, a Jew living in New Bond Street. It was a plan requiring the co-operation of a brilliant writer and that was why he had come to me. If only I would help, the return of the Jews to Palestine would be rendered certain and easy. There was no trouble about the poor Jews, he knew how he could get them back at any time; the difficulty lay with the Rothschilds, the Oppenheims and such; with my assistance, however, the thing could be done.

I am afraid I was rude enough to decline to go into the scheme on the ground that I did not care twopence whether the Rothschilds and Oppenheims went back to Palestine or not. This was felt to be an obstacle; but then he began to try and make me care, whereupon, of course, I had to get rid of him. [1883.]

The Great Bear’s Barley-Water

Last night Jones was walking down with me from Staple Inn to Clifford’s Inn, about 10 o’clock, and we saw the Great Bear standing upright on the tip of his tail which was coming out of a chimney pot. Jones said it wanted attending to. I said:

“Yes, but to attend to it properly we ought to sit up with it all night, and if the Great Bear thinks that I am going to sit by his bed-side and give him a spoonful of barley-water every ten minutes, he will find himself much mistaken.” [1892.]

The Cock Tavern

I went into Fleet Street one Sunday morning last November [1882] with my camera lucida to see whether I should like to make a sketch of the gap made by the demolition of the Cock Tavern. It was rather pretty, with an old roof or two behind and scaffolding about and torn paper hanging to an exposed party-wall and old fireplaces and so on, but it was not very much out of the way. Still I would have taken it if it had not been the Cock. I thought of all the trash that has been written about it and of Tennyson’s plump head waiter (who by the way used to swear that he did not know Tennyson and that Tennyson never did resort to the Cock) and I said to myself:

“No—you may go. I will put out no hand to save you.”

Myself in Dowie’s Shop

I always buy ready-made boots and insist on taking those which the shopman says are much too large for me. By this means I keep free from corns, but I have a great deal of trouble generally with the shopman. I had got on a pair once which I thought would do, and the shopman said for the third or fourth time:

“But really, sir, these boots are much too large for you.” I turned to him and said rather sternly, “Now, you made that remark before.”

There was nothing in it, but all at once I became aware that I was being watched, and, looking up, saw a middle-aged gentleman eyeing the whole proceedings with much amusement. He was quite polite but he was obviously exceedingly amused. I can hardly tell why, nor why I should put such a trifle down, but somehow or other an impression was made upon me by the affair quite out of proportion to that usually produced by so small a matter.

My Dentist

Mr. Forsyth had been stopping a tooth for me and then talked a little, as he generally does, and asked me if I knew a certain distinguished literary man, or rather journalist. I said No, and that I did not want to know him. The paper edited by the gentleman in question was not to my taste. I was a literary Ishmael, and preferred to remain so. It was my rÔle.

“It seems to me,” I continued, “that if a man will only be careful not to write about things that he does not understand, if he will use the tooth-pick freely and the spirit twice a day, and come to you again in October, he will get on very well without knowing any of the big-wigs.”

“The tooth-pick freely” and “the spirit twice a day” being tags of Mr. Forsyth’s, he laughed.

Furber the Violin-Maker

From what my cousin [Reginald E. Worsley] and Gogin both tell me I am sure that Furber is one of the best men we have. My cousin did not like to send Hyam to him for a violin: he did not think him worthy to have one. Furber does not want you to buy a violin unless you can appreciate it when you have it. My cousin says of him:

“He is generally a little tight on a Saturday afternoon. He always speaks the truth, but on Saturday afternoons it comes pouring out more.”

“His joints [i.e. the joints of the violins he makes] are the closest and neatest that were ever made.”

“He always speaks of the corners of a fiddle; Haweis would call them the points. Haweis calls it the neck of a fiddle. Furber always the handle.”

My cousin says he would like to take his violins to bed with him.

Speaking of Strad violins Furber said: “Rough, rough linings, but they look as if they grew together.”

One day my cousin called and Furber, on opening the door, before saying “How do you do?” or any word of greeting, said very quietly:

“The dog is dead.”

My cousin, having said what he thought sufficient, took up a violin and played a few notes. Furber evidently did not like it. Rose, the dog, was still unburied; she was laid out in that very room. My cousin stopped. Then Mrs. Furber came in.

R. E. W. “I am very sorry, Mrs. Furber, to hear about Rose.”

Mrs. F. “Well, yes sir. But I suppose it is all for the best.”

R. E. W. “I am afraid you will miss her a great deal.”

Mrs. F. “No doubt we shall, sir; but you see she is only gone a little while before us.”

R. E. W. “Oh, Mrs. Furber, I hope a good long while.”

Mrs. F. (brightening). “Well, yes sir, I don’t want to go just yet, though Mr. Furber does say it is a happy thing to die.”

My cousin says that Furber hardly knows any one by their real name. He identifies them by some nickname in connection with the fiddles they buy from him or get him to repair, or by some personal peculiarity.

“There is one man,” said my cousin, “whom he calls ‘diaphragm’ because he wanted a fiddle made with what he called a diaphragm in it. He knows Dando and Carrodus and Jenny Lind, but hardly any one else.”

“Who is Dando?” said I.

“Why, Dando? Not know Dando? He was George the Fourth’s music master, and is now one of the oldest members of the profession.”

Window Cleaning in the British Museum Reading-Room

Once a year or so the figures on the Assyrian bas-reliefs break adrift and may be seen, with their scaling ladders and all, cleaning the outside of the windows in the dome of the reading-room. It is very pretty to watch them and they would photograph beautifully. If I live to see them do it again I must certainly snapshot them. You can see them smoking and sparring, and this year they have left a little hole in the window above the clock.

The Electric Light in its Infancy

I heard a woman in a ’bus boring her lover about the electric light. She wanted to know this and that, and the poor lover was helpless. Then she said she wanted to know how it was regulated. At last she settled down by saying that she knew it was in its infancy. The word “infancy” seemed to have a soothing effect upon her, for she said no more but, leaning her head against her lover’s shoulder, composed herself to slumber.

Fire

I was at one the other night and heard a man say: “That corner stack is alight now quite nicely.” People’s sympathies seem generally to be with the fire so long as no one is in danger of being burned.

Adam and Eve

A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of Adam and Eve.

“Which is Adam and which is Eve?” said one.

“I do not know,” said the other, “but I could tell if they had their clothes on.”

Does Mamma Know?

A father was telling his eldest daughter, aged about six, that she had a little sister, and was explaining to her how nice it all was. The child said it was delightful and added:

“Does Mamma know? Let’s go and tell her.”

Mr. Darwin in the Zoological Gardens

Frank Darwin told me his father was once standing near the hippopotamus cage when a little boy and girl, aged four and five, came up. The hippopotamus shut his eyes for a minute.

“That bird’s dead,” said the little girl; “come along.”

Terbourg

Gogin told me that Berg, an impulsive Swede whom he had known in Laurens’s studio in Paris and who painted very well, came to London and was taken by an artist friend [Henry Scott Tuke, A.R.A.] to the National Gallery where he became very enthusiastic about the Terbourgs. They then went for a walk and, in Kensington Gore, near one of the entrances to Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, there was an old Irish apple-woman sitting with her feet in a basket, smoking a pipe and selling oranges.

“Arranges two a penny, sorr,” said the old woman in a general way.

And Berg, turning to her and throwing out his hands appealingly, said:

“O, madame, avez-vous vu les Terbourgs? Allez voir les Terbourgs.”

He felt that such a big note had been left out of the life of any one who had not seen them.

At Doctors’ Commons

A woman once stopped me at the entrance to Doctors’ Commons and said:

“If you please, sir, can you tell me—is this the place that I came to before?”

Not knowing where she had been before I could not tell her.

The Sack of Khartoum

As I was getting out of a ’bus the conductor said to me in a confidential tone:

“I say, what does that mean? ‘Sack of Khartoum’? What does ‘Sack of Khartoum’ mean?”

“It means,” said I, “that they’ve taken Khartoum and played hell with it all round.”

He understood that and thanked me, whereon we parted.

Missolonghi

Ballard [a fellow art-student with Butler at Heatherley’s] told me that an old governess, some twenty years since, was teaching some girls modern geography. One of them did not know the name Missolonghi. The old lady wrung her hands:

“Why, me dear,” she exclaimed, “when I was your age I could never hear the name mentioned without bursting into tears.”

I should perhaps add that Byron died there.

Memnon

I saw the driver of the Hampstead ’bus once, near St. Giles’s Church—an old, fat, red-faced man sitting bolt upright on the top of his ’bus in a driving storm of snow, fast asleep with a huge waterproof over his great-coat which descended with sweeping lines on to a tarpaulin. All this rose out of a cloud of steam from the horses. He had a short clay pipe in his mouth but, for the moment, he looked just like Memnon.

Manzi the Model

They had promised him sittings at the Royal Academy and then refused him on the ground that his legs were too hairy. He complained to Gogin:

“Why,” said he, “I sat at the Slade School for the figure only last week, and there were five ladies, but not one of them told me my legs were too hairy.”

A Sailor Boy and Some Chickens

A pretty girl in the train had some chirping chickens about ten days’ old in a box labelled “German egg powders. One packet equal to six eggs.” A sailor boy got in at Basingstoke, a quiet, reserved youth, well behaved and unusually good-looking. By and by the chickens were taken out of the box and fed with biscuit on the carriage seat. This thawed the boy who, though he fought against it for some lime, yielded to irresistible fascination and said:

“What are they?”

“Chickens,” said the girl.

“Will they grow bigger?”

“Yes.”

Then the boy said with an expression of infinite wonder: “And did you hatch them from they powders?”

We all laughed till the boy blushed and I was very sorry for him. If we had said they had been hatched from the powders he would have certainly believed us.

Gogin, the Japanese Gentleman and the Dead Dog

Gogin was one day going down Cleveland Street and saw an old, lean, careworn man crying over the body of his dog which had been just run over and killed by the old man’s own cart. I have no doubt it was the dog’s fault, for the man was in great distress; as for the dog there it lay all swelled and livid where the wheel had gone over it, its eyes protruded from their sockets and its tongue lolled out, but it was dead. The old man gazed on it, helplessly weeping, for some time and then got a large piece of brown paper in which he wrapped up the body of his favourite; he tied it neatly with a piece of string and, placing it in his cart, went homeward with a heavy heart. The day was dull, the gutters were full of cabbage stalks and the air resounded with the cry of costermongers.

On this a Japanese gentleman, who had watched the scene, lifted up his voice and made the bystanders a set oration. He was very yellow, had long black hair, gold spectacles and a top hat; he was a typical Japanese, but he spoke English perfectly. He said the scene they had all just witnessed was a very sad one and that it ought not to be passed over entirely without comment. He explained that it was very nice of the good old man to be so sorry about his dog and to be so careful of its remains and that he and all the bystanders must sympathise with him in his grief, and as the expression of their sympathy, both with the man and with the poor dog, he had thought fit, with all respect, to make them his present speech.

I have not the man’s words but Gogin said they were like a Japanese drawing, that is to say, wonderfully charming, and showing great knowledge but not done in the least after the manner in which a European would do them. The bystanders stood open-mouthed and could make nothing of it, but they liked it, and the Japanese gentleman liked addressing them. When he left off and went away they followed him with their eyes, speechless.

St. Pancras’ Bells

Gogin lives at 164 Euston Road, just opposite St. Pancras Church, and the bells play doleful hymn tunes opposite his window which worries him. My St. Dunstan’s bells near Clifford’s Inn play doleful hymn tunes which enter in at my window; I not only do not dislike them, but rather like them; they are so silly and the bells are out of tune. I never yet was annoyed by either bells or street music except when a loud piano organ strikes up outside the public-house opposite my bedroom window after I am in bed and when I am just going to sleep. However, Jones was at Gogin’s one summer evening and the bells struck up their dingy old burden as usual. The tonic bell on which the tune concluded was the most stuffy and out of tune. Gogin said it was like the smell of a bug.

At Eynsford

I saw a man painting there the other day but passed his work without looking at it and sat down to sketch some hundred of yards off. In course of time he came strolling round to see what I was doing and I, not knowing but what he might paint much better than I, was apologetic and said I was not a painter by profession.

“What are you?” said he.

I said I was a writer.

“Dear me,” said he. “Why that’s my line—I’m a writer.”

I laughed and said I hoped he made it pay better than I did. He said it paid very well and asked me where I lived and in what neighbourhood my connection lay. I said I had no connection but only wrote books.

“Oh! I see. You mean you are an author. I’m not an author; I didn’t mean that. I paint people’s names up over their shops, and that’s what we call being a writer. There isn’t a touch on my work as good as any touch on yours.”

I was gratified by so much modesty and, on my way back to dinner, called to see his work. I am afraid that he was not far wrong—it was awful.

Omne ignotum pro magnifico holds with painters perhaps more than elsewhere; we never see a man sketching, or even carrying a paint-box, without rushing to the conclusion that he can paint very well. There is no cheaper way of getting a reputation than that of going about with easel, paint-box, etc., provided one can ensure one’s work not being seen. And the more traps one carries the cleverer people think one.

Mrs. Hicks

She and her husband, an old army sergeant who was all through the Indian Mutiny, are two very remarkable people; they keep a public-house where we often get our beer when out for our Sunday walk. She owns to sixty-seven, I should think she was a full seventy-five, and her husband, say, sixty-five. She is a tall, raw-boned Gothic woman with a strong family likeness to the crooked old crusader who lies in the church transept, and one would expect to find her body scrawled over with dates ranging from 400 years ago to the present time, just as the marble figure itself is. She has a great beard and moustaches and three projecting teeth in her lower jaw but no more in any part of her mouth. She moves slowly and is always a little in liquor besides being singularly dirty in her person. Her husband is like unto her.

For all this they are hard-working industrious people, keep no servant, pay cash for everything, are clearly going up rather than down in the world and live well. She always shows us what she is going to have for dinner and it is excellent—“And I made the stuffing over night and the gravy first thing this morning.” Each time we go we find the house a little more done up. She dotes on Mr. Hicks—we never go there without her wedding day being referred to. She has earned her own living ever since she was ten years old, and lived twenty-nine and a half years in the house from which Mr. Hicks married her. “I am as happy,” she said, “as the day is long.” She dearly loves a joke and a little flirtation. I always say something perhaps a little impudently broad to her and she likes it extremely. Last time she sailed smilingly out of the room, doubtless to tell Mr. Hicks, and came back still smiling.

When we come we find her as though she had lien among the pots, but as soon as she has given us our beer, she goes upstairs and puts on a cap and a clean apron and washes her face—that is to say, she washes a round piece in the middle of her face, leaving a great glory of dirt showing all round it. It is plain the pair are respected by the manner in which all who come in treat them.

Last time we were there she said she hoped she should not die yet.

“You see,” she said, “I am beginning now to know how to live.”

These were her own words and, considering the circumstances under which they were spoken, they are enough to stamp the speaker as a remarkable woman. She has got as much from age and lost as little from youth as woman can well do. Nevertheless, to look at, she is like one of the witches in Macbeth.

New-Laid Eggs

When I take my Sunday walks in the country, I try to buy a few really new-laid eggs warm from the nest. At this time of the year (January) they are very hard to come by, and I have long since invented a sick wife who has implored me to get her a few eggs laid not earlier than the self-same morning. Of late, as I am getting older, it has become my daughter who has just had a little baby. This will generally draw a new-laid egg, if there is one about the place at all.

At Harrow Weald it has always been my wife who for years has been a great sufferer and finds a really new-laid egg the one thing she can digest in the way of solid food. So I turned her on as movingly as I could not long since, and was at last sold some eggs that were no better than common shop eggs, if so good. Next time I went I said my poor wife had been made seriously ill by them; it was no good trying to deceive her; she could tell a new-laid egg from a bad one as well as any woman in London, and she had such a high temper that it was very unpleasant for me when she found herself disappointed.

“Ah! sir,” said the landlady, “but you would not like to lose her.”

“Ma’am,” I replied, “I must not allow my thoughts to wander in that direction. But it’s no use bringing her stale eggs, anyhow.”

“The Egg that Hen Belonged to”

I got some new-laid eggs a few Sundays ago. The landlady said they were her own, and talked about them a good deal.

She pointed to one of them and said:

“Now, would you believe it? The egg that hen belonged to laid 53 hens running and never stopped.”

She called the egg a hen and the hen an egg. One would have thought she had been reading Life and Habit [p. 134 and passim].

At Englefield Green

As an example of how anything can be made out of anything or done with anything by those who want to do it (as I said in Life and Habit that a bullock can take an eyelash out of its eye with its hind-foot—which I saw one of my bullocks in New Zealand do), at the Barley Mow, Englefield Green, they have a picture of a horse and dog talking to one another, made entirely of butterflies’ wings, and very well and spiritedly done too.

They have another picture, done in the same way, of a greyhound running after a hare, also good but not so good.

At Abbey Wood

I heard a man say to another: “I went to live there just about the time that beer came down from 5d. to 4d. a pot. That will give you an idea when it was.”

At Ightham Mote

We took Ightham on one of our Sunday walks about a fortnight ago, and Jones and I wanted to go inside over the house.

My cousin said, “You’d much better not, it will only unsettle your history.”

We felt, however, that we had so little history to unsettle that we left him outside and went in.

Dr. Mandell Creighton and Mr. W. S. Rockstro

“The Bishop had been reading Mr. Samuel Butler’s enchanting book Alps and Sanctuaries and determined to visit some of the places there described. We divided our time between the Italian lakes and the lower slopes of the Alps and explored many mountain sanctuaries . . . As a result of this journey the Bishop got to know Mr. S. Butler. He wrote to tell him the pleasure his books had given us and asked him to visit us. After this he came frequently and the Bishop was much attracted by his original mind and stores of out-of-the-way knowledge.” (The Life and Letters of Dr. Mandell Creighton by his Wife, Vol. II, p. 83.)

The first time that Dr. Creighton asked me to come down to Peterborough in 1894 before he became Bishop of London, I was a little doubtful whether to go or not. As usual, I consulted my good clerk, Alfred, who said:

“Let me have a look at his letter, sir.” I gave him the letter, and he said:

“I see, sir, there is a crumb of tobacco in it; I think you may go.”

I went and enjoyed myself very much. I should like to add that there are very few men who have ever impressed me so profoundly and so favourably as Dr. Creighton. I have often seen him since, both at Peterborough and at Fulham, and like and admire him most cordially. [251]

I paid my first visit to Peterborough at a time when that learned musician and incomparable teacher, Mr. W. S. Rockstro, was giving me lessons in medieval counterpoint; so I particularly noticed the music at divine service. The hymns were very silly, and of the usual Gounod-Barnby character. Their numbers were posted up in a frame and I saw there were to be five, so I called the first Farringdon Street, the second King’s Cross, the third Gower Street, the fourth Portland Road, and the fifth Baker Street, those being stations on my way to Rickmansworth, where I frequently go for a walk in the country.

In his private chapel at night the bishop began his verse of the psalms always well before we had done the response to the preceding verse. It reminded me of what Rockstro had said a few weeks earlier to the effect that a point of imitation was always more effective if introduced before the other voices had finished. I told Rockstro about it and said that the bishop’s instinct had guided him correctly—certainly I found his method more satisfactory than if he had waited till we had finished. Rockstro smiled, and knowing that I was at the time forbidden to work, said:

“Satan finds some mischief still for idle brains to do.”

Talking of Rockstro, he scolded me once and said he wondered how I could have done such a thing as to call Handel “one of the greatest of all musicians,” referring to the great chords in Erewhon. I said that if he would look again at the passage he would find I had said not that Handel was “one of the greatest” but that he was “the greatest of all musicians,” on which he apologised.

Pigs

We often walk from Rickmansworth across Moor Park to Pinner. On getting out of Moor Park there is a public-house just to the left where we generally have some shandy-gaff and buy some eggs. The landlord had a noble sow which I photographed for him; some months afterwards I asked how the sow was. She had been sold. The landlord knew she ought to be killed and made into bacon, but he had been intimate with her for three years and some one else must eat her, not he.

“And what,” said I, “became of her daughter?”

“Oh, we killed her and ate her. You see we had only known her eighteen months.”

I wonder how he settled the exact line beyond which intimacy with a pig must not go if the pig is to be eaten.

Mozart

An old Scotchman at Boulogne was holding forth on the beauties of Mozart, which he exemplified by singing thus:

Music score:Dehvieni alla fenestra

I maliciously assented, but said it was strange how strongly that air always reminded me of “Voi che sapete.”

Divorce

There was a man in the hotel at Harwich with an ugly disagreeable woman who I supposed was his wife. I did not care about him, but he began to make up to me in the smoking-room.

“This divorce case,” said he, referring to one that was being reported in the papers, “doesn’t seem to move very fast.”

I put on my sweetest smile and said: “I have not observed it. I am not married myself, and naturally take less interest in divorce.”

He dropped me.

Ravens

Mr. Latham, the Master of Jones’s College, Trinity Hall, Cambridge, has two ravens named Agrippa and Agrippina. Mr. Latham throws Agrippa a piece of cheese; Agrippa takes it, hides it carefully and then goes away contented; but Agrippina has had her eye upon him and immediately goes and steals it, hiding it somewhere else; Agrippa, however, has always one eye upon Agrippina and no sooner is her back turned than he steals it and buries it anew; then it becomes Agrippina’s turn, and thus they pass the time, making believe that they want the cheese though neither of them really wants it. One day Agrippa had a small fight with a spaniel and got rather the worst of it. He immediately flew at Agrippina and gave her a beating. Jones said he could almost hear him say, “It’s all your fault.”

Calais to Dover

When I got on board the steamer at Calais I saw Lewis Day, who writes books about decoration, and began to talk with him. Also I saw A. B., Editor of the X.Y.Z. Review. I met him some years ago at Phipson Beale’s, but we do not speak. Recently I wanted him to let me write an article in his review and he would not, so I was spiteful and, when I saw him come on board, said to Day:

“I see we are to have the Editor of the X.Y.Z. on board.”

“Yes,” said Day.

“He’s an owl,” said I sententiously.

“I wonder,” said Day, “how he got the editorship of his review?”

“Oh,” said I, “I suppose he married some one.”

On this the conversation dropped, and we parted. Later on we met again and Day said:

“Do you know who that lady was—the one standing at your elbow when we were talking just now?”

“No,” said I.

“That,” he replied, “was Mrs. A. B.”

And it was so.

Snapshotting a Bishop

I must some day write about how I hunted the late Bishop of Carlisle with my camera, hoping to shoot him when he was sea-sick crossing from Calais to Dover, and how St. Somebody protected him and said I might shoot him when he was well, but not when he was sea-sick. I should like to do it in the manner of the Odyssey:

. . . And the steward went round and laid them all on the sofas and benches and he set a beautiful basin by each, variegated and adorned with flowers, but it contained no water for washing the hands, and Neptune sent great waves that washed over the eyelet-holes of the cabin. But when it was now the middle of the passage and a great roaring arose as of beasts in the Zoological Gardens, and they promised hecatombs to Neptune if he would still the raging of the waves . . .

At any rate I shot him and have him in my snap-shot book, but he was not sea-sick. [1892.]

Homer and the Basins

When I returned from Calais last December, after spending Christmas at Boulogne according to my custom, the sea was rough as I crossed to Dover and, having a cold upon me, I went down into the second-class cabin, cleared the railway books off one of the tables, spread out my papers and continued my translation, or rather analysis, of the Iliad. Several people of all ages and sexes were on the sofas and they soon began to be sea-sick. There was no steward, so I got them each a basin and placed it for them as well as I could; then I sat down again at my table in the middle and went on with my translation while they were sick all round me. I had to get the Iliad well into my head before I began my lecture on The Humour of Homer and I could not afford to throw away a couple of hours, but I doubt whether Homer was ever before translated under such circumstances. [1892.]

The Channel Passage

How holy people look when they are sea-sick! There was a patient Parsee near me who seemed purified once and for ever from all taint of the flesh. Buddha was a low, worldly minded, music-hall comic singer in comparison. He sat like this for a long time until . . . and he made a noise like cows coming home to be milked on an April evening.

The Two Barristers at Ypres

When Gogin and I were taking our Easter holiday this year we went, among other places, to Ypres. We put up at the HÔtel TÊte d’Or and found it exquisitely clean, comfortable and cheap, with a charming old-world, last-century feeling. It was Good Friday, and we were to dine maigre; this was so clearly de rigueur that we did not venture even the feeblest protest.

When we came down to dinner we were told that there were two other gentlemen, also English, who were to dine with us, and in due course they appeared—the one a man verging towards fifty-eight, a kind of cross between Cardinal Manning and the late Mr. John Parry, the other some ten years younger, amiable-looking and, I should say, not so shining a light in his own sphere as his companion. These two sat on one side of the table and we opposite them. There was an air about them both which said: “You are not to try to get into conversation with us; we shall not let you if you do; we dare say you are very good sort of people, but we have nothing in common; so long as you keep quiet we will not hurt you; but if you so much as ask us to pass the melted butter we will shoot you.” We saw this and so, during the first two courses, talked sotto voce to one another, and made no attempt to open up communications.

With the third course, however, there was a new arrival in the person of a portly gentleman of about fifty-five, or from that to sixty, who was told to sit at the head of the table, and accordingly did so. This gentleman had a decided manner and carried quite as many guns as the two barristers (for barristers they were) who sat opposite to us. He had rather a red nose, he dined maigre because he had to, but he did not like it. I do not think he dined maigre often. He had something of the air of a half, if not wholly, broken-down blackguard of a gambler who had seen much but had moved in good society and been accustomed to have things more or less his own way.

This gentleman, who before he went gave us his card, immediately opened up conversation both with us and with our neighbours, addressing his remarks alternately and impartially to each. He said he was an Italian who had the profoundest admiration for England. I said at once—

“Lei non puÒ amare l’Inghilterra piÙ che io amo ed ammiro l’Italia.”

The Manning-Parry barrister looked up with an air of slightly offended surprise. Conversation was from this point carried on between both parties through the Italian who acted, as Gogin said afterwards, like one of those stones in times of plague on which people from the country put their butter and eggs and people from the town their money.

By and by dealings became more direct between us and at last, I know not how, I found myself in full discussion with the elder barrister as to whether Jean Van Eyck’s picture in the National Gallery commonly called “Portrait of John Arnolfini and his Wife” should not properly be held to be a portrait of Van Eyck himself (which, by the way, I suppose there is no doubt that it should not, though I have never gone into the evidence for the present inscription). Then they spoke of the tricks of light practised by De Hooghe; so we rebelled, and said De Hooghe had no tricks—no one less—and that what they called trick was only observation and direct rendering of nature. Then they applauded Tintoretto, and so did we, but still as men who were bowing the knee to Baal. We put in a word for Gaudenzio Ferrari, but they had never heard of him. Then they played Raffaelle as a safe card and we said he was a master of line and a facile decorator, but nothing more.

On this all the fat was in the fire, for they had invested in Raffaelle as believing him to be the Three per Cents of artistic securities. Did I not like the “Madonna di S. Sisto”? I said, “No.” I said the large photo looked well at a distance because the work was so concealed under a dark and sloppy glaze that any one might see into it pretty much what one chose to bring, while the small photo looked well because it had gained so greatly by reduction. I said the Child was all very well as a child but a failure as a Christ, as all infant Christs must be to the end of time. I said the Pope and female saint, whoever she was, were commonplace, as also the angels at the bottom. I admitted the beauty of line in the Virgin’s drapery and also that the work was an effective piece of decoration, but I said it was not inspired by devotional or serious feeling of any kind and for impressiveness could not hold its own with even a very average Madonna by Giovanni Bellini. They appealed to the Italian, but he said there was a great reaction against Raffaelle in Italy now and that few of the younger men thought of him as their fathers had done. Gogin, of course, backed me up, so they were in a minority. It was not at all what they expected or were accustomed to. I yielded wherever I could and never differed without giving a reason which they could understand. They must have seen that there was no malice prepense, but it always came round to this in the end that we did not agree with them.

Then they played Leonardo Da Vinci. I had not intended saying how cordially I dislike him, but presently they became enthusiastic about the head of the Virgin in the “Vierge aux Rochers” in our Gallery. I said Leonardo had not succeeded with this head; he had succeeded with the angel’s head lower down to the right (I think) of the picture, but had failed with the Madonna. They did not like my talking about Leonardo Da Vinci as now succeeding and now failing, just like other people. I said it was perhaps fortunate that we knew the “Last Supper” only by engravings and might fancy the original to have been more full of individuality than the engravings are, and I greatly questioned whether I should have liked the work if I had seen it as it was when Leonardo left it. As for his caricatures he should not have done them, much less preserved them; the fact of his having set store by them was enough to show that there was a screw loose about him somewhere and that he had no sense of humour. Still, I admitted that I liked him better than I did Michael Angelo.

Whatever we touched upon the same fatality attended us. Fortunately neither evolution nor politics came under discussion, nor yet, happily, music, or they would have praised Beethoven and very likely Mendelssohn too. They did begin to run Nuremberg and it was on the tip of my tongue to say, “Yes, but there’s the flavour of Faust and Goethe”; however, I did not. In course of time the sÉance ended, though not till nearly ten o’clock, and we all went to bed.

Next morning we saw them at breakfast and they were quite tame. As Gogin said afterwards:

“They came and sat on our fingers and ate crumbs out of our hands.” [1887.]

At Montreuil-sur-Mer

Jones and I lunched at the HÔtel de France where we found everything very good. As we were going out, the landlady, getting on towards eighty, with a bookish nose, pale blue eyes and a Giovanni Bellini’s Loredano Loredani kind of expression, came up to us and said, in sweetly apologetic accents:—

“Avez-vous donc dÉjeunÉ À peu prÈs selon vos idÉes, Messieurs?”

It would have been too much for her to suppose that she had been able to give us a repast that had fully realised our ideals, still she hoped that these had been, at any rate, adumbrated in the luncheon she had provided. Dear old thing: of course they had and a great deal more than adumbrated. [26 December, 1901.]