p coat with waist and skirts, his opera hat made to
special order by a Bond Street expert on an 1850 last. And then, before
setting off, he would talk of some fellow-artist who was a little down
and out, and wonder whether some of his drawings might not be bought at
a few guineas apiece. Then to book, as it were, such an order gave salt
to his evening, and if the evening meant contact with some of his own
exquisite work, a word of admiration was taken with that wistful
gratitude that it is now almost unbearable to remember.

The theatre is a complex, co-operative affair, and it is idle to inquire
who gives more than another to it. But on one side of its effort nobody
in these later years has fought for light and beauty more surely and
courageously than Claud Lovat Fraser. Like every fine artist, he was
sometimes a little puzzled, a little hurt, that the critics could not
see the clear motives inspiring his work. But the purpose never
faltered. _As You Like It_, _The Beggar's Opera_, _If_, the exquisite
designs for Madame Karsavina's later ballets--these made it plain enough
that a new genius of extraordinary power and fertility was at work on
the stage. With a knowledge of tradition that combined the widest
learning with profound intuition, Lovat Fraser in his design touched the
life of five hundred years with the English spirit of our own time, with
a certainty that every one of his colleagues, I know, will be proud to
allow was beyond them all. The fertility of which I speak was perhaps
his peculiar distinction, and it had no touch of common facility. He
could not draw a line that was not hard with thought and rooted in
imaginative decision. But he could invent with immense rapidity. It was
the old, though rare, story. Alike in his theatre design and his tender
landscape, beauty of spirit flowed in everything he did into beauty of
execution. He was a man in whose presence everything mean or slipshod
withered.

But perhaps it is most fitting at this time that we should think of our
dead friend in yet another way. We are governed by two influences, our
own character, and example. For each man his own character is for his
meditation apart, but of example we may sometimes speak together in the
open with profit. Those of us who live always striving towards creative
effort believe passionately that the thing towards which we aim makes
for all that is most chivalrous and most intelligent in life, that it is
indeed the one t