vagant tales, he
would confide the most paradoxical philosophy, the most topsy-turvy
ethics, with a fantastic seriousness, never approached except in the
Arabian Nights of Prince Florizel for the puppets of whose adventures,
as for Spring-Heeled Jack, he was the sitter. It was a delightful
accomplishment, but dangerous when applied to actual life. I cannot
forget his advice once to a friend on the verge of a serious step that
might sink him into nobody could foretell what social quagmire. Bob
could see in it only the adventure and the joy of adventure, not the
price fate was bound to demand for it. To him the mistake was the unlit
lamp, the ungirt loin--the adventure lost--and, life being what it is, I
am not sure that he was not right.

I think his talk struck me as the more extraordinary because he looked
so little like it. In the Nineties he had taken to the Jaegers that
usually stand for vegetarianism, teetotalism, hygiene--all the drab
things of life. He wore even a Jaeger hat and Jaeger boots--as complete
an advertisement for Jaeger as old Joseph Finsbury was for his Doctor.
No costume could have seemed so altogether out of character with the
fantastic, delightful, extravagant creature inside of it, though,
really, none could have been more in character. It had always been Bob's
way to play the game of life by dressing the part of the moment. Before
I met him I had been told of his influence over Louis Stevenson, whose
debt to him for ideas and conceits was said to be immeasurable, and
nobody who knew Bob has doubted it. I feel convinced that Louis owed to
him also his touch of the fantastic, the unusual, in dress, since it
belonged so entirely to Bob and was no less entirely in keeping with his
attitude towards the universe and his place in it--his tendency of
always probing the real for the romantic.

Knowing one cousin and the books of the other, I should say it was Bob
who, in their childhood, originated the drama of the Lantern-Bearers and
the evil-smelling lantern under the great coat, symbol of adventure and
daring--that it was Bob who, in their gay youth, evolved the black
flannel shirts to which they owed the honour of being, with Lord
Salisbury, the only Britons ever refused admission to the Casino at
Monte Carlo, and which were worn by the Stennis Brothers in _The
Wrecker_,--that it was Bob who impressed upon Louis the importance of
being dressed for the scene until he surpassed himself in his amazing