ng until the very next train meant the very next
day. But before long I learned that there was no romance about it, that
it was grim reality, the grimmer to me because I had taken it so
lightly. His illness was mere rumour at first, for few people went to
his house in far Kew to see him. It was more than rumour when he ceased
altogether to appear in the galleries, for we knew he was dependent
upon art criticism for his butter, if not for most of his bread. I had
not got as far as belief in his illness before the news came that he had
set out upon the greatest adventure of all and that no more would
Buckingham Street be transfigured in the light of his romancing,
glorified by his inexhaustible fancy. I owed him much: the charm of the
personality of "this delightful and wonderful creature" in Henley's
words of him, pleasure from his talk, stimulus from his criticism, and I
wish I had had the common sense to do what I could to make him live as a
pleasure and a stimulus to others. My mistake on our Thursday nights was
to keep my cuff clean, my note-book empty.

[Illustration: Sketch by Aubrey Beardsley
HENRY HARLAND]

V

In the case of Henry Harland my conscience makes me no such reproach. If
ever a man became his own Boswell it was he, though I do not suppose
anything was further from his mind when he sat down to write. But as he
talked, so he wrote--he could not help himself--and all who have read
the witty, gay, whimsical, fantastic talk of his heroes and heroines,
especially in his last three books, have listened to him. He, no less
than his Adrian Willes--even if quite another man was the model--never
understood how it was possible for people to be bored. Flaubert once
said in a letter, "Life is so hideous that the only way of enduring it
is to avoid it." But Harland believed in plunging into it headlong and
getting everything that is to be got out of it. He had eyes to see that
"life is just one sequence of many-coloured astonishments", and the
colours were the gayer when he came to our Thursday nights because he
was still so young.

He and Mrs. Harland had been in London only a few years, his career as
Sydney Luska was behind him, his career as Henry Harland was before him,
he was full of life, energy, enthusiasm, deep in long novels, busy for
the _Daily Chronicle_, writing as hard as he talked, and he talked every
bit as hard as Bob Stevenson.

Like Bob, he seemed to love talk more than anything, but he must