or at least whiskey and cigars behind a screen. The
New English men compromised by staying away, but they clung to the
lunch, a feast chiefly for their commissionaire and their salesman and
the grey-haired critic, a survival, who could not reconcile himself to
change and whom I heard once, in another gallery, pronounce the show
admirable, "perfect really, your show, but for one thing missing--a
decanter and cigars on the table." Furse, who had not heard the critic's
cry for reform and could not understand his banishment, lingered in the
passage, button-holing everybody who came out, trying to pick up a hint
as to what we were all going to say about him. He considered himself a
red-hot rebel and the prophetic picture of him scaling Academic heights
annoyed him extremely, though he so soon became an Associate of the
Academy that I think, had he lived, time would have proved the prophets
right.

Walter Sickert's voice, too, was frequently heard at the beginning of a
Thursday night, but his promise of brilliancy never struck me as leading
anywhere in particular, my personal impression being that with his talk,
as with his art, the fulfilment scarcely justified the promise.

D.S. MacColl, young arch-rebel at the time little as the formal official
of to-day suggests it, his bombarding of the Victorian door directed
chiefly from the sober columns of the _Spectator_, and later of the
_Saturday Review_, was always well armed with words for the Thursday
night battle, conscientious in distributing his blows and shaping them
in strict deference to his sense of style, just a touch of the preacher
perhaps in his voice and in his fight for art and freedom, as he was the
first to acknowledge; more than once I have heard him explain
apologetically that his right place was the pulpit for which he had been
designed.

Arthur Tomson, one of the best friends in the world, was a spirited
revolutionary who went to the length of founding and editing a paper of
his own to promote revolution--the _Art Weekly_, which, not being able
to afford illustrations, conducted its warfare solely by its articles,
and strong, fearless, knock-you-down articles they were since we all
wrote for the paper while it lasted. It did not last long, however, but
shared the fate of most revolutionary sheets with more brains than
capital. Arthur Tomson himself, out of print, was a quiet, if staunch
fighter, another of the old Thursday night group who knew that his yea