Gilbert who can do it for you!

He lives now in Bruges, that beautiful dead city of canals and Hans
Memlings, and when I was there a few years ago I saw him. I shall never
forget his welcome! I let him know of my arrival, and within a few hours
he sent a carriage to my hotel to bring me to his house. The seats of
the _fiacre_ were hidden by flowers! He had not long been in his house,
and there were packing-cases still lying about in the spacious, desolate
rooms looking into an old walled garden. But on the wall of the room in
which we dined was a sketch by Raffaele, and the dinner, chiefly cooked
by Mr. Gilbert himself,--the Savoy at its best!

Some people regret that he has "buried" himself in Bruges, and that
England has practically lost her best sculptor. I think that he will do
some of the finest work of his life there, and meanwhile England should
be proud of Alfred Gilbert.

In a city which can boast of some of the ugliest and weakest statues in
the world, he has, in the fountain erected to the memory of the good
Lord Shaftesbury in Piccadilly Circus, created a thing of beauty which
will be a joy to future generations of Londoners.

The other day Mr. Frampton, one of the leaders of the younger school of
English sculptors, said of the Gilbert fountain that it could hold its
own with the finest work of the same kind done by the masters of the
past. "They tell me," he said, "that it is inappropriate to its
surroundings. It is. That's the fault of the surroundings. In a more
enlightened age than this, Piccadilly Circus will be destroyed and
rebuilt merely as a setting for Gilbert's jewel."

"The name of Gilbert is honored in this house," went on Mr. Frampton. We
were at the time looking at Henry Irving's death-mask which Mr. Frampton
had taken, and a replica of which he had just given me. I thought of
Henry's living face, alive with raffish humor and mischief, presiding at
a supper in the Beefsteak Room--and of Alfred Gilbert's Beethoven-like
head with its splendid lion-like mane of tawny hair. Those days were
dead indeed.

Now it seems to me that I did not appreciate them half enough--that I
did not observe enough. Yet players should observe, if only for their
work's sake. The trouble is that only certain types of men and
women--the expressive types which are useful to us--appeal to our
observation.

I remember one supper very well at which Bastien-Lepage was present, and
"Miss Sarah" too. The artist was lo