after I have talked to you for two or three hours you will see that I am
right," quoth my strange new friend, while at the prospect of two or
three hours' conversation I experienced a distinctly sinking feeling.
But with the next few words she uttered, the sinking feeling vanished,
to be superseded by one of deep interest. For some years, she told me,
she had been constantly communing in the spirit with her husband and
Lord Byron--rival spirits. Her husband was jealous of the poet and of
her correspondence with him, and she showed me a series of letters
dictated by that great man in the dark--all sorts of beautiful letters
on all subjects, ranging from tennis to theology. I sat there I know not
how long listening to this wonderful woman; and also--it may seem
foolish--I felt strangely comforted and encouraged to hear her say so
convincingly that I was to make a success, for at that period I had
never painted a picture, and the whole thing was, as it were, an
experiment. It was many weeks before I could forget that old lady and
her monkey. All through my travels the memory of that monkey's
eyes--beady, blinking, never changing--followed me, and stimulated me.

With Tokio and Yokohama I was disappointed. I had the privilege of
attending the Mikado's garden party; but the pleasure of the really
beautiful grounds and the cherry-blossom was spoilt by the Western dress
of the guests and of high personages--a hideous substitute for the
Japs' own graceful garments. Yokohama I found especially unsympathetic.
The bulk of the Europeans I met there seemed to be spending half their
time in abusing Japan and everything Japanese. Strange that a colony of
such unrefined, uneducated people should presume to criticise these
artists! Tokio, with its formal dinners and conventionalities, was much
the same; and with epithets such as "Crank" and "Madman" hurled after
me, I fled to Kioto, there to lose myself in endless and undreamt-of
joys.

In Japan there are flowers blooming all the year round: the country is a
veritable paradise of flowers. When a certain flower is at its height,
whether it be the wistaria, the chrysanthemum, or the azalea, that is a
signal for a national holiday, and, dropping business and all such minor
considerations, the whole of Japan turns out and streams through the
parks and through the country to picnic in the sunshine, under the
flowers. I arrived in Japan in the spring, and the country was pink with
blossom.