the soil. Dons and
undergraduates stood around, rather pale, discussing nothing but it.
Whence came it, this meteorite? From Paris. Its name? Will
Rothenstein. Its aim? To do a series of twenty-four portraits in
lithograph. These were to be published from the Bodley Head, London.
The matter was urgent. Already the warden of A, and the master of B,
and the Regius Professor of C had meekly "sat." Dignified and
doddering old men who had never consented to sit to any one could not
withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue; he invited: he
did not invite; he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore
spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was a
wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Daudet and
the Goncourts. He knew every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart.
He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had
polished off his selection of dons, he was going to include a few
undergraduates. It was a proud day for me when I--I was included. I
liked Rothenstein not less than I feared him; and there arose between
us a friendship that has grown ever warmer, and been more and more
valued by me, with every passing year.

At the end of term he settled in, or, rather, meteoritically into,
London. It was to him I owed my first knowledge of that
forever-enchanting little world-in-itself, Chelsea, and my first
acquaintance with Walter Sickert and other August elders who dwelt
there. It was Rothenstein that took me to see, in Cambridge Street,
Pimlico, a young man whose drawings were already famous among the
few--Aubrey Beardsley by name. With Rothenstein I paid my first visit
to the Bodley Head. By him I was inducted into another haunt of
intellect and daring, the domino-room of the Cafe Royal.

There, on that October evening--there, in that exuberant vista of
gilding and crimson velvet set amidst all those opposing mirrors and
upholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the painted
and pagan ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation
broken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoes
shuffled on marble tables, I drew a deep breath and, "This indeed,"
said I to myself, "is life!" (Forgive me that theory. Remember the
waging of even the South African War was not yet.)

It was the hour before dinner. We drank vermuth. Those who knew
Rothenstein were pointing him out to those who knew him on