s of "The Yellow
Book" and later of "The Savoy" he had never a word but of scorn. He
wasn't resented. It didn't occur to anybody that he or his Catholic
diabolism mattered. When, in the autumn of '96, he brought out (at his
own expense, this time) a third book, his last book, nobody said a word
for or against it. I meant, but forgot, to buy it. I never saw it,
and am ashamed to say I don't even remember what it was called. But I
did, at the time of its publication, say to Rothenstein that I thought
poor old Soames was really a rather tragic figure, and that I believed
he would literally die for want of recognition. Rothenstein scoffed.
He said I was trying to get credit for a kind heart which I didn't
possess; and perhaps this was so. But at the private view of the New
English Art Club, a few weeks later, I beheld a pastel portrait of
"Enoch Soames, Esq." It was very like him, and very like Rothenstein
to have done it. Soames was standing near it, in his soft hat and his
waterproof cape, all through the afternoon. Anybody who knew him would
have recognized the portrait at a glance, but nobody who didn't know
him would have recognized the portrait from its bystander: it "existed"
so much more than he; it was bound to. Also, it had not that
expression of faint happiness which on that day was discernible, yes,
in Soames's countenance. Fame had breathed on him. Twice again in the
course of the month I went to the New English, and on both occasions
Soames himself was on view there. Looking back, I regard the close of
that exhibition as having been virtually the close of his career. He
had felt the breath of Fame against his cheek--so late, for such a
little while; and at its withdrawal he gave in, gave up, gave out. He,
who had never looked strong or well, looked ghastly now--a shadow of
the shade he had once been. He still frequented the domino-room, but
having lost all wish to excite curiosity, he no longer read books
there. "You read only at the museum now?" I asked, with attempted
cheerfulness. He said he never went there now. "No absinthe there,"
he muttered. It was the sort of thing that in old days he would have
said for effect; but it carried conviction now. Absinthe, erst but a
point in the "personality" he had striven so hard to build up, was
solace and necessity now. He no longer called it "la sorciere
glauque." He had shed away all his French phrases. He had become a
plain, unvarnished P