ezing of a musical-box, ridiculously
sweet:--

Oh, don't you remember the days when we roamed,
Sweet Phillis, by lane and by lea?

Whatever you want in Chelsea--that you will find, assuming, of course,
the possession of the Chelsea temperament. Whistler discovered her
silvern beauty when he first saw her reclining by the river, beautifying
that which beautifies her. All about Chelsea the colours seem to chime
with their backgrounds as though they loved them; and when the lamps are
lighted, flinging soft shadows on sixteenth and seventeenth-century
gables and doorways and passages, then she becomes a place of wonder, a
Bagdad, a treasure-ground for the artist.

And the artists have discovered her. Chelsea has much to show.
Hampstead, Kensington, Mayfair--these be rich in gilt-trapping names,
but no part of England can produce such a shining array of names, whose
greatness owes nothing to time, place, or social circumstance: the names
of those whose greatness is of the soul, and who have shaken the world
with the beauty they have revealed to us. But Art has now taken
possession of her, and it is as the studio of the artist that Chelsea is
known to-day. Step this way, if you please. We draw the curtain. _Vie de
Boheme!_ But not, mark you, the _vie de Boheme_ of Murger. True,
Rodolphe and Marcel are here, and Mimi and Musette. But the studio is
not the squalid garret that we know. We have changed all that. Rodolphe
writes light verse for the "largest circulations." Mimi draws fashion
plates, and dresses like the Duchess of the novelettes. Marcel--well,
Marcel of Chelsea may be poor, but his is only a relative poverty. He is
poor in so far as he dines for two shillings instead of five. The Marcel
of to-day who is accustomed to skipping a meal by stress of
circumstances doesn't live in Chelsea. He simply couldn't do it; look at
the rents. He lives in Walworth Road or Kentish Town. No; there is a
_vie de Boheme_ at Chelsea, but it is a Bohemia of coffee liqueurs and
Turkish cigarettes.

The beginnings of the delectable suburb are obscure. It seems to have
assumed importance on the day when Henry VIII "acquired" its manor,
which led to the building of numerous sycophantic houses. The Duchess of
Monmouth had a residence here, with the delightful John Gay as
secretary. Can one imagine a modern Duchess with a modern poet as
secretary? The same house was later occupied by the gouty dyspeptic
Smollett, who wrote