1.30 with whatever book he happened to be
writing.

On three days of the week he dined in a restaurant on his way home, and
on the other days he dined in his chambers where his laundress had cooked
his dinner. At two o'clock Alfred returned (having been home to dinner
with his wife and children) and got tea ready for him. He then wrote
letters and attended to his accounts till 3.45, when he smoked his first
cigarette. He used to smoke a great deal, but, believing it to be bad
for him, took to cigarettes instead of pipes, and gradually smoked less
and less, making it a rule not to begin till some particular hour, and
pushing this hour later and later in the day, till it settled itself at
3.45. There was no water laid on in his rooms, and every day he fetched
one can full from the tap in the court, Alfred fetching the rest. When
anyone expostulated with him about cooking his own breakfast and fetching
his own water, he replied that it was good for him to have a change of
occupation. This was partly the fact, but the real reason, which he
could not tell everyone, was that he shrank from inconveniencing anybody;
he always paid more than was necessary when anything was done for him,
and was not happy then unless he did some of the work himself.

At 5.30 he got his evening meal, he called it his tea, and it was little
more than a facsimile of breakfast. Alfred left in time to post the
letters before six. Butler then wrote music till about 8, when he came
to see me in Staple Inn, returning to Clifford's Inn by about 10. After
a light supper, latterly not more than a piece of toast and a glass of
milk, he played one game of his own particular kind of Patience, prepared
his breakfast things and fire ready for the next morning, smoked his
seventh and last cigarette, and went to bed at eleven o'clock.

He was fond of the theatre, but avoided serious pieces. He preferred to
take his Shakespeare from the book, finding that the spirit of the plays
rather evaporated under modern theatrical treatment. In one of his books
he brightens up the old illustration of _Hamlet_ without the Prince of
Denmark by putting it thus: "If the character of Hamlet be entirely
omitted, the play must suffer, even though Henry Irving himself be cast
for the title-role." Anyone going to the theatre in this spirit would be
likely to be less disappointed by performances that were comic or even
frankly farcical. Latterly, when he grew slightly de