in London, where a membership in the Savile Club added to
his enjoyment. Here he met several interesting men, among them Edmund
William Gosse and Sidney Colvin, both writers and literary critics, with
whom he became very intimate.

"My experience of Stevenson," writes Mr. Gosse, "during these first
years was confined to London upon which he would make sudden piratical
descents, staying a few days or weeks and melting into thin air again.
He was much at my house, and it must be told that my wife and I, as
young married people, had possessed ourselves of a house too large for
our slender means immediately to furnish. The one person who thoroughly
approved of our great bare absurd drawing room was Louis, who very
earnestly dealt with us on the immorality of chairs and tables, and
desired us to sit always, as he delighted to sit, upon hassocks on the
floor. Nevertheless, as armchairs and settees straggled into existence,
he handsomely consented to use them, although never in the usual way,
but with his legs thrown sidewise over the arms of them, or the head of
a sofa treated as a perch. In particular, a certain shelf with cupboards
below, attached to a bookcase, is worn with the person of Stevenson, who
would spend half an evening, while passionately discussing some question
... leaping sidewise in a seated posture to the length of this shelf and
back again.

"... These were the days when he most frequented the Savile Club, and
the lightest and most vivacious part of him there came to the surface.
He might spend the morning in work or business, and would then come to
the club for luncheon. If he were so fortunate as to find a congenial
companion disengaged, or to induce them to throw over their engagements,
he would lead him off to the smoking-room, and there spend an afternoon
in the highest spirits and the most brilliant and audacious talk.

"He was simply bubbling with quips and jests. I am anxious that his
laughter-loving mood should not be forgotten, because later on it was
partly, but I think never wholly quenched, by ill health, responsibility
and advance of years.

"His private thoughts and prospects must often have been of the
gloomiest, but he seems to have borne his unhappiness with a courage as
high as he ever afterwards displayed."

Sidney Colvin he met some time previous while visiting relatives in
England, and their friendship was renewed when they met again in
London; a friendship which lasted througho