c Society. He
was like a very big fish out of water; he was comparatively thin,
however, in those days, nearly forty years ago. We had been much
intrigued by the weekly contribution of an unknown writer to "The
Speaker" and "The Nation"--brilliant work, and my wife and I,
independently, came to the conclusion when we heard this young man
speak that it must be he. The style was unmistakable.

I thought of writing to him to congratulate him on his speech, but
before I could do so, I got a letter from him, saying that he was
coming to hear me in the same series in a week or so; it was thus we
first became acquainted, and the acquaintance ripened into a warm
friendship with us both. He and his brother Cecil were in and out of
our flat in Paddington Green, where I was assistant curate. He was
genial, bubbling over with jokes, at which he roared with laughter.

The question was becoming insistent: when would there be enough money
for Frances and Gilbert to get married?

In one letter Frances asks him what he thinks of Omar Khayyam. He
replies at great length, and concludes:

You see the result of asking me for an opinion. I have written it
very hurriedly: if I had paused I might make an essay of it.
(Commercial Pig!) Never mind, sweetheart, that Essay might be a
sauce-pan some day--or at any rate a cheap toast-rack.

Of his belief in God, in man, in goodness, as against the pessimist
outlook of the day, Gilbert, as we have seen, felt profound
certitude. That his outlook was one that held him back from many
fields of opportunity he was already partly conscious. A fragment of
a letter to Frances expresses this feeling.

. . . I find I cannot possibly come tonight as my Canadian uncle
keeps his last night in England in a sort of family party. And I
abide by my father's house--said our Lady of the Snows.

I have just had a note from Rex, asking me, with characteristic
precision, if I can produce a play in the style of Maeterlinck by
6.50 this afternoon, or words to that effect. The idea is full of
humour. He remarks, as a matter of fact that there is just a remote
chance of his getting the Stage Society to act my play of The Wild
Knight. This opens to me a vista of quite new ambition. Why only at
the Stage Society?--I see a visionary programme.

The Wild Knight . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Charles Hawtree
Captain Redfeather . . . . . .