not be able to do that. Yet, sooner or later, write about him I
must. You will see, in due course, that I have no option. And I
may as well get the thing done now.

In the Summer Term of '93 a bolt from the blue flashed down
on Oxford. It drove deep, it hurtlingly embedded itself in the
soil. Dons and undergraduates stood around, rather pale,
discussing nothing but it. Whence came it, this meteorite?
From Paris. Its name? Will Rothenstein. Its aim? To do a
series of twenty-four portraits in lithograph. These were to be
published from the Bodley Head, London. The matter was
urgent. Already the Warden of A, and the Master of B, and the
Regius Professor of C, had meekly `sat.' Dignified and
doddering old men, who had never consented to sit to any one,
could not withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue:
he invited; he did not invite: he commanded. He was twenty-
one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any
other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of ideas.
He knew Whistler. He knew Edmond de Goncourt. He knew
every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in
Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off
his selection of dons, he was going to include a few
undergraduates. It was a proud day for me when I--I--was
included. I liked Rothenstein not less than I feared him; and
there arose between us a friendship that has grown ever warmer,
and been more and more valued by me, with every passing year.

At the end of Term he settled in--or rather, meteoritically into--
London. It was to him I owed my first knowledge of that
forever enchanting little world-in-itself, Chelsea, and my first