Lytton's Afghan policy. How could I do a Tory leader? Well, I did a
neutral-tinted thing, with citations from Aristophanes! I found
presently some other scribes for G. B.

What a paper that was! I have heard that G. B. paid in handfuls of gold,
in handfuls of bank-notes. Nobody ever read _London_, or advertised in
it, or heard of it. It was full of the most wonderfully clever verses in
old French forms. They were (it afterwards appeared) by Mr. W. E.
Henley. Mr. Stevenson himself astonished and delighted the public of
_London_ (that is, the contributors) by his "New Arabian Nights." Nobody
knew about them but ourselves, a fortunate few. Poor G. B. died and Mr.
Henley became the editor. I may not name the contributors, the flower of
the young lions, elderly lions now, there is a new race. But one lion, a
distinguished and learned lion, said already that fiction, not essay, was
Mr. Stevenson's field. Well, both fields were his, and I cannot say
whether I would be more sorry to lose _Virginibus Puerisque_ and "Studies
of Men and Books," or "Treasure Island" and "Catriona." With the decease
of G. B., Pactolus dried up in its mysterious sources, _London_ struggled
and disappeared.

Mr. Stevenson was in town, now and again, at the old Saville Club, in
Saville Row, which had the tiniest and blackest of smoking-rooms. Here,
or somewhere, he spoke to me of an idea of a tale, a Man who was Two Men.
I said "'William Wilson' by Edgar Poe," and declared that it would never
do. But his "Brownies," in a vision of the night, showed him a central
scene, and he wrote "Jekyll and Hyde." My "friend of these days and of
all days," Mr. Charles Longman, sent me the manuscript. In a very
commonplace London drawing-room, at 10.30 P.M., I began to read it.
Arriving at the place where Utterson the lawyer, and the butler wait
outside the Doctor's room, I threw down the manuscript and fled in a