Not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. For his
sake, poor fellow, I should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. It
is ill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames
without making him ridiculous? Or, rather, how am I to hush up the
horrid fact that he WAS ridiculous? I shall 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 withtand 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 Daudet and the
Goncourts. 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.