E. V. Lucas: The Passing of a Wit

I

MORE years ago than I care to remember, Horace Traubel, Walt Whitman’s Boswell, showed me a letter written by Emerson to Charles Sumner, then Senator from Massachusetts, introducing to him the ‘Good Gray Poet.’ On the back of the letter Whitman had written: ‘I never presented this letter, I presented myself.’ The sight of this human document confirmed in me an existing prejudice against all letters of introduction — calling upon a stranger with such a letter seemed too much like a request for something which might easily cause embarrassment to both parties. So from that day to this I have made it a rule never to give or present letters of introduction if I could avoid it. Before leaving the subject, may I refer to a recent experience?

My telephone rang one evening and a lady at the other end of the wire informed me that she would like very much to see my library, that she had a letter of introduction to me from — I did not catch the name. Now ‘seeing a library’ is a silly business — one can see a picture gallery, but seeing a library is a difficult matter: books have to be shown. Wearily I said that my home was eighteen miles from Philadelphia, from whence the call originated; however, if the lady could have herself conveyed by train or motor to my house I should be glad to show her any books in which she might be interested.

The next day a very large woman presented herself at my house with a letter. I put the letter aside for future reading and got down to my work. Did my caller have any special interest? Was she interested in any particular author? No, she merely wanted to see my library. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘here it is, look at it.’ She said it was a nice library. I agreed. Looking at a portrait of BosweIl, by Reynolds, she remarked, ‘That’s George Washington, I presume.’ I asked her what was the occasion of her visit to Philadelphia, and she told me she came to play hockey, and that, while she did not wish to boast, she was the champion woman hockey player of the world. ‘It is a game, I think,’ I said. ‘Game!’ screamed the Amazon; ‘I should rather think it is.’ ‘Do you play it with cards or dice?’ I inquired, sweetly. The lady snorted — and soon had seen enough of my library. After she had gone I opened the letter of introduction, and I could not make out the signature of the writer or the name of the person introduced.

And now let me recall that when someone — I have forgotten who (it was over forty years ago) — gave me such a letter to the late E. V. Lucas, I, in the words of Walt Whitman, presented myself, telling him the story. I found him to be a quiet, reserved man, somewhat younger than myself, occupying a desk in the office of Punch in Bouverie Street, London. I soon made clear that the only excuse I had for calling on him was my interest in Charles Lamb, which, while it might not equal his, was nevertheless very keen. Gradually Lucas overcame his reserve and finally asked me to have lunch with him, which invitation I, of course, declined. In talking to him I told him that I had recently sought the grave of Charles Lamb and that of his sister in Edmonton Churchyard, and I was shocked to find them, after considerable search, overgrown with weeds and nettles. He said that it was disgraceful that the grave of perhaps the bestbeloved author in our language should be so neglected. In this complete agreement we parted.

Upon my next visit to London I again called on Lucas, and he asked me if I would not make another journey to Edmonton Churchyard and tell him if I was pleased with the way in which Lamb’s grave had been cared for. I told him that I had done so and expressed my great satisfaction; although Lucas would not admit it, I felt quite sure that it was he who had had the grave put to rights. I offered to make a contribution to a fund the income of which should keep the grave in order in perpetuity, but I was told that he did not think this would be permitted. In brief, I got the impression that Lucas did not wish to share his pious undertaking with anyone.

We had another common interest — our love for London, which he of course knew well, although I remember that years later I caught him up on the ‘Old Vic.’ It became my habit whenever I was in London to call on Lucas, but in those days my visits to London were infrequent; he was a very busy man, always working, perhaps in the reading room of the British Museum, or frequently he would be out of town securing data for his ‘Wanderer’ books. The result was that our acquaintance languished, and finally ceased altogether.

Then came the war, after which Lucas made a trip around the world, entering this country by the Golden Gate. Roving East and Roving West was the result. In New York he met Eugene Saxton, of the firm of Harper and Brothers, and I am indebted to Saxton for bringing him to see me; it may be that Lucas had forgotten my name and only thought of me as a man having some interesting Lamb material which he would be glad to see. In any event, one fine Sunday afternoon, to my great surprise, I saw Saxton and Lucas walking up the drive to my house. Lucas was as amazed to see me as I was to see him, and his first words were ‘I do not need an introduction to you at this late day; we have known each other for years.’

In the course of conversation it developed that he was in search of material for his monumental Life of Edwin Abbey, upon which he was then engaged. Abbey’s frescoes in the new Capitol at Harrisburg, left unfinished at the time of his death, had been completed by Violet Oakley, and Lucas wanted to see them. I insisted that he stay with us, and I am able to date the time of this visit exactly, for I then got him to sign my well-worn copy of the first edition of his Life of Charles Lamb, which he did ‘on the first day of Spring, 1920.’

Although a book collector, I had never made a point of collecting Lucas; his output was so enormous. An indefatigable writer, he put his name to an immense number of books of travel, essays, verses, anthologies, and tales which can hardly be called novels, so gentle and reflective is their movement. When I came to know him well, he made no secret of the fact that he could not write a novel; he called his little fictions ‘stories’ — for the most part without plot and with small attempt at character drawing, but nevertheless delightful reading. In his stories nothing much happens; someone misses a train, perhaps, or is caught without an umbrella in a heavy shower, but this serves the author’s purpose admirably, enabling him to charm his readers with his pleasant fancies — kindly, wise, witty, and frequently illuminating. I never cared much for Arnold Bennett; we usually met — when we met at all — head on, but one day at his club in London, under the soothing influence of an excellent lunch, he spoke of Lucas in the highest terms, and it was his habit to praise few. He said his Life of Lamb was a masterpiece, better than Boswell, and of his novels, so-called, the best was Over Bemerton’s. In this opinion I agreed, putting in a word, however, for Rose and Rose.

Presently, as a book collector will, I set out to discover what was Lucas’s first book, and finally I found it: a tiny little volume of verse entitled Sparks from a Flint. I cannot now remember when or where I secured this rare item. Lucas, in his autobiography, Reading, Writing, and Remembering, refers to the joy of every author upon the appearance of his first book. No author, he says, can possibly enjoy twice the thrill of seeing himself in print for the first time, but frequently this pride of authorship gives way to a feeling of shame, and so it was with him and his Sparks. He did everything he could to conceal its existence, and told me he was overcome with agony at the mere mention of it. He had made it a rule to buy up all the copies he could find and destroy them. But a few copies escaped — they always do; mine is one of them, and when I asked him to sign it for me, this is what he wrote: ‘With shame I confess that this was my first book. E. V. Lucas. Jan. 17, 1923,’ accompanying it with a note of the same date, which reads: ‘You old devil, how dare you dig up this old book. I spent £17 in suppressing it about five years ago. Tell me when you come back from Paris because I always want to see you (plural). E.V.L.’

Some years later he gave me a copy of his second book, Catherine Anwill: Her Book, privately printed for Arthur L. Humphreys, MDCCCXCV. The inscription in this reads: ‘To A. E. N. from E. V. L. September 26, 1935, forty years late.’ This was also verse, and in his autobiography he says: ‘I seem to have written no prose before I was twenty-one.’

II

But when all is said and done, Lucas’s books are ephemera — had he not made himself the authority on Charles Lamb, they would have no value whatever. His visiting card to posterity is his Life of Charles Lamb; originally published in 1905, it, with his Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb (three volumes, 1935), will never be superseded. I had an opportunity of making this declaration of faith at a dinner in London several years ago; the occasion was a meeting of the Johnson Club: it was an anniversary of an event of importance in Johnson’s life — I have forgotten just what. A memorial sermon was preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral by the Dean, from the text, ‘Let us now praise famous men.’ The bells of the city churches were pealed, filling the air with their confused melody; there was a meeting of Johnsonians, followed by a dinner in the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, one of the smallest and certainly the most beautiful of the Guild Halls in London. It was built by Inigo Jones, and boasts a famous picture by Holbein, ‘The Presentation of the Charter by Henry VIII’ (surgeons were originally barbers); it is a large oblong picture showing the King on a sort of throne in the centre, while on each side of him the recipients of the charter, eighteen in number, are kneeling — all are portraits. Lucas told me that barbers and surgeons (and physicians) were not legally separated until 1745, since which time surgery is regarded as a distinguished profession, while barbers have become tradesmen.

Lucas, not long before, — I think upon the death of Sir James Barrie, — had been made one of the trustees of the Johnson House in Gough Square. Be this as it may, we sat down to an excellent dinner, which was followed, inevitably, by speeches in praise of Johnson and his biographer. The general opinion was, in the words of Macaulay, that ‘Boswell had no second.’ When it came my turn to say something I begged leave to differ with this generally accepted opinion: there was, I said, a second biography and a second biographer, and this place of honor I claimed for my friend Mr. E. V. Lucas, whose Life of Charles Lamb filled the most exacting requirements. I opined that it had become a mere convention to place Lockhart and his biography of Scott second to Boswell; that it might once have been entitled to second place, but that was before Lucas’s Lamb had appeared. So saying, I looked across the table to where Lucas was sitting, and to my surprise I saw him get up and leave the table and the room, not to be seen again that evening. Early next morning I received a note from him, saying he could not sit still and hear himself so bepraised — or it might have been the fish.

This is a long introduction to the simple statement that Lucas continued to be the most modest, the most retiring man I ever met. One of the best-known men in London, interested in everything, he went everywhere, and was a member of many clubs: literary, social, sporting, and otherwise. As evidence of the catholicity of his tastes, I have seen a scries of caricatures by Max Beerbohm of Lucas discussing the church with a bishop at the Athenæum, the stage with an actor at the Garrick, cricket at Lord’s, food at the Beefsteak, and so on.

One day Lucas called on me and said that he proposed to give me a little dinner, by way of return for something I had been able to do for him. He asked me to choose the place and name the guests; after some consideration I chose the Garrick Club and I told him that the man I most wanted to meet was Augustine Birrell. I think I also mentioned Barrie’s name, but Lucas said Barrie was a nonconductor, and he was not invited; and when, subsequently, I met Sir James at the table of my dear friend Cecil Harmsworth, I understood what he meant. I forget now just who were at that dinner, — which was, to quote Dr. Johnson, the kind of a dinner to ask a man to, — but I sat on Lucas’s right, and next to me sat Augustine Birrell, whose essays have been one of the joys of my life since I first made his acquaintance in Obiter Dicta as far back as 1884. When I said that I had a copy of the first edition of this book, Birrell snorted that I had n’t. To prove my statement I described the book to him and told him what I paid for it, whereupon he called me a jackass, but was pleased nevertheless. After that the ice was broken and we became friends.

I shall never forget that pleasant little dinner, and I recalled how upon my first visit to London, in 1884, I had walked by the Garrick Club and wondered whether I should ever be permitted to enter its doors, and here I was in one of its private dining rooms, the honored guest of an intimate friend, sitting next to Augustine Birrell (upon whose essays I may now say I have formed my own literary style — if I have one), cracking jokes with Sir Walter Raleigh, who had visited us at ‘Oak Knoll’ and had come up from Oxford to grace the occasion.

Sir Walter was a very tall man; Lucas always referred to him as ‘the long Knight.’ His visit to ’Oak Knoll’ was the result of an invitation extended him through our old friend, Professor Schelling of the University of Pennsylvania. ‘How shall we entertain him?’ we asked. ‘Very largely by leaving him alone,’ was the reply. ‘Your Scotch whiskey is excellent, and he will want tea, of course. I suggest to every half pound of tea a quart of boiling water.’ We served tea of the consistency of spinach and our guest was delighted. ‘First proper tea I’ve had in this country,’ he said.

In reply to a question: ‘I shall go home as soon as they have a gun ready for me. I expect to spend the next year or two with a rifle across my knees, guarding a culvert; however, this will give me time to think up a few more lectures for you Americans.’

Next to Sir Walter sat Sir Squire Bancroft, the fine old actor, the vainest and certainly the handsomest man in London — he would be the first to admit it. . . .

The dinner passed off pleasantly; the thing I chiefly recall was a remark made by Sir Squire, who in a momentary pause of the talk, which had been rapid and continuous, observed, ‘It was in this room more years ago than I care to remember that I first met Charles Dickens.’ Whereupon we talked Dickens, and I remarked that as a great English genius I ranked him next to Shakespeare. I expected to have my head blown off, but to my surprise Sir Walter bowed his acquiescence, and Birrell said, ‘My enthusiasm for him burns as brightly as ever — but I don’t read him much.’

As an outcome of this dinner I subsequently joined the Garrick Club at the suggestion, as I remember, of Sir Arthur Pinero, backed by Lucas; and just before Birrell’s death it was my privilege to give a luncheon to him in that same room. It was a pleasant occasion, and Birrell stayed on talking — and how wonderfully! — with Holbrook Jackson long after the other guests had gone. Finally I put my old friend into a taxi and took him home; I never saw him again. Having Jackson’s amazing Anatomy of Bibliomania in mind, I still am of the opinion I expressed when I first met him, that he is not one man but many.

III

But I am presumed to be writing of Lucas. He had a wife and a daughter, but we never saw either of them. The daughter has recently published several novels, of which I know nothing. Unlike many men, Lucas seldom told a story of which he was the hero; he always spoke in a very low voice, and I remember his once saying to my wife in a restaurant, — Hatchett’s in Piccadilly; two hundred years ago it was the ‘White Horse,’ — ‘Can you not prevail upon Eddie to lower his voice?’ He had just said that Hatchett’s was where a man made a rendezvous with another man’s wife. ‘And that is the reason, E. V., that you have accustomed yourself to speak in so low a voice — you are afraid of being overheard. Now I have nothing to fear.’

Lucas never presided at any formal function. On March 29, 1825, Lamb wrote his friend Crabb Robinson, ‘Give me great joy, I have left the India House forever.’ He had been for thirty-three years a clerk and had been retired with a generous pension. The story is told in the well-known essay, ‘The Superannuated Man.’ One hundred years later the occasion was celebrated by a ‘Charles Lamb Superannuated Centenary Dinner’ in Inner Temple Hall, Augustine Birrell in the chair. The souvenir menu, a copy of which Lucas sent me, was skillfully arranged by him, but he was not one of the speakers — in fact, although he was the prime mover of the occasion, his name does not anywhere appear. Lucas could write with interest and charm upon anything, upon a broomstick, but if he found himself in a company in which he might be called on to say a few words, one looked around and found that he had disappeared.

Our friendship, having got its second wind, grew apace. My wife and I were much in London after the war, which is another way of saying that Lucas was a frequent visitor to our flat in Jermyn Street. His humor was so subtle, so entirely the reverse of the obvious, that one had to be very alert not to miss some sly and witty innuendo. He was very fond of dogs. Is not the title of one of his books The More I See of Men? He came in one evening about teatime, bringing with him a very fine Pekinese to which I may have spoken somewhat harshly; whereupon Lucas said, ‘Eddie, you are not speaking to a dog; my friend has never been spoken to that way before.’ His verses, ‘The Pekinese National Anthem,’illustrated with the daintiest penand-ink sketches, tell of his love and devotion to these Chinese aristocrats.

It was upon one of Lucas’s little visits to us in Jermyn Street at teatime that someone asked him if he would have a chocolate eclair. ‘I never wish to see or even hear of one of those abominations,’he replied, almost with violence.

‘Why this heat?’ I inquired.

‘A few days ago I was drinking tea with the Queen. I thought I knew how to eat one of those horrid things. Imagine my horror when I discovered that I had decanted one right down my shirt front.’

‘“Hold still a minute,” said the Queen, at the same time coming to my rescue with a napkin.

‘But no one,’ said Lucas sadly, ‘can dust a chocolate eclair from a shirt front, not even Majesty. I think, but for my clumsiness on this occasion, I should have been made a Knight instead of a mere C. H. [Companion of Honor].’

IV

For many years Lucas contributed to the Sunday Times a column under the caption of ‘A Wanderer’s Note Book.’ It was a popular feature of that excellent newspaper, and on one occasion he made me the subject of his column. He had a seeing and remembering eye; he described my library, my books ‘lapped in steel,’ with especial reference to my Lambs, and he poked fun at me for my many enthusiasms. We did not agree about Trollope, but he elsewhere refers to our chance meeting on a steamer going from Marseilles to Port Said. I had insisted that he read The Small House at Allington — in fact, I lent him my copy as we parted for the night. Sometime after midnight a lascar steward stuck his head into my cabin and handed me a note which read: ‘Johnny Eames has just saved the Earl’s life from the bull. Fine work! E. V.’ And at dawn the next morning I received another note: ‘Johnny Eames has just blacked Crosbie’s eye at Paddington Station. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. E. V.’ Indeed, if Lucas never spoke, he never ceased writing. One time when in London, my wife had occasion to go to Paris for a few days, and, not wishing to leave me alone, she asked Frank Morley, Kit’s brother, to occupy our spare room. The result was a party — in fact, two. The first night we three — Lucas, Morley, and I — dined together, and thoroughly. The next night Morley had an engagement, and to Lucas, when he called for me about eight, I felt bound to say that I did not feel quite up to a late sitting; nevertheless we went out. Sometime about midnight Lucas suggested our going to the Drury Lane Theatre to meet friends then acting there. Further details have escaped me, but about noon the next day the valet came to my room with a note, which read: —

Lucas was the last man to call himself a poet, but he could write excellent rhymes about as fast as his pen could travel. He was never idle. When he went with me from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, he had a table put up at his seat in a parlor car and wrote during the entire journey — what I do not know. Lamb wrote some papers for Moxon called ‘Peter’s Net,’with the motto, ‘All is fish that comes to my net.’ So it was with Lucas: he turned everything he saw or did into copy. As someone has said, —

Some years ago a French college professor discovered that Wordsworth, when in France in 1791, had an affair with a French lady by whom he had a child; Lucas immediately wrote a sonnet which begins: —

And so on.

Lucas drove his pen with as much pleasure as other men drive fast horses or fast motorcars. As he himself says, ‘Few authors have been as lucky as I in blending recreation with livelihood. Writing, which for many men is drudgery, is for me a pleasure.’ His one recreation was cricket; I suppose when a boy he played himself, — every English boy does, — but when I knew him he had given over the exercise and contented himself with constant attendance at Lord’s. He knew the game thoroughly and rejoiced in the company of the players; he said that he had to keep a constant check on himself not to talk and write cricket to the exclusion of everything else. He loved sport, and when in Philadelphia a group of us took him to see some baseball games, which he followed with the keenest interest; it was only necessary to explain once the fine points of the game — the tempo of which he thought characteristic of American life, as indeed it is.

V

Edward Verrall Lucas came of good Quaker stock — it may well be that there is no bad Quaker stock. Charles Lamb, as a very small boy, walking through a churchyard with his sister and spelling out the epitaphs, inquired: ‘Mary, where are the bad people buried?’ So one may look in vain for bad Quakers.

Lucas spent his early years in or near Brighton. His forbears being unable or perhaps unwilling to give him the advantages of a university education, he was, after attendance at several private schools, apprenticed to a Brighton bookseller. For a boy with his tastes and fondness for reading, it may be doubted whether he could have received a better training; he, however, all his life continued to regret the loss of a classical education, which means so much more to an Englishman than it does to us. I think his stay in a bookshop was brief, for we soon hear of him on the staff of a Brighton newspaper. The life of a reporter makes for speedy writing on any and all subjects; I take it Lucas must have written well, for a kindly disposed uncle came along and gave him two hundred pounds, which was thought sufficient to keep him in London for two years while attending lectures at University College.

He had now to make his way in what, in one of his anthologies, he calls The Friendly Town. I wonder if he found it friendly when, without friends, he had to support himself for several years while he was making a place for himself. He had, however, the two requisites, ability and industry. He worked early and late, and haunted the reading room of the British Museum — of how many men of letters may this not be said? I never enter the great rotunda presided over by Arthur Ellis, the friend of everyone who has to do with that noble institution, without thinking of the hundreds and thousands of men and women whose Alma Mater it is.

I fancy that it was in these early years in London that Lucas decided to write a life, the Life of Charles Lamb. At that time the authority on Lamb was Canon Ainger, the Master of the Temple, but ‘he had avoided spadework,’ Lucas says, as was perhaps natural in an old gentleman occupying a fine residence with an adequate salary and few duties — and those performed by others. The residence of ‘The Master’ is not too easy to find by tourists, which perhaps makes life in it especially attractive. ‘Spadework ’ was exactly the sort of work Lucas was prepared to do; he qualified for the job by discovering, reading, and digesting an immense amount of material to be found in many volumes of reminiscences and recollections. Indeed, Lamb’s letters, until Lucas took them up, were scattered almost as widely as their recipients. Think of a man (Talfourd) having the temerity to publish a volume entitled Final Memorials of Charles Lamb—final, indeed, in 1848! Lamb’s essays themselves are a mine of biographical material, but it requires skillful handling, for in many cases it is purposely misleading.

The supreme merit of Lucas’s biography is the bringing together in proper sequence of thousands of utterly disconnected sentences and paragraphs culled from many different sources, and so skillfully assembled that the reader hardly feels that he is engaged upon a mosaic, but upon a narrative which flows uninterruptedly and delightfully from the first page to the last. If ever a man wrote his own life it was Charles Lamb. Indeed, in a sense, every essayist is for the time being an autobiographer. And while Lucas was engaged upon this exacting work he was supporting himself by writing stories, essays, and guidebooks without end, and compiling the delightful anthologies with which we are so familiar, and which had an enormous sale. Nor did all this prevent his becoming a publisher’s ‘reader.’ His chief work was done for the firm of Methuen and Company; finally, in 1924, upon the death of Sir Algernon Methuen, he became chairman of the firm he had long served so well.

Is that all? By no means. He early became a contributor to Punch. Its present editor in chief, Mr. E. V. Knox, in an obituary note, says that having joined the famous ‘Round Table’ in 1904, — which, by the way, is oblong and not round, — he was seldom absent from the weekly meetings of the staff, and that he contributed as many words to that journal as any other man ‘on the table,’ if not more. To bo ‘on the table’ is a very different thing from being an occasional contributor. It is Mr. Knox’s considered opinion that Lucas wrote more words than he spoke — of the written word Lucas was, indeed, a master.

VI

I am not pleased with the subtitle I have chosen for this appreciation of my friend. Indeed, as I understand the word, it may be doubted whether Lucas was a wit at all. A wit, I take it, sparkles. Lucas did not. He very quietly — under his breath, as it were — gave a humorous and unexpected twist to some wellknown phrase; as, when looking at a picture of Charles Laughton as Henry VIII, he murmured, ‘Every ounce a King.’ And if his war song, ‘When We Wind Up the Watch on the Rhine,’ is no longer remembered, it deserves to be.

It will be recalled that when Roosevelt the First retired reluctantly from Presidenting this country he went to Africa to hunt big game, and he blazed his way especially by shooting lions. When he reached the Sudan and Egypt, he in a few — or not so few — well-chosen words told England how these countries should be governed, and finally he reached London. Now in Trafalgar Square there stands a statue of Nelson upon a shaft almost two hundred feet high. At each of the four corners of the square pedestal upon which the shaft stands is an enormous lion hewn out of a block of granite, the work of Sir Edwin Landseer. To greet Mr. Roosevelt when he came to the Square, as everyone must who comes to London, was a sign: THESE LIONS MUST NOT BE SHOT. It is said that the suggestion was Lucas’s. The execution of this happy idea was doubtless left to another.

Lucas differed from most Englishmen in that when he came to this country he did not come to lecture. Was there not in Punch some years ago a picture of a callow youth rushing into his mother’s drawing-room, exclaiming, ‘Rejoice with me, Mother! My novel has been accepted at last,’ with her retort: ‘Splendid, my boy; now you can go to America and lecture.’ Some of us may remember the younger Churchill’s efforts in this direction. We are, indeed, the most belectured people in the world.

VII

Something over a year ago, I was unlucky enough to attract the attention of an inquisitive surgeon (I had almost written acquisitive) from whose tender mercies I am only now slowly recovering. Acting upon advice, I have traveled much, and last spring saw me in London. Lucas came to see us, as was his habit, and his last visit was of several hours. When a new edition of his Life of Lamb, in two small volumes, first appeared in 1921, he gave me a copy with a pleasant inscription. One day, perhaps a year ago, I gave this copy to my daughter, and when Lucas called I asked him to send me another. This he did upon the following day, with an inscription which reads: ‘To A. Edward Newton, this book’s best friend, from its proud author, E. V. Lucas. May 5, 1938.’ He was grieved to find me enjoying such miserable health and said so; indeed, his rather long stay was for the purpose of cheering me up.

We talked of many things, our pleasant meetings in the past, and he prophesied that I should soon be back in London again; my spiritual home, he called it. I hope I shall be, but, alas! I shall never see him again. We sailed the next day, and a few weeks after my return I was shocked, upon picking up a newspaper, to read of the passing of my friend in one of those English abominations, a ‘nursing home’ (may I never see the inside of one). E. V., my junior by four years, who seemed in excellent health when I last saw him, has gone. His passing will be regretted by his many friends and by thousands who knew him only in his books — in which after all, as Dr. Johnson says, the best part of every author is to be found.