re is gnashing of teeth--the doctrine of art for art's sake which the
advanced young leaders of the new generation assure me is hopelessly out
of date. Pretence of any kind was as the red rag; "bleat" was the
unpardonable sin; the man who was "human" was the man to be praised. I
would not pretend to say who invented this meaning for the word "human."
Perhaps Louis Stevenson. As far back as 1880, in a letter from Davos
describing the people "in a kind of damned hotel" where he had put up, I
find him using it as Henley and his Young Men used it later:

Eleven English Parsons, all
Entirely inoffensive; four
True human beings--what I call
Human--the deuce a cipher more.

Stevenson may even then have learned it from Henley. But however that
may have been, "bleat" and "human" were the two words ever recurring
like a refrain in the columns of the _National Observer_, ever the
beginning and end of argument in the heated atmosphere of Buckingham
Street.

In my memory, every Thursday night stands for a battle. Henley was then
always at his best. His week's task was done, he was not due at his
house in Addiscombe until the next day, for he always stayed in his
Great College Street rooms from Monday to Friday--and the night was
before him. At first I trembled a little at the smell of powder under my
own roof, at turning our chambers into the firing line when friends came
to them to pass a peaceful friendly evening--the Roman and Venetian
_cafes_ and restaurants of my earlier experience had been common ground
on which combatants shared equal rights or, better, no rights at all. It
was probably my old Philadelphia bringing up that made me question the
propriety of the same freedom at home, that made me doubt its being
quite "the thing" when J., who is an excellent fighter though a
Philadelphian, met Henley in a clash of words. But I quickly got
accustomed to the fight and enjoyed it and would not have had it
otherwise.

Some friends who came, I must confess, enjoyed it less, especially if
they were still smarting from a recent attack in the _National
Observer_. There were evenings when it took a good deal of skilful
manoeuvring on everybody's part to keep Henley and his victims at a
safe distance from each other. More than once in later days Walter Crane
laughed with us at the memory of a Thursday night, just after he had
been torn to pieces in the best _National Observer_ style, when he
gradually realized that he w