"All of the characters in your poem, 'The Vision of Helen,' are
neurotics. They suffer from morbid fears, delusions, hysteria, violent
mental and emotional complexities. A text-book in madness."

Grimshaw laughed. "You flatter me. I am attracted by neurotic types.
Insanity has its source in the unconscious, and we English are afraid
of looking inward." He glanced around the crowded room with an amused
and cynical look. "Most of these people are as bad as my Trojans,
Doctor Fenton. Only they conceal their badness, and it isn't good for
them."

We talked for a few moments. I amused him, I think, by my diagnosis of
his Helen's mental malady. But he soon tired of me and his restless
gaze went over my head, searching for admiration. Esther Levenson
brought Ellen Terry over and he forgot me entirely in sparkling for
the good lady--showing his teeth, shaking his yellow locks, bellowing
like a centaur.

"The fellow's an ass," I decided.

But when "The Labyrinth" was produced, I changed my mind. There again
was that disturbing loveliness. It was a story of the passionate
Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Esther Levenson drifted
through the four long acts against a background of Tuscan walls,
scarlet hangings, oaths, blood-spilling, dark and terrible vengeance.
Grimshaw took London by the throat and put it down on its knees.

Then for a year or two he lived on his laurels, lapping up admiration
like a drunkard in his cups. Unquestionably, Esther Levenson was his
mistress, since she presided over his house in Cheyne Walk. They say
she was not the only string to his lute. A Jewess, a Greek poetess,
and a dancer from Stockholm made up his amorous medley at that time.
Scandalized society flocked to his drawing-room, there to be received
by Simonetta herself, wearing the blanched draperies and tragic pearls
of the labyrinth he had made for her. Grimshaw offered no apologies.
He was the uncrowned laureate and kings can do no wrong. He was
painted by the young Sargent, of course, and by the aging
Whistler--you remember the butterfly's portrait of him in a yellow
kimono leaning against a black mantel? I, for one, think he was vastly
amused by all this fury of admiration; he despised it and fed upon it.
If he had been less great, he would have been utterly destroyed by it,
even then.

I went to Vienna, and lost track of him for several years. Then I
heard that he had married a dear friend of mine--Lady Dagmar Cooper,
one of