or
twenty-five--medium height, medium looks, medium clothes, somewhat reddish
hair, and lively eyes. If I had seen him in a motorbus I should never have
said, 'A remarkable chap'--no more than if I had seen myself in a
motorbus. My impressions of the interview were rather like my impressions
of the book: at first somewhat negative, and only very slowly becoming
positive. He was reserved, as became a young author; I was reserved, as
became an older author; we were both reserved, as became Englishmen. Our
views on the only important thing in the world--that is to say,
fiction--agreed, not completely, but in the main; it would never have done
for us to agree completely. I was as much pleased by what he didn't say as
by what he said; quite as much by the indications of the stock inside the
shop as by the display in the window. The interview came to a calm close.
My knowledge of him acquired from it amounted to this, that he held
decided and righteous views upon literature, that his heart was not on his
sleeve, and that he worked in a publisher's office during the day and
wrote for himself in the evenings.

"Then I saw no more of Swinnerton for a relatively long period. I read
other books of his. I read _The Young Idea_, and _The Happy Family_, and,
I think, his critical work on George Gissing. _The Happy Family_ marked a
new stage in his development. It has some really piquant scenes, and it
revealed that minute knowledge of middle-class life in the nearer suburbs
of London, and that disturbing insight into the hearts and brains of quite
unfashionable girls, which are two of his principal gifts. I read a sketch
of his of a commonplace crowd walking around a bandstand which brought me
to a real decision as to his qualities. The thing was like life, and it
was bathed in poetry.

"Our acquaintance proceeded slowly, and I must be allowed to assert that
the initiative which pushed it forward was mine. It made a jump when he
spent a week-end in the Thames Estuary on my yacht. If any reader has a
curiosity to know what my yacht is not like, he should read the striking
yacht chapter in _Nocturne_. I am convinced that Swinnerton evolved the
yacht in _Nocturne_ from my yacht; but he ennobled, magnified, decorated,
enriched and bejewelled it till honestly I could not recognise my wretched
vessel. The yacht in _Nocturne_ is the yacht I want, ought to have, and
never shall have. I envy him the yacht in _Nocturne_, and my envy takes a
m