mong his friends. It
was one of his special charms; now when the voice is silent and the face
still, it makes it impossible to do justice to his power in
conversation. He was a delightful companion to such as can bear bracing
weather; not to the very vain; not to the owlishly wise, who cannot have
their dogmas canvassed; not to the painfully refined, whose sentiments
become articles of faith. The spirit in which he could write that he was
"much revived by having an opportunity of abusing Whistler to a knot of
his special admirers" is a spirit apt to be misconstrued. He was not a
dogmatist, even about Whistler. "The house is full of pretty things," he
wrote, when on a visit; "but Mrs. ----'s taste in pretty things has one
very bad fault: it is not my taste." And that was the true attitude of
his mind; but these eternal differences it was his joy to thresh out and
wrangle over by the hour. It was no wonder if he loved the Greeks; he
was in many ways a Greek himself; he should have been a sophist and met
Socrates; he would have loved Socrates, and done battle with him
staunchly and manfully owned his defeat; and the dialogue, arranged by
Plato, would have shone even in Plato's gallery. He seemed in talk
aggressive, petulant, full of a singular energy; as vain, you would have
said, as a peacock, until you trod on his toes, and then you saw that he
was at least clear of all the sicklier elements of vanity. Soundly rang
his laugh at any jest against himself. He wished to be taken, as he took
others, for what was good in him without dissimulation of the evil, for
what was wise in him without concealment of the childish. He hated a
draped virtue, and despised a wit on its own defence. And he drew (if I
may so express myself) a human and humorous portrait of himself with all
his defects and qualities, as he thus enjoyed in talk the robust sports
of the intelligence; giving and taking manfully, always without
pretence, always without paradox, always with exuberant pleasure;
speaking wisely of what he knew, foolishly of what he knew not; a
teacher, a learner, but still combative; picking holes in what was said
even to the length of captiousness, yet aware of all that was said
rightly; jubilant in victory, delighted by defeat: a Greek sophist, a
British schoolboy.

Among the legends of what was once a very pleasant spot, the old Savile
Club, not then divorced from Savile Row, there are many memories of
Fleeming. He was not popular