all his books at the top of his bad temper. Then
came--but one could fill an entire volume with nothing but a list of the
goodly fellowship of Chelsea.

The book about Chelsea has yet to be written. Such a book should
disclose to us the soul of the place, with its eternal youth and eternal
antiquity. It should introduce us to its charming ghosts--it is
difficult to name one disagreeable person in this pageant; even the
cantankerous Smollett was soothed when he came under its spell. It
should enable us to touch finger-tips, perhaps make closer acquaintance,
with Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Hans Holbein, Thomas Shadwell (forgotten
laureate), Carlyle, Whistler, Edwin Abbey, George Meredith, Swinburne,
Holman Hunt, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Oscar and Willie Wilde,
Count d'Orsay, George Eliot, and a host of lesser but equally adorable
personalities whose names must come "among those present." It should
show us its famous places. It should afford us peep-holes into the
studios of famous artists--Augustus John's studio is a revelation in
careful disarrangement; it should take us round a "Show Sunday"; it
should reconstruct the naive gaieties of Cremorne; and, finally, it
should recreate and illumine all the large, forgotten moments in the
lives of those apostles of beauty whose ruminations and dreams the soul
of Chelsea has fused with more of herself than men may know; ending,
perhaps, with a disquisition on the effects of environment on the
labours of genius.

Such a book must be done by a stranger, an observer, one with a gracious
pen, a delicate, entirely human mind. There is one man above all who is
divinely appointed for the task.

Please, Mr. W. D. Howells, will you write it for us?

* * * * *

I was strolling in philosophic mood down the never-ending King's Road,
one November night, debating whether I should drop in at the Chelsea
Palace, or have just one more at the "Bells," when I ran into the R.B.A.
He is a large man, and running into him rather upsets one's train of
thought. When I had smoothed my nose and dusted my trousers, I said:
"Well, what about it?" He said: "Well, what about it?"

So we turned into the "Six Bells," the evening haunt of every good
artist. He said he hadn't much money, so what about it? We decided on a
Guinness to begin with, and then he ordered some Welsh Rarebits, while I
inspected the walls of the saloon, which are decorated with nothing but
orig