cared what he wore," she writes. "I remember one night
when my husband and I were living in the same block of flats he came
in to ask me to go and sit with Frances who wasn't very well, while
he went down to the House to dine with Hugh Law--Gilbert was very
correctly dressed except for the fact that he had on one boot and one
slipper! I pointed it out to him, and he said: 'Do you think it
matters?' I told him I was sure Frances would not like him to go out
like that--the only argument to affect him! When he was staying with
me here in Vancouver, Dorothy Collins had to give him the once-over
before he went lecturing--they had left Frances in Palos Verdes as
she wasn't well."

In 1904, were published a monograph on Watts, _The Napoleon of
Notting Hill_, and an important chapter in a composite book, _England
a Nation_.

The _Watts_ is among the results of Gilbert's art studies. Its
reviewers admired it somewhat in the degree of their admiration
for the painter. But for a young man at that date to have seen the
principles of art he lays down meant rare vision. The portrait-painter,
he says, is trying to express the reality of the man himself but
"he is not above taking hints from the book of life with its
quaint old woodcuts." G.K. makes us see all the painter could have
thought or imagined as he sets us before "Mammon" or "Jonah" or
"Hope" and bids us read their legend and note the texture and lines
of the painting. His distinction between the Irish mysticism of Yeats
and the English mysticism of Watts is especially valuable, and the
book, perhaps even more than the _Browning_ or the _Dickens_,
manifests Gilbert's insight into the mind of the last generation. The
depths and limitations of the Victorian outlook may be read in _G. F.
Watts_.

The story of the writing of _The Napoleon_ was told me in part by
Frances, while part appeared in an interview* given by Gilbert, in
which he called it his first important book:

[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, pp. 16-17.]

I was "broke"--only ten shillings in my pocket. Leaving my worried
wife, I went down Fleet Street, got a shave, and then ordered for
myself, at the Cheshire Cheese, an enormous luncheon of my favourite
dishes and a bottle of wine. It took my all, but I could then go to
my publishers fortified. I told them I wanted to write a book and
outlined the story of "Napoleon of Notting Hill." But I must have
twenty pounds, I said, befo