" What his
real name was, whence he came, whence the money came, I never knew. G.
B. was going to start a weekly Tory paper. Would I contribute? G. B.
came to see me. Mr. Stevenson has described him, _not_ as I would have
described him: like Mr. Bill Sikes's dog, I have the Christian
peculiarity of not liking dogs "as are not of my breed." G. B.'s paper,
_London_, was to start next week. He had no writer of political leading
articles. Would I do a "leader"? But I was _not_ in favour of Lord
Lytton's Afghan policy. How could I do a Tory leader? Well, I did a
neutral-tinted thing, with citations from Aristophanes! I found
presently some other scribes for G. B.
What a paper that was! I have heard that G. B. paid in handfuls of gold,
in handfuls of bank-notes. Nobody ever read _London_, or advertised in
it, or heard of it. It was full of the most wonderfully clever verses in
old French forms. They were (it afterwards appeared) by Mr. W. E.
Henley. Mr. Stevenson himself astonished and delighted the public of
_London_ (that is, the contributors) by his "New Arabian Nights." Nobody
knew about them but ourselves, a fortunate few. Poor G. B. died and Mr.
Henley became the editor. I may not name the contributors, the flower of
the young lions, elderly lions now, there is a new race. But one lion, a
distinguished and learned lion, said already that fiction, not essay, was
Mr.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57