Among other pleasant social duties I paid a farewell visit to Sir Scorp, who shall appear often hereafter in these pages. During the Christmas holidays at Barfleur’s I had become well acquainted with this Irish knight and famed connoisseur of art, and while in London I had seen much of him. Here in his lovely mansion in Cheyne Walk I found him surrounded by what one might really call the grandeur of his pictures. His house contained distinguished examples of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Van Dyck, Paul Potter, Velasquez, Mancini and others, and as I contemplated him on this occasion he looked not unlike one of the lymphatic cavaliers of Van Dyck’s canvases. A pale gentleman, this--very remote in his spirit, very far removed from the common run of life, concerned only with the ultimately artistic, and wishing to be free of everything save the leisure to attend to this. He was not going to leave London, he thought, at this time, except possibly for a short visit to Paris. He was greatly concerned with the problem of finding a dilapidated “cahstle” which he could restore, live in, fill with his pictures and eventually sell, or dedicate to his beloved England as a memorial of himself. It must be a perfect example of Tudor architecture--that he invariably repeated. I gained the impression that he might fill it with interesting examples of some given school or artist and leave it as a public monument. He urged upon me that I ought to go about the work of getting up a loan exhibit of representative American art, and have it brought to London. He commended me to the joys of certain cities and scenes--Pisa, San Miniato outside of Florence, the Villa Doria at Rome. I had to smile at the man’s profound artistic assurance, for he spoke exactly as a grandee recounting the glories of his kingdom. I admired the paleness of his forehead and his hands and cast one longing look at his inestimable Frans Hals. To think that any man in these days should have purchased for little a picture that can in all likelihood be sold for $500,000--it was like walking into Aladdin’s cave.