Ansdell had met Alfred Geary at the Cape—about Geary I shall have a little to say in my next chapter—and I suppose that to Geary he was indebted for the introductions which enabled him to establish his “afternoons.” My opportunities of joining Ansdell’s circle were infrequent. The journalist of larger leisure, a smaller sense of responsibility, and more mercurial temperament, found the Ansdell reunions extremely to his taste. And there can be no doubt that the founder of the “afternoons” had contrived to surround himself with some very interesting characters. Among them was a certain poet. The world forgets all about him—a tasteless and an ungrateful world—but in the seventies and eighties no new publication would consider itself complete that did not contain a copy of verse from his muse. And if he had been Horace himself, he could not have had a more profound belief in the authenticity of his poetic gift. He had a stout figure, a round red face, and he walked up and down the Street that is called Fleet with his head held well back, and with the severe air of a man that was determined to bring the beast of a British Public to its knees. I am afraid the good fellow was chaffed considerably at the Ansdell symposia. But his belief in his own good gifts was too profound to permit him to take offence even at the most obvious irony. The last occasion on which I saw the poet was on the day on which the papers announced that the Laureateship, vacant for some time by the death of Tennyson, had been bestowed upon Mr. Austin. He was overwhelmed with grief and chagrin—grief, that a post so manifestly adapted to his own genius should have been given to another; chagrin, because the office had been given to one whom he regarded as his own inferior. His idea was that I should obtain for him permission, from the conductors of a journal with which I was then connected, to write the new appointment down. He was greatly incensed, I remember, by my asking him whether it mattered very much who was appointed or whether any appointment whatever were made. “It is the cynical act of a Minister who has made science his hobby. What sort of a taste for literature can be expected to be acquired in Lord Salisbury’s laboratories at Hatfield?” “A taste for literary retorts,” I suggested. But he would not allow the momentous subject to be side-tracked by a mere verbal pleasantry. “I tell you,” he persisted, “it’s a filthy political job. Austin has been officially honoured, not on account of his poems, but as a reward for his Conservative leaders in the _Standard_. This great office has been flung like a bone to a dog by a cynical and unscrupulous Minister.” It was strange, the way he harped on poor Lord Salisbury’s cynicism. But I was unable to obtain for him the hearing he desired, and I do not expect that it was accorded to him elsewhere.