There were two artists in the Ansdell entourage. The one was Mat Stretch, the other George Cruikshank junior. Both were contributors to the comic papers. The work of Mat Stretch was at one time in great demand. He possessed a vein of humour which was quite his own, and his drawings always found a place in one or other of the humorous publications. Cruikshank had a stiff style and an exaggerated method. I never could stand his work, nor, indeed, did I care very much for the little creature himself. He was by way of being a bit of a dandy. He wore a very glossy silk hat tilted over one ear; his clothes were usually of a sporting cut, and he affected the style of a patron of the turf. Before the growing popularity of camera pictures both he and Mat Stretch fell back. The camera, if not artistic, is at least reliable, and any reliability which Cruikshank might have at one time evinced became impaired by his conviviality. It is to be feared, indeed, that he was not a bigoted subscriber to the teetotal tenets of his illustrious relative. George the Elder drew “The Bottle.” George the Younger was fonder of drawing the cork. Ansdell, the chairman of these afternoon reunions, was a widower. When he took to himself a second wife, Cruikshank junior regarded it as something in the nature of a personal affront that the permission of the circle at Anderton’s had not been obtained in the first place. Perhaps Ansdell knew that George would never give his consent. At all events, he got married without asking for it. The agreeable afternoon functions were broken up, and Fleet Street knew James Ansdell no more. The smoking-room at Anderton’s Hotel is abundantly provided with windows at the back, and over the front part of it, which is cut off from the back by a partition, there is a dome light. But the place is so built in that the walls of neighbouring erections cut off the sunlight, and on the brightest days this particular apartment is always tenebrious. On gloomy days the artificial lights are switched on. At Anderton’s Hotel the redoubtable Richard Pigott spent some of the last days of his smirched career, and the smoking-room was the favourite resort of the devoted forger. Pigott’s favourite position was at the writing-tables under the glass skylight in the lower part of the room. There he spent many hours of those days of the Parnell Commission pending and during his call to the witness-box. I had occasion to interview him on two occasions during this momentous period—almost literally period—in his career. I always found him writing away like mad and smiling sweetly to himself the while. Never, surely, did the results of a literary man’s efforts yield so much immediate pleasure to their author as Pigott’s “copy” seemed to afford to him. When I addressed him and explained my desires, he gathered up his sheets of “copy” and deposited them in a black leather bag which always accompanied him.