Verrey’s, on the other side of Regent Street, I have mentioned as the second West End establishment at which a French dinner could be obtained in those gastronomically evil days which preceded the great awakening. When I first knew Verrey’s, it was run by old George Krehl, a most entertaining man of the old school. He was not a Parisian, or, indeed, a Frenchman at all; but he had been educated in the French methods, and his bisque was the most delicate to be obtained in London. At the death of the old man the restaurant descended to his son George, who has since died. George the younger Krehl was a dog-fancier in rather a large way of business. He ran a paper called _The Stock-keeper_, devoted to the interests of the “fancy.” Krehl the Younger introduced some new breeds to Society, among which were the basset-hound and the schipperké. In old Krehl’s time Tennyson resorted to the restaurant during his visits to town. The poet took quite a fancy to the proprietor, and Krehl preserved many souvenirs of the poet—plans of battle drawn on backs of menu-cards, and other trifles whereby Tennyson thought to make his meaning quite clear to a foreign listener. It was in the old Krehl’s time that I received an invitation to dine with an Australian magnate of British birth, on a visit to the mother-country. The dinner was served in what was then known as the Cameo Room, and the occasion became memorable to me by reason of an acquaintanceship then made, which was destined to ripen into a lasting friendship. It was in this way. I found myself seated next to a clergyman. The circumstance at first caused me to curse my luck, for I have never taken much stock in parsons. But before we had got to the fish I found that my neighbour was not at all of the class of clergyman with whom, to that time, it had been my fortune to get acquainted. He was a man of medium height, about fifty years of age, broad-shouldered, and of portly figure. His grey beard was trimmed and pointed, and he wore a moustache. His name was Bachelor, and he was a gaol chaplain. At that time I discovered nothing of the life-work of the individual sitting beside me; nor from himself did I ever hear anything, save incidentally, of his services to his generation—services never acknowledged, and services sometimes resented and always neglected by the authorities. I had beside me that night, in fact, one of those who, in their own persons, illustrate the truth of Henry Taylor’s apothegm: “The world knows nothing of its greatest men.” Here, at least, something may be recorded as a memorial to him. And at the same time the narrative may be enlivened by one or two of those stimulating recollections of which he seemed to be an inexhaustible mine. I never sat down to a dinner at which I enjoyed myself more. My new friend was a man of the world, a gourmet, a fine judge of wine, and withal a practical philanthropist, unresting, untiring, and undespairing.