Yet he was in those days of his youth at the height of his enthusiasm on matters of Art; he had just written those articles on living painters--specially noting the so-called Pre-Raphaelites--which had drawn considerable notice to his pseudonym of “Ignotus,” and he was, at the moment, one of Rossetti’s favoured young admirers. But I knew nothing of all this; nor of his having already begun his career of a “wit” as Junior of the Bar on the Northern Circuit. In fact, what I recall of him then is not his wit but his tenderness. He was the ardent pursuer, the first man I had met with whom I was afraid to flirt, because--in spite of some tremulousness in his eager insistence--there was something that said: “I mean to succeed.” So I stood dreaming before the masterpieces of the National Gallery, and he, I am bound to say, was content with much silence as we sat in the large, cool rooms on that hot May day. Later on, when he was showing me what to admire, I would teaze him by pointing to some atrocity in Art, and say: “That is what I really like.” But not that day. And when the hour came for me to return to the boarding-house, I think his sole thought was upon the contriving of our next meeting. As we passed the British Museum--he looked up at the windows of my brother’s rooms facing it, and said: “Sheridan Knowles’ ‘Hunchback,’ you said.” “Yes,” I replied. “And I do Julia and Mr. Jameson Master Walter. But it may all fall through because he can’t find a man for the lover. It is desolating.” I can recall the slow look he gave me; but then he smiled and said: “Is that what you would say in your foreign tongues?” I got cured of such expressions later on, but that day I think I was ashamed of my careless speech, for I knew better; and I shook hands with him with a sense of disappointment as the slavey opened the door into the dingy brown hall. Had I been too flippant and free to please such a clever man? That evening, however, when I went to the rehearsal in Great Russell Street, Mr. Comyns Carr was there; of course he had offered himself to play that lover’s part. He was busy enough--though not so busy as he had been before I knew him, when reading for his Law Scholarship at the London University. He had, in fact, if I remember rightly, just returned from his first experience on the Northern Circuit and was beginning to supplement his earnings at the Bar by literary efforts. But he was not too busy for this adventure, and there followed three weeks of rehearsals under Mr. Jameson’s management, during which my assets for the stage were calmly discussed, Mr. Jameson declaring that they were good, and finally winning my brother’s consent to the bidding of his theatrical friends--John Hare among them--to decide the question. But Joe always pooh-poohed the notion. And when I said: “Well, I’m going to earn enough to keep me in London somehow. I’m not going back to that dead-alive life at home!” he only said cryptically, “There are other ways.”