The stoutish, grey man in the grey checked suit was Robert Browning whose afternoon-tea manner was quite simple, as unaffected as that of a bank-chairman contemplating dividends or deposits. He was not in the least a posing poet. He had been a great friend of Moscheles for a long time, and the latter spoke of him as "my literary godfather." Moscheles, at this time, was preparing for publication "Felix Mendelssohn's letters to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles." I had something to do with persuading him to write "In Bohemia with George Du Maurier." I had been looking in his studio through a mass of autograph letters and sketches relating to his years in Paris as an art student, the "Trilby" years, and, as Du Maurier's book and the play adapted from it were the rage of the time, Felix was encouraged to write around the letters he had, and Du Maurier's early sketches, and about the characters in the romance of the hour, and to {45} send some of the chapters to the _Century Magazine_, and afterward to produce the whole as a book. Moscheles was brought up among celebrities, and was surrounded by the famous all his life. Mendelssohn, Joachim, Malibran, Lablache were, in his boyhood, family friends. He attracted distinguished persons as long as he lived. When he was thirteen the family moved from London to Leipzig, at Mendelssohn's instigation. Mendelssohn was eager that his friend, Moscheles' father, should become a professor in the Conservatoire which he was founding at Leipzig. And so the move was made, Ignaz Moscheles relinquishing his London career and its worldly advantages in order to live near his friend. Felix, who at ten had begun his education at King's College, London, had, at thirteen, to find it in Germany. But not for long; when he was seventeen, determined to become an artist, he began studying drawing and painting in Paris, at the Atelier Gleyre. Having seen something of the troubles of Germany in 1848, he was now to see the troubles of France which led to and followed the flight of Louis Philippe, and attended the _coup d'état_. It was during the Atelier Gleyre period that he met George du Maurier and had the amusing experiences he described afterwards in the book to which I have alluded. From Paris he went to Antwerp, where he studied under Van Lorino at De Keyser's Academy, and where he had as fellow students Laurens Alma-Tadema, Maris, and Heyermans. I don't know when he returned to London {46} to settle down, but when he did so he began a career that was to be rich in friendships, helpful to all, and productive in portraiture.