If when traveling about with him on the tram, going to a concert, shopping for coffee and cigarettes outside the Museum, a thought came to him, he would pull out a bit of paper and jot down notes. That was how he compiled his material for books, gathering it piecemeal and storing it away in envelopes. Anything on the dance went into the dance envelope, music into music, and so on. As soon as any one became full enough to attract his attention, he took it out and started to make something of it. Sometimes we dined together at a Soho restaurant; occasionally I had tea at his flat. In his combined kitchen and dining room, warmed by a coal stove, he did his work, and there also he cooked meals for which he marketed himself. He was proud of being able to lay a fire with fewer sticks and less paper than an expert charwoman, and once said he would rather win praise for the creation of a salad than of an essay. One of the four rooms was set aside for the use of his wife, Edith. She preferred the country and lived on her farm in Cornwall, whereas Havelock loved to be in the city; though he was not a part of it, he liked to hear it going on about him. Whenever she came to town she found all her books and possessions inviolate; whenever he went to Cornwall he found everything ready for him. Either of them could, on impulse, board a train without baggage and in a few hours be at home. Edith was short and stocky, high-colored, curly-haired, with mystical blue eyes but accompanying them a strain of practicality. She could run the farm, look after the livestock, and dispose of her products. Her vitality was so great that it sought other outlets in writing fiction. Bernard Shaw was once trying to find his way to the Ellis farm and stopped at a cottage to inquire whether he was on the right road. The goodwife could not tell him. “But I know Mr. and Mrs. Ellis live near here.” She kept protesting nobody of that name was in the neighborhood until Shaw pointed to a house which appeared as though it might be the one. “Who lives there?” “Two strangers.” “What do they do?” “Oh, the man he writes out of other folks’ books, but she writes out of her head.” The person who saw most of Havelock was Olive Schreiner, a long-standing friend of his and of Edith. I was delighted at the chance of meeting the author of _Woman and Labor_ and of another favorite, _The Story of an African Farm_. She had just come to England for the first time in twenty-five years and been caught in the War.