Transcribed from the 1916 E. P. Dutton and Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Kensington Central Library (http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/libraries/) for providing the copy from which the illustrations are taken. OLD FAMILIAR FACES BY THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON AUTHOR OF “AYLWIN” NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY MCMXVI THE ATHENÆUM PRESS, LONDON, ENGLAND. [Picture: Mrs. William Morris. “She was the most lovely woman I have ever known, her beauty was incredible.”—Theodore Watts-Dunton] INTRODUCTION. For some years before his death it was the intention of Theodore Watts-Dunton to publish in volume form under the title of ‘Old Familiar Faces,’ the recollections of his friends that he had from time to time contributed to _The Athenæum_. Had his range of interests been less wide he might have found the time in which to further this and many other literary projects he had formed; but he was, unfortunately, very slow to write, and slower still to publish. His long life produced in published works a number of critical and biographical essays contributed to periodicals and encyclopædias, a romance (‘Aylwin’), a sheaf of poems (‘The Coming of Love’), two of the most stimulating critical pronouncements that his century produced (‘Poetry’ and ‘The Renascence of Wonder’), a handful of introductions to classics—and that is all. Only those who were frequent visitors at “The Pines” can form any idea of his keen interest in life and affairs, which seemed to grow rather than to diminish with the passage of each year, even when 81 had passed him by. At his charmingly situated house at the foot of Putney Hill, he lived a life of as little seclusion as he would have lived in Fleet Street. Here he received his friends and acquaintances, and there was little happening in the world outside with which he was unacquainted. He was a tremendous worker, and only a few months before his death he wrote of “the enormous pressure of work” that was upon him, telling his correspondent that he had “no idea, no one can have any idea, what it is. I am an early riser and breakfast at seven, and from that hour until seven in the evening, I am in full swing of my labours with the aid of two most intelligent secretaries.”