Our life at Beaulieu, wholly delightful as it was--for there never was a host to equal him in simple and graceful hospitality--had nevertheless its humorous aspects. We lived, indeed, a sort of Box and Cox existence. The brisk air and bright climate tempted me to rise early, and I was generally at work on the little terrace outside my room by nine o’clock in the morning. It was Sullivan’s habit, on the other hand, to lie late, and our first meeting of the day occurred only at lunch-time. Sometimes, but not always, he would work a little during the afternoon, but it was only when dinner was over, and we had played a few games of bezique, that he set himself seriously to his task. We parted generally at about eleven, and then Arthur’s musical day began. Withdrawing himself into a little glass conservatory that overlooked the Mediterranean, he would often remain at his desk, scoring and composing, till four or even five o’clock in the morning, and it was only rarely during the labour of composition that he had any need to have recourse to the piano to try over a few notes of the melody he had under treatment. His actual pen-work when he was engaged in scoring his composition for the orchestra was of surprising neatness and delicacy, and I think it was this part of his task he enjoyed the most. He used to say to me that the invention of melody rarely presented to him any grave difficulty. It flowed naturally, almost spontaneously, when he had once fixed the musical rhythm which he felt the meaning of the words and the chosen metre of the verse rightly demanded. Here he took extraordinary pains to satisfy himself, and it was, I think, this spirit of exacting loyalty to the special quality of each separate lyric that gave to his work its special value in relation to the theatre. Sullivan was always anxious to gather any hint or suggestion from the writer with whom he was associated. I told him one day that in composing verse that was to be set to music I always had some dumb tune echoing in my brain, and I can recall now his futile endeavours to extract from me even the vaguest idea of what this “unheard melody” might be. Sometimes in a spirit of pure mischief he would see how far he could impose upon my confessed ignorance of the musician’s art. He invited me one day to his rooms in Victoria Street to listen to the musical form he proposed to adopt in setting the final choruses of _King Arthur_, and when, after playing over what he would himself have described as a “tinpot melody,” he inquired if the result came up to my expectation, the imperturbable gravity of his face entirely deceived me. “Well, my dear Arthur,” I replied, “if that is what you propose, I can only assume that one of us two is a vulgar fellow, and I suppose I am the culprit.” And then, with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Well, perhaps you prefer this,” and proceeded to play the melody he had really composed for the purpose.