Nothing daunted, I undertook to pilot the party to the place, and after a lovely drive we reached the spot where the village ought to be. Here I saw a kind of model hotel, and, I think, a shanty of some description; the rest was an ordinary English landscape. I hardened my heart, and patiently sketched the building, which, of course, was not there at the period the story referred to, and some details of the place where a village only existed in the author's imagination. When next I saw Sir Walter Besant, he tried to console me with the assurance that there certainly must have been a village there some centuries ago! [Illustration: THE LATE SIR WALTER BESANT.] Besides being a wit and a delightful conversationalist, Sir Walter was the most practical and businesslike of authors. It was a treat to meet him, as I frequently did, walking into Town, and enjoy his vivacious humour. I recollect one morning, speaking of illustrators, mentioning the fact that Cruikshank always imagined that Dickens had taken "Oliver Twist," merely endowing it with literary merit here and there, and palming it off as his own! "Ah!" said Besant, "how funny! Do you know, I overheard two of my little girls talking a few mornings ago, and one said to the other, 'Papa does not write all his stories, you know--Charlie Green helps him.'" (Green was at the time illustrating Besant's "Chaplain of the Fleet.") [Illustration: THE "JETTY."] My second instance occurred about the same period. The author was the most delightful and entertaining of literary men of our time, Mr. James Payn. I was selected to illustrate the serial story in the _Illustrated London News_, and as in that also the author minutely describes the scene of the semi-historical romance, I, being a thoroughly conscientious artist, visited James Payn, then editor of _Cornhill_, in his editorial den in Waterloo Place, to talk the matter over. My notes were: "Jetty--Lovers meet--Ancient church--Old houses." But the "Jetty" was _the_ important object--I must get that. I therefore started for the South Coast. Again I was forced to bow down before my author's wonderful powers of imagination, for once more, in company with my wife, with a hireling to carry my sketching stool and materials, I walked a great distance in search of the jetty. Vain, vain! not a ghost of a jetty was to be seen. The menial could not enlighten us. At last we unearthed the "oldest inhabitant," who took us back to where a few sticks in the water alone marked where it stood "a many years ago." I tried to develop some of the powers of the late Professor Owen, when he constructed an animal from the smallest bone, and succeeded in "evolving" a jetty from the green remains of four wooden posts.