Henceforth Gissing spent an increasing portion of his time abroad, and it was from St. Honorè en Morvan, for instance, that he dated the preface of _Our Friend the Charlatan_ in 1901. As with _Denzil Quarrier_ (1892) and _The Town Traveller_ (1898) this was one of the books which Gissing sometimes went the length of asking the admirers of his earlier romances 'not to read.' With its prefatory note, indeed, its cheap illustrations, and its rather mechanical intrigue, it seems as far removed from such a book as _A Life's Morning_ as it is possible for a novel by the same author to be. It was in the South of France, in the neighbourhood of Biarritz, amid scenes such as that described in the thirty-seventh chapter of _Will Warburton_, or still further south, that he wrote the greater part of his last three books, the novel just mentioned, which is probably his best essay in the lighter ironical vein to which his later years inclined,[23] _Veranilda_, a romance of the time of Theodoric the Goth, written in solemn fulfilment of a vow of his youth, and _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, which to my mind remains a legacy for Time to take account of as the faithful tribute of one of the truest artists of the generation he served. [Footnote 23: It also contains one of the most beautiful descriptions ever penned of the visit of a tired town-dweller to a modest rural home, with all its suggestion of trim gardening, fresh country scents, indigenous food, and homely simplicity.--_Will Warburton_, chap. ix.]