When he dined with me he talked, he listened, he wept, he laughed by turns; after dinner he walked about, or passed his hands over the piano and played awhile, or would strike weird chords of wailing. He was a bit of a musical genius as well as a master in his own line. How often music and its sister art are thus twinned! But then, if I mistake not, he was descended from musicians on both sides. Suddenly he would leave the piano, attracted by a door-knob, a button, or an idea, and would then plunge into a dissertation upon art or a lecture on philosophy. How Gilbert loved art! Every bend and curve meant something to him. His blue eyes would dilate with pleasure or his heavy jaw become set and rigid in anger or contempt. When his work really pleased him he could not bear to part with it; when it dissatisfied him he broke it up—very honest of him, but hardly remunerative. He was never made for this world. He was a dreamer, a poet, an idealist; perhaps this very incongruity of temperament was the source of the beautiful ideals he conceived and sometimes brought to birth. Down in that studio in the Fulham Road I spent many pleasant hours watching him work. He would often forget I was there. Then, rousing himself to my presence, he would offer me a cup of tea at odd intervals of half an hour, entirely oblivious of the fact that it was nearing dinner-time. A certain actor does this sort of thing as a pose—an impudent pose—but Gilbert did it because he could not help himself. He wanted to be hospitable, and hours became moments as he worked and dreamed. There were days and weeks and months when he never did anything, when hunger stared him in the face. But rather than part with a work of his creation, or an unfinished dream, he preferred to starve and, if needs be, die. London was no place for him. He was too utterly an artist for a great, teeming, bustling city, and away in Bruges—dead to the world, dead to his friends—the wreck of that great and charming personality is dreaming his life away amongst his unfinished gods, without the strength of will or purpose to complete his inspirations. The complexity of Gilbert was beyond comprehension. His very genius was his curse. Truly a gifted, wayward child—lovable, but annoying; exasperating, but delightful. Bertram MacKennall, an Australian by birth, was poor and unknown as a student in Paris, when he met Alfred Gilbert. He adored Gilbert and worshipped his work. One day the latter said to MacKennall: “Go to London, man, and start there.” “But I cannot afford it.” “Never mind, go and try, and you will become my rival. It will do us both good, spur us both on to better things, perhaps.” To London he came. He succeeded, and finally stepped into Alfred Gilbert’s place at the Academy. What irony of fate!