In clear black writing on half-sheets of note-paper, the lecture was apparently written. The light was good and the lecture desk high, and he was practically able to read without appearing to do so. Sometimes one could see he was interlarding his prepared material with impromptu lines, but the bulk of the material was delivered as it was prepared. And it was a brilliant achievement. A thin, small voice and yet so accustomed to use, that it could be heard all over the hall. As a rule he spoke quietly, but sometimes he became emphatic, and thumped his right hand on his left. Sometimes he folded his hands on his chest, at others he folded them behind his back. In fact, one would dub him a thoroughly good speaker from habit rather than circumstance. He has not got a sufficiently commanding presence, nor is his voice strong enough for effect, but being an absolute master of his subject and from the practice of fifty years of public life, he knows how to catch an audience and keep it interested. Having referred to his nervousness, it is only fair to say it lasted but a minute. Before he turned the first page of his manuscript it had flown, and so accustomed was he to speak that he evidently prepared a speech of one hour’s duration, and exactly as the clock pointed to the hour he ceased. It was a scholarly production rendered in a masterly way. In 1911 the late Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and other friends were dining with me in York Terrace, when Arthur Bourchier’s name turned up in conversation. “How splendid he is as _Henry VIII._,” remarked the veteran Academician, who had just celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday, and who was still as hale, hearty, full of jokes as ever, and rattled off new stories with every fresh course. Taking up his name card as he spoke, he drew a little square box, and in another instant, a few more lines had turned the box into the figure of Bourchier as _Henry VIII._ “Have you seen Bourchier’s beard off the stage?” I asked. “No, I do not think I have,” he replied, and then I told him of the silly little remark I had made at a public dinner and which someone must have overheard, as it appeared in endless newspapers the following week. Here it is, headed: “MR. BOURCHIER’S REJOINDER “When Mrs. Alec Tweedie a few days ago met Mr. Arthur Bourchier, who was wearing, of course, his fiery red dyed Henry VIII. beard, she exclaimed: ‘Why, I thought you were Bernard Shaw, with a swollen face!’ ‘What an impossible conception—Bernard Shaw with any part of his head swollen,’ replied the Garrick manager.” Chaffing Mr. Bourchier about this a week or two later at a luncheon given by Mr. Somerset Maugham at the Carlton, I said: “I really believe your beard is redder than ever.” “Quite so,” he replied; “to-day is dye-day, Monday.” “Oh, is it? I always thought it was wash-day?” “With me it is dye-day, and every Monday morning I am steeped in henna,” he replied. “Why did you start that beard?” I asked.