“Because, dear lady, when we began _Henry VIII._ it was winter, and I had not the pluck to face gumming on a beard for eight performances a week in the cold weather, tearing it off again, and shaving daily. I should have had no face left by now. It would have been raw meat. The only way was to grow a beard, and as the beard would come grey, the only way to master it was to dip it in the dye-pot.” And he laughed that merry chuckle which has become so familiar in his impersonation of bluff King Hal. Everyone liked Tadema with his genial personality. It is a curious thing that though of Dutch descent, he was really born in Wimpole Street, London. He lived more or less in Holland until he was sixteen, when he went to Belgium to study Art, but he never drew his pictures, except in his mind’s eye; he painted straight on the canvas. He was the first exponent of art and archæology in combination. When he returned to Holland they assured him that he was no longer Dutch, and if he wished to be considered so, he must be naturalised. “Ridiculous,” he said, “I shall do nothing of the kind, and if your rules are so absurd, I shall have nothing more to do with Holland.” “I was annoyed and I left, and England has been my home ever since,” he continued as he was relating this to me. “The funny part is, that when I wear my uniform to go to a Levée, I am always taken for an English admiral. You see I am short and fat, and have a beard, and the man in the street seems to associate that with the commander of the sea. Anyway, I have so often been taken for an admiral, that I sometimes forget I am a painter.” If Tadema looked like an admiral instead of a painter, Somerset Maugham looks like a smart London young man rather than a medico who has taken to the drama. What a strange career! A young doctor, in a small practice, he spent his spare time writing plays. For eight years _Lady Frederick_ was refused a hearing. Then one day he heard that Ethel Irving wanted a comedy in a hurry—looked up his book, saw Mary Moore had had it for a year, dashed off in a hansom (there weren’t many taxis in 1905), made her unearth it, went on in the hansom, left it with Ethel Irving, and within twenty-four hours it was accepted. She was great in the part. Success followed. _Mrs. Dot_ had been refused by managers for five years. Once accepted, it roped money in. Success number two. In 1910 he laughingly told me he had just used up the last of his stock of plays, and would then (having made a fortune in the old ones) have to begin something new. He owned he had altered and written them all up a bit, but they were the same plays that all the managers had previously refused. When an artist paints a portrait, he leaves out the disagreeable traits, when a photographer takes a photo he rubs out the wrinkles, and when an author writes a personal book he leaves out all the most personal touches.