Of the man himself--for on several occasions I had the privilege and
the permit to visit him--I have the pleasantest, most sacred memories.
His was a wonderfully vivid and intense personality. The head was
beautiful, perfectly conic in form. The eyes were like two revolving
lamps, set very close together. The smile was haunting. There was a
touch of old-world courtesy in the repression of the evident impulse
to spring at one's throat. The voice had notes that recalled M.
Mounet-Sully's in the later and more important passages of Oedipe Roi.
I remember that he always spoke with the greatest contempt of Mr. and
Mrs. Pegaway's translations. He likened them to--but enough! His boom
is not yet at the full. A few weeks hence I shall be able to command
an even higher price than I could now for my `Talks with Kolniyatsch.'
No. 2. THE PINES
[Early in the year 1914 Mr. Edmund Gosse told me he was asking certain
of his friends to write for him a few words apiece in description of
Swinburne as they had known or seen him at one time or another; and he
was so good as to wish to include in this gathering a few words by
myself. Ifound it hard to be brief without seeming irreverent. I
failed in the attempt to make of my subject a snapshot that was not a
grotesque. So I took refuge in an ampler scope.
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