We had little in common. I could not think Political Economy `the most
exciting thing in the world,' as he used to call it. Nor could I
without yawning listen to more than a few lines of Mr. William Morris'
interminable smooth Icelandic Sagas, which my friend, pious young
socialist that he was, thought `glorious.' He had begun to write an
Icelandic Saga himself, and had already achieved some hundreds of
verses. None of these pleased him, though to me they seemed very like
his master's. I can see him now, standing on his hearth-rug, holding
his MS. close to his short-sighted eyes, declaiming the verses and
trying, with many angular gestures of his left hand, to animate them--
a tall, broad, raw-boned fellow, with long brown hair flung back from
his forehead, and a very shabby suit of clothes. Because of his
clothes and his socialism, and his habit of offering beer to a guest,
I had at first supposed him quite poor; and I was surprised when he
told me that he had from his guardian (his parents being dead) an
allowance of ?350, and that when he came of age he would have an
income of ?400. `All out of dividends,' he would groan. I would hint
that Mr. Hines and similar zealots might disembarrass him of this
load, if he asked them nicely. `No,' he would say quite seriously, `I
can't do that,' and would read out passages from `Fabian Essays' to
show that in the present anarchical conditions only mischief could
result from sporadic dispersal of rent.
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