“How strange to think of such a change.  I’m leading the merriest of lives, and only hope it will last.  Living with Henley, No. 85, Newman Street; very jolly and comfortable.  Chumming with all the old Paris fellows again, all of them going ahead.  There’s Whistler is already one of the great celebrities here—­Poynter getting on.  This is a very jolly little village, and I wish you were over here.  They do make such a fuss with an agreeable fellow like you or me, for instance.  But I suppose Paris is just as jolly in its way.  My ideas of Paris are all Boheme, quartier latin, &c., et si c’etait a recommencer, ma foi je crois que je dirais ‘zut.’  This is a hurried and absurd letter to write to an old pal like you, but I hardly ever have time for a line—­out late every night and make use of what little daylight there is in Newman Street to draw.  ’S’il faisait au moins clair de Lune pendant le jour dans ce sacre pays.’  I daresay I shall treat myself to a trip over to Paris as soon as the weather is jollier.  I intend to go abroad this summer to do some etchings ‘qui seront aux pommes.’  Is there any chance whatever of your coming over here before?  You mustn’t form your opinion of my performances by what you may happen to see, as half of what I do is spoiled by bad engraving (that’s why I intend to etch), and what I have done, bar one or two things, are merely little chic sketches for money.  I have many plans; among others I intend to bring out a series in Punch, with which I shall take peculiar care—­something quite original.  I think you would precious soon get more portraits than you could paint here, but if you are getting on so well in Paris, of course it would be madness to leave.  But I do not like the idea of your not being one of us—­such a band of brothers full of jolly faults that dovetail beautifully.  It was quite a freak of mine coming over here; I did it against everybody’s advice—­came over with a ten-pound note and made the rest.  ’Your friend Bobtail seems to be the only man who had no doubt of your talent,’ writes my mother.  ’Enfin c’est prouve que je suis au moins bon a quelque chose.’  Do you go much into the world?  I go knocking about as happily as possible, singing and smoking cigars everywhere.  Jimmy Whistler and I go ‘tumbling’ together, as Thackeray says.  Would you were here to tumble with us!  Enfin, mon bon, ecris moi vite.”

When at last I too returned to London I was privileged to take my humble share in the “tumbling,” as also in the steady process that was gradually to wean us from Bohemia.  We tumbled pretty regularly into the Pamphilon, a restaurant within a stone’s throw of Oxford Circus, of the familiar type that exhibits outside its door a bill of fare with prices appended, to be studied by those who count their shillings and pence as we did.  We had got beyond the days when no wines are sour and when tough meat passes muster, if there is only plenty of it; we wanted a sound dinner, and we got it at the Pamphilon; to wind up we adjourned to the coffee-room and talked and read and smoked.