Stacey Marks, Poynter, Jimmy Whistler, and Charles Keene were among the crew, and others not so well known to fame.  Pleasant hours those and gemuethliche, as the Germans say; how different the after-dinner clay pipe or cheap weed of those times to the post-prandial havannah we now complacently whiff at our friend’s Maecenas’ hospitable table!  Yes, things have changed, my dear Rag, since the day we were paying our bill, and you addressed the waiter with superb affability:  “Here, Charles, is a penny for you.  I know it isn’t much, but I can’t afford more.”

It is hard to fancy anything less like Bohemia than Regent Street, but a little incident that occurred as I walked down that busy thoroughfare one afternoon recalls the best traditions of the land in which practical jokes abound.  I was going along without any definite aim, killing time and gathering wool, flaneing, in fact; perhaps there was a touch of the foreigner about me, for I had only lately returned from abroad; anyway I suddenly found myself singled out as a fit subject to be victimised.  I felt a hand stealthily sliding into my pocket; on the spur of the moment I grasped that hand in as much of an iron grip as I could muster.  Then—­I hardly know why—­I waited quite a number of seconds before I turned round.  When I did, it was du Maurier’s face that I beheld, blanched with terror.  Those seconds had been ages to him.  Good heavens! had he made a mistake?  Was it not Bobtail’s but another man’s hand that was clutching his wrist?  Thank Heaven, it was Bobtail’s!

There never was an occasion, before or after, I feel absolutely sure, when du Maurier was more truly glad to see me.  His colour rapidly returned, and he swore that of all the bonnes blagues this was the best; but for all that, one thing is certain—­he has never since attempted to pick pockets in Regent Street.

A delightful compromise between Bohemia and the land where well-regulated Society rules supreme, was the ground on which stood Moray Lodge, the residence of Arthur Lewis, the head of the well-known firm of Lewis and Allenby.

We have read of him before:—­

“Sir Lewis Cornelys, as everybody knows, lives in a palace on Campden Hill, a house of many windows, and, whichever window he looks out of, he sees his own garden and very little else.  There was no pleasanter or more festive house than his in London, winter or summer.”

I quote this, as probably it may not be known to everybody that Sir Lewis was knighted on the memorable occasion of Trilby’s birthday, when she was presented at the drawing—­and every other—­room.  With much kindly fore-thought his friend and biographer allows him to be eighty years old in the early sixties, thereby enabling him to have attained to-day the ripe old age of one hundred and fourteen.

Well, he was one of du Maurier’s earliest friends, and when Taffy the Laird, and Little Billie, “a-smokin’ their pipes and cigyars,” told the cabby to drive to Mechelen Lodge, I found my way to what I called Moray Lodge, and met them there.  And there too, to be sure, was Glorioli, “the tall, good-looking swarthy foreigner from whose scarcely parted, moist, thick, bearded lips issued the most ravishing sounds that had ever been heard from throat of man or woman or boy.”