Part 27 (2/2)

J K S

I was delighted with this Another time he wrote a parody of Myers' ”St Paul” for ht:

Lo! what the deuce I' ”Lo!” for God is aware and leaves o for, Lo! there is naught inadequately for:

Souvenez-vous si les vers que je trace Fussent parfois (je l'avoue!) l'argot, Si vous trouvez un peu trop d'audace On ose tout quand on se dit ”Margot”

My dear friend JKS was responsible for the aspiration frequently quoted:

When the Rudyards cease froh I can hardly claim Symonds as a Soul, he was so much interested in me and my friends that Iton Symonds, in 1885, at Davos

I climbed up to Am Hof[Footnote: J A Symonds's country house]

one afternoon with a letter of introduction, which was taken to the fa things As no one came near me, I presu the books, prepared to wait In a little ti at the open door

”Has he gone?” was the querulous question that came from behind the screen

And in a ton Sy atfor it but to answer:

”No I a the most courteous of men, he sether

Sy ht up to Am Hof, where we talked and read out loud till one and often two in the hts at Davos than I had ever learnt in ether; Swift, Voltaire, Browning, Walt Whites from every author and poet, which he would turn up feverishly to illustrate what he wanted me to understand

I shall always think Lord Morley [Footnote: Viscount Morley of Blackburn] the best talker I ever heard and after hie Meredith was too much of a prima donna and was very deaf and uninterruptable when I knew hiood even then Alfred Austin was a friend of his and had just been made Poet Laureate by Lord Salisbury, when my beloved friend Admiral Maxse took me down to the country to see Meredith for the first ti more than usually stupid, I said to him:

”Well Mr Meredith, I wonder what your friend Alfred Austin thinks of his appoint his beautiful head he replied:

”It is very hard to say what a banta”

Symonds' conversation is described in Stevenson's essay on Talks and Talkers, but no one could ever really give the fancy, the epigram, the swiftness and earnestness hich he not only expressed hied you in conversation This and his affection co companion

The Swiss postht and drank Italian wines out of beautiful glass which our host had brought from Venice; and they were our only interruptions when Mrs Syirls went to bed I haveour peasant friends off fro by his side in the dark, listening to the crack of their whips and their yodels yelled far down the snow roads into the starry skies

When I first left hiland, Mrs Sy a blank book with his own poems and translations, which he posted toWe corresponded till he died; and I have kept every letter that he ever wrote to ht me to write If only he were alive noould show hi of it by counsel, syht become famous

”You have l'oreille juste” he would say, ”and I value your literary judg with the one he sent down to our villa at Davos a propos of the essays over which Lady Londonderry and I had our little breeze:

I am at work upon a volu to my brain and not easy to write I think I shall ask you to read them