The offer came to him, but, as far as I know, he never carried out the work.
He left Chelsea soon after that, going to Paris to live. But before going to Paris he met, at my home, my dearest friend, of whom I shall write later. My friend is dead now, but he had produced then two excellent novels and a successful play. Whistler expressed an interest in him, and he looked in one evening to ask me if he might borrow the books. I lent them to him. Here is another aspect of his entertaining character. After he had been some months in Paris, I wrote to him reminding him of the volumes, which, for certain personal reasons, the author never permitted to be reprinted.
Fatal error!
Whistler never replied. I never saw him again. But that was Travel's fault, not mine. I never heard again from Whistler. And he never returned the books!
CHAPTER XII
HENRY DRUMMOND
We were smoking churchwarden pipes and telling how Jock This and Sandy That had made their money. I hope the Free Kirk folk will not be scandalised by the revelation, especially by that of the churchwardens. While Drummond lived I concealed this grievous sin, but now that he has been dead nigh upon a quarter of a century, I think he will fare no worse for it in heaven, whatever might have been the case in Glasgow in the early nineties. He wore a velvet smoking jacket, too, and we toasted our toes before his study fire on one of the worst nights it has ever been my fortune to see in Scotland or elsewhere. The wind was lifting roofs and toppling chimneys to the ground, and the rain was like streams from a thousand fire engines. There was never a better night for a fireside.
Jock This and Sandy That got into the conversation (not bodily but in essence) because their experiences illustrated what Professor Drummond was saying about "getting on in the world." And he was saying these things because he liked talking other men's shop, not his own. The point he made was this: it is n't necessary to emigrate in order to prosper. He had been talking to a group of young men about this that very day. He had a way with him when talking to young men.