Thomas Hardy (who honoured us with his presence very rarely) I must mention in this context as a poet and not as a novelist, though he is the head of the novelists’ craft to-day, undoubtedly. I am not certain that he is not also our truest living poet, except Kipling. He has certainly come nearer to finding a new poetical form than any modern poet except Yone Noguchi, the marvellous Japanese, who has written some of the finest contemporary poetry in our language, for Walt Whitman’s psalm forms are not suited for any country but America, or for any writer who is not one of the people working with his hands. His crudities would not be tolerable in an educated man. But Hardy struck out entirely fresh forms. Hardy shook off the ancient trammels of rhyme and metre, while preserving a rich rhythm and a scholarly elegance, in poems inspired with a broad humanity.

Henley, who, like Gray, wrote a few gems, which will find their place in every anthology, was never in our flat at Addison Mansions, though he was a friend of mine; he could not have climbed so many stairs if he had tried.

I remember two sayings of his specially. In those days I wrote verses; and he was good enough to read my books of verse and advise me on them. He said there was some hope for me because I wrote short pieces, and, in his opinion, the perfect poem should never contain more than three stanzas. But I have long since abandoned verse writing.

The other was a thing which he said to me when he was giving me some introductions, on the eve of my departure for America. I thought it was a joke then, but subsequent events threw a light on it. He was urging me after I left America to go on and see Stevenson at Samoa. He said that Stevenson would be my inspiration, and as he was handing me the introduction he said to me, with what I considered unnecessary emphasis, “And when you see him, tell the beggar that I hate him for being so beastly successful.”

Years afterwards Henley wrote of Stevenson with an acidity which his friends regretted very much, and which proved to me that what he had said to me as we were parting was one of those outbursts of candour for which Henley was famous.

It required a big man like Henley to confess that he was envious, and perhaps there was good reason why he should be, for considering the way their careers began, and Henley’s magnificent intellect and gift of expression, one would not have prophesied in the beginning that Henley would only be appreciated by the critical few, and Stevenson by all the world, gentle and simple.

I never did see Stevenson. We meant to have taken Samoa on our way back from Japan to San Francisco, but the Japanese boat which should have taken us there broke down, and we could not wait for the next.

CHAPTER XI
LADY AUTHORS AT ADDISON MANSIONS

The great “Miss Braddon,” who is now one of the most valued of my friends, and a not infrequent visitor, never came to 32 Addison Mansions. She achieved fame before any living novelist. She had published Aurora Floyd and Lady Audley’s Secret more than half a century ago, in 1862, while Thomas Hardy did not write Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes till ten years after that. Her powers are undiminished. Her Green Curtain, published fifty years later, is one of the finest books she ever wrote.