Let us say Romané‑Conti, which is the "cru" that Barty loved best.
Next morning Barty left us early, with a portfolio of sketches under his arm, and his heart full of sanguine expectation, and spent the day in Fleet Street, or there‑abouts, calling on publishers of illustrated books and periodicals, and came back to us at dinner‑time very fagged, and with a long and piteous but very droll story of his ignominious non‑success: his weary waitings in dull, dingy, little business back rooms, the patronizing and snubbing he and his works had met with, the sense that he had everything to learn—he, who thought he was going to take the publishing world by storm.
Next day it was just the same, and the day after, and the day after that—every day of the week he spent under our roof.
Then he insisted on leaving us, and took for himself a room in Newman Street—a studio by day, a bedroom by night, a pleasant smoking‑room at all hours, and very soon a place of rendezvous for all sorts and conditions of jolly fellows, old friends and new, from Guardsmen to young stars of the art world, mostly idle apprentices.
Gradually boxing‑gloves crept in, and foils and masks, and the faithful Snowdrop (whose condition three or four attacks of delirium tremens during Barty's exile had not improved).
And fellows who sang, and told good stories, and imitated popular actors—all as it used to be in the good old days of St. James's Street.
But Barty was changed all the same. These amusements were no longer the serious business of life for him. In the midst of all the racket he would sit at his small easel and work. He declared he couldn't find inspiration in silence and solitude, and, bereft of Martia, he could not bear to be alone.
Then he looked up other old friends, and left cards and got invitations to dinners and drums. One of his first visits was to his old tailor in Jermyn Street, to whom he still owed money, and who welcomed him with open arms—almost hugged him—and made him two or three beautiful suits; I believe he would have dressed Barty for nothing, as a mere advertisement. At all events, he wouldn't hear of payment "for many years to come! The finest figure in the whole Household Brigade!—the idea!"
Soon Barty got a few sketches into obscure illustrated papers, and thought his fortune was made. The first was a little sketch in the manner of John Leech, which he took to the British Lion, just started as a rival to Punch. The British Lion died before the sketch appeared, but he got a guinea for it, and bought a beautiful volume of Tennyson, illustrated by Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and others, and made a sketch on the fly‑leaf of a lovely female with black hair and black eyes, and gave it to Leah Gibson. It was his old female face of ten years ago; yet, strange to say, the very image of Leah herself (as it had once been that of his mother).