The month was May, a true May with a warm wind, a warmer sun, and fluttering green leaves. The little party—the nucleus of the much larger party that was to meet there in the evening—drifted downstairs to Hughes’s studio where there was a grand piano and a portable harmonium which appeared to belong to no one in particular. Hughes, looking a little ruefully at the MS. upon which he was engaged, put it away on a shelf, opened his wide windows and began to play. Harry Lowe, with his magnificent but untrained voice, appeared dramatically in the doorway and sang:

Largo
grandioso		For he’s a Scotsman, a bonny Scotsman, His feyther and his mither, His sister and his brither—
(Forte)They are all Scotch, from the land of Roderick Dhu;
(Vivace) And the whitewash brush in the middle of his kilt
(Piano) Is all Sco-otch too.

This went to a great tune devised, invented, composed and arranged by Hughes and Lowe. The great air, heard with its cunning chatter of an accompaniment from the piano, put everyone in the right mood, and Norman Morrow, whose head was always full of ideas, began to prepare “stunts” for the evening, whilst Warlow, having nothing better to do, attired himself as an Italian Count, sat at the open window, and smiled sadly at all the girls whose attention he could attract in the street below.

Norman’s idea was a revue—a revue of Any Old Thing: Mona Lisa, the sale of beautiful slaves, the Salome Dance by six-foot-two Harry Lowe, the Innocent [241] ]Wench who took the Wrong Turning, etc., etc. He wanted to prepare the groundwork for the evening’s performance; the details could be filled in on the spur of the moment. But, in the afternoon rehearsal, several scenes, exciting the actors, were studied carefully to the most minute particular. Kitty, in the meantime, was upstairs preparing food, her dainty hands fluttering over salads and sandwiches. At six, jolly, lovable little Susie rushed from her work, revitalised everybody, and sang in her funny little voice, holding a cigarette in one hand and a saucepan in the other.

But before the Rag Proper began, many charming idiocies were enacted. Warlow and Eddie Morrow walked to Sloane Square (it is conceivable that they called at the Six Bells on the way) for the sole purpose of riding back again in a taxi-cab, Warlow in a great Russian overcoat smothered in fur, Eddie a little unkempt and looking as though he had just stepped out of one of J. M. Synge’s plays. Harry Lowe telephoned a number of telegrams to a far-off post office where it was supposed there was a lady who owned his heart and sold postage stamps. Norman Morrow sat in a corner daubing pieces of brown paper with yellow paint and chuckling inconsequently to himself. All three studios, one above the other, appeared to be in glorious disorder, but, as a matter of fact, nearly every brain was busy with preparations, and by seven o’clock everything was ready for the great rag....

I cannot re-create the scene for you. I do not know quite how it is, but the gaiety, the light-heartedness of that most jolly evening ooze from my heart as I write. I am not sufficient of an artist to sweep from my heart all the sad, irrecoverable things that my heart remembers. Especially, I cannot forget Ivan Heald, who now lies dead. (A year later he was to say to me, in that same studio: “This is a real good-bye, Gerald. It is not possible that [242] ]both of us will survive this.”... And, of course, it is he who has gone. One feels mean in surviving, in enjoying the savour of life, when one’s best friends have departed.) ...

The artistic Irishman is a perfect actor, an inimitable mimic, and the two Morrows surpassed everyone. If ever you have seen Eddie Morrow, it will appear to you inconceivable that he could ever make a good Mona Lisa. Yet his Mona Lisa was perfect. He smiled so mysteriously, so faintly, so imaginatively, that Walter Pater, had he seen him, would have rewritten that swooning chapter which contains so much of art’s opiate.... I remember Edith Heald who, unexpectedly to me, revealed consummate art as a nigger-boy, her eyes rolling in rapt wonderment. I remember Hearn’s eyeglasses, and the smiling eyes behind them, and the little scurry of words that occasionally came from his lips when something magical touched his spirit. And I can hear Herbert Hughes’ contented voice saying: “Well, this is rather splendid, don’t you know.”

Hughes was awfully good to me on these occasions, for he would allow me to improvise the music for the dumb charades, though as an extempore player—and, indeed, as a player of any kind—he is worlds above me. And I used to love to invent Eastern Dances à la Bantock to fit the gyrations of Harry Lowe, or Debussy chords for anything shadowy and sentimental, or chromatic melodies—prolonged and melting things in the “O Star of Eve” manner—for luscious love scenes, or fat, bulgy discords when some real tomfoolery was afoot.

You must imagine everybody gay and, occasionally, just a little riotous; in remembrance, it seems to me very beautiful because so happy and childlike. And you must imagine everybody very friendly, even to complete strangers. There was a carnival atmosphere. Clever people were there with their brains burning bright. There [243] ]were wit, music, wine, pretty women, courtesy, infinite good-will.

Perhaps, towards midnight, we would seek change in quietness, and, lying on rugs spread on the waxed floor, would listen to Norman singing, unaccompanied, an Irish Rebel song, and something a little hard would come into Irish Susie’s eyes for a moment or two, and I remember with regret how, some months after war had broken out, I said after Norman had been singing that it was no longer pleasant to me to hear Rebel songs. Regret? Yes; for when I said that I was a prig and was imagining myself as something of a soldier-hero. If only Norman were alive now to sing whatsoever songs he liked!