Like streams of hot lava,
Oh! there’s Lily Tarver!
The regatta’s loud brava
Still rings in her ears.
Oh! there’s Lily Tarver
In oceans of tears!”
At Arthur Benson’s one night I met Mr. Gosse, who was kind to me, and from that moment became a lifelong friend.
I had written an essay on Collins, and Arthur Benson had sent it for me to Macmillan’s Magazine. The editor did not print it, but he wrote me a letter about it, urging me to go on writing. While I had been at Florence I had written a complete novel, which I had sent to the publishers. The publishers’ reader reported that it was worth printing, and offered to publish it on the half-profits system. I had the sense to put it in the fire. Everyone, said Vernon Lee to me once, should write a novel once, if only so as never to want to do it again.
In August I went to Mr. Tatham, who lived near Abingdon, to prepare for my examination. At his house several boys were struggling with the same task and preparing to go to Oxford. Mr. Tatham did not teach me arithmetic—nobody could do that—but he taught me some Greek and Latin. We read the Plutus of Aristophanes, and some Catullus, and he led me into new fields in English literature. I enjoyed myself at his house quite immensely. Sometimes at dinner Mr. Tatham would laugh till tears poured down his cheeks, and once he laughed so much that he was almost ill and had to go upstairs to his room to recover.
We used to make up triolets at meals, and at all times of the day, and while I was at Abingdon I had two little books of them printed called Northcourt Nonsense. One of them was written while dressing for dinner and after having been stung by a fly, and addressed to Mr. Tatham and sent to him by the maid. It ran thus: