SOURCE: "E. V. Lucas," in Figures in the Foreground: Literary Reminiscences 1917-1940, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963, pp. 82-8.

In the following essay, Swinnerton reflects on his personal acquaintance with Lucas.

Friendship with Lucas, though it could be both fluent and free, called for tact. While on the surface equable, he suffered from sensitiveness which could twist a chance inattention into a deliberate affront, or an ironic comment into an accusation. Personally a wit, he belonged, I always thought, to the days of the hansom cab and the historic Café Royal; and it was unquestionable that he remembered those days, or believed he remembered them, with affection.

He had been 'reader', not indeed for John Lane, the publisher around whom Beardsley, Richard le Gallienne, and Max Beerbohm revolved, but for Grant Richards when that bold fellow went into business at the end of the 'nineties; and he claimed to have...