Dear Herbert,—­Since I left Oxford, I have been staying in town.  I can’t remember if you ever came across my old friend Hardy—­ Augustus Hardy, the art critic—­at all events you will know whom I mean.  I have been very much interested and a good deal distressed by my visit.  Hardy is an elderly man now, nearly sixty.  He went through Oxford with a good deal of distinction, and his sketches were much admired.  It was supposed that he had only to present himself at the doors of the Academy, and that it would surrender at discretion.  His family were rich, and Hardy went up to town to practise art.  He was a friend of my father’s, and he was very kind to me as a boy.  He was well off, and lived in a pleasant house of his own in Half Moon Street.  He was a great hero of mine in those days; he had given up all idea of doing anything great as a painter, but turned his attention to art-criticism.  He wrote an easy, interesting style, and he used to contribute to magazines on all kinds of aesthetic subjects; he belonged to several clubs, dined out a great deal, and used to give elaborate little dinners himself.  He was fond of lecturing and speechifying generally; and he liked the society of young people, young men of an intelligent and progressive type.  He was very free with his money—­I suppose he had nearly three thousand a year—­and spent it in a princely kind of way; when he travelled he travelled like a great gentleman, generally took a young artist or two with him in whom he was interested, and whose expenses he paid.

He was in those days an admirable talker, quick, suggestive, amusing, and with an indefinable charm.  He was then a tall, thin, active man, with flashing eyes, a sanguine complexion, and a mobile face; he wore his hair rather luxuriantly, and had a picturesque, pointed beard.  I shall never forget the delight of occasional visits to his house; he was extraordinarily kind and really sympathetic, and he had with young people a kind of caressing deference in his manner that used to give one an agreeable sense of dignity.  I remember that he had a very deft way of giving one’s halting remarks a kind of twist which used to make it appear that one had said something profound and poetical.

Well, about twenty years ago, all this came to an end very suddenly.  Hardy lost the greater part of his money at one swoop; he had inherited, I think, a certain share in his father’s business; he had one brother, older than himself, who carried the business on.  Hardy never looked into money matters, but simply spent whatever came in; the business came to grief, and Hardy found himself pretty considerably in debt, with a few hundreds a year of his own.  He had, fortunately for himself, never married; his friends came to his assistance, and arranged matters as comfortably as possible.  Hardy settled in an old house in Hammersmith, and has lived there ever since.  He belonged to several clubs; but he resigned his membership of all but one, where he now practically spends his day, and having been always accustomed to have his own way, and dominate the societies in which he found himself, took it for granted that he would be the chief person there.  He was always an egoist, but his position, his generosity, and his own charm had rather tended to conceal the fact.