In this
fairly numerous company--there were others though no other face
rises before me--my father and York Powell found listeners for a
conversation that had no special loyalties, or antagonisms; while
I could only talk upon set topics, being in the heat of my youth,
and the topics that filled me with excitement were never spoken
of.
IV
Some quarter of an hour's walk from Bedford Park, out on the high
road to Richmond, lived W. E. Henley, and I, like many others,
began under him my education. His portrait, a lithograph by
Rothenstein, hangs over my mantlepiece among portraits of other
friends. He is drawn standing, but, because doubtless of his
crippled legs, he leans forward, resting his elbows upon some
slightly suggested object--a table or a window-sill. His heavy
figure and powerful head, the disordered hair standing upright,
his short irregular beard and moustache, his lined and wrinkled
face, his eyes steadily fixed upon some object, in complete
confidence and self-possession, and yet as in half-broken reverie,
all are exactly as I remember him.
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