324 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



his duty to see life in its various phases so as to be better 

 able to instruct his flock. He has an artist nephew who 

 takes him round town, and round Paris, and also to race 

 meetings, to Scarborough and other gay places. The 

 Parson writes and the Painter illustrates their experiences. 

 I should say here that we did actually go to all the places 

 and scenes dealt with, though, of course, the bare facts 

 are much expanded. If anything better has ever been 

 done by a black and white artist, I, at any rate, have 

 never seen it. The double-page drawings of An Undress 

 Rehearsal at the Alhambra and The Pelicans at Home 

 are really wonders. Then, too, the Night with Slavin 

 is intensely humorous. I remember the morning it came 

 out, for I took the paper over to Romano's and showed 

 it to Slavin, who was there. It struck me while doing so 

 that if by any chance he did not see the joke my position 

 might be precarious ; but he saw it right enough and was 

 delighted. 



Now I was sure that with the Parson and Painter 

 idea all would now be well for the paper, but something 

 utterly unforeseen happened which effectually darkened 

 the prospect. 



I will not go into it minutely here ; for any animosities 

 and hostilities that it created have long since died out, 

 and Mr Horatio Bottomley and I, who were in some 

 measure protagonists in the contest, have had many other 

 and better subjects to think about since then. 



I refer to the case of " The Hansard Publishing Union 

 Limited," in which Mr Bottomley was the moving spirit ; 

 and he had the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Henry Isaacs, 

 as chairman of the company. 



The acquisition of the Hansard copyright was a very 

 clever move, for that seemed at once to suggest stability. 

 For the rest, the company was, in effect, an attempted 

 combine of the printing trade of London and a good deal 

 of the paper-making. Into the merits or demerits of the 

 scheme and its ramifications I will not enter here indeed 

 they never at any time interested me ; but I will just give 



