It used to begin as a rumour, a faint stirring and excitement in King’s Road, Chelsea. The artist on the top floor of Joubert Studios—an artist who had a private income and a gently nursed hypochondria—received a parcel from home: a couple of cooked chickens, perhaps, a tongue, cakes, crystallised fruits, three bottles of wine and so on. The lady who occupied the studio below, and the musical critic who lived in the third studio from the top, were duly apprised of the fact, and Norman and Eddie Morrow were called in from near by for a consultation.

“Clearly,” the lady remarked, “a rag is indicated. A rag must always have a beginning, and this undoubtedly is a most excellent beginning. Ring up Susie, somebody, and fetch Hearn over and Ivan and let the Cumberlands know; and, oh! Hughes, dear little Herbert, lend me your pots and pans and things. And, Warlow, just run round everywhere and tell all the people you meet. Don’t forget John, and I think that Deane would like that girl with fuzzy hair. We’ll begin at seven. No, we won’t: we’ll begin now.”

And Warlow, nursing his hypochondria and being very biddable, sighed and moved away, saying beseechingly as he went:

“You will leave me a wing, won’t you? I’ve had no breakfast yet.”

240But neither had the rest, and by the time Warlow, suffering in a resigned and patient kind of way from paleness and breathlessness, returned, one of the chickens had vanished, and the long table with its litter of paper, cardboard, pencils and paint, was now littered also with plates and knives and forks and breadcrumbs. The rag had begun.

The month was May, a true May with a warm wind, a warmer sun, and fluttering green leaves. The little party—the nucleus of the much larger party that was to meet there in the evening—drifted downstairs to Hughes’s studio where there was a grand piano and a portable harmonium which appeared to belong to no one in particular. Hughes, looking a little ruefully at the MS. upon which he was engaged, put it away on a shelf, opened his wide windows and began to play. Harry Lowe, with his magnificent but untrained voice, appeared dramatically in the doorway and sang:
Largo
grandioso
   
For he’s a Scotsman, a bonny Scotsman,
His feyther and his mither,
His sister and his brither—
(Forte)   
They are all Scotch, from the land of Roderick Dhu;
(Vivace)   
And the whitewash brush in the middle of his kilt
(Piano)   
Is all Sco-otch too.

This went to a great tune devised, invented, composed and arranged by Hughes and Lowe. The great air, heard with its cunning chatter of an accompaniment from the piano, put everyone in the right mood, and Norman Morrow, whose head was always full of ideas, began to prepare “stunts” for the evening, whilst Warlow, having nothing better to do, attired himself as an Italian Count, sat at the open window, and smiled sadly at all the girls whose attention he could attract in the street below.

Norman’s idea was a revue—a revue of Any Old Thing: Mona Lisa, the sale of beautiful slaves, the Salome Dance by six-foot-two Harry Lowe, the Innocent 241Wench who took the Wrong Turning, etc., etc. He wanted to prepare the groundwork for the evening’s performance; the details could be filled in on the spur of the moment. But, in the afternoon rehearsal, several scenes, exciting the actors, were studied carefully to the most minute particular. Kitty, in the meantime, was upstairs preparing food, her dainty hands fluttering over salads and sandwiches. At six, jolly, lovable little Susie rushed from her work, revitalised everybody, and sang in her funny little voice, holding a cigarette in one hand and a saucepan in the other.

But before the Rag Proper began, many charming idiocies were enacted. Warlow and Eddie Morrow walked to Sloane Square (it is conceivable that they called at the Six Bells on the way) for the sole purpose of riding back again in a taxi-cab, Warlow in a great Russian overcoat smothered in fur, Eddie a little unkempt and looking as though he had just stepped out of one of J. M. Synge’s plays. Harry Lowe telephoned a number of telegrams to a far-off post office where it was supposed there was a lady who owned his heart and sold postage stamps. Norman Morrow sat in a corner daubing pieces of brown paper with yellow paint and chuckling inconsequently to himself. All three studios, one above the other, appeared to be in glorious disorder, but, as a matter of fact, nearly every brain was busy with preparations, and by seven o’clock everything was ready for the great rag....

I cannot re-create the scene for you. I do not know quite how it is, but the gaiety, the light-heartedness of that most jolly evening ooze from my heart as I write. I am not sufficient of an artist to sweep from my heart all the sad, irrecoverable things that my heart remembers. Especially, I cannot forget Ivan Heald, who now lies dead. (A year later he was to say to me, in that same studio: “This is a real good-bye, Gerald. It is not possible that 242both of us will survive this.”... And, of course, it is he who has gone. One feels mean in surviving, in enjoying the savour of life, when one’s best friends have departed.) ...

The artistic Irishman is a perfect actor, an inimitable mimic, and the two Morrows surpassed everyone. If ever you have seen Eddie Morrow, it will appear to you inconceivable that he could ever make a good Mona Lisa. Yet his Mona Lisa was perfect. He smiled so mysteriously, so faintly, so imaginatively, that Walter Pater, had he seen him, would have rewritten that swooning chapter which contains so much of art’s opiate.... I remember Edith Heald who, unexpectedly to me, revealed consummate art as a nigger-boy, her eyes rolling in rapt wonderment. I remember Hearn’s eyeglasses, and the smiling eyes behind them, and the little scurry of words that occasionally came from his lips when something magical touched his spirit. And I can hear Herbert Hughes’ contented voice saying: “Well, this is rather splendid, don’t you know.”

Hughes was awfully good to me on these occasions, for he would allow me to improvise the music for the dumb charades, though as an extempore player—and, indeed, as a player of any kind—he is worlds above me. And I used to love to invent Eastern Dances à la Bantock to fit the gyrations of Harry Lowe, or Debussy chords for anything shadowy and sentimental, or chromatic melodies—prolonged and melting things in the “O Star of Eve” manner—for luscious love scenes, or fat, bulgy discords when ............