show off and astonish his audience, and usually talked better after an
hour or two than at the beginning. His verve was inexhaustible. But
always a great part of the fascination lay in the quick changes from
grave to gay, from pathos to mockery, from philosophy to fun.
There was but little of the actor in him. When telling a story he never
mimicked his personages; his drama seldom lay in clash of character, but
in thought; it was the sheer beauty of the words, the melody of the
cadenced voice, the glowing eyes which fascinated you and always and
above all the scintillating, coruscating humour that lifted his
monologues into works of art.
Curiously enough he seldom talked of himself or of the incidents of his
past life. After the prison he always regarded himself as a sort of
Prometheus and his life as symbolic; but his earlier experiences never
suggested themselves to him as specially significant; the happenings of
his life after his fall seemed predestined and fateful to him; yet of
those he spoke but seldom. Even when carried away by his own eloquence,
he kept the tone of good society.
When you came afterwards to think over one of those wonderful evenings
when he had talked for hours, almost without interruption, you hardly
found more than an epigram, a fugitive flash of critical insight, an
apologue or pretty story charmingly told. Over all this he had cast the
glittering, sparkling robe of his Celtic gaiety, verbal humour, and
sensual enjoyment of living. It was all like champagne; meant to be
drunk quickly; if you let it stand, you soon realised that some still
wines had rarer virtues. But there was always about him the magic of a
rich and _puissant_ personality; like some great actor he could take a
poor part and fill it with the passion and vivacity of his own nature,
till it became a living and memorable creation.
He gave the impression of wide intellectual range, yet in reality he was
not broad; life was not his study nor the world-drama his field. His
talk was all of literature and art and the vanities; the light
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