When at last I too returned to London I was privileged to take my humble share in the "tumbling," as also in the steady process that was gradually to wean us from Bohemia. We tumbled pretty regularly into the Pamphilon, a restaurant within a stone's throw of Oxford Circus, of the familiar type that exhibits outside its door a bill of fare with prices appended, to be studied by those who count their shillings and pence as we did. We had got beyond the days when no wines are sour and when tough meat passes muster, if there is only plenty of it; we wanted a sound dinner, and we got it at the Pamphilon; to wind up we adjourned to the coffee-room and talked and read and smoked.
Stacey Marks, Poynter, Jimmy Whistler, and Charles Keene were among the crew, and others not so well known to fame. Pleasant hours those and gemüthliche, as the Germans say; how different the after-dinner clay pipe or cheap weed of those times to the post-prandial havannah we now complacently whiff at our friend's Mæcenas' hospitable table! Yes, things have changed, my dear Rag, since the day we were paying our bill, and you addressed the waiter with superb affability: "Here, Charles, is a penny for you. I know it isn't much, but I can't afford more."
It is hard to fancy anything less like Bohemia than Regent Street, but a little incident that occurred as I walked down that busy thoroughfare one afternoon recalls the best traditions of the land in which practical jokes abound. I was going along without any definite aim, killing time and gathering wool, flanéing, in fact; perhaps there was a touch of the foreigner about me, for I had only lately returned from abroad; anyway I suddenly found myself singled out as a fit subject to be victimised. I felt a hand stealthily sliding into my pocket; on the spur of the moment I grasped that hand in as much of an iron grip as I could muster. Then--I hardly know why--I waited quite a number of seconds before I turned round. When I did, it was du Maurier's face that I beheld, blanched with terror. Those seconds had been ages to him. Good heavens! had he made a mistake? Was it not Bobtail's but another man's hand that was clutching his wrist? Thank Heaven, it was Bobtail's!