Another great element of charm in Payn was his warm love of Life,
"And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world."
While he hated the black and savage and sordid side of existence with a passionate hatred, he enjoyed all its better--which he believed to be its larger--part with an infectious relish. Never have I known a more blithe and friendly spirit; never a nature to which Literature and Society--books and men--yielded a more constant and exhilarating joy. He had unstinted admiration for the performances of others, and was wholly free from jealousy. His temperament indeed was not equable. He had ups and downs, bright moods and dark, seasons of exaltation and seasons of depression. The one succeeded the other with startling rapidity, but the bright moods triumphed, and it was impossible to keep him permanently depressed. His health had always been delicate, but illness neither crushed his spirit nor paralysed his pen. Once he broke a blood-vessel in the street, and was conveyed home in an ambulance. During the transit, though he was in some danger of bleeding to death, he began to compose a narrative of his adventure, and next week it appeared in the _Illustrated London News_.
During the last two years of his life he was painfully crippled by arthritic rheumatism, and could no longer visit the Reform Club, where for many years he had every day eaten his luncheon and played his rubber. Determining that he should not completely lose his favourite, or I should rather say his only, amusement, some members of the Club banded themselves together to supply him with a rubber in his own house twice a week; and this practice was maintained to his death. It was a striking testimony to the affection which he inspired. In those years I was a pretty frequent visitor, and, on my way to the house, I used to bethink me of stories which might amuse him, and I used even to note them down between one visit and another, as a provision for next time. One day Payn said, "A collection of your stories would make a book, and I think Smith and Elder would publish it." I thought my anecdotage scarcely worthy of so much honour; but I promised to make a weekly experiment in the _Manchester Guardian_. My _Collections and Recollections_ ran through the year 1897, and appeared in book-form at Easter, 1898. But Payn died on the 25th of the previous March; and the book, which I had hoped to put in his hand, I could only inscribe to his delightful memory.
