It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left it. But just where the deuce had he left it? The consciousness of dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut enough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon," between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality somewhat intimidating.
Max was worried Henry James might be upset about this, but James described the book as "the most intelligent that has been produced in England for many a long day" and when asked by an admirer what he thought about something else, just pointed at Max and said: "Ask that young man, he is in full possession of my innermost thoughts."
This capacity to be in possession of someone's innermost thoughts, and to reveal them in pictures as well as words, Max possessed to an extraordinary degree. He said the most perfect caricature is "that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment, in the most beautiful manner".
Not that he always admired his subjects. His greatest aversion was to Rudyard Kipling. The two men met only once, in Baltimore in 1895, while Max was accompanying his half-brother, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the impresario, on a tour of the United States. "So young to have a style!" Kipling exclaimed. For his part, Max admitted Kipling's genius, but hated "the smell of blood, beer and baccy" which, he said, exhaled from Kipling's pages: "The schoolboy, the bully and the brute — these three types have surely never found a more brilliant expression of themselves than in Rudyard Kipling."
Kipling was so hurt by Max's caricatures that he refused, 20 years later, to meet David Low, who wanted to draw him. One of the most wounding of these caricatures was published in 1904. It shows the short, vulgar figure of Kipling dancing along with Britannia, who is tall, graceful and not at all enjoying his company. They have swapped hats, so that he is crowned by her helmet, and she is left with his bowler. The caption reads: "Mr Rudyard Kipling takes a bloomin' day aht, on the Blasted 'Eath, along with Brittannia, 'is gurl."
