"A pavement artist has done you, sir, very lifelike. I saw it myself this morning at Hyde Park Corner."

Arnold Bennett's man Fred told him, March 29, 1927. He noted it in his private journal, adding the comment: "New manifestation of fame." There was a touch of poetic fitness in it, for he had written some years before that to him the word 'pavement' was one of the most beautiful in the English language.