And Chelsea, dotted with groups of studios, full of small streets, and cheap lodgings, is alive with artists and writers, and rich with memories of both.

Introductory chapter.

My life will be the happier, turn out what it may, for these friendships, these pot-house nights, these evenings in the firelight of a studio, and these walks, two or three of us talking from our hearts, along the Embankment in the Chelsea evening, with the lamps sparkling above us in the leaves of the trees, the river moving with the sweet noise of waters, the wings of youth on our feet, and all the world before us.

Conclusion.

Despite Ransome's misgivings I am sure he would be delighted to see his first "real book" republished by Oxford University Press seventy-six years after it was written, and in time for its author's hundredth birthday.

Epilogue, 1983.