J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by His Wife

								

Carr supervised daily, laden with homely but abundant fare.
But Joe made many other friends in town who never found time to
visit Clapham. In spite of his recent appointment as dramatic critic
to The Echo his new friends were less among actors than among
painters--Burne-Jones and perhaps chiefest just then, Rossetti,
whose friendship he describes himself in Some Eminent Victorians.
Nevertheless he had met Henry Irving through the son of the Lyceum
manager, Mr. Bateman, and had often passionately praised him.
To the girl fresh from the small English colony abroad it was all
vastly entertaining, though I did not realize then how much of a
figure my betrothed already was among the men of his time. Even the
gayer part of my girlhood--the summers spent at S. Moritz, which
my father had discovered, as a homely village in his yearly Alpine
tramp--bore little resemblance to London excitements. I had but rarely
seen the inside of a theatre and never a fine English actor, and my
first vision of Henry Irving in “The Bells,” is a haunting
memory still.
This was in July, 1873.
But this engrossing first season of mine had to be interrupted; for
Joe, having at last obtained a commission from one of the dailies for
holiday articles which would bring in a sum just sufficient to pay
his expenses, was whirled off to the Engadine by my brother to be
introduced to my parents as my suitor.
In some ways a strange meeting on both sides: to Joe the restrictions
of a parson’s home--though greatly modified by the manner of
a foreign life--must have seemed a contrast to the methodical yet
easy-going Clapham household; to my parents the reckless courage
of my lover’s plan of life, his bold enthusiasms and gay
self-confidence must have been--to my father, at all events--somewhat
startling. But my brother was a bit of an autocrat in the family
circle and knew the position which Joe was likely to win in the London
world of letters; my sister, a very young girl, kept the ball rolling
merrily on the lighter side, while my mother quickly discovered deep
points of sympathy with her would-be son-in-law, and the two would sit
on the terrace of our mountain home, looking on the green lake with
the snow-capped peaks cleaving an indigo sky, and quote Wordsworth
contentedly. To the end of her life they understood one another; but
even my father came to recognise the value of a fine character above
creeds. Certain it is that Joe was as much pleased with the Italian
cooking of the maid who sat on the sofa with the dish in her hands
while waiting for him to ask for a second helping, as he was surprised
at my brother advising him not to borrow a postage stamp when five
minutes later my father proposed to settle a small yearly sum upon me
which would enable us to marry as soon as Joe had any fixed income
whatsoever.
As often later, his personality had won, his incurable optimism and