J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by His Wife

								

took the best precautions available in requiring the legal part of
the ceremony to take place on the “British ground” of his
small, temporary hotel room, and there, both of us kneeling on two
little sofa cushions, the ring was put upon my finger.
My father, however, naturally wanted to “finish us off” in
the English Church, and I remember my shyness when I saw the uninvited
crowd which had assembled there--I was told afterwards to see what a
high-art wedding dress would be like!
Joe declared that they expected it to be scanty; if so they must have
been disappointed that the folds of my soft brocade, fashioned after my
artist sister-in-law’s design and approved by my husband, were
much more ample than was the mode of the day.
How much have we changed since the Morris vogue!
I don’t think I minded then being the centre of observation, even
though I may have guessed it was fraught with adverse criticism--not
wholly, as I now think, undeserved.
But in the friendly little party that assembled in our modest home to
wish us God-speed there was no adverse criticism, and we went off to
Leipzig for our honeymoon en route for England and work, without any
of the fatiguing excitement of a society assembly.
Joe’s graceful little speech in reply to congratulations was
quite the merriest note of the simple festivities.
I daresay the wine at that table was not wholly worthy of the palate
for which Joe had already acquired a reputation among his London
friends; but when we reached Leipzig I remember his ordering a bottle
of the celebrated Johannesberg for our wedding dinner. Possibly he may
have told a sympathetic bon viveur of this afterwards; anyhow our
first dinner invitation on our return to London was to the house of a
wealthy bachelor who produced a bottle of the (ostensibly) same wine
with the dessert. Unluckily, Joe, on being pressed to praise it, said
with his usual candour: “Well, my dear fellow, you gave us such
excellent claret during dinner that you have spoiled my palate for
this!”
The laugh that followed compensated for an ominous frown on the brow of
our rather peppery host, who was however placated by one of the guests
recalling an occasion on which Joe had mortified the famous proprietor
of a famous eating-house by forcing him to admit a mistake in serving,
later in the dinner, an inferior brand of the wine supplied at first.
Two days of lazy sight-seeing in the fine old German town, and then on
we travelled; and a cold journey we had of it! But Joe’s spirits
were equal to every contretemps: even when we were turned out at a
dreary frontier junction in the middle of the night to await a slow
train, although we had paid first class fare and had been told there
was no change.
There was but one other passenger in the train--a quiet, elderly
German, and when I translated to Joe the bullying official’s
assurance that this gentleman had agreed to waive his rights if we did