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 self-confidence had inspired the confidence of my parents, and it was not misplaced. They made the speedy marriage which, he insisted, could alone lead him to success, just possible: economy and courage did the rest—the courage which never forsook him. For as I look over his letters—written to me in later years when some one of his many bold ventures had not succeeded like another—I find the cheerful phrase recurring: “Don’t be afraid; there’s a lot of fight left in me yet.”
Upon that—safest and most enduring of all incomes—we set sail without a vestige of misgiving upon the sea of life; and I’m thankful to say that I never was “afraid.”
But it was this early marriage that led Joe for a second time, as he tells in his Reminiscences, to change his profession, and gradually, and to the distress of his legal friends, to forsake the Bar for the more immediately remunerative work of literature. I well recollect his joyful announcement to me of his appointment as Art Critic to the Pall Mall Gazette—the beginning of a long period of many-sided association with Frederick Greenwood; and that slender certainty of income provided the condition imposed by my father: our wedding day was fixed.
CHAPTER III
MARRIAGE