J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by His Wife

by Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr

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 the same, he made me ask our fellow-traveller if this was the case. Unwarily the gentleman admitted that he had been told the same thing of us, and although I was unable to put all the epithets which Joe applied to the lying official into colloquial German, I was buoyed up to persuade the traveller to use some of them, with the result that a special engine and first class carriage took us all three on to Paris by the morning. Perhaps our unknown companion was a person in power.

But in Paris fresh delays awaited us. When after two arduous but cheerful days of some sight-seeing and a good deal of aimless and delightful wandering and strange but equally pleasant meals in tiny restaurants—we came to the Gare du Nord on our last day, Joe found that he had not money enough to pay for tickets and luggage, and we were obliged to return ignominiously to the hotel and borrow from our best man—happily for us just arrived there on his own homeward route.

Somehow we minded little, but we reached Clapham one day late for the family Christmasing—arriving, indeed, when the turkey was already on the table, and I think it took all Joe’s tact to win his mother’s forgiveness.

So that was the end of our one week’s wedding trip; it was back to work and a busy time we had of it till our son Philip was about nine months old. Then, by dint of Joe’s unceasing work and my economy we found that we could allow ourselves a journey to Italy to stay with the various friends of my girlhood.