Sir Coutts’s venture was to start in the following May, and there was much to discuss and settle at that shooting party; yet not so much as to interfere with plenty of fun by the way.
It was on this visit that Prince Leopold was a guest at the house and I vividly recall a series of tableaux vivants got up for his entertainment, in which Joe played a part he was often to fill later—that of stage manager, combined on this occasion with the office of Dresser, in which capacity he “corked” a moustache on His Royal Highness’ face for an impersonation of Charles I.
There were anxious moments—such as when the Prince’s tights did not arrive from Edinburgh, or when Sir Arthur Sullivan, after nobly seconding Joe’s efforts with his incidental music, flatly refused to abandon his cigar at a late hour to play waltzes; or again, on the following Sunday morning when—the crimson cloth being laid ready at the Episcopalian Church—a belated telegram arrived from Windsor commanding H.R.H.’s attendance at Presbyterian worship. But I think Joe’s unconventional and merry wit—even in those early days when he might have felt strange in that kind of society—helped away many a little ruction, and the fun that he made of himself as “one of the lower middle class” little used to the ways of great houses was much appreciated by Arthur Sullivan, “Dicky Doyle” and others claiming kinship with the “Bohemians,” yet used to the habits at which he pretended to be alarmed.
I can see the twinkle in the eye with which he stoutly declared that a French Chef did not necessarily beget a sure taste in the hosts, and the corroboration given to his statement by the sight of some twenty docile people eating a salad that had been mixed with methylated spirit in mistake for vinegar without turning a hair.
I think Arthur Sullivan—who was an habitué—expostulated with the butler about it, when the cause of the “odd taste” was run to earth and laid to the account of the kitchenmaid.
These Balcarres days began for us that series of social gatherings so well known later as the Grosvenor Gallery Sunday afternoons, at which Lady Lindsay presided over a company including all the most notable people in Literature and Art, to say nothing of the “beaux noms,” courtiers and politicians in her more exclusive set.
Those most entertaining parties and the Private Views both at the Grosvenor Gallery and, later on, at the New Gallery in Regent Street, were among the season’s features of that period, and invitations to both of them were eagerly sought by all classes of Society. Especially in the earlier years the vagaries in dress assumed by some of the women of the “Artistic” and Theatrical Set were, and I fear often justly, matters for merriment to those of the fashionable world who fitly displayed the last modes from Paris; and I hear again the softly sarcastic tones of a society lady commenting on the clinging draperies of a pretty artist “finished by a pair of serviceable boots.”
Yet there were those among the leaders of the élite who chose to wear garments following the simpler and more graceful patterns of some bygone era; and I am bound to say that these were often among the most beautiful toilettes present and those which Joe then most admired.
But much strenuous work preceded the days of the Private Views. Early in the career of the Grosvenor Gallery, Joe, steeped in the work of the Old Masters of which he had made such a special study, persuaded Sir Coutts Lindsay to have an exhibition of their drawings—culled from the great collections of England; and many a pleasant visit did he have to fine country houses on this quest.