J. COMYNS CARR
From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co. Ltd.
CHAPTER I
COURTSHIP
It was in June of the year 1873 that I first saw my husband.
Aimée Desclée was beginning a memorable season of French Plays at the Royalty Theatre, and it was in the capacity of dramatic critic to The Echo—a post to which he had recently been appointed—that “Joe Carr,” as his friends called him, sat awaiting the curtain to rise on that remarkable performance of Frou-Frou which set the cosmopolitan world of London aflame in its day.
He was twenty-four years of age; but he looked more, for though he had the complexion almost of a girl and that unruly twist in his fair, curling hair which belongs to early youth, he was broad-shouldered and had the strong build of the Cumberland statesmen from whom he was as proud to claim ancestry on his father’s side as he was of the Irish blood that came to him from his mother.
Not that I could have described him that evening: the stalls were too ill lit and my excitement over the play was too great.