“I can enjoy fine things just as well when they belong to others as to me,” he would say. Of none are the words truer: “Having nothing yet possessing all things.”
But this graver digression has led me far from that merry Christmas party, when the parlour-maid, whose beauty was an attraction of our first home, and whose charm and devotion for eleven years are one of its sweetest memories, was forced to retire to the sideboard to compose her face; which sort of thing did not only occur at our own table, but at far smarter houses where decorous butlers would bow their heads lower to conceal their smiles, the mistress of one of them even declaring that her maggiordomo had not considered the company that evening worthy of Joe, and had suggested a different choice for a future party.
There was one over-cultured house to which we used to be bidden where the learned hostess was mated to a meek alien, who never presumed to understand her conversation. One evening, before the fish was removed, she leant forward and called down the table to Joe: “Mr. Comyns Carr, would you kindly inform us ‘what is style?’”
Joe scarcely paused before he replied with his sunniest smile, “Not before the sweets, Madam.” And he turned pleasantly to the amazed host and began complimenting him on the excellence of his claret.
I think, although I am afraid I have heard him call that host a “Prince of Duldoggery,” he preferred him that night to the lady of culture, though she was too serious to be included in his pet aversions, the “Lady Sarah Volatile’s” or “jumping-cats” of Society.
But even among such, how prompt he was to detect the tiniest spark of genuine knowledge or enthusiasm, the most foolishly concealed quality of true womanliness and devotion.
I remember a girl-friend of his daughter’s, boasting to him in defiance of his counsel, that she would drive to Ascot alone in an admirer’s car.
“No you won’t,” said Joe quietly.
And loudly as she persisted that night—she did not.
I could multiply these instances by the score, for even in middle age he was the darling of all girls, though he always told them home-truths, and many was the match he made or wisely marred in the confidential corner of a drawing-room.