Whether in the quiet or the open, of course, he always talked the better for his cigar, and to some the sight of the matches he wasted while seeking the positively apt word was a joy in itself—or an annoyance, as the case might be.
I know one dear friend who could not listen for irritation, and would burst out at last: “Light your pipe, first, old man, do!”
Yet there were times when he had no pipe to light—in smart drawing-rooms or theatre stalls, for instance. He was very naughty in the latter, and kept me in a fever lest, being so well known, some one should overhear him who could make mischief.
Once he was reproved by the management for making his party laugh immoderately in the stage-box at a sorely dull farcical comedy.
“Pray present my compliments to the manager,” said Joe suavely to the attendant who had brought the message, “and assure him that we were not laughing at anything on the stage.”
The speech he was proud to make every 8th of January in honour of his dear old friend, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s birthday, and the good wishes which for many years he voiced for many friends at Sir George and Lady Lewis’ New-Year parties, will not perhaps be altogether forgotten, nor could I recall the topical interests of the moment after so long.
But those who knew him best knew that the opportunities for witty rejoinder and humorous invention were by no means limited to set occasions; they were instantly seized on provocation which no one else would have perceived, and as often in the simplicity of domestic life as in the society of clever people who might have been supposed to inspire him.
Who but Joe, when a picnic was spread beneath the trees in the woods at Walton, and a combative young curate, claiming to have secured the spot, swooped down upon us with his Sunday-school flock, would have whispered merrily: “Never mind! We’ll cut him according to his cloth!”
Or who, on being asked by a lady which was my “At Home” day, would have replied: “Let me see! Sunday is the Lord’s Day, and Monday is my wife’s day;” or, in the days of my slenderness and his more opulent figure, would have declared that, taking the average, we were the thinnest couple in London?