A happy chapter this: for though Joe always had so many irons in the fire that lengthy holidays were not only very few with him but actually avoided and disliked, he made merry so well by the wayside that many a memory falls into a category scarcely enshrined in a longer period than a summer afternoon, or at most, a week-end trip; he made holiday for other folk all the time, and in so doing made it for himself.
Of week-end visits none were more joyous than those spent under the hospitable roof of our friends Sir George and Lady Lewis at Walton-on-Thames, where Sir Edward Burne-Jones was a constant visitor. Neither of those friends were knighted or baroneted then, so that perhaps we might all have been said to be—using Joe’s own words—“of the lower middle class, to which I am proud to belong.”
Oscar Wilde was often of the Walton party—fresh from Oxford then, and considerably esteemed as a wit himself, though not, as Joe shows in his Reminiscences, always above the suspicion of borrowing.
In this respect he somewhat resembled Whistler; but the latter was more honest in his plagiarism.
One day Whistler accused Joe of making a joke at the expense of his friend—a false accusation in reality, though sometimes lightly true—to which Joe quickly answered: “Well, I can make a friend most days, but I can only make a good joke now and then:” assuredly only half a truth, too.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Whistler with his shrill cackle, “I wish I had said that myself!”
“Never mind, Jimmy, you will,” retorted Joe.
And the cackle broke forth again whole-heartedly, whereas Wilde might possibly have been offended.
But very few folk were ever offended at my husband’s fun.