We have read of him before:—
"Sir Lewis Cornelys, as everybody knows, lives in a palace on Campden Hill, a house of many windows, and, whichever window he looks out of, he sees his own garden and very little else. There was no pleasanter or more festive house than his in London, winter or summer."
I quote this, as probably it may not be known to everybody that Sir Lewis was knighted on the memorable occasion of Trilby's birthday, when she was presented at the drawing—and every other—room. With much kindly fore-thought his friend and biographer allows him to be eighty years old in the early sixties, thereby enabling him to have attained to-day the ripe old age of one hundred and fourteen.
Well, he was one of du Maurier's earliest friends, and when Taffy the Laird, and Little Billie, "a-smokin' their pipes and cigyars," told the cabby to drive to Mechelen Lodge, I found my way to what I called Moray Lodge, and met them there. And there too, to be sure, was Glorioli, "the tall, good-looking swarthy foreigner from whose scarcely parted, moist, thick, bearded lips issued the most ravishing sounds that had ever been heard from throat of man or woman or boy."
As we now empty one or the other of the million bottles that are about, marked "De Soria, Bordeaux," we often think with gratitude of the great wine-grower and still greater singer, so correctly described as "singing best for love or glory in the studios of his friends."
To return to Arthur Lewis:—
He occupied an exceptional position, inasmuch as he had made his house a centre towards which intellectual London gravitated. When he had done this, that, and the other to make his bachelor days memorable to a host of friends, he wound up by marrying one of England's fairest women, our great actress, Kate Terry. It was in those early days that Ellen, the débutante, was introduced to the dramatic world as "Kate Terry's sister." Since then Kate, having elected to rest on her laurels, is proud to be referred to by the younger generation as "Ellen Terry's sister."
In early life Lewis had various roads open to him. Born, as he was, with the capacity of a man of business, the means and opportunities of a man of leisure, and the talents of an artist, he managed to follow the three roads at the same time, and they all led to well-deserved success. He was to be found at his desk in Regent Street, at his easel in the studio, or on the threshold of that big billiard and reception room which he had built to entertain his friends. Himself an artist, and for many years a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, he was on terms of close friendship with the men who had made their mark in the art-world, and with many who were destined to become famous. He was a Mæcenas of the right sort, knowing a good thing when he came across it, and frequently acquiring it before the sleepy world awoke to its merits.
I well recollect the enthusiasm with which he welcomed the first pictures Joseph Israels exhibited in England in 1862. Neither in the English nor in the Dutch department of the Exhibition could he ascertain whether these two pictures, "The Drowned Fisherman" and "Washing the Cradle," were for sale. But luck would have it that he was introduced to Israels at the Academy soirée, and the artist, assuring him that the pictures were "certainly for sale," Lewis secured the coveted works, and was thus the first to establish Israels' fame in England.