Edmund Gosse proved a stanch friend to us as he has to many other Americans made welcome at his Sunday afternoons. He was a man of charm and simplicity: my memories of him are in harmony with his enchanting autobiography, “Father and Son.” Mrs. Gosse was both aesthetic and good looking. We met at her house her two sisters, Mrs. Alma-Tadema and another whose name I have forgotten. These three charmers were the daughters of Mr. Epps, and were known by the adjectives in his famous cocoa advertisement, “Grateful, Comforting, Delicious.” All were pretty women. Mrs. Tadema, the handsomest, was I think “Delicious.” She painted extremely well, and her husband was proud of her pictures. I once heard him say:
“Take notice that I wish to have it put on my tombstone, ‘Here lies the husband of Mrs. Alma-Tadema’!”
The Alma-Tadema house had certain classical features,—an atrium like those at Pompeii with marble columns and seats, a fountain playing in a marble basin filled with rose leaves; the floors were strewn with panther and tiger skins. Tadema often painted this interior in his pictures of Roman and Greek life, which were much admired and brought enormous sums.
Edmund Yates of the London World was one of the prominent men about town. His witticisms at the expense of his rival, Labouchère, editor of London Truth, were much quoted. The two editors chaffed each other in a weekly paragraph. People looked in Truth for Labouchère’s screed beginning, “My dear Edmund”, and in the World for a corresponding paragraph opening with, “My dear Labbie”! The jesting was good-humoured, neither hitting below the belt.
Mr. Yates was kind to us, first for Uncle Sam’s sake, then for our own. He was unwearied in arranging entertainments where we might meet the literary lights of the day. A dinner at the Star and Garter, at Richmond, where for the first time I tasted whitebait, is a clear memory. We drove down from London on a coach and four through beautiful Richmond Park, whose noble oaks are among the finest I have ever seen. We had a private dining room opening on the terrace, with the famous view over the Thames. Mallock, author of the “New Republic”, one of the books of the year, was the most brilliant of the witty party, and the lovely Violet Fane kept pace with him. William Black, who was among the guests, was very silent that night, but looked interesting.
“I wish to propose the health of the United States!” said the host, bowing to my mother. The company rose to drink the toast.
“Yates ought to like your country,” said Louis Jennings, my neighbor at table; “he earned the thirty thousand pounds with which he bought the World, on a lecture tour in the States!”
Mr. Yates had made some success as a novelist, but his real talent was journalistic. As long as he lived the World was sent to us, and my mother never failed to read it, sometimes crying out as she laid the paper down, “It makes me homesick for London!”
Among the friends of other days was Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes), whom my mother had known on her first visit to England in 1844. He then ranked as one of the notable minor poets, though I do not often hear his poetry spoken of to-day. I have a volume of his, published in 1838. It has a certain old-fashioned charm and brings back the marked personality of the old gentleman whom we met frequently at dinners and even balls, though he was past eighty years old.
Mr. George Howard, the late Lord Carlisle, was tireless in helping us see the best ancient and modern art. He was at that time devoting himself to painting, exhibiting with the rebels of the Grosvenor Gallery. He was a man of exquisite refinement and great reserve, ill fitted, it appeared, to take part in political life. He had married Rosamond, daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley, who inherited the family gift for politics and was already prominent as a reformer, though still very young, with a nursery full of children. I date my lifelong passion for sight-seeing from those hours spent with Mr. Howard at the British Museum, the National Gallery, and other picture galleries and studios. He introduced us to his friend Burne-Jones, who asked me to sit for him. I remember those mornings at Burne-Jones’s house very clearly. The walls of the passage leading to the studio were hung with the cartoons of the artist’s beautiful decoration, “The Briar Rose.” Burne-Jones was one of the most sensitive and interesting artists I have known. He complimented me on being a good sitter,—“You can hold the pose as well as many professional models.” He did not show me the canvas for which I sat, but told me later that my portrait appeared in a group of nymphs in the decoration he was then working upon. One day William Morris came in during the sitting and said a few words to his friend. Morris, in his plain, rough blue linen shirt and picturesque homespun clothes, looked the poet and the artist he was. Most of the men and women of this artistic group were very individual in dress. Mrs. Burne-Jones and her daughter looked like the ladies in Walter Crane’s lovely illustrations. It was from them that I first learned of the charming Liberty fabrics to which I have remained faithful all these years.