Yes. Stanley was a great man. Seven thousand miles across unknown Africa, amidst slave-traders, cannibals, and wild beasts, his expedition “tottered its way to the Atlantic, a scattered column of long and lean bodies; dysentery, ulcers, and scurvy fast absorbing the remnant of life left by famine.” So he crossed from East to West, and traversed hundreds of miles of the river Congo.
My other neighbour at that dinner—Hall Caine—had much in common with me, and we discussed Iceland, where, of course, we had both been; Norway, which he knew in summer and I in winter; and then Nansen.
The Manxman is an interesting companion, his nervous intensity throws warmth and enthusiasm into all his sayings and makes his subjects appear more interesting than they really are, perhaps. There is a magnetic influence in him. Physically delicate, a perfect bundle of nerves, there is an electric thrill in all he says, in spite of the sad, soft intonation of his voice.
He ponders again and again over his scenes, throws himself heart and soul into his characters, himself lives all the tragic episodes and terrible moments that the men and women undergo, with the result that by the time the book is completed he is absolutely played out, mind and body.
Certainly, to sum up, my dinner neighbours have often been, and often are, most interesting, and frequently delightful as well.
Nothing in the world is more bracing than contact with brilliant minds. Brilliancy begets brilliancy just as dullness makes thought barren.
CHAPTER XXIII
PRIVATE DINNERS
MY dinner slips and their history would fill a volume, therefore they must be laid aside just now. Suffice it to say that as a bride I conceived the idea of asking celebrated men and women to sign my tablecloths. Now after twenty years there are over four hundred names upon these cloths, including the signatures of some of the most prominent men and women in London at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. All the men on Punch have drawn a little picture, twenty Academicians have done likewise. Specialists, such as Marconi, Sir Hiram Maxim, Sir Joseph Swan, Sir William Crookes, or Sir William Ramsay, have drawn designs showing their own inventions. Others have made sketches or caricatures of themselves. Among them are Sir A. Pinero, Harry Furniss, Solomon J. Solomons, William Orpen, John Lavery, E. T. Reid, Weedon Grossmith, Forbes Robertson, Thompson Seton, Max Beerbohm, W. K. Haselden. A possession truly, and a record of many valued friendships. It has its comic side too, for sometimes when I am out at dinner and my name is heard my partner turns to me and says: