There are many scattered entries in his Diary which show how great a relaxation the Paris holiday yielded.
'At Christmas at Paris we were always gay, though often among the aged. The gayest dinner I remember was at Henri Germain's with Gérôme, Gaston Boissier, Laboulaye, and others, all about eighty, I being the chicken of the party.'
Gérôme, the painter, is often mentioned. Laboulaye must have been Paul Laboulaye, born 1833, the diplomatist who had been Ambassador to St. Petersburg in 1886. It was during his embassy that the rapprochement took place between France and Russia which was announced to Europe by the welcome of the French fleet to Cronstadt.
Gaston Boissier, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, and a great classical scholar, figures again with another friend, M. Bonnat, in Sir Charles's memoir of his wife; for he notes that during their last Christmas in Paris, in 1903, 'the gaiety of their meetings' with these two friends and others 'had been as unrestrained as ever.' Earlier memories recall the sculptors Christophe and Gustave Moreau. Christophe's beautiful 'Mask,' of which Lady Dilke had written, stands in the Tuileries Garden, and was some time ago horribly disfigured by inkstain. One of Sir Charles's late letters was written to M. Joseph Reinach, to ask whether anything had yet been done to cleanse this work of the sculptor she venerated. Only two small casts were made by Christophe from the statue, and one of these, given to her by him, decorated the Pyrford home. So did a picture by François Louis Français, another artist friend, chief in his day of the water-colour school, a picture which had inspired one of her stories, and gave the motto, 'Dites-moi un Pater,' to her Shrine of Death. In all the later and in some of the earlier friendships Sir Charles shared, as he did in those of the great custodians of art treasures. M. de Nolhac, the poet and the Curator of Versailles, was prominent among them, and Eugène Müntz, head of the École des Beaux Arts. Lady Dilke's correspondence with the latter, extending over a period of twenty-three years, is preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale.
One great friend among collectors was M. Gustave Dreyfus, a high authority on Donatello and on the medallists of the Italian Renaissance. At his house there was another attraction in the shape of the concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its blandishments on the writer. His love of cats was as well known to his French as to his English friends, Émile Ollivier writes in 1891 from La Moutte: 'Campion lui-même cherche d'un regard affligé son protecteur disparu'; and M. André Chevrillon, being 'touché par la façon dont je vous ai entendu parler de ce divin animal,' sent him Taine's sonnets 'A trois chats, Puss, Ébène, et Mitonne, dédiés par leur ami, maître, et serviteur.'
Memorials of dinners with the well-known collector Camille Groult were preserved in the shape of some sketches, one of a cavalier in peruke and cravat, another an excellent crayon head of the host, by Domingo, the Spanish artist, drawn on the back of a torn menu and given by him to Lady Dilke.
The Groults' admiration of the beauty of Dockett Eddy was testified in the gift of a little reflecting mirror, a 'camera obscura,' which, held to the light, made exquisite vignettes of river, clematis, and syringa; and a dinner at 76, Sloane Street was marked by the gift of little copies of M. Groult's famous lately acquired Fragonard, in which Cupid levels his arrows at the dainty feet of a well-known dancer of the time.
The sculptor Rodin was an acquaintance of late years, and a Christmas card sent to 76, Sloane Street, in the form of a framed and signed pencil sketch of a female head, was that master's tribute to Sir Charles's heresy that Rodin drew much better than he sculptured.
'For old Français,' says Sir Charles, 'Lady Dilke had the veneration she felt for Christophe among sculptors,' and for a few women, such as Mme. Renan. To both the Renans they were bound by ties of familiar friendship, and some of their pleasantest hours were spent at the Collège de France. On November 11th, 1880, there is a note of Sir Charles's of a talk with Gambetta: 'They discussed Renan's "Souvenirs," which were appearing in the Revue for November, wonderfully entertaining, and perfectly beautiful in style.' It was Renan who had presented Lady Dilke's two volumes on the French Renaissance, in 1880, to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with an admiring report, and Sir Charles's admiration for Renan's writing was great. Of Mme. Renan he says: 'This homely-looking old dame was not only a good wife, but a woman of the soundest sense and the most upright judgment.'
The same feeling of attachment and respect bound them to Mme. de Franqueville, [Footnote: Mlle. Érard.] the first wife of Sir Charles's old friend M. de Franqueville, whom he saw often both in Paris and London. They visited them at La Muette, famous for its memories of Marie Antoinette, where in the early years of her prosperity she would take her companions to play at dairying with dainty emblazoned milkpails.