“Yes,” replied Latham, with his knowing look, and his head on one side like a bird, “but what I want to know is, how many bottles you can manage at one sitting?”
“I once knew another priest,” said Borrow. “It was at Oporto; I have seen him get through two bottles by himself.”
By this time Latham was a little unsteady; he slipped from his chair as if it had been an inclined plane, and lay on the carpet, on which he made his mark as betokening more than nausea. He was unable to rise, but he held his head up, with a cunning smile, saying, “This must be a very disreputable house.”
Borrow saw Latham after this at times on his way to me, and always stopped to say a kind word to him, seeing his forlorn condition.
LV.
It must have been in 1871 that I made the acquaintance of Rossetti. This was some time after Lady Ripon’s death, on which I visited my married daughter in Germany, but finally returned to Roehampton. It was then that I called on the poet-painter, as described. After dining with me, he was so good as to send me a note, in which he said he should like to ask some of his friends to meet me at dinner. In reply, I said that it would be a pleasure to me to dine with him, but begged him not to inconvenience himself on my account, as it would suit me at any time to visit him.
On the day finally fixed there were many at dinner, and as many later. Many of these, at the time, had good positions as editors, writers, and painters. W. B. Scott was at the table, also Mr. Sidney Colvin, Mr. Joseph Knight, Dr. Hüffer, Mr. William Rossetti, and so on; and in the evening, Dr. Westland Marston, Mr. O’Shaugnessy, Philip Marston, Madox Brown, Dr. Appleton, a wife or two, and not a few besides.
Some of these have increased in fame since then, some are dead, some are forgotten. Madox Brown, a painter with a fine historic imagination, flourishes still.